III 

112TH CONGRESS 

2D SESSION S. RES. 399 

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, crimes against humanity, ethnic cleansing, 

and genocide documented in the United States record relating to the 

Armenian Genocide, and for other purposes. 

IN THE SENATE OF THE UNITED STATES 

MARCH 19, 2012 

Mr. MENENDEZ (for himself, Mr. KIRK, Mrs. BOXER, Mr. LIEBERMAN, Mr. 

BENNET, Mr. WHITEHOUSE, Mrs. FEINSTEIN, Mr. LEVIN, and Mr. 

REED) submitted the following resolution; which was referred to the Committee on Foreign 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, 

crimes against humanity, ethnic cleansing, and genocide 

documented in the United States record relating to the 

Armenian Genocide, and for other purposes. 

1 Resolved, 

2 SHORT TITLE

3 SECTION 1. This resolution may be cited as the ‘‘Af4 firmation of the United States Record on the Armenian 

5 Genocide Resolution’’. 


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1 FINDINGS

2 SEC. 2. The Senate finds the following: 

3 (1) The Armenian Genocide was conceived and car4 ried out by the Ottoman Empire from 1915 to 1923, re5 sulting in the deportation of nearly 2,000,000 Armenians, 

6 of whom 1,500,000 men, women, and children were killed, 

7 500,000 survivors were expelled from their homes, and the 

8 elimination of the over 2,500-year presence of Armenians 

9 in their historic homeland. 

10 (2) On May 24, 1915, the Allied Powers of England, 

11 France, and Russia, jointly issued a statement explicitly 

12 charging for the first time ever another government of 

13 committing ‘‘a crime against humanity’’. 

14 (3) This joint statement stated that ‘‘the Allied Gov15 ernments announce publicly to the Sublime Porte that 

16 they will hold personally responsible for these crimes all 

17 members of the Ottoman Government, as well as those of 

18 their agents who are implicated in such massacres’’. 

19 (4) The post-World War I Turkish Government in20 dicted the top leaders involved in the ‘‘organization and 

21 execution’’ of the Armenian Genocide and in the ‘‘mas22 sacre and destruction of the Armenians’’. 

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

24 Young Turk Regime were tried and convicted, as charged, 


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1 for organizing and executing massacres against the Arme2 nian people. 

3 (6) The chief organizers of the Armenian Genocide, 

4 Minister of War Enver, Minister of the Interior Talaat, 

5 and Minister of the Navy Jemal were all condemned to 

6 death for their crimes, but, the verdicts of the courts were 

7 not enforced. 

8 (7) The Armenian Genocide and these domestic judi9 cial failures are documented with overwhelming evidence 

10 in the national archives of Austria, France, Germany, 

11 Great Britain, Russia, the United States, the Vatican and 

12 many other countries, and this vast body of evidence at13 tests to the same facts, the same events, and the same 

14 consequences. 

15 (8) The United States National Archives and Record 

16 Administration holds extensive and thorough documenta17 tion on the Armenian Genocide, especially in its holdings 

18 under Record Group 59 of the United States Department 

19 of State, files 867.00 and 867.40, which are open and 

20 widely available to the public and interested institutions. 

21 (9) The Honorable Henry Morgenthau, United States 

22 Ambassador to the Ottoman Empire from 1913 to 1916, 

23 organized and led protests by officials of many countries, 

24 among them the allies of the Ottoman Empire, against 

25 the Armenian Genocide. 


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1 (10) Ambassador Morgenthau explicitly described to 

2 the Department of State the policy of the Government of 

3 the Ottoman Empire as ‘‘a campaign of race extermi4 nation,’’ and was instructed on July 16, 1915, by Sec5 retary of State Robert Lansing that the ‘‘Department ap6 proves your procedure . . . to stop Armenian persecu7 tion’’. 

8 (11) Senate Concurrent Resolution 12, 64th Con9 gress, agreed to February 9, 1916, resolved that ‘‘the 

10 President of the United States be respectfully asked to 

11 designate a day on which the citizens of this country may 

12 give expression to their sympathy by contributing funds 

13 now being raised for the relief of the Armenians,’’ who 

14 at the time were enduring ‘‘starvation, disease, and untold 

15 suffering’’. 

16 (12) President Woodrow Wilson concurred and also 

17 encouraged the formation of the organization known as 

18 Near East Relief, chartered by the Act of August 6, 1919, 

19 66th Congress (41 Stat. 273, chapter 32), which contrib20 uted some $116,000,000 from 1915 to 1930 to aid Arme21 nian Genocide survivors, including 132,000 orphans who 

22 became foster children of the American people. 

