Two Senators Introduce Armenian Genocide Resolution In US Senate

The Armenian Genocide resolution is introduced by Senators John Ensign of Nevada and Robert Menendez, a Democrat from New Jersey. Besides introducing the Resolution, Senator Ensign also met yesterday with the leaders from the Armenian National Committee of America to discuss his Armenian Genocide Resolution and the protocols signed between Armenia and Turkey on October 10 to normalize relations between the two countries.

“It is inconceivable that after so many years the international community has yet to affirm that the deportation, expropriation, abduction, torture, massacre and starvation of the Armenian people was genocide,” said Ensign. “By joining together and affirming that genocide was committed on the Armenian people, we send a strong message to the international community that we will not turn a blind eye to the crimes of the past simply because they are in the past.”

It is estimated that between 1915 and 1923 1.5 million Armenians were massacred by the government of Turkey for purposes of ethnic cleansing and depriving millions of Armenians from their own fatherland. Currently those lands in Eastern Turkey have zero Armenian population despite thriving communities before 1915. At the time the international community condemned the Armenian Genocide by Turks, but no strong action to remove the consequences of the genocide were taken to prevent future genocides such as the Jewish Holocaust, Rwanda and Darfur, and to protect the rights of the deprive Armenian diaspora.

Nearly 20 countries have recognized and condemned the Armenian Genocide including France, Poland and Switzerland, where it is considered a punishable crime to deny the fact of the genocide. To this date Turkey denies that it was a genocide only hundreds of thousands wanished due to the consequences of the First World War.

According to The New York Times "on the eve of World War I, there were two million Armenians in the declining Ottoman Empire. By 1922, there were fewer than 400,000. The others — some 1.5 million — were killed in what historians consider a genocide.

"As David Fromkin put it in his widely praised history of World War I and its aftermath, “A Peace to End All Peace”: “Rape and beating were commonplace. Those who were not killed at once were driven through mountains and deserts without food, drink or shelter. Hundreds of thousands of Armenians eventually succumbed or were killed ."

Armenia and Turkey, according to the protocols, have agreed to set up a Governmental commission, which according to the Armenian president Serzh Sargsyan, will study and make recommendations on "how to remove and deal with the consequences of the Armenian Genocide." Turkey hopes the commission will question the fact of the Genocide.

The genocide of the Armenian people, carried out by the Young Turks between 1915-1923 gave birth of the powerful Armenian Diaspora. Spread around the world, the members of the Diaspora who are the decedents of those killed and driven out from Eastern Anatolia, hope that justice will be served and they will have an opportunity to return the land of their fathers, back home. The Diaspora also hopes that condemnation of the Armenian genocide world-wide will prevent other genocides, such as Darfur, from being carried out.

Written by Armen Hareyan
HULIQ Publisher