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House Calendar No. 296

106TH CONGRESS

2D SESSION H. RES. 596

[Report No. 106–933]

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

OCTOBER 4, 2000

Additional sponsor: Mr. BONIOR

OCTOBER 4, 2000

Reported with an amendment, referred to the House Calendar, and ordered

to be printed

[Strike out all after the resolving clause and insert the part printed in italic]

[For text of introduced resolution, see copy of resolution as introduced on September 27, 2000]

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
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States record relating to the Armenian Genocide, and

for other purposes.

1 Resolved,

2 SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE.

3 This resolution may be cited as the ‘‘Affirmation of

4 the United States Record on the Armenian Genocide Reso5 lution’’.

6 SEC. 2. FINDINGS.

7 The House of Representatives finds the following:

8 (1) The Armenian Genocide was conceived and

9 carried out by the Ottoman Empire from 1915 to

10 1923, resulting in the deportation of nearly 2,000,000

11 Armenians, of whom 1,500,000 men, women, and

12 children were killed, 500,000 survivors were expelled

13 from their homes, and which succeeded in the elimi14 nation of the over 2,500-year presence of Armenians

15 in their historic homeland.

16 (2) On May 24, 1915, the Allied Powers, Eng17 land, France, and Russia, jointly issued a statement

18 explicitly charging for the first time ever another gov19 ernment of committing ‘‘a crime against humanity’’.

20 (3) This joint statement stated ‘‘[i]n view of

21 these new crimes of Turkey against humanity and

22 civilization, the Allied Governments announce pub23 licly to the Sublime Porte that they will hold person24 ally responsible for these crimes all members of the
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1 Ottoman Government, as well as those of their agents

2 who are implicated in such massacres’’.

3 (4) The post-World War I Turkish Government

4 indicted the top leaders involved in the ‘‘organization

5 and execution’’ of the Armenian Genocide and in the

6 ‘‘massacre and destruction of the Armenians’’.

7 (5) In a series of courts-martial, officials of the

8 Young Turk Regime were tried and convicted, as

9 charged, for organizing and executing massacres

10 against the Armenian people.

11 (6) The chief organizers of the Armenian Geno12 cide, Minister of War Enver, Minister of the Interior

13 Talaat, and Minister of the Navy Jemal were all con14 demned to death for their crimes, however, the ver15 dicts of the courts were not enforced.

16 (7) The Armenian Genocide and these domestic

17 judicial failures are documented with overwhelming

18 evidence in the national archives of Austria, France,

19 Germany, Great Britain, Russia, the United States,

20 the Vatican and many other countries, and this vast

21 body of evidence attests to the same facts, the same

22 events, and the same consequences.

23 (8) The United States National Archives and

24 Record Administration holds extensive and thorough

25 documentation on the Armenian Genocide, especially
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1 in its holdings under Record Group 59 of the United

2 States Department of State, files 867.00 and 867.40,

3 which are open and widely available to the public

4 and interested institutions.

5 (9) The national archives of Turkey should also

6 include all of the records pertaining to the indict7 ment, trial, and conviction of the Ottoman authorities

8 responsible for the Armenian Genocide.

9 (10) The Honorable Henry Morgenthau, United

10 States Ambassador to the Ottoman Empire from 1913

11 to 1916, organized and led protests by officials of

12 many countries, among them the allies of the Otto13 man Empire, against the Armenian Genocide.

14 (11) Ambassador Morgenthau explicitly described

15 to the United States Department of State the policy

16 of the Government of the Ottoman Empire as ‘‘a cam17 paign of race extermination’’, and was instructed on

18 July 16, 1915, by United States Secretary of State

19 Robert Lansing that the ‘‘Department approves your

20 procedure . . . to stop Armenian persecution’’.

21 (12) Senate Concurrent Resolution 12 of Feb22 ruary 9, 1916, resolved that ‘‘the President of the

23 United States be respectfully asked to designate a day

24 on which the citizens of this country may give expres25 sion to their sympathy by contributing funds now
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1 being raised for the relief of the Armenians’’, who at

2 the time were enduring ‘‘starvation, disease, and un3 told suffering’’.

