[Congressional Record Volume 151, Number 154 (Friday, November 18, 2005)]
[Senate]
[Pages S13394-S13395]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                         SUBMITTED RESOLUTIONS

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  SENATE RESOLUTION 320--CALLING ON THE PRESIDENT TO ENSURE THAT THE 
FOREIGN POLICY OF THE UNITED STATES REFLECTS APPROPRIATE UNDERSTANDING 
   AND SENSITIVITY CONCERNING ISSUES RELATED TO HUMAN RIGHTS, ETHNIC 
CLEANSING, AND GENOCIDE DOCUMENTED IN THE UNITED STATES RECORD RELATING 
                        TO THE ARMENIAN GENOCIDE

  Mr. ENSIGN (for himself and Mr. Durbin) submitted the following 
resolution; which was referred to the Committee on Foreign Relations:

                               S. Res 320

       Whereas the Armenian Genocide was conceived and carried out 
     by the Ottoman Empire from 1915 to 1923, resulting in the 
     deportation of nearly 2,000,000 Armenians, of whom 1,500,000 
     men, women, and children were killed, 500,000 survivors were 
     expelled from their homes, and which succeeded in the 
     elimination of more than 2,500-year presence of Armenians in 
     their historic homeland;
       Whereas, on May 24, 1915, the Allied Powers issued the 
     joint statement of England, France, and Russia that 
     explicitly charged, for the first time ever, another 
     government of committing ``a crime against humanity'';
       Whereas that joint statement stated ``the Allied 
     Governments announce publicly to the Sublime Porte that they 
     will hold personally responsible for these crimes all members 
     of the Ottoman Government, as well as those of their agents 
     who are implicated in such massacres'';
       Whereas the post-World War I Turkish Government indicted 
     the top leaders involved in the ``organization and 
     execution'' of the Armenian Genocide and in the ``massacre 
     and destruction of the Armenians'';
       Whereas in a series of courts-martial, officials of the 
     Young Turk Regime were tried and convicted on charges of 
     organizing and executing massacres against the Armenian 
     people;
       Whereas the officials who were the chief organizers of the 
     Armenian Genocide, Minister of War Enver, Minister of the 
     Interior Talaat, and Minister of the Navy Jemal, were tried 
     by military tribunals, found guilty, and condemned to death 
     for their crimes, however, the punishments imposed by the 
     tribunals were not enforced;
       Whereas the Armenian Genocide and the failure to carry out 
     the death sentence against Enver, Talaat, and Jemal are 
     documented with overwhelming evidence in the national 
     archives of Austria, France, Germany, Russia, the United 
     Kingdom, the United States, the Vatican, and many other 
     countries, and this vast body of evidence attests to the same 
     facts, the same events, and the same consequences;
       Whereas the National Archives and Records Administration of 
     the United States holds extensive and thorough documentation 
     on the Armenian Genocide, especially in its holdings for the 
     Department of State under Record Group 59, files 867.00 and 
     867.40, which are open and widely available to the public and 
     interested institutions;
       Whereas the Honorable Henry Morgenthau, United States 
     Ambassador to the Ottoman Empire from 1913 to 1916, organized 
     and led protests by officials of many countries, among them 
     the allies of the Ottoman Empire, against the Armenian 
     Genocide;
       Whereas Ambassador Morgenthau explicitly described to the 
     Department of State the policy of the Government of the 
     Ottoman Empire as ``a campaign of race extermination'', and 
     was instructed on July 16, 1915, by Secretary of State Robert 
     Lansing that the ``Department approves your procedure . . . 
     to stop Armenian persecution'';
       Whereas Senate Concurrent Resolution 12, 64th Congress, 
     agreed to July 18, 1916, resolved that ``the President of the 
     United States be respectfully asked to designate a day on 
     which the citizens of this country may give expression to 
     their sympathy by contributing funds now being raised for the 
     relief of the Armenians'', who, at that time, were enduring 
     ``starvation, disease, and untold suffering'';
       Whereas President Woodrow Wilson agreed with such 
     Concurrent Resolution and encouraged the formation of the 
     organization known as Near East Relief, which was 
     incorporated by the Act of August 6, 1919, 66th Congress (41 
     Stat. 273, chapter 32);
       Whereas, from 1915 through 1930, Near East Relief 
     contributed approximately $116,000,000 to aid survivors of 
     the Armenian Genocide, including aid to approximately 132,000 
     Armenian orphans;
       Whereas Senate Resolution 359, 66th Congress, agreed to May 
     11, 1920, stated in part, ``the testimony adduced at the 
     hearings conducted by the subcommittee of the Senate 
     Committee on Foreign Relations have clearly established the 
     truth of the reported massacres and other atrocities from 
     which the Armenian people have suffered'';
       Whereas such Senate Resolution followed the report to the 
     Senate of the American Military Mission to Armenia, which was 
     led by General James Harbord, dated April 13, 1920, that 
     stated ``[m]utilation, violation, torture, and death have 
     left their haunting memories in a hundred beautiful Armenian 
     valleys, and the traveler in that region is seldom free from 
