Senate Resolution No. 5233
BY: Senator MALTESE
COMMEMORATING the 93rd Anniversary of the Armenian
Genocide on Thursday, April 24, 2008
WHEREAS, This Resolution arises from a sense of human decency and
respect for the Armenian people and their history; and
WHEREAS, Towards the end of the 19th Century, the Turkish Government
began to systematically persecute their citizens of Armenian heritage;
and
WHEREAS, From 1894 to 1896, Sultan Abdu-Hamid II ordered the
massacre of 300,000 Armenians living within the boundaries of the
Turkish Empire; and
WHEREAS, In 1909, 30,000 more Armenian men, women and children were
slaughtered by Turkish armies in the mountain village of Cilicia; and
WHEREAS, Nonetheless, by the onset of World War I, there still
remained 2,500,000 Armenians who made their homes within the Ottoman
Empire; of these, over 250,000 were faithful soldiers who loyally fought
within the ranks of its armies in an effort to defend their homeland;
and
WHEREAS, On April 24, 1915, hundreds of Armenian religious,
political, and intellectual leaders were rounded up, exiled and
eventually murdered in secret death camps hidden in mountainsides; and
WHEREAS, Over the course of the next six months, the Armenian
soldiers on active duty in the army were disarmed and placed in forced
labor battalions, whereupon many either starved or were summarily
executed behind the fences of these camps; and
WHEREAS, Deprived of their leaders and the young men who could
defend these helpless communities, the remaining Armenians became an
easy target for the government raids and found themselves at the mercy
of cruel and often barbaric persecutors; and
WHEREAS, A total of 1,500,000 Armenian men, women and children were
massacred; 500,000 more were exiled; and 500,000 were able to escape the
reign of terror and establish themselves in new foreign lands; as a
result, today there are only 100,000 people of Armenian heritage left
residing within the borders of modern Turkey; and
WHEREAS, The devastation which resulted from this "ethnic cleansing"
practiced by the rulers of the Ottoman Empire occurred in a similar
ratio to that caused by the Jewish Holocaust of the 1940s, yet most of
the world's peoples do not realize the gravity of the Armenian genocide;
and
WHEREAS, The Armenian people have been denied the right to
self-determination on their ancestral lands; they have received no form
of reparations for their tragic losses; and
WHEREAS, Members of the Armenian community honor the memory of the
victims of this genocide and emphasize that crimes against humanity must
be condemned and never be allowed; now, therefore, be it
RESOLVED, That this Legislative Body pause in its deliberations to
commemorate the 93rd Anniversary of the Armenian Genocide to be
recognized on Thursday, April 24, 2008; on Friday, April 25, 2008,
Armenian Americans from throughout the Northeast will converge in New
York City to commemorate the anniversary of the 1915 Armenian Genocide;
the day will commence with a commemoration ceremony at New York City
Hall; this year's Keynote Speaker is Henry Theriault, Professor of
philosophy; in addition, there will be a second convergence of Armenian
Americans at Times Square in New York City on Sunday, April 27, 2008, to
once again commemorate the anniversary of the 1915 Armenian Genocide;
and be it further
RESOLVED, That this Resolution is intended to counter the tide of
revisionist history which purports that the Armenian Genocide never took
place; and be it further
RESOLVED, That copies of this Resolution, suitably engrossed, be
transmitted to Doug Geogerian, Chairman of the Armenian National
Committee of New York and Kenneth V. Hachikian, Chairman of the Armenian
National Committee.
