III 

109TH CONGRESS 

1ST SESSION S. RES. 320 

Calling on 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. 

IN THE SENATE OF THE UNITED STATES 

NOVEMBER 18, 2005 

Mr. ENSIGN (for himself and Mr. DURBIN) submitted the following resolution; 

which was referred to the Committee on Foreign Relations 

RESOLUTION 

Calling on 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. 

Whereas 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 more than 2,500- 

year presence of Armenians in their historic homeland; 

Whereas, on May 24, 1915, the Allied Powers issued the joint 

statement of England, France, and Russia that explicitly 
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charged, for the first time ever, another government of 

committing ‘‘a crime against humanity’’; 

Whereas that 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’’; 

Whereas 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’’; 

Whereas in a series of courts-martial, officials of the Young 

Turk Regime were tried and convicted on charges of organizing and executing massacres against the Armenian 

people; 

Whereas the officials who were the chief organizers of the Armenian Genocide, Minister of War Enver, Minister of the 

Interior Talaat, and Minister of the Navy Jemal, were 

tried by military tribunals, found guilty, and condemned 

to death for their crimes, however, the punishments imposed by the tribunals were not enforced; 

Whereas the Armenian Genocide and the failure to carry out 

the death sentence against Enver, Talaat, and Jemal are 

documented with overwhelming evidence in the national 

archives of Austria, France, Germany, Russia, the United 

Kingdom, 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; 

Whereas the National Archives and Records Administration 

of the United States holds extensive and thorough docu-
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mentation on the Armenian Genocide, especially in its 

holdings for the Department of State under Record 

Group 59, files 867.00 and 867.40, which are open and 

widely available to the public and interested institutions; 

Whereas 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; 

Whereas Ambassador Morgenthau explicitly described to the 

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 Secretary of 

State Robert Lansing that the ‘‘Department approves 

your procedure . . . to stop Armenian persecution’’; 

Whereas Senate Concurrent Resolution 12, 64th Congress, 

agreed to July 18, 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 

that time, were enduring ‘‘starvation, disease, and untold 

suffering’’; 

Whereas President Woodrow Wilson agreed with such Concurrent Resolution and encouraged the formation of the 

organization known as Near East Relief, which was incorporated by the Act of August 6, 1919, 66th Congress 

(41 Stat. 273, chapter 32); 

Whereas, from 1915 through 1930, Near East Relief contributed approximately $116,000,000 to aid survivors of the 
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Armenian Genocide, including aid to approximately 

132,000 Armenian orphans; 

Whereas Senate Resolution 359, 66th Congress, agreed to 

May 11, 1920, stated in part, ‘‘the testimony adduced at 

the hearings conducted by the subcommittee 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’’; 

Whereas such Senate Resolution followed the report to the 

Senate of the American Military Mission to Armenia, 

which was led by General James Harbord, dated April 

13, 1920, 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’’; 

Whereas, 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; 

Whereas Raphael Lemkin, who coined the term ‘‘genocide’’ in 

1944, and who was the earliest proponent of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide, invoked the Armenian case as a definitive example of genocide in the 20th century; 

Whereas the first resolution on genocide adopted by the 

United Nations, United Nations General Assembly Resolution 96(1), dated December 11, 1946, (which was 
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adopted at the urging of Raphael Lemkin), and the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide, 

done at Paris December 9, 1948, recognized the Armenian Genocide as the type of crime the United Nations 

intended to prevent and punish by codifying existing 

standards; 

Whereas, in 1948, the United Nations War Crimes Commission invoked the Armenian Genocide as ‘‘precisely . . . 

one of the types of acts which the modern term ‘crimes 

against humanity’ is intended to cover’’ and as a precedent for the Nuremberg tribunals; 

Whereas such 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’’; 

Whereas House Joint Resolution 148, 94th Congress, adopted by the House of Representatives on April 8, 1975, resolved that ‘‘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’’; 

Whereas Proclamation 4838 of April 22, 1981 (95 Stat. 

1813) issued by President Ronald Reagan, stated, in 
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part, that ‘‘[l]ike 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’’; 

Whereas House Joint Resolution 247, 98th Congress, adopted by the House of Representatives on September 10, 

1984, resolved that ‘‘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’’; 

Whereas, in August 1985, after extensive study and deliberation, the United Nations Sub-Commission 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’’; 

Whereas such 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 and this is corroborated by reports in United 

States, German, and British archives and of contem-
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porary diplomats in the Ottoman Empire, including those 

of its ally Germany’’; 

Whereas the United States Holocaust Memorial Council, an 

independent Federal agency that serves as the board of 

trustees of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum pursuant to section 2302 of title 36, United States 

Code, unanimously resolved on April 30, 1981, that the 

Museum would exhibit information regarding the Armenian Genocide and the Museum has since done so; 

Whereas, reviewing an aberrant 1982 expression by the Department of State (which was later retracted) that asserted 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’’; 

Whereas, on June 5, 1996, the House of Representatives 

adopted an amendment to H.R. 3540, 104th Congress 

(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; 

Whereas President William Jefferson Clinton, on April 24, 

1998, stated, ‘‘[t]his 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 
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a half Armenians in the Ottoman Empire in the years 

1915–1923’’; 

Whereas President George W. Bush, on April 24, 2004, stated, ‘‘[o]n 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’’; and 

Whereas, 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: 

Now, therefore, be it 

1 Resolved, That the Senate— 

2 (1) calls on the President to ensure that the 

3 foreign policy of the United States reflects appro4 priate understanding and sensitivity concerning 

5 issues related to human rights, ethnic cleansing, and 

6 genocide documented in the United States record re7 lating to the Armenian Genocide and the con8 sequences of the failure to realize a just resolution; 

9 and 

10 (2) calls on the President, in the President’s 

11 annual message commemorating the Armenian 

12 Genocide issued on or about April 24 to accurately 

13 characterize the systematic and deliberate annihila-
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1 tion of 1,500,000 Armenians as genocide and to re2 call the proud history of United States intervention 

3 in opposition to the Armenian Genocide. 

Æ