Amended in Assembly April 14, 2015

Amended in Assembly March 26, 2015

California Legislature—2015–16 Regular Session

Assembly Joint Resolution No. 2

Introduced by Assembly Members Nazarian, Achadjian, Alejo, Atkins, Baker, Bigelow, Bloom, Bonta, Brown, Burke, Calderon, Chang, Chávez, Chiu, Chu, Cooper, Dababneh, Dahle, Eggman, Cristina Garcia, Eduardo Garcia, Gatto, Gipson, Gomez, Gray, Hadley, begin insert Holden, end insert Irwin, Jones-Sawyer, Kim, Lackey, Levine, Low, Maienschein, Mayes, McCarty, Medina, Mullin, Obernolte, O’Donnell, begin delete Olson, end delete begin insert Olsen, end insert Perea, Rendon, Ridley-Thomas, Salas, Santiago, Mark Stone, Ting, Waldron, Weber, Wilk, and Williams

(Principal coauthors: Senators begin insert Berryhill, end insert Cannella, De León, Hall, Lara, Liu, Mendoza, and Runner)

December 1, 2014

Assembly Joint Resolution No. 2—Relative to the Armenian Genocide.

LEGISLATIVE COUNSEL’S DIGEST

AJR 2, as amended, Nazarian. Armenian Genocide.

This measure would, among other things, designate the year of 2015 as “State of California Year of Commemoration of the Centennial Anniversary of the Armenian Genocide of 1915-1923,” designate April 24, 2015, as “State of California Day of Commemoration of the Centennial Anniversary of the Armenian Genocide of 1915-1923,” begin delete urge the Republic of Turkey to acknowledge the facts of the Armenian Genocide and to work toward a just resolution, end delete and would call upon the President of the United States and the United States Congress to formally and consistently reaffirm the historical truth that the atrocities committed against the Armenian people constituted genocide.

Fiscal committee: no.

WHEREAS, Armenians have resided in Asia Minor and the
Caucasus for approximately four millennia, and have a long and
rich history in the region, including the establishment of many
kingdoms, and despite Armenians’ historic presence, stewardship,
and autonomy in the region, Turkish rulers of the Ottoman Empire
and the Republic of Turkey subjected Armenians to severe and
unjust persecution and brutality, including wholesale massacres
beginning in the 1890s; and

WHEREAS, The Armenian nation was subjected to a systematic
and premeditated genocide officially beginning on April 24, 1915,
at the hands of the Young Turk Government of the Ottoman Empire
from 1915-1919 and continued at the hands of the Kemalist
Movement of Turkey from 1920-1923 whereby over 1.5 million
Armenian men, women, and children were slaughtered or marched
to their deaths in an effort to annihilate the Armenian nation in the
first genocide of modern times, while thousands of surviving
Armenian women and children were forcibly converted and
Islamized, and hundreds of thousands more were subjected to
ethnic cleansing during the period of the modern Republic of
Turkey from 1924-1937; and

WHEREAS, During the genocides of the Christians living in
the Ottoman Empire and surrounding regions, which occurred
during the first one-half of the 20th century, 1.5 million men,
women, and children of Armenian descent, and hundreds of
thousands of Assyrians, Greeks, and other Christians, lost their
lives at the hands of the Ottoman Turkish Empire and the Republic
of Turkey, constituting one of the most atrocious violations of
human rights in the history of the world; and

WHEREAS, These crimes against humanity also had the
consequence of permanently removing all traces of the Armenians
and other targeted people from their historic homelands of more
than four millennia, and enriching the perpetrators with the lands
and other property of the victims of these crimes, including the
usurpation of several thousand churches; and

WHEREAS, In response to the genocide and at the behest of
President Woodrow Wilson and the United States State
Department, the Near East Relief organization was founded, and
became the first congressionally sanctioned American philanthropic
effort created exclusively to provide humanitarian assistance and
rescue to the Armenian nation and other Christian minorities from
annihilation, who went on to survive and thrive outside of their
ancestral homeland all over the world and specifically in this state;
and

WHEREAS, Near East Relief succeeded, with the active
participation of the citizens from this state, in delivering $117
million begin delete of end delete begin insert in end insert assistance, and saving more than one million refugees,
including 132,000 orphans, between 1915 and 1930, by delivering
food, clothing, and materials for shelter, setting up refugee camps,
clinics, hospitals, and orphanages; and

WHEREAS, The Armenian nation survived the genocide despite
the attempt by the Ottoman Empire begin delete and the modern Republic of
Turkey end delete to exterminate it; and

WHEREAS, Adolf Hitler, in persuading his army commanders
that the merciless persecution and killing of Jews, Poles, and other
people would bring no retribution, declared, “Who, after all, speaks
today of the annihilation of the Armenians?”; and

