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    Categories: 2023

Armenian Genocide Education Act to be re-introduced in U.S. House of Representatives

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 10:42,

YEREVAN, APRIL 19, ARMENPRESS. United States congresswoman Anna Eshoo (D-CA), Congressmen Ted Lieu (D-CA), and Gus Bilirakis (R-FL) are re-introducing the Armenian Genocide Education Act, a bipartisan measure – building upon official U.S. Congressional and Presidential recognition of this crime – to fund Library of Congress educational programs about the history, lessons, consequences, and ongoing costs of the Armenian Genocide, the Armenian National Committee of America (ANCA) reported.

This landmark legislation – strongly supported by the ANCA – seeks to provide $10 million in funding over five years for the Library of Congress to educate Americans about Ottoman Turkey’s systematic and deliberate state-sponsored mass murder, national dispossession, cultural erasure, and exile of millions of Armenians, Greeks, Assyrians, Chaldeans, Syriacs, Arameans, Maronites, and other Christians, between 1915 and 1923.

“With Azerbaijan, backed by Turkey, openly seeking to complete the Armenian Genocide, it’s more urgent than ever for American school children to learn the lessons of this still unpunished – still ongoing – crime against all humanity,” said ANCA Executive Director Aram Hamparian. “Chief among these lessons is that we – as Americans – must never, for reasons of political convenience or practical expediency, turn a blind eye to state-driven genocidal campaigns to eradicate indigenous populations or other at-risk groups, anywhere in the world.”

Building upon the 2019 passage of H.Res.296 and S.Res.150 – which specifically rejected any official U.S. association with Armenian Genocide denial – the Armenian Genocide Education Act seeks to counter-discourse and propaganda that claims that Ottoman Turkey’s systematic and deliberate state-sponsored mass murder, national dispossession, cultural erasure, and exile of millions of Christians between 1915 and 1923 did not take place. A similar measure was introduced in the last session of Congress.

Members of Congress can join as original cosponsors of the measure in the days leading up to its introduction, timed around April 24th, the international day of justice for the Armenian Genocide, ANCA reported.

Emil Lazarian: “I should like to see any power of the world destroy this race, this small tribe of unimportant people, whose wars have all been fought and lost, whose structures have crumbled, literature is unread, music is unheard, and prayers are no more answered. Go ahead, destroy Armenia . See if you can do it. Send them into the desert without bread or water. Burn their homes and churches. Then see if they will not laugh, sing and pray again. For when two of them meet anywhere in the world, see if they will not create a New Armenia.” - WS