LEGISLATIVE RESOLUTION recognizing the 100th Anniversary of the Armenian
Genocide

WHEREAS, This Resolution arises from a sense of human decency and
respect for the Armenian people and their history; and
WHEREAS, Toward 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 1940, 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-deter-
mination on their ancestral lands; they have received no form of repara-
tions 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
recognize the 100th Anniversary of the 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 a copy of this Resolution, suitably engrossed, be tran-
smitted to the Capital District Armenian Genocide Committee.