S6002 CONGRESSIONAL RECORD— SENATE May 2, 1995 

laws to be more efficient and less burdensome. 

But, we must not exploit the current 

frustration with Government to gut all 

laws protecting our environment. 

Those who claim we must eviscerate 

environmental rules in order to sustain 

our economy are at best disingenuous. 

They know—we all know—that we cannot strengthen our economy if we destroy our environment. In fact, establishing policies for a sustainable environment is an economic necessity. We 

must develop policies using balance, 

reason, and good science. 

We will debate many important environmental issues in this Congress. Let 

us hold ourselves to those standards: 

balance, reason, and good science. 

Pollution does not respect ideological boundaries. So our efforts to prevent pollution, to clean up mistakes 

from our past, and to plan thoughtfully 

for the future on this delicate planet 

must transcend those boundaries. 

In my lifetime, the world population 

has doubled, and the U.S. population 

has soared from 150 million to 260 million people. At current growth rates, 

it’s projected that the U.S. population 

will double—to 522 million people—just 

60 years from now. 

The cold, hard truth is that the 

Earth cannot supply the resources to 

sustain such a large human population 

unless we change our consumption and 

conservation practices now. 

Earth Day reminds us that the Earth 

is not an infinitely bountiful cornucopia. Rather, it is a planet of finite resources from which comes the materials for our food, clothing, and shelter. 

We must learn to live within its geological and biological limits. 

Environmental issues are often expressed in by scientists in complicated, 

technical terms. But the essential issue 

is really quite simple and critical for 

all of us to embrace. President Theodore Roosevelt put it best early in this 

century when he said: ‘‘A nation behaves well if it treats its natural resources as assets which it must turn 

over to the next generation increased—

not impaired—in value.’’

We have an obligation to our children 

and our children’s children to safeguard their future, to preserve the 

water, soil, air, minerals, rivers, and 

oceans that are the resource base of 

this diverse planet and the many life 

forms that inhabit it. 

Last week, students at the Grandview Elementary School in Rapid City 

spoke with me about pressing environmental problems and possible solutions. 

Let us not disappoint our children. 

Let us, Democrats and Republicans 

alike, heed Sitting Bull’s plea to ‘‘put 

our heads together,’’ to work together, 

‘‘to see what life we can make for our 

children.’’

f 

SAFE WORKPLACES FOR 

AMERICAN WORKERS 

Mr. DASCHLE. Mr. President, our 

Nation’s history includes too many 

tragic and avoidable workplace accidents that have maimed and killed 

workers. 

The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire 

early in this century, in which women 

died because the owner had locked the 

fire doors to prevent them taking an 

unauthorized work break, remains one 

of the most horrifying examples. 

Twenty-five years ago last Friday, 

Congress passed the Occupational Safety and Health Act. With that legislation, we made a commitment to all 

American workers that the places 

where they earned their living would 

not themselves pose a hazard to life or 

health. 

Yet it has been just a couple of years 

since the Hamlet chicken processing 

plant fire had a result all too similar to 

the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory disaster, and for the same cause—a locked 

fire escape door. Twenty-five working 

people in North Carolina died in that 

fire. 

The Occupational Safety and Health 

Act was intended to prevent such tragedies, but despite the passage of a quarter century, its work is not yet done. 

Every year, more than 6,000 workers 

are killed by workplace injuries; more 

than 50,000 die each year from occupational diseases. 

We have made great strides in cleaning up the chemicals and other contaminants that pose a hazard to health 

in many workplaces. Most American 

employers are anxious to create workplaces that will not cause injury to 

their own employees. 

But the number of deaths each year, 

whether from immediate injury or 

from the long-range effects of exposure 

to hazardous substances, means we 

cannot say that the work of the Occupational Health and Safety Administration is finished. It is not. 

It is inconceivable that, with this 

heavy toll of premature worker death, 

there is today a concerted effort to roll 

back and eviscerate workplace safety 

provisions that protect workers today. 

This is a misguided and mistaken approach. We are seeing improvements in 

the rate of workplace safety, with reduced injuries and accidents. Clearly, 

the work done by Federal and State inspectors is having an effect. It is counterproductive to take an effective enforcement approach and seek to weaken it. 

American workers deserve better. 

American workers should not have to 

fear that the Congress, which promised 

to protect their health a quarter of a 

century ago, will today renege on that 

promise. 

There are undoubtedly improvements 

to be made in the enforcement field, 

but proposals to eliminate the tools of 

enforcement itself are not improvements. They will do nothing but undermine the ability of inspectors to do 

their job. 

There are fewer than 2,000 Federal 

workplace safety inspectors. They are 

already overwhelmed by the scope of 

their responsibilities. If they don’t 

have the tools with which to enforce 

safety requirements, the promise of a 

safe workplace will become an empty 

one. 