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WHEREAS, The planning and implementation of genocide is
indisputably recognized in international law as a crime against
humanity and is punishable as such, yet has remained unpunished
for nearly 100 years, as the government of Turkey is allowed with
impunity to distort history and to deny the genocide and its
consequences perpetrated both by its Ottoman predecessor and its
own predecessor regimes despite international recognition of the
Armenian Genocide by 23 countries, including the United States
of America; and

end delete

WHEREAS, On November 4, 1918, immediately after the
collapse of the Young Turk regime and before the founding of the
Republic of Turkey by Mustafa Kemal Ataturk in 1923, the
Ottoman Parliament considered a motion on the crimes committed
by the Committee of Union and Progress (CUP): “A population
of one million people guilty of nothing except belonging to the
Armenian nation were massacred and exterminated, including even
women and children.” The Minister of Interior at the time, Fethi
Bey, responded by telling the Parliament: “It is the intention of
the government to cure every single injustice done up until now,
as far as the means allow, to make possible the return to their
homes of those sent into exile, and to compensate for their material
loss as far as possible”; and

WHEREAS, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk made a historic admission
in an interview published in the Los Angeles Examiner on August
1, 1926: “These leftovers from the former Young Turk Party, who
should have been made accountable for the lives of millions of
our Christian subjects who were ruthlessly driven, en masse, from
their homes and massacred”; and

WHEREAS, The Parliamentary Investigative Committee
proceeded to collect relevant documents describing the actions of
those responsible for the Armenian mass killings and turned them
over to the Turkish Military Tribunal. CUP’s leading figures were
found guilty of massacring Armenians and hanged or given lengthy
prison sentences. The Turkish Military Tribunal requested that
Germany extradite to Turkey the masterminds of the massacres
who had fled the country. After German refusal, they were tried
in absentia and sentenced to death; and

WHEREAS, Unlike other people and governments that have
admitted and denounced the abuses and crimes of predecessor
regimes, and despite the Turkish government’s earlier admissions
and the overwhelming proof of genocidal intent, the Republic of
Turkey inexplicably and adamantly has denied the occurrence of
the crimes against humanity committed by the Ottoman and Young
Turk rulers for many years, and continues to do so a full century
since the first crimes constituting genocide occurred; and

WHEREAS, Those denials compound the grief of the few
remaining survivors of the atrocities, desecrate the memory of the
victims, cause continuing pain to the descendants of the victims,
and deprive the surviving Armenian nation, both on individual and
collective levels, of their ancestral land, property, culture, heritage,
financial assets, and population growth; and

WHEREAS, The Republic of Turkey has escalated its
international campaign of Armenian Genocide denial, maintained
its blockade of Armenia, and increased its pressure on the small
but growing movement in Turkey acknowledging the Armenian
Genocide and seeking justice for this systematic campaign of
destruction of millions of Armenians, Greeks, Assyrians, and other
Christians upon their biblical-era homelands; and

WHEREAS, Those citizens of Turkey, both Armenian and
non-Armenian, who continue to speak the truth about the Armenian
Genocide, such as human rights activist and journalist Hrant Dink,
continue to be silenced by violent means; and

begin delete

WHEREAS, Leaders of nations with strategic, commercial, and
cultural ties to the Republic of Turkey should be reminded of their
duty to encourage Turkish officials to cease efforts to distort facts
and deny the history of events surrounding the Armenian Genocide;
and

end delete begin delete

WHEREAS, The failure of the international community to hold
responsible nations accountable for crimes against humanity results
in a travesty of justice and sets a negative precedent; and

end delete

WHEREAS, There is continued concern about the welfare of
Christians in the Republic of Turkey, their right to worship and
practice freely, and the legal status and condition of thousands of
ancient Armenian churches, monasteries, cemeteries, and other
historical and cultural structures, sites, and antiquities in the
Republic of Turkey; and

WHEREAS, The United States is on record as having officially
recognized the Armenian Genocide in the United States
government’s May 28, 1951, written statement to the International
Court of Justice regarding the Reservations to the Convention on
the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, through
President Ronald Reagan’s April 22, 1981, Proclamation No. 4838,
and by congressional legislation including House Joint Resolution
148 adopted on April 9, 1975, and House Joint Resolution 247
adopted on September 12, 1984; and

WHEREAS, Even prior to the Convention on the Prevention
and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, the United States has
a record of having sought to justly and constructively address the
consequences of the Ottoman Empire’s intentional destruction of
the Armenian people, including through United States Senate
Concurrent Resolution 12 adopted on February 9, 1916, United
States Senate Resolution 359 adopted on May 11, 1920, and
President Woodrow Wilson’s November 22, 1920, decision
entitled, “The Frontier between Armenia and Turkey,” which was
issued as a binding arbitral award, yet has not been enforced to
this date despite its legally binding status; and

