Rodney Frelinghuysen: “Today we remember the Armenian Genocide, and honor the memory of the 1.5 million Armenians who died between 1915 and…”

“Today we remember the Armenian Genocide, and honor the memory of the 1.5 million Armenians who died between 1915 and 1923. It has been 83 years since the Ottoman Empire began the systematic slaughter of Armenians living in Turkey. It started in 1915, when the Turkish government rounded up and killed Armenian soldiers. Then, on April 24, 1915, the government turned its attention to slaughtering Armenian intellectuals. They were killed because of their ethnicity, the first group in the 20th Century killed not for what they did, but for who they were. By the time the bloodshed of the genocide ended, the victims included the aged, women and children who had been forced from their homes and marched to relocation camps, beaten and brutalized along the way. In addition to the 1.5 million dead, over 500,000 Armenians were chased from their homeland. We take time every year to remember the victims of the Armenian genocide. We hope that, by remembering the bloodshed and atrocities committed against the Armenians, we can prevent this kind of tragedy from repeating itself. Unfortunately, we have been unsuccessful. From Germany to Cambodia to Rwanda, the horrors of the genocide have repeated themselves. So, Mr. Speaker, we must continue to talk about the genocide. We must keep alive the memory of those who lost their lives during the eight years of bloodshed in Armenia. We must educate other nations who have not recognized that the Armenian genocide occurred.”