A week after the ultimate workplace 

tragedy, the bombing in Oklahoma 

City that took the lives of so many 

Federal employees as they worked at 

their desks, it is worthwhile to remember the tragic and wasteful loss of life 

that goes unremarked in the workplace 

every day. 

I commend the AFL–CIO and its affiliates for the continued effort they 

make, through Workers Memorial Day, 

to recall to the national memory the 

lives needlessly lost to preventable injuries and hazards on the job. 

f 

THE 80TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE 

ARMENIAN GENOCIDE 

Mr. LIEBERMAN. Mr. President, this 

week we commemorate the 80th anniversary of the Armenian genocide—the 

death of over 1.5 million Armenians 

and their exile from their homeland. 

This terrible tragedy marked the beginning of an ugly period in human history where there have been attempts to 

systematically liquidate certain ethnic 

groups. The Nazi Holocaust, the extermination of the Kulaks by Stalin, and 

the ruthless murders of innocent Cambodians by the Khmer Rouge are all 

further examples of brutality against 

fellow human beings. Today, people are 

being killed in the Balkans, Rwanda, 

and Burundi once again because they 

are members of a different ethnic 

group. 

What can we learn from all these 

tragedies and especially the one we 

commemorate today? The first and 

foremost lesson is to acknowledge that 

a tragedy occurred and admit that it is 

a crime against all of humanity. Then 

we must never allow the world to forget what happened here and the fate of 

these people. This is why we mark this 

date in history—and why we must continue to do so. 

In 1915, the Ottoman Empire was in a 

state of collapse. The Empire was exhausting its last strength in fighting 

World War I. The economy was in tatters and the Government was in a state 

of confusion. The victims of this time 

of upheaval were the Armenian people 

who were either killed or forced to flee 

their homelands. 

The Armenian people kept their culture and beliefs, and with the collapse 

of the Soviet Union, the Nation of Armenia was born. This birth has been a 

troubled one. 

The tragic 7-year conflict between 

Armenia and Azerbaijan has cost thousands of lives and displaced over a million people. I am very encouraged, however, by the cease-fire which has been 

in place in Nagorno-Karabakh for 1 

year this month. 

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May 2, 1995 CONGRESSIONAL RECORD— SENATE S6003 

I am also encouraged that Russia decided this past December to work with 

the Minsk Group of the OSCE to seek a 

peaceful solution in NagornoKarabakh. The Minsk Group, cochaired 

by Russia and Finland, has been meeting regularly to address the needs of all 

the concerned parties. The process is 

moving along slowly, but there is hope 

that a peacekeeping unit may soon be 

in Nagorno-Karabakh to ensure the 

safety of all people. 

The United States is eager to see a 

lifting of the blockade of Armenia and 

to see a return to the free flow of humanitarian aid in this region. We share 

the aspirations of Armenia, Azerbaijan, 

and the other members of the OSCE 

Minsk Group for a peaceful solution to 

this troubling problem. 

We must do whatever we can to solve 

the situation in Nagorno-Karabakh. We 

must use all available resources to see 

that the tragedy which befell Armenians in the first part of this century is 

not repeated—either in Armenia or 

anywhere else in the world. On this, 

the 80th anniversary of a terrible genocide, we must learn from the past and 

make sure that such a tragedy is never 

repeated. 

f 

THE 80TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE 

ARMENIAN GENOCIDE 

Mr. GLENN. Mr. President, once 

again I join my colleagues in pausing 

to reflect upon, and remember the victims of, this century’s first example of 

the horrendous crime of genocide, the 

Armenian population of the Ottoman 

Empire. April 24, 1995, marked the 80th 

anniversary of the beginning of this 

tragedy. On that day in 1915, some 200 

Armenian religious, political, and intellectual leaders were arrested in Constantinople and exiled or taken to the 

interior and executed. For the next 

several years, Armenians were systematically expelled and deported. Some 

were killed and others left to die of 

deprivation. When the horror ended in 

1923, 1.5 million Armenians had perished and another 500,000 had fled their 

homeland. 

Evidence of the Armenian genocide is 

available from a number of sources, 

among the most compelling of which is 

the reporting of our own United States 

Ambassador to the Ottoman Empire, 

Henry Morgenthau. In a cable to the 

Secretary of State, Ambassador Morgenthau wrote: 

Deportation of and excesses against peaceful Armenians is increasing and from 

harrowing reports of eye witnesses it appears 

that a campaign of race extermination is in 

process under a pretext of reprisal against 

rebellion. 

Some may ask why it is important to 

take time each year to commemorate 

an event which occurred over half a 

century ago. In reply I would recall the 

reported observation of Adolph Hitler 

as he contemplated the ‘‘final solution’’—‘‘Who remembers the Armenians?’’

