[Congressional Record Volume 154, Number 66 (Thursday, April 24, 2008)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E740]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




               93RD ANNIVERSARY OF THE ARMENIAN GENOCIDE

                                 ______
                                 

                          HON. STENY H. HOYER

                              of maryland

                    in the house of representatives

                        Thursday, April 24, 2008

  Mr. HOYER. Madam Speaker, today we commemorate one of the most tragic 
chapters in human history: the Armenian genocide, whose 93rd 
anniversary is marked today. From 1915 to 1923, officials of the 
Ottoman Empire carried out a systematic campaign of massacres and 
forced deportations of Armenians from their homeland. All told, 1.5 
million innocent men, women and children were murdered in this 
genocide, and 500,000 became refugees and displaced persons.
  And sadly, we see this pattern--of genocide--repeating itself today. 
It is no coincidence that on this very day of commemoration, the news 
from Darfur grows only worse. While the world's worst humanitarian and 
human rights crisis continues to unfold, the regime in Khartoum 
continues to stymie the implementation of a peacekeeping force, and the 
peace process has ground to a halt. From the U.N. come frightening new 
figures--300,000 dead and the vast majority of the region's population, 
4.27 million out of 6 million, now ``seriously affected'' by the 
conflict.
  Clearly, patterns repeat themselves. Which is all the more reason 
why, in commemorating the 20th century's first genocide, one cannot 
help but feel compelled to redouble our efforts to resolve the 21st 
century's first genocide--that of Darfur.
  The Genocide Convention speaks not only of addressing genocide after 
it has happened--but also of preventing genocide. This day of 
commemoration should remind us all that we have a responsibility not 
only to honor the victims of genocide and their families, not only a 
responsibility to the past, but to the future. In the face of 
continuing genocide, we have a responsibility for action--not apathy.
  In a July 24, 1915 cable, American Consul Leslie Davis said of the 
genocide of Armenians, ``I do not believe there has ever been a 
massacre in the history of the world so general and thorough as that 
which is now being perpetrated in this region or that a more fiendish, 
diabolical scheme has ever been conceived by the mind of man.'' Today, 
those words strike us not only as tragic--but as outdated. The troubled 
20th century showed us, again and again and again, that the mind of man 
is more than capable of such diabolical schemes.
  Today, burdened by the memory of those crimes, we remember and 
rededicate. Today we return to the origin of genocide, and we honor the 
dead. Let us find in their memory not only grief, but new resolution--
to speedily end today's atrocities, to prevent those of tomorrow, and 
to punish all those who would attempt or carry out evil on such a 
scale.

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