Mike Capuano: “I rise today, for the third consecutive year, to commemorate a people who despite murder, hardship, and betrayal have…”

“I rise today, for the third consecutive year, to commemorate a people who despite murder, hardship, and betrayal have persevered. April 24, 2001, marks the 86th anniversary of the Armenian Genocide; unbelievably, an event that many still fail to recognize. Throughout three decades in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, millions of Armenians were systematically uprooted from their homeland of three thousands years and deported or massacred. From 1894 through 1896, three hundred thousand Armenians were ruthlessly murdered. Again in 1909, thirty thousand Armenians were massacred in Cilicia, and their villages were destroyed. On April 24, 1915, two hundred Armenian religious, political, and intellectual leaders were arbitrarily arrested, taken to Turkey and murdered. This incident marks a dark and solemn period in the history of the Armenian people. From 1915 to 1923, the Ottoman Empire launched a systematic campaign to exterminate Armenians. In eight short years, more than 1.5 million Armenians suffered through atrocities such as deportation, forced slavery, and torture. Most were ultimately murdered.”