[Congressional Record Volume 149, Number 57 (Wednesday, April 9, 2003)]
[Senate]
[Page S5053]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                   ARMENIAN GENOCIDE 88TH ANNIVERSARY

  Mr. FEINGOLD. Mr. President, today people around the world are 
pausing to remember and honor the victims of the Armenian genocide, 
which began 88 years ago in what is now Turkey. Between 1915 and 1923, 
one-and-a-half million Armenians--roughly 60 percent of the total 
Armenian population--were systematically murdered at the hands of 
agents of the Ottoman Empire, and hundreds of thousands more were 
forced to leave their homes. At that time, the word ``genocide'' had 
not yet entered our vocabulary. Now, 88 years later, this brutal 
episode of violence against the Armenian people is considered to have 
been the first, but unfortunately not the last, genocide of the 20th 
century.
  Two decades later, in 1939, as Adolph Hitler, confident that history 
would exonerate him, prepared to send his armies into Poland with 
instructions to slaughter people indiscriminately and without mercy, he 
rhetorically asked his advisers: ``Who, after all, speaks today of the 
annihilation of the Armenians?'' That is precisely why I speak today, 
and every year on this date, to honor the Armenian people who lost 
their lives nearly a century ago and to remind the American people that 
the capacity for violence and hate is still prevalent in our world 
today.
  Just in the last decade, we have seen systematic efforts to 
extinguish people because of their ethnicity in Bosnia, Rwanda, and 
Kosovo. Last year the Organization for Security and Cooperation in 
Europe noted a ``sharp escalation'' of anti-Semitic violence in Europe. 
Apparently, even lessons as searing and tragic as those of the 
Holocaust can be forgotten if we do not remain vigilant in our efforts 
to remember them.
  Last year, as the chairman of the Subcommittee on Africa, I had the 
opportunity to visit the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, 
which is setting groundbreaking legal precedents with regard to the 
treatment of genocide. Through such tribunals, the international 
community should send a powerful message to would-be mass-murderers 
that such horrific acts will not go unpunished. Since I became a member 
of the U.S. Senate, I have striven to make protection of basic human 
rights, and accountability for such atrocities, cornerstones of U.S. 
foreign policy, and I will continue to do so as long as I am here.
  Today, we remember the men, women and children who perished in the 
Armenian genocide, because to forget them, or any of the countless 
millions who have been murdered because of their ethnicity over the 
past century, would be to invite such tragic episodes to be repeated.

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