[Congressional Record Volume 154, Number 66 (Thursday, April 24, 2008)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E732-E733]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




               93RD ANNIVERSARY OF THE ARMENIAN GENOCIDE

                                 ______
                                 

                        HON. LINCOLN DIAZ-BALART

                               of florida

                    in the house of representatives

                        Thursday, April 24, 2008

  Mr. LINCOLN DIAZ-BALART of Florida. Madam Speaker, every year we mark 
the anniversary of a terrible event that took place over the years of 
1915-1923, during the First World War, when 1.5 million Armenians were 
slaughtered and over half a million survivors were forced to leave a 
homeland they had inhabited for over two millennia. Today marks the 
93rd anniversary of the Armenian genocide.
  I am a cosponsor of H. Res. 106, a resolution which simply affirms a 
historical fact. The United States National Archives and Record 
Administration holds extensive records, open to the public, which 
meticulously document the Armenian genocide. Furthermore, the post-
World War I Turkish government indicted leaders who were involved in 
these killings which

[[Page E733]]

it labeled a ``massacre.'' On May 24, 1915, the Allied Powers of 
England, France, and Russia issued a statement charging the Ottoman 
government of committing a ``crime against humanity.'' President Ronald 
Reagan in proclamation number 4838, dated April 22, 1981, said, ``like 
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.''
  The Armenian genocide resolution is offensive to some simply because 
it characterizes that massacre as ``genocide.'' We do not use that term 
loosely, but violence on such a tremendous scale has earned that 
terrible title. These deaths were not caused by the inevitable 
hostility of war, but by systematic murder aimed at eliminating a 
people. We gain nothing by pretending it was anything less.
  The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum includes a quote from 
Adolf Hitler who justified his own atrocities by saying, ``[w]ho, after 
all, speaks today of the annihilation of the Armenians?'' Shortly 
thereafter, the world would learn of the horrors of the Holocaust.
  I wonder whether the horrors of the Second World War may have been 
averted had people loudly and with conviction condemned the Armenian 
genocide of the First World War. We cannot erase the events of history, 
and we ignore them at our peril. In the United States, we are still 
dealing with the consequences of slavery--a blight on our own 
historical record. But we cannot be committed to the principle of 
``never again'' if we do not acknowledge the evil that first committed 
us to make that vow.

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