[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 146 (2000), Part 4]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page 5851]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]



                           ARMENIAN GENOCIDE

                                 ______
                                 

                               speech of

                           HON. NANCY PELOSI

                             of california

                    in the house of representatives

                       Wednesday, April 12, 2000

  Ms. PELOSI. Mr. Speaker, I rise today in memory of the victims of one 
of history's most terrible tragedies, the Armenian Genocide that took 
place in Turkey between 1915 and 1923. This antecedent for all 
subsequent 20th-century genocides began on April 24, 1915, when the 
rulers of the Ottoman Empire began the systematic and ruthless 
extermination of the Armenian minority in Turkey. By the end of the 
Terror, more than a million Armenian men, women, and children had been 
massacred and more than half a million others had been expelled from 
the homeland that their forebearers had inhabited for three millennia.
  April 24, 1915 is remembered and commemorated each year by the 
Armenian community and people of conscience throughout the world. The 
Armenian Genocide is a historical fact. The Republic of Turkey has 
adamantly refused to acknowledge that the Genocide happened on its soil 
but the evidence is irrefutable.
  As we enter the Third Millennium of the Christian Era, it behooves us 
to remember. If we ignore the lessons of the Armenian Genocide, then we 
are destined to continue our stumbles through the long, dark tunnel of 
endless ethnic-cleansings, genocides, and holocausts. Let us, then, 
remember to remember.

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