[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 153 (2007), Part 19]
[House]
[Page 27019]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                      ARMENIAN GENOCIDE RESOLUTION

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Kirk) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. KIRK. Madam Speaker, for more than 90 years, Armenians were 
denied recognition for the genocide of 1915. We promised in 1945 to 
never forget the Holocaust, to remember when such atrocities are 
committed. But the world could well forget the first genocide of the 
20th century. In fact, Hitler used the world's denial of the Armenian 
genocide as the justification for his invasion of Poland and the 
ensuing murder of Europe's Jewry.
  In a speech he gave in 1939, Adolf Hitler stated, ``I have placed my 
death-head formation in readiness, with orders to send to death 
mercilessly and without compassion, men, women and children of Polish 
derivation and language. Who, after all, speaks today of the 
annihilation of the Armenians?''
  Unfortunately, Members of Congress, both Republicans and Democrats, 
are seeking to, once again, bury this to appease Turkey. We remember 
Turkey well, a formerly strong NATO ally; but in 2003, when the United 
States Army requested permission to transit this ally's territory, 
Turkey said no, a decision which cost the lives of American service men 
and women.
  Former U.S. House Majority Leader Dick Gephardt, once an ardent 
supporter of the Armenian Genocide resolution, is now registered with 
the Justice Department as a foreign agent of the Turkish Government. 
Like many other former Members of Congress, he is lobbying against a 
bill that he cosponsored when he served in this body. As a defender of 
human rights, our country must formally recognize the genocide that 
Hitler so easily dismissed.
  From 1915 to 1923, the Ottoman Turks systemically annihilated more 
than 1.5 million ethnic Armenians. There is no other way to describe 
this organized campaign of murder other than as genocide.
  The Armenian Genocide resolution, H. Res. 106, was just approved 
today by a vote of 27-21 in the House Committee on Foreign Affairs. I 
urge Speaker Pelosi to bring this important resolution to the floor so 
that we may finally provide the Armenian community with the recognition 
that they deserve.

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