Speech #940035865

Tip ONEILL. for his strong sense of justice evidenced by his interest and diligent efforts on behalf of this resolution. Over 50 Members of the House have joined TIP ONEILL and myself in sponsoring this measure to authorize and request that the President issue a proclamation calling upon the people of the United States to observe April 24. 1975. as a day of remembrance of the Armenian victims of the genocide perpetrated in Turkey in 1915. This upcoming April 24 will mark the 60th anniversary of the tragic prelude to the first largescale massacre of this country which ensued when the Turks carried out a deliberate plan to eliminate some 2 million Armenians living in the Ottoman empire through deportations. starvation. and wholesale carnage. Mr. Henry Morganthau. the U.S. Ambassador to Turkey during this Infamous period. was one of several observers of the genocide who recorded the atrocities committee at the time: I am confident that the whole history of the human race contains no such horrible episode as this. The great massacres and persecutions of the past seem almost insignificant when compared to the sufferings of the Armenian race in 1915. ("Ambassador Morganthaus Story." Garden City. 1918) The Norwegian High Commissioner for Refugees for the League of Nations. Fridtjof Nansen. related the following description of the deportations: A foreign witness has said that these deportations were merely a polite form of massacre. but in reality they were infinitely worse and more heartless. for instead of instant death they forced the victims to undergo all sorts of inhuman sufferings. while this cowardly and barbarous plan was to save the face of the authorities by posing as a necessary military measure. From June till August 1915. the hottest time of year when the victims were most likely to succumb. these processions of death wended their way endlessly from all the vilayets and towns where there were Armenians southwards in the direction of the desert. ("Armenia and the Near East." New York. 1928) Yet. despite voluminous reports and accounts of the human destruction which occurred. there was a recent effort to minimize this reprehensible episode. I am referring to the March 1974 meeting of the United Nations Commission on Human Rights when an interim report on genocide being prepared for the Subcommission on the Elimination of Discrimination and the Protection of Minorities was under consideration.