States News Service
April 24, 2009 Friday
HOYER COMMEMORATES 94TH ANNIVERSARY OF ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
WASHINGTON
The following information was released by the office of House Majority
Leader Steny Hoyer:
House Majority Leader Steny H. Hoyer (MD) released the following
statement today on the 94th anniversary of the Armenian Genocide:
Today, we recognize the genocide that took the lives of 1.5 million
Armenian children, women, and men in their ancestral homeland. Their
ashes are written into history: into human history, into the history
of Ottomans and Armenians, and even into the history of this country,
on account of our predecessors wholike so much of the worldheard, and
knew, and did too little.
Through the 20th century and into the next, the thread of genocide,
and the hate and apathy that run along it, has tied the desert
concentration camps for Armenians to the camp at Auschwitz, the
killing fields of Cambodia, and Rwanda, and Darfur. And yet, where the
thread runs darkest, we can find words to give us hope.
When the parliament in Istanbul was debating how best to seize the
property of the exiled Armenians, a representative rose against the
bill and said this: If we are a constitutional regime functioning in
accordance with constitutional law we can’t do this. This is
atrocious. Grab my arm, eject me from my village, then sell my goods
and propertiessuch a thing can never be permissible. Neither the
conscience of the Ottomans nor the law can allow it.’
The man who spoke those words, Ahmed Riza, was not an Armenian, but a
Turk.
As long as genocide is real in our world, may there be men and women
who speak and think as he did. Let us witness that no law can ever
sanction genocidenot the laws of nations, not the moral law that is
higher than them alland let us work to give the law force in our
world.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress
