Political Quotes

“I thank the gentleman from California for yielding and for his leadership on this important issue. From the spring of 1915 and continuing for the next 8 years, the forces of the Ottoman Empire--police and military--engaged in a genocide of the Armenian people living within the borders of their dying empire. When it was over, more than 1.5 million men, women, and children had been killed in the first genocide of the 20th century. They were beaten, shot, marched to their deaths through scorching deserts or across frigid mountains and were left where they fell. Families and entire communities were destroyed as the Ottomans did everything in their power to make a people disappear. {time} 2210 But the physical near-annihilation of the Armenian people was not enough to satisfy the Turks' desire to wreak vengeance on Armenia, which was the first nation in the world to adopt Christianity as its official religion in AD 301. Their campaign against the Armenians was broader and was aimed at destroying not only the Armenian people but also their history, their culture, and their faith. When Ottoman forces began to massacre their Armenian neighbors 95 years ago, there were nearly 2,000 Armenian churches in what is now Turkey. Fewer than 100 remain standing and fully functioning today. One of the world's oldest Christian communities has, in significant part, disappeared from its ancestral homeland.…”