Remembering the Armenian Genocide

Senate - April 29, 1992

Mr. KERRY. Mr. President, today we mark the 77th anniversary of the Armenian genocide. I would like to use the time allotted to me to reflect on several things related to that tragedy and to the changes that have occurred since our comparable commemoration last year.

First, it becomes increasingly evident with each passing year that the work of the Armenian National Committee and others who have strived to ensure remembrance of the genocide has paid off. Research, testimonies, and official statements all bear witness to the historical truth and appalling inhumanity of the genocide. Throughout the latter part of the 19th century and the early part of this century, it was the policy of the Ottoman Empire to persecute brutally its Armenian minority. No serious historian can deny this.

During the reign of Sultan Abdul Hamid II, 1894-96, 300,000 Armenians were massacred.

In 1909, 21,000 Armenians were murdered in Cilicia.

And between 1914 and 1923, an estimated 1 1/2 million Armenians were killed and another 500,000 forced into exile.

In the words of Henry Morganthau, America's Ambassador to the Ottoman Empire at the time:

When the Turkish authorities gave the orders for these deportations, they were merely giving the death warrant to a whole race: they understood this well, and, in their conversations with me, they made no particular attempt to conceal the fact.
The genocide all but ended the 3,000-year-old presence of the Armenian population in the Turkish Near East. Survivors scattered across the Russian border, into the newly formed Arab states, into Europe, and many to the United States. It is testimony both to the humanitarian nature of the American people, and to the devastating cruelty of Ottoman policies, that 132,000 Armenian orphans came to the United States during this period for adoption or foster care.

Much has been written about the Armenian genocide, the Jewish Holocaust, and the massacres in Cambodia by the Khmer Rouge. Much has been written, but the reminders cannot come too often, nor can the cautions against forgetting ever be safely ignored. We live in a world where today's news becomes forgotten news almost immediately and where the lessons of history are studied carefully only rarely and even then by only a few.

This is a tragedy; it is also dangerous. It is said that those who forget their history are doomed to repeat it, and a glance today at the shelled ruins of Dubrovnik, the scarred streets of Sarajevo, and the fear-filled faces of children in Nagorno-Karabakh will tell us that the risk of repeating history is real and present and awful. The welcome end of the cold war has given rise to an unwelcome resurgence in ethnic violence and rivalry that has already claimed thousands of lives and that has no clear end. Thus, we celebrate the independence of Croatia and Slovenia, even as we mourn their dead. And we celebrate the independence of Armenia, while fearing for the future of its relations with neighboring Azerbaijan.

Today, as we commemorate the millions who suffered at the hands of the Ottoman empire three-quarters of a century ago, let us resolve never to allow in our time what was permitted to happen in their time. Let us resolve to strengthen the support for international recognition of minority rights and all human rights. Let us strengthen support for international institutions that are empowered to intervene diplomatically to resolve international disputes. And let us work to establish an overriding international obligation to act--whenever that is essential--to prevent the systematic persecution of people on ethnic, cultural, or racial grounds.

Elie Wiesel, chairman of the U.S. Holocaust Council, has said that Adolf Hitler had the Armenian example very much in mind when conceiving his own sick plan for exterminating the Jews. Hitler was confident that no one would care: 'Who, after all, remembers the Armenians,' he asked. Sadly, the answer to that question in Hitler's day was silence. But the answer today is we do; see remember the Armenians.

We remember both those who survived and those who perished and we will not allow the truth of their suffering to be obscured by distortions of history or the passage of time. We remember the terrible costs of past indifference and we will not allow the lessons learned to be forgotten. We remember because it is right to honor the past, but because it is even more important to safeguard the future; and because we must never again do less than all we can to prevent the specter of genocide from raising its bloody hand over any population on this planet.