Congressional Record: March 17, 2005
>>From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]
AFFIRMING THE TRUTH ABOUT THE ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
HON. MICHAEL BILIRAKIS
of florida
in the house of representatives
Thursday, March 17, 2005
Mr. BILIRAKIS. Mr. Speaker, the U.S. Ambassador to Armenia, John
Evans, in public forums with the Armenian community, recently
characterized what President George W. Bush has described as an
“appalling tragedy of the 20th century, the massacre of as many as 1.5
million Armenians through forced exile and murder at the end of the
Ottoman Empire,” as Genocide.
I rise today to join with Ambassador Evans and other public officials
who have affirmed the truth and recognize that reconciling with the
past is an important first step in creating a better future.
Recognition of the Armenian Genocide is widely acknowledged. One
hundred and twenty-six Holocaust scholars publicly affirmed the
incontestable fact of the Armenian Genocide during the 30th Anniversary
of the Scholars’ Conference on the Holocaust and the Churches. And in
1981, former President Ronald Reagan stated: “Like the genocide of the
Armenians before it, and the genocide of the Cambodians which followed
it–and like too many other such persecutions of too many other
peoples–the lessons of the Holocaust must never be forgotten.”
In addition, a recent study released by the International Center for
Transitional Justice (ICTJ) on the use of the term Armenian Genocide
and the applicability of the 1948 Genocide Convention to events which
occurred during the early twentieth century in Ottoman Turkey, found
that “the Events, viewed collectively, can thus be said to include all
of the elements of the crime of genocide as defined in the Convention,
and legal scholars as well as historians, politicians, journalists and
other people would be justified in continuing to so describe them.”
As we approach the 90th commemoration of the Armenian Genocide, we
must ensure that we do not forget the lessons of the past. Archbishop
Desmond Tutu, in the Preface to the Encyclopedia of Genocide, published
in 1999 by the Institute on the Holocaust and Genocide in Jerusalem,
writes: “It is sadly true what a cynic has said, that we learn from
the history that we do not learn from history. And yet it is possible
that if the world had been conscious of the genocide that was committed
by the Ottoman Turks against the Armenians, the first genocide of the
twentieth century, then perhaps humanity might have been more alert to
the warning signs that were being given before Hitler’s madness was
unleashed on an unbelieving world.”
Mr. Speaker, let us never forget and let us affirm the truth.
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