March 16, 2001

State of Minnesota Proclamation

WHEREAS: The Armenian Genocide was conceived and carried out by the Ottoman Empire from 1915 to 1923, resulting in the deportation of nearly 2,000,000 Armenians, of whom 1,500,000 men, women, and children were killed, 500,000 survivors were expelled from their homes, and which succeeded in the elimination of the over 2,500-year presence of Armenians in their historic homeland; and

WHEREAS: The unfolding Armenian Genocide was reported in newspapers across Minnesota; moreover, in their editorials of September and October, 1915, the Duluth News Tribune, Fergus Falls Daily Journal, Minneapolis Journal, Minneapolis Tribune, Montevideo Leader, Rochester Post-Record, Red Wing Daily Republican, St. James Journal-Gazette, Saint Paul Pioneer Press, and Winona Independent unambiguously condemned the genocidal measures then in progress against the Armenians; and

WHEREAS: The failure of the domestic and international authorities to punish those responsible for the Armenian Genocide is a reason why similar genocides have recurred and may recur in the future, and that a proper judicial and firm response would have spared humanity needless suffering; and

WHEREAS: One hundred twenty-six of the world's leading scholars of the Holocaust, including Prof. Stephen Feinstein, Director of the Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies, University of Minnesota, and Prof. Eric Marksun of Southwest State University, Marshall, Minnesota, have affirmed that the World War I Armenian Genocide is an incontestable historical fact and accordingly urge the governments of Western democracies to likewise recognize it as such; and

WHEREAS: On the anniversary of the onset of the Armenian Genocide, which is traditionally observed on April 24, it is fitting that all people of goodwill join the Armenian-American community in commemoration of this crime against humanity.

NOW THEREFORE I, JESSE VENTURA, Governor of Minnesota, do hereby proclaim, Tuesday, April 24, 2001 shall be observed as Armenian Remembrance Day in the State of Minnesota.

IN WITNESS WHEREOF, I have hereunto set my hand and caused the Great Seal of the State of Minnesota to be affixed at the State Capitol this sixteenth day of March in the year 2001, and of the State the one hundred forty-second.

[signed]
Jesse Ventura
Governor.