Transcript [PDF] - House Foreign Affairs Committee Democrats

22
ple for 400 years in this country where 6 million died in the passage
coming from Africa to the Western Hemisphere and we have
acknowledged and have made apologies and have attempted to
right wrongs.
I think that it is only fitting and proper that we here in the
United States Congress should acknowledge. I know that Turkey is
a very strong ally. There is no question about it, but South Africa
was an ally of the United States too and we looked the other way
for a long time as apartheid went on because they were anti Communist.
We have to I think right the wrong, and with that, Mr. Chairman,
I yield back the balance of my time. I certainly support the
resolution.
Chairman BERMAN. The time of the gentleman has expired. The
gentleman from California, Mr. Royce, for what purpose do you
seek recognition
Mr. ROYCE. To strike the last word, Mr. Chairman.
Chairman BERMAN. The gentleman is recognized for 5 minutes.
Mr. ROYCE. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I am a co-sponsor of this
resolution, and I have worked on this issue since I was in the state
senate in California where I authored a resolution recognizing the
Armenian Genocide, the first of any such state. My resolution
passed in California a generation ago. Now it is time for Congress
to act.
When I was young, I knew a survivor. He was the sole survivor
from his village, and he himself would have been slaughtered had
not a Turkish neighbor hid him when he was a child. This resolution
focuses singularly on the United States’ record of the Armenian
Genocide. As the text indicates, our national archives is filled
with thousands of pages documenting the premeditated extermination
of the Armenian people.
Our own Ambassador to the Ottoman Empire, Henry Morgenthau,
recalled in his memoirs, and he was an eyewitness to history,
so this is our Ambassador. He says that the Ottomans never had
the slightest idea of reestablishing the Armenians in a new country,
he said, knowing that the great majority of those would either
in his words die of thirst and starvation or be murdered by the
wild Mohammedin desert tribes. Again to use his words as an eyewitness
to history, he said it was a campaign of race extermination
of the Armenian people.
The United States has been a global leader in promoting human
rights around the world. On the issue of the Armenian Genocide,
however, we lag behind. The French, Swiss, Swedish, Russians,
Germans, those governments recognize the Armenian Genocide. As
a global leader in human rights, it is imperative for the United
States to stand on principle and recognize the annihilation of the
Armenians as genocide.
This resolution does not reference the Government of Turkey. It
references the Ottoman Empire. The Turkish Government was not
involved in this. The Ottoman Empire was. It is important that
this committee doesn’t lose sight of truth versus propaganda, right
versus wrong.
While the Armenian Genocide was the first of the twentieth century,
the blind eye cast to the slaughter of Armenians was a point,
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