Targeted News Service
March 4, 2010 Thursday 12:52 AM EST
House Committee on Foreign Affairs Moves Armenian Genocide Resolution
WASHINGTON
Rep. Ed Royce, R-Calif. (40th CD), issued the following news release:
Today, the House Foreign Affairs Committee passed H.Res.252,
recognizing the Armenian Genocide, by a vote of 23-22. Rep. Ed Royce
(R-CA) a long-time supporter of the resolution, issued the following
statement:
"I’ve worked on this issue since I was in the state Senate in
California, where I authored a resolution recognizing the Armenian
genocide, the first of any such state and my resolution passed in
California a generation ago.
Now it is time for Congress to act.
"When I was young I knew a survivor. He was the sole survivor from his
village and he himself would have been slaughtered had not a neighbor
hid him when he was a child.
"This resolution focuses singularly on the United States record of the
Armenian genocide. As the text indicates our national archives are
filled with thousands of pages documenting the premeditated
extermination of the Armenian people. Our own Ambassador to the
Ottoman Empire, Henry Morgenthau, recalled in his memoirs, the
Ottomans "never had the slightest idea of reestablishing the Armenians
in a new country" knowing that "the great majority of those would…
either die of thirst and starvation, or be murdered by the wild
Mohammedan desert tribes."
"Again, to use his words as an eyewitness to history, he said it was a
campaign of race extermination of the Armenian people.
"The United States has been a global leader in promoting human rights
around the world. On the issue of the Armenian Genocide, however, we
lag behind.
The French, Swiss, Swedish, Germans, and even the Russian governments
recognize the Armenian Genocide. As a global leader in human rights,
it is imperative for the U.S. to stand on principle and recognize the
annihilation of the Armenians as "genocide."
"This resolution does not reference the government of Turkey. It
references the Ottoman Empire. The Turkish government was not involved
in this, the Ottoman Empire was.
"It is important that this Committee doesn’t loose sight of truth vs.
propaganda, right vs. wrong. While the Armenian Genocide was the first
of the 20th century, the blind eye cast to the slaughter of Armenians
was a point used by Hitler, who asked, "Who after all speaks today of
the annihilation of the Armenians?" He pointed this out when he was
being internally challenged on his policies.
"The lesson of the genocide is an argument I first learned from my
father who served with General Patton’s 3rd Army and later the 7th
when they cut through Germany and finally liberated the concentration
camps at Dachau. He had his brother’s camera and he documented on film
the ovens with bodies stacked like cord wood, the rail cars and
trenches filled with the dead in the holocaust. Still, he finds the
need to use those photographs, even today, as he confronts those who
deny that genocide.
"History is a continuum. Yesterday impacts today, which impacts tomorrow.
It’s much harder to get tomorrow right if we get yesterday wrong. The
world’s strength to oppose killing today is made greater by
accountability, for actions present, but also past. It’s weakened by
denial of accountability of past acts. Not recognizing the Armenian
Genocide, as such, weakens us.
"For the sake of genocides past and present, I urge the passage of
this bipartisan resolution. 1.5 million Armenians were murdered,
500,000 were removed from their homeland. Passing this resolution will
be a victory for human rights."