Armenian Genocide Commemoration
Rep. Markey, joined by Reps. Koutoujian and Kaprielian, addresses the kNOw Genocide rally in front of the Massachusetts State House to support the new coalition's efforts to prevent genocide denial, April 21, 2006.

PREPARED REMARKS OF
REPRESENTATIVE EDWARD J. MARKEY (D-MA)
ON THE ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
FRIDAY, APRIL 21, 2006

We have gathered today to remember and commemorate the Armenian Genocide, one of the darkest chapters of World War I, and the first of the series of genocides we saw in the 20th Century.

The Armenian Genocide is sometimes called the “Forgotten Genocide.”  In fact, as most of you know, back in 1939, prior to the invasion of Poland, Adolph Hitler argued that his plans for a Jewish holocaust would, in the end, be tolerated by the West, stating:  “After all, who remembers the Armenians.”  Who remembers the Armenians?  Today, we provide an answer:  We Do!  We Remember!

We do so because it is essential to remember and reflect upon these events, but we also do so because we know that the Armenian people today struggle on an ongoing basis to confront and surmount the legacies and the consequences of those dark days.

Consider, for a moment, what might have been.

At the end of the first World War, the American public was acutely aware of the atrocities that had been committed against the Armenian people from 1915 on – atrocities that we knew had resulted in the death of more than 1 million Armenians and left the remaining Armenian population starving and destitute. 

At the time, U.S. Ambassador Henry Morganthau reported that “When the Turkish authorities gave the orders for these deportations, they were simply 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.”

On May 24, 1920, Wilson proposed to create a U.S. mandate in Armenia, in which we would have sent in troops to maintain the peace and provide assistance to help the Armenian people establish a functioning government and economy.

But the proposed U.S. protection never occurred.  Republican Senator Henry Cabot Lodge from Massachusetts, the Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, who earlier had championed the cause of the Armenians, refused to support President Wilson’s proposed protection.   

And so, Armenia was left on its own, open to attack from both Turkey and the Soviet Union.  And the Armenians made a fateful decision.  Rather than accept Turkish dominance and the prospect of additional killings, they signed an agreement with the Soviet leadership’s point man in the Caucuses – a man named Josef Stalin – to join the Soviet Union.  That fateful decision led them to more than 60 years of Armenian suffering under the yoke of the Communists.

So, as we all gather together to consider the legacy of the Armenian genocide and the Diaspora it created, it is also appropriate for America as a nation to consider what can be done to give something back to those who, by tragic circumstances, were forced to live through unspeakable atrocities during the Genocide only to then come under the control of a brutal Soviet rule.

Armenia today faces enormous economic and political challenges:

  • It has hostile neighbors.
  • It faces blockades that stifle trade and economic opportunities.
  • It needs economic and military assistance.

There is much that the we here in the U.S. can and must do to assist the Armenian people:

  • We must provide Armenia with the economic and military assistance it needs to develop its economy and ensure its security.
  • We must press for an end to the Turkish and Azerbaijani economic blockades, which are now well more than a decade old and have a crushing effect on the Armenian economy.
  • We must continue to pressure George Bush to follow through on his campaign promises to properly recognize the atrocities committed against the Armenian people as “Genocide” and finally tear down this wall of denial.
  • We must continue to combat those who would deny the Genocide and fight to ensure that denialist materials are not forced into our classrooms.

The writer Milan Kundera once wrote that “The struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting.”  There are those that would deny the Armenian Genocide, just as there are those that deny the reality of the Nazi Holocaust.  In commemorating the Armenian Genocide, as we do this morning, we all collectively engage in that struggle of memory against forgetting.  But we do this not only to remember the past, but to animate the future with a commitment to prevent such things from ever happening again, and to strive towards making a better future for the Armenian people, a people who have suffered so much.

It has taken Armenia decades to reach a point where its people could enjoy their rights as a free people.  Today, we have an opportunity and a responsibility to help ensure that the Armenian people can build a better future.  And so, I look forward to continuing to work with the Armenian-American community and Members of the Congressional Caucus on Armenia to address the issues facing this longtime friend and important ally of the United States, so that together we build something positive, something hopeful, something good for the future – a peaceful, prosperous and secure Armenia.