US Fed News
March 21, 2009 Saturday 6:38 PM EST
Rep. Schiff Introduces Resolution Concerning Armenian Genocide by
Ottoman Empire
WASHINGTON
WASHINGTON, March 21 — Rep. Adam Schiff, D-California, has introduced
a resolution (H.Res. 252) "calling upon the President to ensure that
the foreign policy of the U.S. reflects appropriate understanding and
sensitivity concerning issues related to human rights, ethnic
cleansing, and genocide documented in the U.S. record relating to the
Armenian Genocide."
The resolution, introduced on March 17, has 76 co-sponsors. It was
referred to the House Foreign Affairs Committee. A copy of the
full-text of the legislation follows: H.Res. 252 Calling upon the
President to ensure that the foreign policy of the United States
reflects appropriate understanding and sensitivity concerning issues
related to human rights, ethnic cleansing, and genocide documented in
the United States record relating to the Armenian Genocide, and for
other purposes.
Resolved, SHORT TITLE Sec. 1. This resolution may be cited as the
`Affirmation of the United States Record on the Armenian Genocide
Resolution’.
FINDINGS Sec. 2. The House of Representatives finds the following:
(1) The Armenian Genocide was conceived and carried out by the Ottoman
Empire from 1915 to 1923, resulting in the deportation of nearly
2,000,000 Armenians, of whom 1,500,000 men, women, and children were
killed, 500,000 survivors were expelled from their homes, and which
succeeded in the elimination of the over 2,500-year presence of
Armenians in their historic homeland.
(2) On May 24, 1915, the Allied Powers, England, France, and Russia,
jointly issued a statement explicitly charging for the first time ever
another government of committing `a crime against humanity’.
(3) This joint statement stated `the Allied Governments announce
publicly to the Sublime Porte that they will hold personally
responsible for these crimes all members of the Ottoman Government, as
well as those of their agents who are implicated in such massacres’.
(4) The post-World War I Turkish Government indicted the top leaders
involved in the `organization and execution’ of the Armenian Genocide
and in the `massacre and destruction of the Armenians’.
(5) In a series of courts-martial, officials of the Young Turk Regime
were tried and convicted, as charged, for organizing and executing
massacres against the Armenian people.
(6) The chief organizers of the Armenian Genocide, Minister of War
Enver, Minister of the Interior Talaat, and Minister of the Navy Jemal
were all condemned to death for their crimes, however, the verdicts of
the courts were not enforced.
(7) The Armenian Genocide and these domestic judicial failures are
documented with overwhelming evidence in the national archives of
Austria, France, Germany, Great Britain, Russia, the United States,
the Vatican and many other countries, and this vast body of evidence
attests to the same facts, the same events, and the same consequences.
(8) The United States National Archives and Record Administration
holds extensive and thorough documentation on the Armenian Genocide,
especially in its holdings under Record Group 59 of the United States
Department of State, files 867.00 and 867.40, which are open and
widely available to the public and interested institutions.
(9) The Honorable Henry Morgenthau, United States Ambassador to the
Ottoman Empire from 1913 to 1916, organized and led protests by
officials of many countries, among them the allies of the Ottoman
Empire, against the Armenian Genocide.
(10) Ambassador Morgenthau explicitly described to the United States
Department of State the policy of the Government of the Ottoman Empire
as `a campaign of race extermination,’ and was instructed on July 16,
1915, by United States Secretary of State Robert Lansing that the
`Department approves your procedure . . . to stop Armenian
persecution’.
(11) Senate Concurrent Resolution 12 of February 9, 1916, resolved
that `the President of the United States be respectfully asked to
designate a day on which the citizens of this country may give
expression to their sympathy by contributing funds now being raised
for the relief of the Armenians’, who at the time were enduring
`starvation, disease, and untold suffering’.
(12) President Woodrow Wilson concurred and also encouraged the
formation of the organization known as Near East Relief, chartered by
an Act of Congress, which contributed some $116,000,000 from 1915 to
1930 to aid Armenian Genocide survivors, including 132,000 orphans who
became foster children of the American people.
(13) Senate Resolution 359, dated May 11, 1920, stated in part, `the
testimony adduced at the hearings conducted by the sub-committee of
the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations have clearly established the
truth of the reported massacres and other atrocities from which the
Armenian people have suffered’.
(14) The resolution followed the April 13, 1920, report to the Senate
of the American Military Mission to Armenia led by General James
Harbord, that stated `[m]utilation, violation, torture, and death have
left their haunting memories in a hundred beautiful Armenian valleys,
and the traveler in that region is seldom free from the evidence of
this most colossal crime of all the ages’.
(15) As displayed in the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum,
Adolf Hitler, on ordering his military commanders to attack Poland
without provocation in 1939, dismissed objections by saying `[w]ho,
after all, speaks today of the annihilation of the Armenians?’ and
thus set the stage for the Holocaust.
(16) Raphael Lemkin, who coined the term `genocide’ in 1944, and who
was the earliest proponent of the United Nations Convention on the
Prevention and Punishment of Genocide, invoked the Armenian case as a
definitive example of genocide in the 20th century.
