GENOCIDE RESOLUTION PASSED BY HOUSE COMMITTEE

[Guest]

GENOCIDE RESOLUTION PASSED BY HOUSE COMMITTEE

 

WASHINGTON--In a vote of 24 to 11 the House International Relations

Committee approved the Armenian Genocide resolution Tuesday.

 

The measure was voted on following an ammendment changing the text of

the resolution. The language was changed from the original "Young Turk

government" to "the Ottoman Turkish government."

 

Sources in Washington said the vote was an overwhelming defeat for the

Turkish lobby and entities opposing the resolution. A member of the

Turkish parliament also presented testimony opposing the resolution but

to no avail.

[Guest]

Is that what it was changed to? I thought I heard them say "Ottoman Government". I lost my connection at that point so am not sure.

 

The measure was voted on following an ammendment changing the text of

the resolution. The language was changed from the original "Young Turk

government" to "the Ottoman Turkish government."

[Guest]

Here is the text introduced for today's discussions. Don't know what further ammendments have taken place.

_________________________________________

CONGRESSIONAL QUARTERLY

BILL TEXT

HRES596

VERSION: INTRODUCED IN HOUSE

Sept. 27, 2000

 

106TH CONGRESS

 

2D SESSION

 

H. RES. 596

 

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.

 

IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

 

SEPTEMBER 27, 2000

 

Mr. RADANOVICH submitted the following resolution; which was referred to

the

Committee on International Relations

 

RESOLUTION

 

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,

 

SECTION. 1. SHORT TITLE.

 

This resolution may be cited as the "Affirmation of the United

States

Record on the Armenian Genocide Resolution".

 

SEC. 2. FINDINGS.

 

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 "n view of these new

crimes

of Turkey against humanity and civilization, 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 national archives of Turkey should also include all

of

the records pertaining to the indictment, trial, and conviction of the

Ottoman authorities responsible for the Armenian Genocide.

 

(10) 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.

 

(11) Ambassador Morgenthau explicitly described to the

United

States Department of State the policy of the Young Turk government 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".

 

(12) 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".

 

(13) President 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

the Armenian Genocide survivors, including 132,000 orphans who became

foster

children of the American people.

 

(14) 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".

 

(15) 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".

 

(16) Setting the stage for the Holocaust, 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?".

 

(17) Raphael Lemkin, who coined the term "genocide" in 1944,

and

who was the earliest proponent of the Genocide Convention, invoked the

Armenian case as a definitive example of genocide in the 20th century.

 

(18) Raphael Lemkin described the crime as "the systematic

destruction of whole national, racial or religious groups. The sort of

thing

Hitler did to the Jews and the Turks did to the Armenians".

 

(19) 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 Genocide Convention

itself

recognized the Armenian Genocide as the type of crime the United Nations

 

intended to prevent by codifying existing standards.

 

(20) 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.

 

(21) 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".

 

(22) The United Nations Commission on Human Rights adopted

in

1985 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 twentieth

century. Among other examples which can be cited as qualifying are . . .

the

Ottoman massacre of Armenians in 1915-1916".

 

(23) This report also explained that "[a]t least 1 million,

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".

 

(24) The tragedy of the Armenian Genocide has been

acknowledged

by countries and international bodies such as Argentina, Belgium,

Canada,

the Council of Europe, Cyprus, the European Parliament, France, Great

Britain, Greece, Lebanon, Russia, the United Nations, the United States,

and

Uruguay.

 

(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) President 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".

 

(27) President Bush, in 1988, speaking of the Armenian

Genocide,

stated "we must consciously and conscientiously recognize the genocides

of

the past-the enormous tragedies that have darkened this century and that

 

haunt us still. We must not only commemorate the courage of the victims

and

of their survivors, but we must also remind ourselves that civilization

cannot be taken for granted. . . . We must all be vigilant against this

most

heinous crime against humanity".

 

(28) President Bush, in 1988, stated further "[t]he United

States must acknowledge the attempted genocide of the Armenian people in

the

last years of the Ottoman Empire, based on the testimony of survivors,

scholars, and indeed our own representatives at the time, if we are to

insure that such horrors are not repeated".

 

(29) President Clinton, on August 13, 1992, stated "[t]he

Genocide of 1915, years of communist dictatorship, and the devastating

earthquake of 1988 have caused great suffering in Armenia during this

century".

 

(30) 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".

 

(31) 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 proper judicial and firm response, holding the guilty accountable

and

requiring the prompt enforcement of verdicts would have spared humanity

needless suffering.

 

(32) In a commendable letter on April 9, 1999, Ambassador

Stuart

Eizenstat, then Under Secretary of State for Economic, Business, and

Agricultural Affairs, pledged that the administration would raise with

the

Republic of Turkey the issue of the recovery of Armenian assets from the

 

genocide period held by the Imperial Ottoman Bank.

 

(33) It is important that the President 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 enforce the judgments of

the

Turkish courts against the responsible officials.

 

 

SEC. 3. DECLARATION OF POLICY.

 

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 enforce the judgments of the Turkish

courts against the responsible officials; and

 

(2) calls upon the President in the President´s annual

message

commemorating the Armenian Genocide issued on or about April 24 to

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.

[Guest]

THE DISCUSSION OF THE "ARMENIAN RESOLUTION" IN U.S. CONGRESS BECAME THE SUBJECT OF THE TELEPHONE CONVERSATION BETWEEN THE PRESIDENTS OF TURKEY AND THE USA

03.10.2000 15.18

03.10.2000, MEDIAMAX, YEREVAN. Turkish President Ahmet Necdet Sezer called President Bill Clinton on Monday to express his concern and grave reservations about the Armenian resolution that is currently being considered in the U.S. Congress, stated White House National Security Council spokesman P.J. Crowley. He said Sezer and Clinton spoke by telephone for about 10 minutes.

Crowley said Clinton told Sezer he shared Turkey's concerns about the resolution.

"Our administration, as have other administrations in the past, both Republican and Democratic, oppose such resolutions. From our point of view, a matter of historical controversy is best left to historians, not legislators,'' Crowley told reporters

It is expected that today the House International Relations Committee will continue the discussion of the Armenian Resolution, which was approved by the Subcommittee for International Relations on September

[Guest]

Well I went back and listened to the archive webcast and Rohrabacher R-Ca made an ammendment to change the section below.

Striking out the words "Young Turk Government" and replacing it with "Government of the Ottoman Empire"

 

(11) Ambassador Morgenthau explicitly described to the United States Department of State the policy of the Young Turk government 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".

[Guest]

MosJan,

 

Jan jan jan, where do I start???????

 

I think that is such WONDERFUL news, especially as the criminals were caught, tried, and punished! Getting what they actually deserve, unlike hundreds more out there.

 

But there is still such a long way to go. but hey! we can do it!

[Guest]

Plus, there HAS been a lot of controversy (especially amongst turks! Now THERE's a suprise) as to whether the genocide of armenians in the Nazi period actually happenned! Some by prof Turkayya stupid-horrible-git-that-doesnt-deserve-to-be-called-a-proffessor. I do wish I could remember his name and the website so you people could see for urselves,(I THINK it's called the world war 2 question, but not too sure) or mabye you probably have. What it also wonderful is that the OBVIOUS HISTORICAL !!!!FACT!!!!! has been recognised and proved and I feel an immense personal satisfaction.