4 (13) President Wilson concurred and also en5 couraged the formation of the organization known as

6 Near East Relief, chartered by an Act of Congress,

7 which contributed some $116,000,000 from 1915 to

8 1930 to aid the Armenian Genocide survivors, includ9 ing 132,000 orphans who became foster children of the

10 American people.

11 (14) Senate Resolution 359, dated May 11, 1920,

12 stated in part, ‘‘the testimony adduced at the hear13 ings conducted by the sub-committee of the Senate

14 Committee on Foreign Relations have clearly estab15 lished the truth of the reported massacres and other

16 atrocities from which the Armenian people have suf17 fered’’.

18 (15) The resolution followed the April 13, 1920,

19 report to the Senate of the American Military Mission

20 to Armenia led by General James Harbord, that stat21 ed ‘‘[m]utilation, violation, torture, and death have

22 left their haunting memories in a hundred beautiful

23 Armenian valleys, and the traveler in that region is

24 seldom free from the evidence of this most colossal

25 crime of all the ages’’.
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1 (16) Setting the stage for the Holocaust, Adolf

2 Hitler, on ordering his military commanders to at3 tack Poland without provocation in 1939, dismissed

4 objections by saying ‘‘[w]ho, after all, speaks today of

5 the annihilation of the Armenians?’’.

6 (17) Raphael Lemkin, who coined the term

7 ‘‘genocide’’ in 1944, and who was the earliest pro8 ponent of the Genocide Convention, invoked the Arme9 nian case as a definitive example of genocide in the

10 20th century.

11 (18) Raphael Lemkin described the crime as ‘‘the

12 systematic destruction of whole national, racial or re13 ligious groups. The sort of thing Hitler did to the

14 Jews and the Turks did to the Armenians’’.

15 (19) The first resolution on genocide adopted by

16 the United Nations at Lemkin’s urging, the December

17 11, 1946, United Nations General Assembly Resolu18 tion 96(1) and the United Nations Genocide Conven19 tion itself recognized the Armenian Genocide as the

20 type of crime the United Nations intended to prevent

21 by codifying existing standards.

22 (20) In 1948 the United Nations War Crimes

23 Commission invoked the Armenian Genocide ‘‘pre24 cisely . . . one of the types of acts which the modern
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1 term ‘crimes against humanity’ is intended to cover’’

2 as a precedent for the Nuremberg tribunals.

3 (21) The Commission stated that ‘‘[t]he provisions of Article 230 of the Peace Treaty of Se ́ 4 vres were

5 obviously intended to cover, in conformity with the

6 Allied note of 1915 . . ., offenses which had been com7 mitted on Turkish territory against persons of Turk8 ish citizenship, though of Armenian or Greek race.

9 This article constitutes therefore a precedent for Arti10 cle 6c and 5c of the Nuremberg and Tokyo Charters,

11 and offers an example of one of the categories of

12 ‘crimes against humanity’ as understood by these en13 actments’’.

14 (22) The United Nations Commission on Human

15 Rights adopted in 1985 a report entitled ‘‘Study of

16 the Question of the Prevention and Punishment of the

17 Crime of Genocide’’, which stated ‘‘[t]he Nazi aberra18 tion has unfortunately not been the only case of geno19 cide in the twentieth century. Among other examples

20 which can be cited as qualifying are . . . the Ottoman

21 massacre of Armenians in 1915-1916’’.

22 (23) This report also explained that ‘‘[a]t least

23 1 million, and possibly well over half of the Armenian

24 population, are reliably estimated to have been killed

25 or death marched by independent authorities and eye-
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1 witnesses. This is corroborated by reports in United

2 States, German and British archives and of contem3 porary diplomats in the Ottoman Empire, including

4 those of its ally Germany’’.

5 (24) The tragedy of the Armenian Genocide has

6 been acknowledged by countries and international

7 bodies such as Argentina, Belgium, Canada, the

8 Council of Europe, Cyprus, the European Par9 liament, France, Great Britain, Greece, Lebanon,

10 Russia, the United Nations, the United States, and

11 Uruguay.

12 (25) The United States Holocaust Memorial

13 Council, an independent Federal agency, unani14 mously resolved on April 30, 1981, that the United

15 States Holocaust Memorial Museum would include

16 the Armenian Genocide in the Museum and has since

17 done so.

