BILL NUMBER: ACR 144	INTRODUCED
	BILL TEXT


INTRODUCED BY   Assembly Member Blumenfield
   (Coauthors: Assembly Members Anderson, Feuer, and Ruskin)

                        MARCH 10, 2010

   Relative to Genocide Awareness and Prevention Month.


	LEGISLATIVE COUNSEL'S DIGEST


   ACR 144, as introduced, Blumenfield. Genocide Awareness and
Prevention Month.
   This measure would proclaim the month of April of each year as
Genocide Awareness and Prevention Month.
   Fiscal committee: no.



   WHEREAS, During the Second World War, Raphael Lemkin, a Polish
lawyer of Jewish descent, coined the term "genocide" to describe a
coordinated plan of actions aimed at the destruction of essential
foundations of the life of national groups, with the aim of
annihilating a group itself, for example, by disintegrating a group's
political and social institutions, culture, language, national
feelings, religion, and economic existence, and destroying the
personal security, liberty, health, and dignity, and the lives of
individuals belonging to the group; and
   WHEREAS, Following the Holocaust, on December 9, 1948, the United
Nations General Assembly adopted Resolution 260 (III) A, the United
Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of
Genocide, declaring genocide to be a crime under international law,
and defining genocide to include the commission of certain acts,
including killing members of the group, causing serious bodily or
mental harm to members of the group, deliberately inflicting
conditions of life calculated to bring about a group's physical
destruction in whole or in part, imposing measures intended to
prevent births within the group, and forcibly transferring children
of the group to another group, with the intent to destroy, in whole
or in part, a national, ethnic, racial, or religious group; and
   WHEREAS, Existing laws recognize certain genocides, including the
Armenian Genocide and the Holocaust, and various other genocides have
been conducted throughout history, including those in Cambodia,
Bosnia, Rwanda, Darfur, and in other parts of the world; and
   WHEREAS, Many genocidal acts throughout history have occurred
during the month of April. In April 1915, the Turkish government
began rounding up leading Armenian religious, political, and
intellectual leaders in the capital of Istanbul and murdering them.
This pattern was copied across the country, leading to the deaths of
more than one million Armenians with the relocation of survivors to
the Syrian desert. In April 1933, the Nazis issued a decree preparing
the way for the "Final Solution," in which they defined non-Aryans
as "anyone descended from non-Aryan, especially Jewish, parents or
grandparents. One parent or grandparent classifies the descendant as
non-Aryan ... especially if one parent or grandparent was of the
Jewish faith." In April 1975, the Khmer Rouge entered the Cambodian
capital, Phnom Penh, and initiated massacres that emptied entire
cities into "killing fields," leading to the death of some two
million people. In April 1992, the siege of Sarajevo began, leading
to the deaths of more than 2,000 Bosnian Serbs. In April 2004, the
Rwandan President's airplane was shot down, leading to the killing of
moderate leaders by Hutu hardliners, and in the next three months
800,000 Tutsis were slaughtered. In April 2003, the displacement of
Darfurians began in Sudan, leading to hundreds of thousands of deaths
and the displacement of millions; and
   WHEREAS, In 2008, the Prevention of Genocide Task Force, convened
by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, the American Academy
of Diplomacy, and the United States Institute of Peace, issued a
report finding that in order to prevent future genocides and mass
atrocities, effective prevention measures must be implemented before
a crisis has erupted, and that educating the public can help to
protect individual rights and promote a culture of lawfulness that
will help prevent future genocides; and
   WHEREAS, The State of California condemns, and desires to combat,
all acts of genocide; and
   WHEREAS, Educating the public about the evils of genocide and
commemorating victims of genocide, including the adoption of a
Genocide Awareness and Prevention Month, are effective tools that
will further these goals; now, therefore, be it
   Resolved by the Assembly of the State of California, the Senate
thereof concurring, That the Legislature hereby proclaims the month
of April of each year as Genocide Awareness and Prevention Month; and
be it further
   Resolved, That the Chief Clerk of the Assembly transmit copies of
this resolution to the author for appropriate distribution.