Mark Kirk: “last Sunday, April 24, 2005 marked the 90th Anniversary of the Armenian Genocide. Beginning in 1915, an estimated one…”

“last Sunday, April 24, 2005 marked the 90th Anniversary of the Armenian Genocide. Beginning in 1915, an estimated one and a half million Armenians were systematically murdered over the next eight years. There were nearly two million Armenians living in the Ottoman Empire on the eve of W.W.I. In an organized campaign of ethnically motivated genocide, the Ottoman Turks deported a million Armenians, separating families and destroying livelihoods. Hundreds of thousands more were murdered. They did not lose their lives, as common nomenclature refers to the situation. They were murdered. Many others died of starvation, exhaustion, and epidemics which ravaged the concentration camps. On this 90th Anniversary, I join with my colleagues in Congress and the Armenian community worldwide in commemorating this solemn day of remembrance. In particular I commend the Armenian-Americans from my district who departed from the All Saints Community Center in Glenview, IL, to join dozens of Armenians from the Chicago area to peacefully protest at the Turkish Consulate in Chicago. This sort of activism is an important step to finally gaining official recognition of the genocide. This anniversary serves as a reminder of the horrible campaigns of genocide that occurred in the past, from the Holocaust, to Rwanda, to today's atrocities in Darfur, Sudan.…”