     the evidence of this most colossal crime of all the ages'';
       Whereas, as displayed in the United States Holocaust 
     Memorial Museum, Adolf Hitler, on ordering his military 
     commanders to attack Poland without provocation in 1939, 
     dismissed objections by saying ``[w]ho, after all, speaks 
     today of the annihilation of the Armenians?'' and thus set 
     the stage for the Holocaust;
       Whereas Raphael Lemkin, who coined the term ``genocide'' in 
     1944, and who was the earliest proponent of the Convention on 
     the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide, invoked the 
     Armenian case as a definitive example of genocide in the 20th 
     century;
       Whereas the first resolution on genocide adopted by the 
     United Nations, United Nations General Assembly Resolution 
     96(1), dated December 11, 1946, (which was adopted at the 
     urging of Raphael Lemkin), and the Convention on the 
     Prevention and Punishment of Genocide, done at Paris December 
     9, 1948, recognized the Armenian Genocide as the type of 
     crime the United Nations intended to prevent and punish by 
     codifying existing standards;
       Whereas, in 1948, the United Nations War Crimes Commission 
     invoked the Armenian Genocide as ``precisely . . . one of the 
     types of acts which the modern term `crimes against humanity' 
     is intended to cover'' and as a precedent for the Nuremberg 
     tribunals;
       Whereas such Commission stated that ``[t]he provisions of 
     Article 230 of the Peace Treaty of Sevres were obviously 
     intended to cover, in conformity with the Allied note of 1915 
     . . . offenses which had been committed on Turkish territory 
     against persons of Turkish citizenship, though of Armenian or 
     Greek race. This article constitutes therefore a precedent 
     for Article 6c and 5c of the Nuremberg and Tokyo Charters, 
     and offers an example of one of the categories of `crimes 
     against humanity' as understood by these enactments'';
       Whereas House Joint Resolution 148, 94th Congress, adopted 
     by the House of Representatives on April 8, 1975, resolved 
     that ``April 24, 1975, is hereby designated as `National Day 
     of Remembrance of Man's Inhumanity to Man', and the President 
     of the United States is authorized and requested to issue a 
     proclamation calling upon the people of the United States to 
     observe such day as a day of remembrance for all the victims 
     of genocide, especially those of Armenian ancestry'';
       Whereas Proclamation 4838 of April 22, 1981 (95 Stat. 1813) 
     issued by President Ronald Reagan, stated, in part, that 
     ``[l]ike the genocide of the Armenians before it, and the 
     genocide of the Cambodians which followed it--and like too 
     many other persecutions of too many other people--the lessons 
     of the Holocaust must never be forgotten'';
       Whereas House Joint Resolution 247, 98th Congress, adopted 
     by the House of Representatives on September 10, 1984, 
     resolved that ``April 24, 1985, is hereby designated as 
     `National Day of Remembrance of Man's Inhumanity to Man', and 
     the President of the United States is authorized and 
     requested to issue a proclamation calling upon the people of 
     the United States to observe such day as a day of remembrance 
     for all the victims of genocide, especially the one and one-
     half million people of Armenian ancestry'';
       Whereas, in August 1985, after extensive study and 
     deliberation, the United Nations Sub-Commission on Prevention 
     of Discrimination and Protection of Minorities voted 14 to 1 
     to accept a report entitled ``Study of the Question of the 
     Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide'', which 
     stated ``[t]he Nazi aberration has unfortunately not been the 
     only case of genocide in the 20th century. Among other 
     examples which can be cited as qualifying are . . . the 
     Ottoman massacre of Armenians in 1915-1916'';
       Whereas such report also explained that ``[a]t least 
     1,000,000, and possibly well over half of the Armenian 
     population, are reliably estimated to have been killed or 
     death marched by independent authorities and eye-witnesses 
     and this is corroborated by reports in United States, German, 
     and British archives and of contemporary diplomats in the 
     Ottoman Empire, including those of its ally Germany'';
       Whereas the United States Holocaust Memorial Council, an 
     independent Federal agency that serves as the board of 
     trustees of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum 
     pursuant to section 2302 of title 36, United States Code, 
     unanimously resolved on April 30, 1981, that the Museum would 
     exhibit information regarding the Armenian Genocide and the 
     Museum has since done so;
       Whereas, reviewing an aberrant 1982 expression by the 
     Department of State (which was later retracted) that asserted 
     that the facts of the Armenian Genocide may be ambiguous, the 
     United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia 
     in 1993, after a review of documents pertaining to the policy 
     record of the United States, noted that the assertion on 
     ambiguity in the United States record about the Armenian 
     Genocide ``contradicted longstanding United States policy and 
     was eventually retracted'';
       Whereas, on June 5, 1996, the House of Representatives 
     adopted an amendment to H.R. 3540, 104th Congress (the 
     Foreign Operations,

