Political Quotes

“I rise today to join my colleagues in honoring the memory of the victims of the Armenian Genocide. Between 1915 and 1923 a systematic and deliberate campaign of genocide by the Ottoman Empire resulted in the deaths of over 1.5 million Armenians and the exile of a nation from its historic homeland. The massacres were condemned by Kemal Ataturk, founder of the Turkish Republic, but the lack of punishment for the perpetrators led Adolph Hitler to cite the Armenian Genocide as precedent for the Holocaust. Mr. Speaker, the lesson we must learn from the Armenian Genocide, and the Holocaust, is that never again can decent people simply ignore the oppression and brutality, and ultimately genocide, that we have witnessed this century. as we look back today on this tragic episode in world history, I hope that our collective conscience will not allow the recurrence of genocide. Such deliberate destruction of a people must be loudly and clearly condemned and those who would consider genocide must be convinced that the international community will not tolerate the extermination of a nation. Mr. Speaker, I am both proud and saddened to commemorate the Armenian Genocide. I am proud to pay tribute to its survivors, to honor its victims, and to reinforce our own determination to ensure that such acts of inhumanity will not be repeated. I am saddened by the fact that the world remains a place where such atrocities can still happen.”