110th
CONGRESS
1st Session
H. RES. 106
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
January 30, 2007
Mr.
SCHIFF (for himself, Mr. RADANOVICH, Mr. PALLONE,
Mr. KNOLLENBERG,
Mr. SHERMAN, and Mr. MCCOTTER) submitted the
following
resolution; which was
referred to the Committee on Foreign Affairs
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'.
Page 2
(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
Page 3
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
Page 4
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.'.
Page 5
(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 .