23 (13) Senate Resolution 359, 66th Congress, agreed 

24 to May 11, 1920, stated in part that ‘‘the testimony ad25 duced at the hearings conducted by the sub-committee of 


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1 the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations have clearly 

2 established the truth of the reported massacres and other 

3 atrocities from which the Armenian people have suffered’’. 

4 (14) The resolution followed the April 13, 1920, re5 port to the Senate of the American Military Mission to 

6 Armenia led by General James Harbord, that stated 

7 ‘‘[m]utilation, violation, torture, and death have left their 

8 haunting memories in a hundred beautiful Armenian val9 leys, and the traveler in that region is seldom free from 

10 the evidence of this most colossal crime of all the ages’’. 

11 (15) As displayed in the United States Holocaust Me12 morial Museum, Adolf Hitler, on ordering his military 

13 commanders to attack Poland without provocation in 

14 1939, dismissed objections by saying ‘‘[w]ho, after all, 

15 speaks today of the annihilation of the Armenians?’’ and 

16 thus set the stage for the Holocaust. 

17 (16) Raphael Lemkin, who coined the term ‘‘geno18 cide’’ in 1944, and who was the earliest proponent of the 

19 United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punish20 ment of the Crime of Genocide, invoked the Armenian case 

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

22 (17) The first resolution on genocide adopted by the 

23 United Nations at Mr. Lemkin’s urging, the December 11, 

24 1946, United Nations General Assembly Resolution 96(1), 

25 and the United Nations Convention on the Prevention and 


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1 Punishment of the Crime of Genocide recognized the Ar2 menian Genocide as the type of crime the United Nations 

3 intended to prevent and punish by codifying existing 

4 standards. 

5 (18) In 1948, the United Nations War Crimes Com6 mission invoked the Armenian Genocide, ‘‘precisely . . . 

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

8 against humanity’ is intended to cover,’’ as a precedent 

9 for the Nuremberg tribunals. 

10 (19) The Commission stated that ‘‘[t]he provisions 

11 of Article 230 of the Peace Treaty of Sevres were obvi12 ously intended to cover, in conformity with the Allied note 

13 of 1915 . . . , offenses which had been committed on 

14 Turkish territory against persons of Turkish citizenship, 

15 though of Armenian or Greek race. This article constitutes 

16 therefore a precedent for Article 6c and 5c of the Nurem17 berg and Tokyo Charters, and offers an example of one 

18 of the categories of ‘crimes against humanity’ as under19 stood by these enactments’’. 

20 (20) On May 28, 1951, in a written statement sub21 mitted to the International Court of Justice concerning 

22 the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the 

23 Crime of Genocide, the United States Government stated, 

24 ‘‘The Genocide Convention resulted from the inhuman and 

25 barbarous practices which prevailed in certain countries 


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1 prior to and during World War II, when entire religious, 

2 racial and national minority groups were threatened with 

3 and subjected to deliberate extermination. The practice of 

4 genocide has occurred throughout human history. The 

5 Roman persecution of the Christians, the Turkish mas6 sacres of Armenians, the extermination of millions of Jews 

7 and Poles by the Nazis are outstanding examples of the 

8 crime of genocide. This was the background when the Gen9 eral Assembly of the United Nations considered the prob10 lem of genocide. Not once, but twice, that body declared 

11 unanimously that the practice of genocide is criminal 

12 under international law and that States ought to take 

13 steps to prevent and punish genocide.’’. 

14 (21) House Joint Resolution 148, 94th Congress, 

15 adopted on April 8, 1975, resolved, ‘‘That April 24, 1975, 

16 is hereby designated as ‘National Day of Remembrance 

17 of Man’s Inhumanity to Man’, and the President of the 

18 United States is authorized and requested to issue a proc19 lamation calling upon the people of the United States to 

20 observe such day as a day of remembrance for all the vic21 tims of genocide, especially those of Armenian ancestry 

22 . . .’’. 

23 (22) President Ronald Reagan, in proclamation num24 ber 4838, dated April 22, 1981 (95 Stat. 1813), stated 

25 that, in part ‘‘[l]ike the genocide of the Armenians before 


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1 it, and the genocide of the Cambodians, which followed 

2 it—and like too many other persecutions of too many 

3 other people—the lessons of the Holocaust must never be 

4 forgotten’’. 

5 (23) House Joint Resolution 247, 98th Congress, 

6 adopted on September 10, 1984, resolved, ‘‘That April 24, 

7 1985, is hereby designated as ‘National Day of Remem8 brance of Man’s Inhumanity to Man’, and the President 

9 of the United States is authorized and requested to issue 

10 a proclamation calling upon the people of the United 

11 States to observe such day as a day of remembrance for 

12 all the victims of genocide, especially the one and one-half 

13 million people of Armenian ancestry . . .’’. 

