Edolphus Towns: “I rise today to join with my colleagues in remembering the victims of the Armenian genocide. Perhaps the only lesson we…”

“I rise today to join with my colleagues in remembering the victims of the Armenian genocide. Perhaps the only lesson we can draw from this tragic event is that we must be ever vigilant against man's capacity to inflict harm upon his fellow man. The first step toward preventing future instances of genocide is openly and honestly understanding the past, and rejecting those who would, in the name of political expediency, deny the Armenian genocide or any such crime against humanity. By allowing revisionism to cloud our remembrance we would only encourage future leaders who would seek to solve their nation's problems through genocide means. With these thoughts in mind, I would like to submit for the record the description of the Armenian genocide by the U.S. Ambassador to the Ottoman Empire, Henry Morgenthau, in his book, Ambassador Morgenthau's story. (Garden City, NY Doubleday, 1918, page 327-28). In the early part of 1915, the Armenian soldiers in the Turkish army were reduced to a new status. Up to that time most of them had been combatants, but now they were all stripped of their arms and transformed into workmen. Instead of serving their country as artillerymen and cavalrymen, these former soldiers now discovered that they had been transformed into road labourers and pack animals.…”