[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 155 (2009), Part 8]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page 10444]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




             THE 94TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE ARMENIAN GENOCIDE

                                 ______
                                 

                         HON. CHRIS VAN HOLLEN

                              of maryland

                    in the house of representatives

                       Wednesday, April 22, 2009

  Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Madam Speaker, I rise to commemorate the suffering of 
millions of Armenians between 1915 and 1923 due to actions by the 
Ottoman Empire. In those eight years, approximately 2 million Armenians 
were deported from their traditional homeland. Of those, 1.5 million 
were senselessly killed and the remaining 500,000 were expelled from 
their homes. This genocide served as models for other horrific 
massacres and ethnic purges that sadly persisted throughout the 20th 
century.
  There is broad agreement that indeed what took place was genocide. On 
May 24, 1915, the Allied Powers England, France and Russia issued a 
joint statement charging the Sublime Porte of committing ``a crime 
against humanity.'' The U.S. showed firm opposition to the unfolding 
horrors. Secretary of State Lansing in 1915 authorized the Ambassador 
to the Sublime Porte to engage to ``stop Armenian persecution,'' and 
President Wilson set up relief funds for the victims and survivors, 
including 132,000 orphans who became foster children of the American 
people.
  Genocide was also corroborated by German and British archives and 
records of diplomats who served in the Ottoman Empire at the time. The 
United States National Archives and Record Administration holds 
extensive documentation on the genocide, and the UN General Assembly in 
1946 and the UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide 
recognized the Armenian Genocide as they type of crime the U.N. 
intended to prevent and punish by codifying existing standards. In 
1975, a House Joint Resolution designated April 24 of that year as 
``National Day of Remembrance of Man's Inhumanity to Man'' in part to 
remember all victims of genocide, especially those of Armenian 
ancestry.
  We welcome steps today by the governments of Turkey and Armenia--as 
the official inheritors of these fateful policies of the Ottoman 
government--to normalize relations and begin working through this 
history. Indeed, reconciliation of painful history is an important 
means of preventing future tragedies of this scope.
  We believe this process will be strengthened if the President--in his 
annual message commemorating the April 24, 1915 declaration by Allied 
Powers--to accurately characterize the mindless massacre of Armenians 
as genocide and to recall the proud record of U.S. opposition to this 
persecution.

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