In September 2000, I had the privilege to chair a hearing on the Armenian Genocide Resolution. It was a four-hour hearing, the first hearing this House ever held on the Armenian Genocide. The testimony I heard that day, and accounts of the atrocities I have read in the articles and books over the years, shocked me deeply. The existence of a campaign of genocide denial also shocked me deeply.

    The issue behind this resolution is whether, when another government denies a genocide, Congress has a responsibility to insist that our government acknowledge it.

    Mr. Chairman, I believe we do.

    In 1915, there were about 2 million Armenians living in what was then the Ottoman Empire. They were living in a region that they inhabited for 2,500 years. By 1923, well over 90 percent of these Armenians had disappeared. Most of them, as many as 1.5 million were dead. The remainder had been forced into exile. 
    
    The government of the empire, whose leaders were members of the movement known as the Young Turks, called this campaign against the Armenians a mass deportation rather than a mass murder, but the United States Ambassador to Turkey at the time, Henry Morgenthau, called it a “campaign of race extermination.”

    The British, French, and Russian governments accused the Young Turk government of a “crime against humanity,” the first time in history that charge was ever made by one state against another.

    After World War I, the term “genocide” didn’t exist, but the whole world understood what had been done to the Armenians and who had done it. The government of Turkey tried and convicted a number of high-ranking Young Turk officials for their role in what the Turkish government’s indictment called, “the massacre and destruction of the Armenians.”

    Unfortunately, memories fade and later generations chose another course. Now there are many who deny the Armenian genocide ever happened. Usually they don’t deny that people died in staggering numbers or even that Turkish soldiers and civilians perpetrated mass rape, torture, and unspeakable atrocities. But they fall back on the excuses typical of genocide deniers.

    They say that it happened during wartime, or that the fault was on both sides, or that the Armenians sympathized with the enemies of the Ottoman Empire, or that the atrocities were the random acts of a few people, not authorized by the central government.

    Yet after World War I the Turkish government’s indictment said that the destruction of the Armenians was “the result of the decision-making of the Central Committee” of the Young Turk political party.

    The sad truth is that the modern Government of Turkey refuses to come to terms with this genocide. The Turkish Government consistently, and aggressively, refuses to acknowledge the Armenian genocide.

    For Armenians everywhere, the Turkish government’s denial is a slap in the face. It is this denial that keeps the Armenian genocide a burning issue.

    Even in our own country, a conspiracy of obfuscation and expediency tries to muffle any acknowledgment of the Armenian genocide. Whenever the issue threatens to surface in Congress, executive branch officials and diplomats quietly but firmly remind us that Turkey is a vital NATO ally. Yet during the Cold War Germany was our most important ally, and no American official would have dreamed of ignoring the Holocaust. Nor would any German official.

    I want to note here that this House is a friend to Turkey. But friends don’t let friends commit crimes against humanity--or act as accomplices in their denial after they have been committed. I recall to you that, in judging the post World War I case against the prime movers of the genocide, the Turkish President of the Court stated that "[p]erpetration of such atrocities is not only incompatible with Ottoman Laws and the Constitution, but also is contrary to the dictates of our Muslim faith." I admire him for saying this. He said this for the good of Turkey, and his words were patriotic.

    Before he launched the Holocaust, Adolf Hitler sneered, “Who today remembers the Armenians?” That question echoes in this room today.

    The Armenian genocide was the first in the terrible series of modern genocides. I think particularly of the Holocaust, and of Rwanda and Bosnia. In July I visited Bosnia for ceremonies marking the 12th anniversary of the genocidal murder near Srebrenica of 8,000 Bosniak Muslims. Many people in Srpska still deny that genocide, or even idolize the genocideurs. When we drove through Srpska, we saw roadside vendors selling posters of Radovan Karadzic. There are American officials who don’t want us to talk too much about the Bosnian genocide, for fear of offending the Serbs. And now we have another genocide taking place in Darfur. I think, too, of the special brutality with which China enforces its one child policy and forced abortion against the Uighur Muslims.

    During the Holocaust the international community waffled and slithered away from responsibility. It did it again in Rwanda, in Bosnia, and it is doing it even as we speak in Darfur.

    “Who today remembers the Armenians?” indeed. This House must remember them, and must continue to do so as long as anyone else refuses to acknowledge what was done to them. American foreign policy must never be complicit in another government’s denial of genocide.

On the Web:

Read the transcript of the September 2000 hearing on the Armenian Genocide Resolution chaired by Rep. Chris Smith