Mark Souder: “I rise to remember the 90th anniversary of the Armenian Genocide of 1915-1923. We are familiar with these events.…”

“I rise to remember the 90th anniversary of the Armenian Genocide of 1915-1923. We are familiar with these events. Hundreds of thousands of men, women, and children were driven from their homes, starved, beaten, and shot. Government-orchestrated intimidation, government-sponsored deportations, and government- perpetrated slaughter are the hallmarks of the Armenian Genocide. They are also the hallmarks of other genocides with which we are all too familiar. The Armenian Genocide was the first genocide of its kind, but it was not the last. It has served as a model of the Holocaust in Europe, the Killing Fields of Cambodia, and religiously motivated atrocities in the Sudan. We look regretfully and sorrowfully at the slaughter of so many in these cases, as well we should. These events demonstrate man's inherent sinfulness and the evil that comes so easily. No one denies the events in Europe, Asia, and Africa happened. Anyone rejecting these mass slaughters is themselves rejected. And yet, many suffer some kind of incredulity when it comes to the Armenian Genocide. We demand the perpetrators of these other genocides are made to account for their actions, but not the Armenian Genocide. Photographs and eye witness account point overwhelmingly and undoubtedly to the massacre of over one million human beings, but no one has ever been held accountable. Ninety years after these events, the perpetrators are no longer living.…”