18 (26) President Reagan in proclamation number

19 4838, dated April 22, 1981, stated in part ‘‘like the

20 genocide of the Armenians before it, and the genocide

21 of the Cambodians, which followed it—and like too

22 many other persecutions of too many other people—

23 the lessons of the holocaust must never be forgotten’’.

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

25 Armenian Genocide, stated ‘‘we must consciously and
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1 conscientiously recognize the genocides of the past—

2 the enormous tragedies that have darkened this cen3 tury and that haunt us still. We must not only com4 memorate the courage of the victims and of their sur5 vivors, but we must also remind ourselves that civili6 zation cannot be taken for granted. . . . We must all

7 be vigilant against this most heinous crime against

8 humanity’’.

9 (28) President Bush, in 1988, stated further

10 ‘‘[t]he United States must acknowledge the attempted

11 genocide of the Armenian people in the last years of

12 the Ottoman Empire, based on the testimony of sur13 vivors, scholars, and indeed our own representatives

14 at the time, if we are to insure that such horrors are

15 not repeated’’.

16 (29) President Clinton, on August 13, 1992, stat17 ed ‘‘[t]he Genocide of 1915, years of communist dicta18 torship, and the devastating earthquake of 1988 have

19 caused great suffering in Armenia during this cen20 tury’’.

21 (30) Reviewing an aberrant 1982 expression

22 (later retracted) by the United States Department of

23 State asserting that the facts of the Armenian Geno24 cide may be ambiguous, the United States Court of

25 Appeals for the District of Columbia in 1993, after a
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1 review of documents pertaining to the policy record of

2 the United States, noted that the assertion on ambi3 guity in the United States record about the Armenian

4 Genocide ‘‘contradicted longstanding United States

5 policy and was eventually retracted’’.

6 (31) Despite the international recognition and

7 affirmation of the Armenian Genocide, the failure of

8 the domestic and international authorities to punish

9 those responsible for the Armenian Genocide is a rea10 son why similar genocides have recurred and may

11 recur in the future, and that a proper judicial and

12 firm response, holding the guilty accountable and re13 quiring the prompt enforcement of verdicts would

14 have spared humanity needless suffering.

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

16 Ambassador Stuart Eizenstat, then Under Secretary

17 of State for Economic, Business, and Agricultural Af18 fairs, pledged that the administration would raise

19 with the Republic of Turkey the issue of the recovery

20 of Armenian assets from the genocide period held by

21 the Imperial Ottoman Bank.

22 (33) It is important that the President ensure

23 that the foreign policy of the United States reflects

24 appropriate understanding and sensitivity concerning

25 issues related to human rights, ethnic cleansing, and
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1 genocide documented in the United States record re2 lating to the Armenian Genocide and the consequences

3 of the failure to enforce the judgments of the Turkish

4 courts against the responsible officials.

5 SEC. 3. DECLARATION OF POLICY.

6 The House of Representatives—

7 (1) calls upon the President to ensure that the

8 foreign policy of the United States reflects appro9 priate understanding and sensitivity concerning

10 issues related to human rights, ethnic cleansing, and

11 genocide documented in the United States record re12 lating to the Armenian Genocide and the consequences

13 of the failure to enforce the judgments of the Turkish

14 courts against the responsible officials;

15 (2) calls upon the President in the President’s

16 annual message commemorating the Armenian Geno17 cide issued on or about April 24 to characterize the

18 systematic and deliberate annihilation of 1,500,000

19 Armenians as genocide and to recall the proud his20 tory of United States intervention in opposition to

21 the Armenian Genocide; and

22 (3) calls upon the President in the President’s

23 annual message commemorating the Armenian Geno24 cide to state that the modern day Republic of Turkey
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1 did not conduct the Armenian Genocide, which was

2 perpetrated by the Ottoman Empire.

House Calendar No. 296

106TH CONGRESS

2D SESSION H. RES. 596

[Report No. 106–933]

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 Statesrecord relating to the Armenian Genocide, andfor other purposes.

OCTOBER 4, 2000

Reported with an amendment, referred to the House

Calendar, and ordered to be printed