April 23, 1998

RESOLUTION CHAPTER 29
FILED WITH SECRETARY OF STATE APRIL 23, 1998
ADOPTED IN SENATE APRIL 23, 1998
ADOPTED IN ASSEMBLY APRIL 23, 1998
AMENDED IN SENATE APRIL 23, 1998
AMENDED IN ASSEMBLY APRIL 20, 1998


INTRODUCED BY Assembly Members Poochigian, Kaloogian, Papan, and Wildman

(Coauthors: Assembly Members Ackerman, Aguiar, Alby, Alquist, Aroner, Ashburn, Baca, Baldwin, Battin, Baugh, Bordonaro, Bowen, Bowler, Brewer, Brown, Bustamante, Campbell, Cardenas, Cardoza, Cedillo, Cunneen, Davis, Ducheny, Escutia, Figueroa, Firestone, Floyd, Frusetta, Gallegos, Goldsmith, Granlund, Havice, Hertzberg, Honda, House, Keeley, Knox, Kuehl, Kuykendall, Leach, Lempert, Leonard, Machado, Margett, Martinez, Mazzoni, McClintock, Migden, Miller, Morrissey, Morrow, Murray, Napolitano, Olberg, Oller, Ortiz, Pacheco, Perata, Prenter, Pringle, Richter, Runner, Scott, Shelley, Strom-Martin, Sweeney, Takasugi, Thompson, Thomson, Torlakson, Villaraigosa, Vincent, Washington, Wayne, Woods, and Wright) (Coauthors: Senators Ayala, Brulte, Burton, Costa, Dills, Greene, Hayden, Haynes, Hughes, Johannessen, Johnson, Johnston, Karnette, Kelley, Knight, Kopp, Leslie, Lewis, Lockyer, Maddy, McPherson, Monteith, Mountjoy, O'Connell, Peace, Polanco, Rainey, Rosenthal, Schiff, Sher, Solis, Thompson, Vasconcellos, and Wright)

APRIL 13, 1998

Assembly Concurrent Resolution No. 138 — Relative to Armenian Genocide Remembrance Day.

LEGISLATIVE COUNSEL'S DIGEST

ACR 138, Poochigian. Armenian genocide remembrance. This measure would designate April 24, 1998, as the "California Day of Remembrance of the Armenian Genocide of 1915-23."

WHEREAS, Armenians living in their 3,000 year historic homeland in Asia Minor were subjected to severe persecution and brutal injustice by the Turkish rulers of the Ottoman Empire before and after the turn of the 20th century, including widespread acts of destruction and murder during the period from 1894-1896 and again in 1909; and

WHEREAS, The horrible experience of the Armenians at the hands of their Turkish oppressors culminated with what is known by historians as the First Genocide of the Twentieth Century, or the "Forgotten Genocide"; and

WHEREAS, The Armenian Genocide began with the murder of hundreds of Armenian intellectuals, and political, religious, and business leaders who were arrested and taken from their homes in Constantinople before dawn on April 24, 1915; and

WHEREAS, The Young Turk regime then in control of the empire planned and executed the unspeakable atrocities committed against the Armenians from 1915 through 1923, that included the torture, starvation, and murder of 1,500,000 Armenians, death marches into the Syrian desert, and the exile of more than 500,000 innocent people; and

WHEREAS, While there were some Turks who jeopardized their safety in order to protect Armenians from the slaughter being perpetrated by the Young Turk regime, the massacres of the Armenians constituted one of the most atrocious violations of human rights in the history of the world; and

WHEREAS, The United States Ambassador to the Ottoman Empire, Henry Morgenthau, Sr., stated: "Whatever crimes the most perverted instincts of the human mind can devise, and whatever refinements of persecutions and injustice the most debased imagination can conceive, became the daily misfortunes of this devoted people. I am confident that the whole history of the human race contains no such horrible episode as this. The great massacres and persecutions of the past seem almost insignificant when compared to the sufferings of the Armenian race in 1915. The killing of the Armenian people was accompanied by the systematic destruction of churches, schools, libraries, treasures of art and cultural monuments, in an attempt to eliminate all traces of a noble civilization with a history of more than three thousand years"; and

WHEREAS, Contemporary newspapers like the New York Times commonly carried headlines such as the following: "Tales of Armenian Horrors Confirmed," "Million Armenians Killed or in Exile," "Wholesale Massacre of Armenians by Turks"; and

WHEREAS, Adolph Hitler, in persuading his army commanders that the merciless persecution and killing of Jews, Poles, and other peoples would bring no retribution, declared, "Who, after all, speaks today of the annihilation of the Armenians"; and

WHEREAS, Unlike other peoples and governments that have admitted the abuses and crimes of predecessor regimes, and despite the overwhelming weight of evidence, the Republic of Turkey has denied the occurrence of the crimes against humanity committed by the Young Turk rulers, and those denials compound the grief of the few remaining survivors of the atrocities and desecrate the memory of the victims; and

WHEREAS, There are concerted efforts to revise history through the dissemination of propaganda suggesting that Armenians were responsible for their fate in the period from 1915 through 1923 and by funding of programs at American educational institutions for the purpose of furthering the cause of such revisionism and to counter, in the words of a Turkish official, "the Armenian view"; and

WHEREAS, The accelerated level and scope of denial and revisionism, coupled with the passage of time and the fact that very few survivors remain who serve as reminders of indescribable brutality and tormented lives, compel a sense of urgency in efforts to solidify recognition of historical truth; and

WHEREAS, By consistently remembering and forcefully condemning the atrocities committed against the Armenians and honoring the survivors, as well as other victims of similar heinous conduct, we guard against repetition of such acts of genocide; and

WHEREAS, California is home to the largest population of Armenians in the United States, and those citizens have enriched our state through leadership in the fields of academia, medicine, business, agriculture, government, and the arts, and are proud and patriotic practitioners of American citizenship; now, therefore, be it

Resolved by the Assembly of the State of California, the Senate thereof concurring, That the Legislature of the State of California hereby designates April 24, 1998, as the "California Day of Remembrance of the Armenian Genocide of 1915-23"; and be it further

Resolved, That the Chief Clerk of the Assembly transmit copies of this resolution to the Governor and to Armenian churches and commemorative organizations.

Search the web site of the California state legislature for measures on the Armenian Genocide. Select the time period in the "Session" box, type "Armenian Genocide" in the "Author(s) and/or Keyword(s)"