90TH COMMEMORATION OF THE ARMENIAN GENOCIDE -- (House of Representatives - April 26, 2005)
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Mr. ENGEL. Mr. Speaker, I rise to commemorate the ninetieth anniversary of the Armenian Genocide. On the night of April 24, 1915, the Ottoman Empire arrested over 200 Armenian community leaders in Constantinople, thereby marking only the beginning of the horrendous Armenian Genocide to come.
On the eve of World War I, an estimated two million Armenians lived in the Ottoman Empire. Well over a million were deported and hundreds of thousands were simply killed. Between 1915 and 1918, the Ottoman Empire conducted other atrocities against Armenians which also included abduction, torture, massacre and starvation. Armenians living in Armenia and Anatolia were forcibly moved to Syria, where they were left in the desert to die of hunger and thirst. In addition, there were systematic murders; women and children were abducted from their homes and abused. It has been estimated that one and half million Armenians died as a result of this genocide from 1915 to 1923. By 1923 the entire landmass of Asia Minor and historic West Armenia had been expunged of its Armenian population.
On this important anniversary, it is a lasting lesson to people everywhere that genocide must not only be opposed by all nations, but that it must be universally recognized as a crime against humanity-no matter where it occurs or against whom it is carried out.
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