Nancy Pelosi: “I thank Mr. Pallone and Mr. Porter for their leadership in bringing us together to remember a time in world history when…”

“I thank Mr. Pallone and Mr. Porter for their leadership in bringing us together to remember a time in world history when the Armenian people were singled out for a brutal attack on their very existence, an attack that would come to be known as the Armenian Genocide. On April 24, 1915, the rulers of the Ottoman Empire set out to annihilate the Armenian minority. Over the course of the next eight years, the Turkish government systematically murdered 1.5 million Armenians and deported 500,000. By the end of 1923, the entire Armenian population of Anatolia and Western Armenia was either murdered or deported. This anniversary serves to remind us of the importance of vigilance against oppression and acts of violence against the rights of ethnic minorities around the world. In my home state of California, the story of the Armenian Genocide is included in the social studies curriculum as mandated by the State Board of Education in 1987. Similar curricula on human rights and genocide exist in New Jersey, New York, Connecticut and Massachusetts. And while a growing number of Americans come to understand the horror of this episode in history, the perpetrators continue their denial. Just last year, Turkey attempted to endow a chair on Turkish and Ottoman history at UCLA. School officials were forced to temper their initial enthusiasm when concerns were raised that this effort was a stab at historical revisionism.”