[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 146 (2000), Part 4]
[House]
[Page 5417]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]



             REMEMBERING THE ARMENIAN GENOCIDE OF 1915-1923

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Souder) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. SOUDER. Mr. Speaker, I would like to join with those who are 
taking a few minutes today to remember and pay tribute to those 
Armenians who lost their lives and national identity during one of 
history's most tragic examples of persecution and intolerance, the 
Armenian genocide of 1915 to 1923.
  Many Armenians in America, particularly in Indiana, are the children 
or grandchildren of survivors. In Fort Wayne, we do not have very many 
Armenians, to be precise, one, sometimes two. But my friend Zohrab 
Tazian is a classic example of many of the Armenians in America whose 
family was chased out of Turkey and down into Lebanon, who moved 
around, having, as a child, to live in a tent, because he saw his 
family members slaughtered and chased from their homeland; coming over 
to America where they had a chance to succeed with an American dream, 
as Armenians actually throughout world history who have been persecuted 
because of their successes as merchants, and often their very success 
has led to persecution in many lands that they have been over time. He 
came to America to the Indiana Institute of Technology, like many other 
foreign students who came in, learned engineering, and became a very 
successful engineer in our hometown.
  I first saw a slide presentation on the facts of this terrible 
genocide about 20 years ago when I was a young businessman in Fort 
Wayne belonging to the Rotary Club. Mr. Zohrab Tazian made a 
presentation that will forever be burned into my mind about the 
terrible persecution; not just discrimination and not just random 
persecution, but the attempt to exterminate an entire people.
  The facts, as we have heard a number of times, but I think it is 
important that we have these burned into our head, on April 24, that is 
the particular day we commemorate the tragedy, because it marks the 
beginning of the persecution and ethnic cleansing by the Ottoman Turks.
  On April 24, 1915, Armenian political, intellectual, and religious 
were arrested, forcibly moved from their homeland and killed. The 
brutality continued against the Armenian people as families were 
uprooted from their homes and marched to concentration camps in the 
desert where they would eventually starve to death.
  By 1923, the religious and ideological persecution by the Ottoman 
Turks resulted in the murder of 1.5 million Armenian men, women, and 
children and the displacement of an additional 500,000 Armenians. In 
our lifetime, we have witnessed the brutality and savagery of genocide 
by despotic regimes seeking to deny people of human rights and 
religious freedoms. That is Stalin against the Russians, Hitler against 
the Jews, Mao Tse-tung against the Chinese, Pol Pot against the 
Cambodians, and Mobutu against the Rwandans.
  But genocide has devastating consequences on society as a whole 
because of the problems created by uprooting entire populations. The 
survivors become the ones who carry the memory of suffering and the 
realization that their loved ones are gone. They are the ones who no 
longer have a home and may feel ideological and spiritual abandonment.
  Part of the healing process for Armenian survivors and families of 
survivors involves the acknowledgment of the atrocity and the admission 
of wrongdoing by those doing the persecution. It is only through 
acknowledgment and forgiveness that it is possible to move past the 
history of the genocide and other sins.
  Unfortunately, those responsible for ordering the systematic removal 
of the Armenians were never brought to justice and the Armenian 
genocide became a dark moment in history, as we heard earlier, quoted 
by Hitler and others, who then proceeded to use it as an example to 
commit genocide on others, to be slowly forgotten by those in America 
and the international community.
  It is important that we remember this tragic event and show strong 
leadership by denouncing the persecution of people due to their 
differences in political and religious ideology. By establishing a 
continuing discourse, we are acknowledging the tragedies of the past 
and remembering those awful moments in history so they will not be 
repeated.
  Mr. Speaker, I want to thank all of my colleagues, those Members who 
have supported this resolution, as well as all the Armenian 
organizations in this country and throughout the world who have worked 
so hard to establish an understanding for their remembrance.

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