[[Page S13395]]

     Export Financing, and Related Programs Appropriations Act, 
     1997), to reduce aid to Turkey by $3,000,000 (an estimate of 
     its payment of lobbying fees in the United States) until the 
     Turkish Government acknowledged the Armenian Genocide and 
     took steps to honor the memory of its victims;
       Whereas President William Jefferson Clinton, on April 24, 
     1998, stated, ``[t]his year, as in the past, we join with 
     Armenian-Americans throughout the nation in commemorating one 
     of the saddest chapters in the history of this century, the 
     deportations and massacres of a million and a half Armenians 
     in the Ottoman Empire in the years 1915-1923'';
       Whereas President George W. Bush, on April 24, 2004, 
     stated, ``[o]n this day, we pause in remembrance of one of 
     the most horrible tragedies of the 20th century, the 
     annihilation of as many as 1,500,000 Armenians through forced 
     exile and murder at the end of the Ottoman Empire''; and
       Whereas, despite the international recognition and 
     affirmation of the Armenian Genocide, the failure of the 
     domestic and international authorities to punish those 
     responsible for the Armenian Genocide is a reason why similar 
     genocides have recurred and may recur in the future, and that 
     a just resolution will help prevent future genocides: Now, 
     therefore, be it
       Resolved, That the Senate--
       (1) calls on the President to ensure that the foreign 
     policy of the United States reflects appropriate 
     understanding and sensitivity concerning issues related to 
     human rights, ethnic cleansing, and genocide documented in 
     the United States record relating to the Armenian Genocide 
     and the consequences of the failure to realize a just 
     resolution; and
       (2) calls on the President, in the President's annual 
     message commemorating the Armenian Genocide issued on or 
     about April 24 to accurately characterize the systematic and 
     deliberate annihilation of 1,500,000 Armenians as genocide 
     and to recall the proud history of United States intervention 
     in opposition to the Armenian Genocide.
  Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, I rise today to recall and to honor the 
1.5 million Armenians killed by the Ottoman government between 1915 and 
1923. Genocides claimed the lives of some 60 million people in the 
century just past, 16 million after the end of the Second World War, 
when we told ourselves, ``Never again.'' The Armenian Genocide was the 
20th century's first genocide, a vicious, organized crime against 
humanity that included murder, deportation, torture, and slave labor.
  Some would ignore the Armenian victims and forget how they died. We 
need to fight against such forgetfulness.
  An Armenian named Vahram Dadrian was a survivor of the genocide and 
wrote about his experiences in a moving memoir. But by the 1940s, he 
had begun to lose hope. ``Everything has been forgotten,'' he wrote, 
``our . . . dead could never have imagined, even for a fraction of a 
moment, that they would have been forgotten so soon.''
  We must restore that lost hope. We must not forget. To do so would 
dishonor the memories of the dead and send a message to the world that 
we might tolerate genocide.
  We will not tolerate the intolerable. We will remember, and in doing 
so, cultivate the knowledge--and the wisdom--necessary to act to 
prevent a repetition of these terrible crimes. Because the problem 
isn't simply a matter of knowing, but about knowing when and how to 
act.
  Senator Ensign and I have submitted a resolution that acknowledges 
the suffering of those destroyed by the Armenian genocide.
  It calls on the President to remember the hard lessons of the 
Armenian genocide in the conduct of U.S. foreign policy and to assure 
that our knowledge of this terrible crime informs our human rights 
policies.
  As I said, the Armenian genocide was the first genocide of the 20th 
century. It was also the first time that the American public found 
itself confronting such a cruel, man-made catastrophe.
  America closely followed the crisis. In 1915, the New York Times 
alone published 145 articles on the Armenian massacres, roughly one 
every 2\1/2\ days.
  Dedicated and courageous American diplomats tried to end the carnage. 
Our ambassador to Constantinople, Henry Morgenthau, played an important 
role in bringing the massacres to the attention of the outside world.
  Americans, such as Mark Twain, Henry Adams, and Clara Barton, spoke 
out against the massacres and a broad-based American humanitarian 
movement sought to provide relief to the desperate Armenians and pushed 
the U.S. Government to protect the victims from further violence. It 
was the birth of the American international human rights movement.
  The Near East Relief Organization, founded in 1919 to assist Armenian 
refugees, provided more than $116 million for the cause during its 10-
year lifetime--the equivalent of more than $1 billion in today's money.
  We need to recapture that energy and determination because the best 
way to honor those who died is to recognize their suffering and 
dedicate ourselves to preventing such a destruction of entire 
communities in the future.
  Recognizing the Armenian genocide takes on added importance in the 
face of the genocide occurring right now in the Darfur region of Sudan. 
As we pause to reflect upon this grievous example of man's inhumanity 
to man, let us honor the victims of the Armenian genocide and all 
crimes against humanity not only by acknowledging their suffering, but 
also by acting to halt similar atrocities that are occurring now before 
our very eyes.

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