[Congressional Record Volume 150, Number 55 (Tuesday, April 27, 2004)]
[House]
[Pages H2397-H2398]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                              {time}  1945
   IN COMMEMORATION OF THE 89TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE ARMENIAN GENOCIDE

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Burgess). Under a previous order of the 
House, the gentleman from California (Mr. Schiff) is recognized for 5 
minutes.
  Mr. SCHIFF. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to honor the one and a half 
million Armenians who perished in the Armenian genocide that began 89 
years ago on April 24, 1915. I consider this a sacred obligation, to 
ensure that future generations of Americans remember the first genocide 
of the 20th century and to ensure that the men, women and children who 
perished at the hands of the Ottoman Empire are not lost to history.
  We have always recognized the transience of memory. It is why we set 
aside holidays and build monuments to honor our heroes and the events 
that have shaped our societies. The stone and concrete of a memorial 
serve to freeze history and to preserve it for those who will follow. 
The written word cannot be burned when it is etched into rock.
  Time is the ally of those who would deny or change history. Such has 
it been with the government of Turkey and the Armenian genocide. 
Although the genocide was perpetrated by modern Turkey's predecessor, 
generations of Turkish leaders have steadfastly denied that the 
genocide ever took place, despite overwhelming evidence to the 
contrary.
  Time is on their side. The generation of Armenians with direct memory 
of the genocide is gone. Their children are aging. Much of the rest of 
the world has moved on, reluctant to dredge up unpleasant memories and 
risk the ire of modern Turkey. For those of us who care deeply about 
the issue, we must redouble our efforts to ensure that our Nation, 
which has championed liberty and human rights throughout its history, 
is not complicit in Ankara's effort to obfuscate what happened between 
1915 and 1923. Worse still, by tacitly siding with those who would deny 
the Armenian genocide, we have rendered hollow our commitment to never 
again let genocide occur.
  Among historians there is no dispute that what happened to the 
Armenian people was genocide. Thousands of pages of documents sit in 
our National Archives. Newspapers of the day were replete with stories 
about the murder of Armenians. Appeal to Turkey to stop massacres 
headlined the New York Times on April 28, 1915, just as the killing 
began. On October 7 of that year, the Times reported that 800,000 
Armenians had been slain in cold blood in Asia Minor. In mid-December 
of 1915, the Times spoke of a million Armenians killed or in exile.
  Prominent citizens of the day, including America's ambassador to the 
Ottoman Empire, Henry Morgenthau, and Britain's Lord Bryce reported on 
the massacres in great detail. Morgenthau was appalled at what he would 
later call the sadistic orgies of rape, torture, and murder. Lord 
Bryce, a former British ambassador to the United States, worked to 
raise awareness of and money for the victims of what he called the most 
colossal crime in the history of the world. In October 1915, the 
Rockefeller Foundation contributed $30,000, a sum worth more than half 
a million dollars today, to a relief fund for Armenia.
  Others, too, reacted in horror to what Ambassador Morgenthau called, 
for lack of a specific term, race murder. In the early 1930s, 10 years 
after the genocide, a young Polish attorney named Raphael Lemkin, who 
had read of the genocide as a child, tried to get European statesmen to 
criminalize the destruction of ethnic and religious groups. He was 
dismissed as an alarmist. A few years later, when Hitler invaded 
Poland, Lemkin lost 49 members of his family in the Holocaust.
  Lemkin escaped, first to Sweden, where he documented the horrors 
going on in Nazi-occupied Europe and then to the United States, where 
he worked for the Allied war effort. He resolved to create a word to 
convey the mass atrocities being committed by the Germans. In 1944, 
while working for the U.S. War Department, he coined the term 
``genocide,'' citing the slaughter of Armenians three decades earlier.
  In 1948, in the shadow of the Holocaust, the international community 
responded to Nazi Germany's methodically orchestrated acts of genocide 
by approving the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the 
Crime of Genocide. It confirms that genocide

[[Page H2398]]

is a crime under international law and defines genocide as actions 
committed with the intent to destroy a national, ethnic, racial or 
religious group.
  The United States, under President Truman, was the first Nation to 
sign the convention. Last year marked the 15th anniversary of President 
Reagan's signing of the Genocide Convention Implementation Act.
  Just over a year ago, I introduced H.R. 193 with my colleague, the 
gentleman from California (Mr. Radanovich), with the gentleman from New 
Jersey (Mr. Pallone), with the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. 
Knollenberg), and other Members of this House. This resolution 
reaffirms the support of the Congress for the genocide convention and 
commemorates the anniversary of our becoming a party to this landmark 
legislation.
  On May 21 of last year, we achieved a huge victory when we passed the 
genocide resolution by a very strong bipartisan vote.
  This should be an easy resolution for all of us now to support on the 
House floor. Genocide is the most abhorrent crime known to humankind; 
and unfortunately, it still exists. Exactly 10 years ago, before the 
cameras of the world, Rwanda's majority Hutus exterminated over 500,000 
Tutsi in just over 3 months' time, mostly with machetes and homemade 
axes.
  The reason that we have not yet succeeded in passing this resolution 
on the House floor is simple. The government of Turkey refuses to 
acknowledge the genocide and the strongest Nation on Earth fears their 
reaction if we do.
  All over the globe--from South Africa, to Argentina, to the former 
Yugoslavia, governments have set up truth commissions and other bodies 
to investigate atrocities. Nowhere has this process been more extensive 
than in Germany, which has engaged in decades of soul-searching and 
good works that have not only restored the nation's standing, but also 
its moral authority.
  I call upon the government of Turkey and our own government to do the 
same. When the burden of the past is lifted, then the future is 
brighter. As long as Ankara engages in prevarication, equivocation and 
evasion, Turkey will exist under a cloud--not because of its past, but 
because of its refusal to address that past. And as long as we fail to 
do our duty in this country, in this Congress, we do not live up to our 
great name and our great heritage.
  I also call upon the distinguished Speaker of the House to allow us 
to vote on the Genocide Resolution. One hundred ten of my colleagues 
have cosponsored this resolution and I expect that it would pass 
overwhelmingly if given the chance, but we must do it soon, for with 
each year the events of 1915-1923 recede a bit more into the dark of 
history.
  Time, Mr. Speaker, is not on our side.
  Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent for 1 additional minute.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair cannot recognize that unanimous 
consent request. The gentleman's time has expired.

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