(17) The first resolution on genocide adopted by the United Nations at
Lemkin’s urging, the December 11, 1946, United Nations General
Assembly Resolution 96(1) and the United Nations Convention on the
Prevention and Punishment of Genocide itself recognized the Armenian
Genocide as the type of crime the United Nations intended to prevent
and punish by codifying existing standards.
(18) In 1948, the United Nations War Crimes Commission invoked the
Armenian Genocide `precisely . . . one of the types of acts which the
modern term `crimes against humanity’ is intended to cover’ as a
precedent for the Nuremberg tribunals.
(19) The Commission stated that `[t]he provisions of Article 230 of
the Peace Treaty of Sevres were obviously intended to cover, in
conformity with the Allied note of 1915 . . ., offenses which had been
committed on Turkish territory against persons of Turkish citizenship,
though of Armenian or Greek race. This article constitutes therefore a
precedent for Article 6c and 5c of the Nuremberg and Tokyo Charters,
and offers an example of one of the categories of `crimes against
humanity’ as understood by these enactments’.
(20) House Joint Resolution 148, adopted on April 8, 1975, resolved:
`[t]hat April 24, 1975, is hereby designated as `National Day of
Remembrance of Man’s Inhumanity to Man’, and the President of the
United States is authorized and requested to issue a proclamation
calling upon the people of the United States to observe such day as a
day of remembrance for all the victims of genocide, especially those
of Armenian ancestry . . .’.
(21) President Ronald Reagan in proclamation number 4838, dated April
22, 1981, stated in part `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’.
(22) House Joint Resolution 247, adopted on September 10, 1984,
resolved: `[t]hat April 24, 1985, is hereby designated as `National
Day of Remembrance of Man’s Inhumanity to Man’, and the President of
the United States is authorized and requested to issue a proclamation
calling upon the people of the United States to observe such day as a
day of remembrance for all the victims of genocide, especially the one
and one-half million people of Armenian ancestry . . .’.
(23) In August 1985, after extensive study and deliberation, the
United Nations SubCommission on Prevention of Discrimination and
Protection of Minorities voted 14 to 1 to accept a report entitled
`Study of the Question of the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime
of Genocide,’ which stated `[t]he Nazi aberration has unfortunately
not been the only case of genocide in the 20th century. Among other
examples which can be cited as qualifying are . . . the Ottoman
massacre of Armenians in 1915-1916′.
(24) This report also explained that `[a]t least 1,000,000, and
possibly well over half of the Armenian population, are reliably
estimated to have been killed or death marched by independent
authorities and eye-witnesses. This is corroborated by reports in
United States, German and British archives and of contemporary
diplomats in the Ottoman Empire, including those of its ally
Germany.’.
(25) The United States Holocaust Memorial Council, an independent
Federal agency, unanimously resolved on April 30, 1981, that the
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum would include the Armenian
Genocide in the Museum and has since done so.
(26) Reviewing an aberrant 1982 expression (later retracted) by the
United States Department of State asserting that the facts of the
Armenian Genocide may be ambiguous, the United States Court of Appeals
for the District of Columbia in 1993, after a review of documents
pertaining to the policy record of the United States, noted that the
assertion on ambiguity in the United States record about the Armenian
Genocide `contradicted longstanding United States policy and was
eventually retracted’.
(27) On June 5, 1996, the House of Representatives adopted an
amendment to House Bill 3540 (the Foreign Operations, Export
Financing, and Related Programs Appropriations Act, 1997) to reduce
aid to Turkey by $3,000,000 (an estimate of its payment of lobbying
fees in the United States) until the Turkish Government acknowledged
the Armenian Genocide and took steps to honor the memory of its
victims.
(28) President William Jefferson Clinton, on April 24, 1998, stated:
`This year, as in the past, we join with Armenian-Americans throughout
the nation in commemorating one of the saddest chapters in the history
of this century, the deportations and massacres of a million and a
half Armenians in the Ottoman Empire in the years 1915-1923.’.
(29) President George W. Bush, on April 24, 2004, stated: `On this
day, we pause in remembrance of one of the most horrible tragedies of
the 20th century, the annihilation of as many as 1,500,000 Armenians
through forced exile and murder at the end of the Ottoman Empire.’.
(30) Despite the international recognition and affirmation of the
Armenian Genocide, the failure of the domestic and international
authorities to punish those responsible for the Armenian Genocide is a
reason why similar genocides have recurred and may recur in the
future, and that a just resolution will help prevent future genocides.
DECLARATION OF POLICY Sec. 3. The House of Representatives–
(1) calls upon the President to ensure that the foreign policy of the
United States reflects appropriate understanding and sensitivity
concerning issues related to human rights, ethnic cleansing, and
genocide documented in the United States record relating to the
Armenian Genocide and the consequences of the failure to realize a
just resolution; and
(2) calls upon the President in the President’s annual message
commemorating the Armenian Genocide issued on or about April 24, to
accurately characterize the systematic and deliberate annihilation of
1,500,000 Armenians as genocide and to recall the proud history of
United States intervention in opposition to the Armenian Genocide.
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