Sadly, as we all well know, the Armenian peoples’ tragedy was not the last 

genocide of this century; there followed 

the horrors of the Holocaust and the 

extermination of the Cambodians during the brutal Khmer Rouge regime. 

Surveying the world today we unfortunately see many too many examples of 

brutal ethnic, religious, or tribal-based 

conflict, from ethnic cleansing in Bosnia to massacres in Rwanda. 

Today we remember the 11⁄2 million 

victims of the Armenian genocide. It is 

not comfortable to remind ourselves of 

this tragedy, or to visit the Holocaust 

Memorial Museum, or to see ongoing 

atrocities in real time on our television 

screens. Let us hope and pray today 

that we never allow ourselves to become complacent about man’s inhumanity to man. For in the words of Edmund Burke, ‘‘the only thing necessary 

of the triumph of evil is for good men 

to do nothing.

f 

’’

ARMENIAN COMMEMORATION 

Mr. JEFFORDS. Mr. President, I join 

many of my colleagues today in commemorating one of history’s greatest 

tragedies: The slaughter 80 years ago of 

more than 1 million Armenians. That 

brutal assault on the Armenian people 

was an unconscionable effort to deny 

Armenians basic political and social 

rights of self-determination, independence, cultural identity, and community. 

The atrocity could not extinguish the 

Armenian people’s desire for freedom 

and justice. The Armenian community 

survives in many places around the 

globe, including, thankfully, the 

United States of America. In commemorating the immense tragedy 

which took place 80 years ago, we are 

honoring the achievements and lives of 

those who perished. We are also paying 

tribute to the perseverance and vigor 

of the Armenian people, who have 

maintained their cultural and historical identity despite oppression and diaspora. They continue to make positive 

contributions wherever they are, including in the United States and in the 

Republic of Armenia. 

Commemorating these tragic events 

of 80 years ago, we also recognize the 

need for vigilance and action in the 

face of ethnic intolerance and injustice. Failure to learn the lessons of 

such events in history will unquestionably lead to future tragedies. 

f 

ARMENIAN GENOCIDE 

Ms. MOSELEY-BRAUN. Mr. President, April 24 was the 80th anniversary 

of the beginning of the Armenian genocide. On that day in 1915, 200 Armenian 

leaders were arrested in Constantinople, now Istanbul, and taken to the 

Turkish interior, where they were executed. This act marked the beginning 

of the first genocide of the 20th century. 

From 1915–1923, 1.5 million Armenians were killed and more than 500,000 

were exiled. By 1923, the entire Armenian population, which had numbered 2 

million, 9 years before, was removed 

from Turkey. 

During the last years of the Ottoman 

Empire, the government carried out 

the extermination of the Christian Armenian minority as a matter of government policy. The Turks were concerned that the Armenian population 

sympathized with the Allied Powers, 

and were worried that they might side 

with the Russians in the Turkish-Russian conflict during World War I. The 

Ottoman Government felt they needed 

to fully contain the Armenians. 

All Armenians were equal candidates 

to be deported or massacred—men, 

women, children, the elderly. The Ottoman Empire justified the genocide as 

one of the necessary military operations during wartime. 

Many Armenians were transferred 

from their homes and taken to desolate 

areas to be abused and killed in mass 

slayings. They were moved either by 

forced caravan marches or by overly 

packed cattle car trains, both of which 

caused massive casualties. 

The survivors of these deportations 

were sent to camps in the middle of the 

Syrian desert, where they faced heat, 

starvation, exhaustion, thirst, and disease. 

In addition to the loss of life, Armenian churches, libraries, towns, and 

other symbols of their culture were 

razed. The property and belongings of 

individual Armenians were transferred 

to the state. 

The massacres ended only after the 

intervention by the Great Powers, including the United States. Henry Morgenthau, the United States Ambassador to the Ottoman Empire, organized and led protests against the targeting of Armenians. Congress chartered an organization, Near East Relief, which provided $113 million between 1915–1930 for the Armenians’

cause. 132,000 Armenian orphans were 

sent to America and placed in foster 

homes. The United States’ efforts 

stopped the Turks from fully completing their plan of extermination. 

Unfortunately, though, we were unable 

to protect the majority of the Armenians from that brutal government. 

Those who were not killed were scattered around the globe. The largest 

community of Armenians today is in 

the United States, and approximately 

25,000 Armenians live in Illinois. 

I believe it is important to recognize 

this history of suffering. The United 

States should make April 24 a national 

day of remembering the Armenian 

genocide. We must acknowledge the 

Armenian genocide for what it was. 

There is no way we can go back and 

change history, but we must recount 

the truth of what happened to the Armenian people between 1915–1923 in the 

Ottoman Empire. We must demonstrate that the attempted extermination of an entire people will not be 

tolerated. We must not forget those 

who suffered and died. 

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