Wednesday, April 09, 2003 Contact: Sean Oblack (202) 225-4176 Schiff Hosts 9th Annual Armenian Genocide Observance On Capitol Hill WASHINGTON, DC - U.S. Representative Adam Schiff hosted the 9th annual Armenian Genocide Observance on Capitol Hill today. As a member of the Congressional Armenian Caucus, Rep. Schiff hosts events each year to honor the memory of the 1.5. million victims of the Armenian Genocide. In remembrance, Rep. Schiff entered the following statement into the Congressional record: "Eighty-eight years ago, Armenian teachers, clergy, businessmen, writers and doctors were rounded up and killed. The events of April 24, 1915, set the stage for the first genocide of the 20th century, the extermination of more than 1.5 million Armenian men, women and children at the hands of the Ottoman Empire. With one of the largest Armenian expatriate communities in the world, April 24 has become an integral part of America's history - but debate over the Genocide is still an annual and bitter conflict. Even though modern-day Turkey was established in 1923 out of the ashes of the Ottoman Empire and was not the actual perpetrator of genocide, it spends millions of dollars each year to fight recognition of the Genocide. Despite this well-funded effort, there is no serious academic dispute about the Armenian Genocide. Our own National Archives house diplomatic dispatches that vividly describe the systematic destruction of an entire people. News accounts from the American press also provide a trove of primary source evidence. Headlines, such as the following from the New York Times, describe the horrors:    "Armenian Officials Murdered By Turks" 9/30/15  "Appeal to Turkey to Stop Massacres" 4/28/15  "Tales of Armenian Horrors Confirmed" 9/27/15  "Wholesale Massacres of Armenians by Turks" 7/29/15  "Armenians Are Sent To Perish In Desert" 8/18/15  "Turks Depopulate Towns of Armenia" 8/27/15  "Million Armenians Killed or In Exile" 12/15/15  "The Death of Armenia" 9/17/15 When the Armenian Genocide occurred, the heinous crime had no name. In denouncing what he was witness to, our own U.S. Ambassador Henry Morgenthau chose the words "race murder" to describe the atrocities. Raphael Lemkin, an International law scholar, ultimately coined the term genocide in 1944. As a Polish attorney, Lemkin was appalled by the Turkish atrocities against the Armenians and tried to get European statesmen to criminalize the destruction of ethnic and religious groups. He was dismissed as an alarmist. Years later, when Hitler invaded Poland, Lemkin lost forty-nine family members in the Holocaust. Landing as a refugee on American shores, Lemkin resolved to devise a word to convey the evil under way. In 1944, while working for the U.S. war department, he invented the term "genocide" - citing the Armenian case as an example. In 1948, in the shadow of the Holocaust, the international community responded to Nazi Germany's methodically orchestrated acts of genocide by approving the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. The Convention confirms that genocide is a crime under international law and defines genocide as actions committed the with intent to destroy a national, ethnic, racial or religious group. The United States, under President Harry Truman, was the first nation to sign the Convention. In 1988, President Ronald Reagan signed an Act that implemented the Convention and criminalized genocide under U.S. law - putting the United States on record as being strongly opposed to the heinous crime of genocide. This year marks the 15th anniversary of the signing of that convention. I will soon introduce a resolution, along with my colleague Mr. Radanovich and several other Members of Congress, that recognizes this important step taken by the United States fifteen years ago, to ensure that the lessons of the Holocaust, the Armenian Genocide, and the genocides in Cambodia and Rwanda, among others, will not be forgotten. Euphemisms, vague terminology or calls for more discussions are just some of the dodges used to avoid Turkish discomfort with its Ottoman past. There is nothing to discuss, there is nothing to discover, there is nothing to be gained by denial - but there is much to be lost. Let us not minimize the deliberate murder of 1.5 million Armenians. Let us not equivocate. Let us not temporize. Let us instead pay homage to the memory of those innocent victims and honor the courage of the survivors. Let us call genocide, genocide."