[Congressional Record Volume 152, Number 48 (Thursday, April 27, 2006)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E633-E634]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




               91ST ANNIVERSARY OF THE ARMENIAN GENOCIDE

                                 ______
                                 

                         HON. JAMES P. McGOVERN

                            of massachusetts

                    in the house of representatives

                       Wednesday, April 26, 2006

  Mr. McGOVERN. Mr. Speaker, 91 years ago, a systematic and deliberate 
campaign of genocide was initiated by the Turkish Ottoman Empire 
against its Armenian population. Beginning in 1915, and continuing over 
the next eight years, over one and a half million Armenians were 
tortured and murdered, and another half million were forced from their 
homeland into exile.
  In his annual April 24th commemoration statement, President Bush once 
again failed to acknowledge this annihilation of a people as genocide. 
In a time when the denial of the Armenian genocide is again on the rise 
in Turkey--and through its agents, even here in the United States as 
witnessed by a federal lawsuit in Massachusetts opposed to our public 
school history curriculum on genocide--President Bush once again 
squandered an opportunity to demonstrate American courage and 
leadership and speak out with moral clarity on the issue of genocide. 
By failing to affirm the Armenian Genocide, President Bush insults the 
suffering endured by the Armenian people and especially the remaining 
survivors of the genocide, most of whom are now in their 90s.
  Luckily, such leadership and courage is not lacking among the 
Armenian-American community. Not only do they continue their historic 
work on the recognition and documentation of the Armenian Genocide, but 
they are genuine leaders and partners in efforts to educate Americans 
about the other genocides of the 20th and 21st Centuries--the Holocaust 
of World War II, Cambodia, Rwanda and Bosnia, to note some of the most 
prominent.
  Most recently, the Armenian-American community has been actively 
engaged in bringing to the attention of U.S. and world leaders the 
genocide going on right now in Darfur, Sudan. I would like to honor, in 
particular, the work of Mr. George Aghjayan, Chairman of the Armenian 
National Committee of Central Massachusetts, who has been especially 
active in education and organizing activities about Darfur. Mr. 
Aghjayan, who lives in Worcester, Massachusetts, has helped rally 
interest and support on Darfur not only from his own community, but 
from college students, religious leaders, and genocide survivors.
  I'm proud to be a member of the House Caucus on Armenian Issues, and 
to support the activities taking place today in the U.S. Congress in 
memory of the Armenian Genocide. I am more proud, however, to have had 
the opportunity to meet and learn from the extensive Armenian-American 
community in central Massachusetts and from their exemplary community 
leaders, like George Aghjayan and his wife, Joyce. Through them I have 
found my own voice and determination to denounce genocide wherever it 
is taking place, and to confront the culture of denial that would erase 
the historical record of the Armenian Genocide.

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