[Congressional Bills 109th Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
[H. Res. 316 Introduced in House (IH)]
109th CONGRESS
1st Session
H. RES. 316
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
June 14, 2005
Mr. Radanovich (for himself, Mr. Knollenberg, Mr. Schiff, Mr. Pallone,
Mr. Dreier, Mr. Weiner, Mr. Saxton, Mr. Levin, Mr. Souder, Ms. Watson,
Mr. Garrett of New Jersey, Mr. McNulty, Mrs. Miller of Michigan, Mr.
Schwarz of Michigan, Mr. Cardoza, Mr. Costello, Mr. Crowley, Mr.
McCotter, Mr. Israel, Mrs. Napolitano, Mrs. Maloney, Mr. Kirk, Mr.
Filner, Mr. Sherman, Ms. Eshoo, Mr. Rogers of Michigan, Mr. McKeon, Mr.
McGovern, Mr. Meehan, Mr. Visclosky, Mr. Bradley of New Hampshire, Mr.
Bass, Mr. Berman, Mr. Nunes, Mr. Andrews, Mr. Shaw, Mr. Grijalva, Mr.
Shimkus, Mr. Conyers, Mr. Hinchey, Mr. Sweeney, Mr. Costa, Mr.
McDermott, Mr. Menendez, Ms. Roybal-Allard, Mr. Issa, Mr. Frank of
Massachusetts, Mr. Langevin, Mr. Bilirakis, Mr. Foley, Mr. Kennedy of
Rhode Island, Mr. Rothman, Mr. Smith of New Jersey, and Mr. Royce)
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 ``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 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.
(10) Ambassador Morgenthau explicitly described to the
United States Department of State the policy of the Government
of the Ottoman Empire 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''.
(11) 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''.
(12) President Woodrow 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 Armenian Genocide
survivors, including 132,000 orphans who became foster children
of the American people.
(13) 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''.
(14) 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''.
(15) As displayed in the United States Holocaust Memorial
Museum, 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?'' and thus set the stage for the Holocaust.
(16) Raphael Lemkin, who coined the term ``genocide'' in
1944, and who was the earliest proponent of the United Nations
Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide,
invoked the Armenian case as a definitive example of genocide
in the 20th century.
(17) 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 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide
itself recognized the Armenian Genocide as the type of crime
the United Nations intended to prevent and punish by codifying
existing standards.
(18) 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.
(19) 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''.
(20) House Joint Resolution 148, adopted on April 8, 1975,
resolved: ``[t]hat April 24, 1975, is hereby designated as
`National Day of Remembrance of Man's Inhumanity to Man', and
the President of the United States is authorized and requested
to issue a proclamation calling upon the people of the United
States to observe such day as a day of remembrance for all the
victims of genocide, especially those of Armenian ancestry . .
.''.
(21) President Ronald 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''.
(22) House Joint Resolution 247, adopted on September 10,
1984, resolved: ``[t]hat April 24, 1985, is hereby designated
as `National Day of Remembrance of Man's Inhumanity to Man',
and the President of the United States is authorized and
requested to issue a proclamation calling upon the people of
the United States to observe such day as a day of remembrance
for all the victims of genocide, especially the one and one-
half million people of Armenian ancestry . . . ''.
(23) In August 1985, after extensive study and
deliberation, the United Nations SubCommission on Prevention of
Discrimination and Protection of Minorities voted 14 to 1 to
accept 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 20th century. Among other examples
which can be cited as qualifying are . . . the Ottoman massacre
of Armenians in 1915-1916''.
(24) This report also explained that ``[a]t least
1,000,000, 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.''.
(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) 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''.
(27) On June 5, 1996, the House of Representatives adopted
an amendment to House Bill 3540 (the Foreign Operations, Export
Financing, and Related Programs Appropriations Act, 1997) to
reduce aid to Turkey by $3,000,000 (an estimate of its payment
of lobbying fees in the United States) until the Turkish
Government acknowledged the Armenian Genocide and took steps to
honor the memory of its victims.
(28) President William Jefferson Clinton, on April 24,
1998, stated: ``This year, as in the past, we join with
Armenian-Americans throughout the nation in commemorating one
of the saddest chapters in the history of this century, the
deportations and massacres of a million and a half Armenians in
the Ottoman Empire in the years 1915-1923.''.
(29) President George W. Bush, on April 24, 2004, stated:
``On this day, we pause in remembrance of one of the most
horrible tragedies of the 20th century, the annihilation of as
many as 1,500,000 Armenians through forced exile and murder at
the end of the Ottoman Empire.''.
(30) 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 just
resolution will help prevent future genocides.
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 realize a just resolution; and
(2) calls upon the President in the President's annual
message commemorating the Armenian Genocide issued on or about
April 24, to accurately 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.
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