[Congressional Record Volume 158, Number 59 (Tuesday, April 24, 2012)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E632-E633]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




        REGARDING THE 97TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE ARMENIAN GENOCIDE

                                  _____
                                 

                         HON. CHRIS VAN HOLLEN

                              of maryland

                    in the house of representatives

                        Tuesday, April 24, 2012

  Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to commemorate the 
anniversary of the Armenian Genocide.
  It was 97 years ago today that over 1.5 million men, women, and 
children, almost 75 percent of the pre-war Armenian population, were 
brutally exterminated by the Ottoman Empire. The Ottoman authorities 
arrested and later murdered over 250 Armenian political, intellectual, 
and religious leaders in Istanbul, beginning a horrific and systematic 
campaign to wipe a 3,000 year-old community from the face of the earth.
  Armenian members of the Turkish armed forces were separated from 
their units and placed into labor battalions, where they were either 
worked to death or murdered. In Armenian villages throughout Turkey, 
adult males were singled out for execution, while the remaining women, 
children, and elderly inhabitants were then forced to march without 
food or water to the Syrian Desert. En route they were set upon by the 
Ottoman Security Service's ``Special Organization,'' which consisted of 
released convicts and was created specifically for the purpose of 
carrying out ethnic cleansing. In the end, of the 2.1 million Armenians 
residing in Turkey at the start of World War I, only 100,000 would 
survive to see the end of hostilities.
  And yet, despite clear evidence that genocide occurred, many 
officials today refuse to even to use the word genocide when referring 
to this incident. By equivocating, they not only dishonor the victims 
of this atrocity and their descendents, they increase the chance that 
other crimes against humanity are met with similar equivocation.
  Indeed, before sending the ``Death's Head'' SS units into Poland with 
orders to ``kill without pity or mercy all men, women and children,'' 
Adolph Hitler is reported to have commented to his generals, ``who 
still talks nowadays of the extermination of the Armenians?''
  When we fail to fully acknowledge that genocide was perpetrated 
against the Armenian people in 1915, it becomes a little easier to do 
the same today when we see similar atrocities unfold in Bosnia, or 
Rwanda or Iraq or Sudan.
  Last week the world commemorated International Holocaust Remembrance 
Day as people everywhere gathered to renew our collective pledge to 
``Never Forget.'' Today we gather for a similar purpose as we remember 
the first genocide of the 20th century. We recall the suffering of the 
Armenian people 97 years

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ago and endeavor to ease the pain of their descendants not only out of 
sympathy for what they have experienced, but to remind ourselves that 
we must never allow it to happen again.

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