[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 154 (2008), Part 5]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page 7008]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




               93RD ANNIVERSARY OF THE ARMENIAN GENOCIDE

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                        HON. LINCOLN DIAZ-BALART

                               of florida

                    in the house of representatives

                        Thursday, April 24, 2008

  Mr. LINCOLN DIAZ-BALART of Florida. Madam Speaker, every year we mark 
the anniversary of a terrible event that took place over the years of 
1915-1923, during the First World War, when 1.5 million Armenians were 
slaughtered and over half a million survivors were forced to leave a 
homeland they had inhabited for over two millennia. Today marks the 
93rd anniversary of the Armenian genocide.
  I am a cosponsor of H. Res. 106, a resolution which simply affirms a 
historical fact. The United States National Archives and Record 
Administration holds extensive records, open to the public, which 
meticulously document the Armenian genocide. Furthermore, the post-
World War I Turkish government indicted leaders who were involved in 
these killings which it labeled a ``massacre.'' On May 24, 1915, the 
Allied Powers of England, France, and Russia issued a statement 
charging the Ottoman government of committing a ``crime against 
humanity.'' President Ronald Reagan in proclamation number 4838, dated 
April 22, 1981, said, ``like the genocide of the Armenians before it, 
and the genocide of the Cambodians, which followed it--and like too 
many other persecutions of too many other people--the lessons of the 
Holocaust must never be forgotten.''
  The Armenian genocide resolution is offensive to some simply because 
it characterizes that massacre as ``genocide.'' We do not use that term 
loosely, but violence on such a tremendous scale has earned that 
terrible title. These deaths were not caused by the inevitable 
hostility of war, but by systematic murder aimed at eliminating a 
people. We gain nothing by pretending it was anything less.
  The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum includes a quote from 
Adolf Hitler who justified his own atrocities by saying, ``[w]ho, after 
all, speaks today of the annihilation of the Armenians?'' Shortly 
thereafter, the world would learn of the horrors of the Holocaust.
  I wonder whether the horrors of the Second World War may have been 
averted had people loudly and with conviction condemned the Armenian 
genocide of the First World War. We cannot erase the events of history, 
and we ignore them at our peril. In the United States, we are still 
dealing with the consequences of slavery--a blight on our own 
historical record. But we cannot be committed to the principle of 
``never again'' if we do not acknowledge the evil that first committed 
us to make that vow.

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