David Thomas: “I rise to recognize the fact that today is the 87th anniversary of the beginning of the Armenian genocide that began…”

“I rise to recognize the fact that today is the 87th anniversary of the beginning of the Armenian genocide that began under the direction of the Ottoman Empire. From 1915 until 1923, 1.5 million Armenians were murdered and another 500,000 were forced into exile in Russia, ending a period of 2,500 years of an Armenian presence in their historic homeland. In addition, Armenian religious, political, and intellectual leaders from Istanbul were arrested and exiled--silencing the leading representatives of the Armenian community in the Ottoman Empire. Today, we pause to remember and honor the victims of this terrible period in human history. Like the Jewish and Cambodian holocausts, and more recently, the Serbian ethnic cleansing in Kosovo, the Armenian genocide was terrible and morally reprehensible. Thus, today I honor those Armenians who were killed, arrested, exiled, and otherwise mistreated, and I remind my colleagues and the world that we must never forget what happened during that terrible period in history. Furthermore, we must reaffirm our resolve to ensure that no people will ever again be the victims of such a mass genocide.”