14 (24) In August 1985, after extensive study and delib15 eration, the United Nations Sub-Commission on Preven16 tion of Discrimination and Protection of Minorities voted 

17 14 to 1 to accept a report entitled ‘‘Study of the Question 

18 of the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Geno19 cide,’’ which stated that ‘‘[t]he Nazi aberration has unfor20 tunately not been the only case of genocide in the 20th 

21 century. Among other examples which can be cited as 

22 qualifying are . . . the Ottoman massacre of Armenians 

23 in 1915–1916’’. 

24 (25) This report also explained that ‘‘[a]t least 

25 1,000,000, and possibly well over half of the Armenian 


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1 population, are reliably estimated to have been killed or 

2 death marched by independent authorities and eye-wit3 nesses. This is corroborated by reports in United States, 

4 German and British archives and of contemporary dip5 lomats in the Ottoman Empire, including those of its ally 

6 Germany’’. 

7 (26) The United States Holocaust Memorial Council, 

8 an independent Federal agency, unanimously resolved on 

9 April 30, 1981, that the United States Holocaust Memo10 rial Museum would include the Armenian Genocide in the 

11 Museum and has since done so. 

12 (27) Reviewing an aberrant 1982 expression (later 

13 retracted) by the Department of State asserting that the 

14 facts of the Armenian Genocide may be ambiguous, the 

15 United States Court of Appeals for the District of Colum16 bia in 1993, after a review of documents pertaining to the 

17 policy record of the United States, noted that the assertion 

18 on ambiguity in the United States record about the Arme19 nian Genocide ‘‘contradicted longstanding United States 

20 policy and was eventually retracted’’. 

21 (28) On June 5, 1996, the House of Representatives 

22 adopted an amendment to House Bill 3540, 104th Con23 gress (the Foreign Operations, Export Financing, and Re24 lated Programs Appropriations Act, 1997), to reduce aid 

25 to Turkey by $3,000,000 (an estimate of its payment of 


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1 lobbying fees in the United States) until the Government 

2 of Turkey acknowledged the Armenian Genocide and took 

3 steps to honor the memory of its victims. 

4 (29) President William Jefferson Clinton, on April 

5 24, 1998, stated: ‘‘This year, as in the past, we join with 

6 Armenian-Americans throughout the nation in commemo7 rating one of the saddest chapters in the history of this 

8 century, the deportations and massacres of a million and 

9 a half Armenians in the Ottoman Empire in the years 

10 1915–1923.’’. 

11 (30) President George W. Bush, on April 24, 2004, 

12 stated: ‘‘On this day, we pause in remembrance of one 

13 of the most horrible tragedies of the 20th century, the an14 nihilation of as many as 1,500,000 Armenians through 

15 forced exile and murder at the end of the Ottoman Em16 pire.’’. 

17 (31) President Barack Obama, on April 24, 2010, ex18 plicitly employed the expression Meds Yeghern, a term 

19 used by Armenians to reference the Armenian Genocide. 

20 The statement reads in part: ‘‘On this solemn day of re21 membrance, we pause to recall that 95 years ago one of 

22 the worst atrocities of the 20th century began. In that 

23 dark moment of history, 1,500,000 Armenians were mas24 sacred or marched to their death in the final days of the 

25 Ottoman Empire. . . . The Meds Yeghern is a devastating 


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1 chapter in the history of the Armenian people, and we 

2 must keep its memory alive in honor of those who were 

3 murdered and so that we do not repeat the grave mistakes 

4 of the past.’’. 

5 (32) Despite the international recognition and affir6 mation of the Armenian Genocide, the failure of the do7 mestic and international authorities to punish those re8 sponsible for the Armenian Genocide is a reason why simi9 lar genocides have recurred and may recur in the future, 

10 and that just resolution of this issue will help prevent fu11 ture genocides. 

12 DECLARATION OF POLICY

13 SEC. 3. The Senate— 

14 (1) calls upon the President to ensure that the for15 eign policy of the United States reflects appropriate un16 derstanding and sensitivity concerning issues related to 

17 human rights, crimes against humanity, ethnic cleansing, 

18 and genocide documented in the United States record re19 lating to the Armenian Genocide and the consequences of 

20 the failure to realize a just resolution; and 

21 (2) calls upon the President in the President’s annual 

22 message commemorating the Armenian Genocide issued 

23 on or about April 24, to accurately characterize the sys24 tematic and deliberate annihilation of 1,500,000 Arme25 nians as genocide and to recall the proud history of United 


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1 States intervention in opposition to the Armenian Geno2 cide. 

Æ 


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