Mr. President. I rise today to commemorate the 93rd anniversary of the Armenian genocide. On April 24. 1915. an ancient nation faced extermination when officials of the Ottoman Government initiated a series of raids in which hundreds of Armenians were arrested and subsequently deported or killed. Isolated incidents of brutality had occurred before. but sadly this event marked the beginning of a campaign of murder. deportation. and forced starvation. When the violence ultimately ended. as many as 1.5 million Armenians had died and 500.000 were exiled. Armenians all but disappeared from land their people had occupied for centuries. The American Ambassador to the Ottoman Empire at the time was the distinguished Henry Morgenthau who described the horrors perpetrated against the Armenians as the "murder of a nation." Just this week. the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. which I have the honor to chair. had a hearing on the systematic murder of innocents in Darfur.
Keywords matched
deportation deported