Connie Morella: “Tomorrow evening on this floor there will be a special order commemorating the 85th anniversary of the Armenian…”

“Tomorrow evening on this floor there will be a special order commemorating the 85th anniversary of the Armenian Genocide. I will not be present because of a conflict tomorrow evening, and, therefore, I chose this evening to rise in remembrance of all of those who perished during the Armenian Genocide. The commemoration of the Turkish persecution of its Armenian citizens is important because only by educating ourselves about the past can we prevent repetition of similar tragic situations in the future. April 24 is a special day for the Armenian people. It marks the day that 200 Armenian leaders were arrested in Constantinople and murdered. This was not an isolated incident, rather, it was the beginning of a chain of persecution that had begun under the rule of Ottoman Sultan Abdul. In just 2 years, between 1894 to 1896, 300,000 Armenians had lost their lives. This event marked the coming of years of oppression, torture and murder for the Armenian-Turkish population. After Sultan Abdul's reign was over, a new group called the Young Turks came to power. They made pan-Turkism the national ideology, and they set out to rid Turkey of all its minority groups, mainly its Armenians. By 1923, 1.5 million Armenians had been slaughtered and more than 500,000 had been exiled from their homes. Less than a century ago, the massacre of the Armenian people was unknown to the world.”