Jack Reed: “I, along with the Armenians in Rhode Island and throughout the United States, as well as those around the world…”

“I, along with the Armenians in Rhode Island and throughout the United States, as well as those around the world, recognize the 90th anniversary of the Armenian Genocide. On the night of April 24, 1915, nationalists in the Ottoman Empire rounded up and executed 200 Armenian community leaders, sparking an 8- year campaign of tyranny that impacted the lives of every Armenian in Asia Minor. By 1923, an estimated 1.5 million Armenians were murdered, and another 500,000 were exiled. The U.S. Ambassador to the Ottoman Empire, Henry Morganthau, Sr., unsuccessfully pleaded with President Wilson to act. Morganthau later remembered the events of the genocide. ``I am confident that the whole history of the human race contains no such horrible episode as this,'' the Ambassador wrote in his memoir. ``The great massacres and persecutions of the past seem almost insignificant when compared to the sufferings of the Armenian race in 1915.'' Unfortunately, the United States, and the world, did not intervene. Today, on the 90th Anniversary, I am proud to be one of 32 Senators who urged President Bush to refer to the mass murder of Armenians as genocide in his commemorative statement. Failing to do so, does not properly commemorate this tragedy. Accurate acknowledgment of this event in human history is a small, but necessary, step to take.…”