WHEREAS, President Barack Obama entered office “calling
for Turkey’s acknowledgment of the Armenian Genocide” and on
April 24, 2013, and similarly on April 24, 2014, he further stated,
“A full, frank, and just acknowledgment of the facts is in all of
our interests. Peoples and nations grow stronger, and build a more
just and tolerant future, by acknowledging and reckoning with
painful elements of the past”; and

WHEREAS, California is home to the largest
Armenian-American population in the United States, and
Armenians living in California have enriched our state through
their leadership and contribution in business, agriculture, academia,
government, and the arts, many of whom have family members
who experienced firsthand the horror and evil of the Armenian
Genocide and its ongoing denial; and

WHEREAS, Every person should be made aware and educated
about the Armenian Genocide and other crimes against humanity,
and this state has been at the forefront of encouraging and
promoting a curriculum relating to human rights and genocide in
order to empower future generations to prevent the recurrence of
genocide; and

WHEREAS, April 24, 1915, is globally observed and recognized
as the commencement of the Armenian Genocide and April 24,
2015, will mark the centennial anniversary since the
commencement of the Armenian Genocide; and

WHEREAS, Armenians in this state and throughout the world,
have not been provided with justice for the crimes perpetrated
against the Armenian nation despite the fact that a century has
passed since the crimes were first committed; and

WHEREAS, The Armenian people, in this state and elsewhere,
remain resolved and their spirit continues to thrive a century after
their near annihilation; now, therefore, be it

Resolved by the Assembly and the Senate of the State of
California, jointly, That the Legislature hereby designates the year
of 2015 as “State of California Year of Commemoration of the
Centennial Anniversary of the Armenian Genocide of 1915-1923”
and in doing so, intends, through the enactment of legislation, that
the Armenian Genocide is properly commemorated and taught to
its citizens and visitors through statewide educational and cultural
events; and be it further

Resolved, That the Legislature hereby designates April 24, 2015,
as “State of California Day of Commemoration of the Centennial
Anniversary of the Armenian Genocide of 1915-1923”; and be it
further

Resolved, That the Legislature commends its conscientious
educators who teach about human rights and genocide, and intends
for them, through the enactment of legislation, to continue to
enhance their efforts to educate students at all levels about the
experience of the Armenians and other crimes against humanity;
and be it further

Resolved, That the Legislature hereby commends the
extraordinary service which was delivered by Near East Relief to
the survivors of the Armenian Genocide and the Assyrian
Genocide, including thousands of direct beneficiaries of American
philanthropy who are the parents, grandparents, and
great-grandparents of many Californian Armenians and Assyrians,
and pledges its intent, through the enactment of legislation, to
working with community groups, nonprofit organizations, citizens,
state personnel, and the community at large to host statewide
educational and cultural events; and be it further

Resolved, That the Legislature deplores the persistent, ongoing
efforts by any person, in this country or abroad, to deny the
historical fact of the Armenian Genocide; and be it further

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Resolved, That the Legislature urges the Republic of Turkey to
acknowledge the facts of the Armenian Genocide and to work
toward a just resolution, to honor its obligations under international
treaties and human rights laws, to end all forms of religious
discrimination and persecution, to return Christian church
properties to their rightful owners, and to allow the owners and
congregants of all churches to conduct their religious activities
unhindered, including, but not limited to, prayer services and
religious observances, education and training, community
gatherings, and social services; and be it further

end delete

Resolved, That the Legislature respectfully calls upon the
President of the United States and the United States Congress begin delete to
act likewise and end delete to formally and consistently reaffirm the historical
truth that the atrocities committed against the Armenian people
constituted genocide; and be it further

Resolved, That the Legislature calls on the President of the
United States to work toward equitable, constructive, stable, and
durable Armenian-Turkish begin delete relations based upon the Republic of
Turkey’s full acknowledgment of the facts and ongoing
consequences of the Armenian Genocide, and a fair, just, and
comprehensive international resolution of this crime against
humanity; end delete begin insert relations; end insert and be it further

Resolved, That the Chief Clerk of the Assembly transmit copies
of this resolution to the President and Vice President of the United
States, to the Speaker of the House of Representatives, to the
Majority Leader of the Senate, to each Senator and Representative
from California in the Congress of the United States, to the
Governor of California, begin insert to end insert every member of the California State
Legislature, begin insert and to end insert the Superintendent of Public begin delete Instruction, and
to the Turkish Ambassador to the United States. end delete begin insert Instruction. end insert

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CORRECTIONS:

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