AJR 2 Assembly Joint Resolution

BILL NUMBER: AJR 2	AMENDED
	BILL TEXT

	AMENDED IN ASSEMBLY  MARCH 21, 2011

INTRODUCED BY   Assembly Members Portantino and Achadjian
   (Principal coauthors: Assembly Members  Gatto 
   and Halderman   Conway,
  Gatto,   Halderman,   and John Pщrez
 )
   (Principal coauthors: Senators Berryhill, De Leєn, Liu, Simitian,
Wyland, and Yee)
    (   Coauthors:   Assembly Members 
 Ammiano,   Bill Berryhill,  Block,  
Cook,   Garrick,   Gordon,   Hagman, 
 Harkey,   Huffman,   Bonnie Lowenthal, 
 Ma,   Monning,   Nielsen,   Olsen,
  Swanson,   and Williams   ) 
    (   Coauthors:   Senators  
Cannella,   Dutton,   and Rubio   ) 

                        JANUARY 25, 2011

   Relative to the Armenian Genocide.


	LEGISLATIVE COUNSEL'S DIGEST


   AJR 2, as amended, Portantino.  Armenian Genocide: Day of
Remembrance.
   This measure would designate April 24, 2011, as "California Day of
Remembrance for the Armenian Genocide of 1915-1923." It would
memorialize the Congress and the President of the United States to
act likewise to commemorate the Armenian Genocide.
   Fiscal committee: no.



   WHEREAS, The Armenian people, living in their 3,000-year historic
homeland in eastern Asia Minor and throughout the Ottoman Empire,
were subjected to severe persecution and brutal injustice by the
rulers of the Ottoman Empire before and after the turn of the 20th
century, including widespread massacres, usurpation of land and
property, and acts of wanton destruction during the period from 1894
to 1896, inclusive, and again in 1909; and
   WHEREAS, The horrible experience of the Armenians at the hands of
their oppressors culminated in 1915 in what is known by historians as
the "First Genocide of the Twentieth Century," and as the prototype
of modern day mass killing; and
   WHEREAS, The Armenian Genocide began with the arrest, exile, and
murder of hundreds of Armenian intellectuals, including business,
political, and religious leaders, starting on April 24, 1915; and
   WHEREAS, The regime then in control of the empire, known as the
"Young Turks," planned and executed the unspeakable atrocities
committed against the Armenian people from 1915 to 1923, inclusive,
which included the torture, starvation, and murder of 1,500,000
Armenians, death marches into the Syrian Desert, the forced exile of
more than 500,000 innocent people, and the loss of the traditional
Armenian homelands; and
   WHEREAS, While there were some Turks and others who jeopardized
their safety in order to protect Armenians from the crimes being
perpetrated by the Young Turk regime, the genocide of the Armenian
people constituted one of the most egregious 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 3,000 years"; and
   WHEREAS, In discussing World War I, President Theodore Roosevelt
wrote that "... the Armenian massacre was the greatest crime of the
war, and the failure to act against Turkey is to condone it ... the
failure to deal radically with the Turkish horror means that all talk
of guaranteeing the future peace of the world is mischievous
nonsense"; and
   WHEREAS, Winston Churchill wrote: "As for Turkish atrocities: ...
massacring uncounted thousands of helpless Armenians, men, women, and
children together, whole districts blotted out in one administrative
holocaust--these were beyond human redress"; and
   WHEREAS, Contemporary newspapers like the New York Times commonly
carried headlines such as "Tales of Armenian Horrors Confirmed,"
"Million Armenians Killed or in Exile," and "Wholesale Massacre of
Armenians by Turks"; and
   WHEREAS, Adolph Hitler, in persuading his army commanders on the
eve of World War II that the merciless persecution and killing of
Poles, Jews, and other peoples would bring no retribution, declared,
"Who, after all, speaks today of the annihilation of the Armenians?";
and
   WHEREAS, Raphael Lemkin, the attorney who coined the word
"genocide" in 1948 and who was instrumental in the establishment of
the United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of
Genocide, cited the Armenian Genocide as a clear example of genocide;
and
   WHEREAS, The United States, through its filing with the
International Court of Justice in 1951 pertaining to the United
Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the 
crime   Crime  of Genocide expressly noted that
"outstanding examples on the crime of genocide" included the "Turkish
massacres of Armenians"; and
   WHEREAS, The United States, in a letter from Assistant Secretary
 of State  , Legislative Affairs, Matthew A. Reynolds to the
Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, dated July 29,
2008, acknowledged and reaffirmed the historical record of the
Armenian Genocide by stating, the "Administration recognizes that the
mass killings, ethnic cleansing, and forced deportations of over one
and a half million Armenians were conducted by the Ottoman Empire";
and
   WHEREAS, Unlike other  peoples and  governments
that have  admitted and  denounced the 
abuses and  crimes of predecessor regimes, and despite the
overwhelming proof of genocidal intent, the Republic of Turkey has
inexplicably and adamantly 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, desecrate the memory of the victims, and cause continuing
trauma and pain to the descendants of the victims; and
   WHEREAS, The Turkish  Government   government
 has engaged in concerted efforts to revise history through the
dissemination of propaganda falsely suggesting that Armenians were
responsible for their fate in the period from 1915 to 1923,
inclusive, and  by the funding of   funded 
programs at American educational institutions for the purpose of
furthering the cause of this revisionism; and
   WHEREAS, The Republic of Turkey has been condemned by Amnesty
International and other human rights organizations for making free
speech a crime by enacting Article 301 of the Turkish Penal Code,
which makes "public denigration of Turkishness ... the Government of
the Republic of Turkey, the judicial institutions of the State, the
military or security structures" punishable by imprisonment, and has
used this device to harass, intimidate, prosecute, and imprison
Turkish citizens who have written or spoken honestly about the
Armenian Genocide, including Nobel Prize winning author Orhan Pamuk;
and
   WHEREAS, Among those charged with "denigration of Turkishness" by
Turkish prosecutors for his forthright acknowledgment of the Armenian
Genocide was journalist Hrant Dink, and in this atmosphere of
intolerance of dissent, Mr. Dink was assassinated for his views on
January 19, 2007; and
   WHEREAS, The accelerated level and scope of denial and
revisionism, coupled with  the passage of time and 
the fact that few survivors remain who serve as personal eyewitnesses
to the indescribable brutality and torment, compel a sense of
urgency in achieving formal recognition and reaffirmation of the
historical truth of the Armenian Genocide; and
   WHEREAS, By honoring the victims and survivors, and consistently
remembering and forcefully condemning the atrocities committed
against the Armenian people as well as the persecution of the
Assyrian and Greek populations of the Ottoman Empire, we guard
against repetition of  the crime of  genocide; and
   WHEREAS, California has become home to the largest population of
Armenians in the world outside of Armenia, including Armenian
Genocide survivors and their descendants, and those citizens have
enriched our state and our Nation through leadership in academia,
medicine, business, law, agriculture, government, the arts, and many
other worthy endeavors, and they are proud and patriotic
practitioners of American citizenship; and
   WHEREAS, The State of California 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 recurrence
of the crime of genocide; now, therefore, be it
   Resolved by the Assembly and Senate of the State of California,
jointly, That the Legislature of the State of California hereby
designates April 24, 2011, as the "California Day of Remembrance for
the Armenian Genocide of 1915-1923"; and be it further
   Resolved, That the State of California commends its conscientious
educators who teach about human rights and genocide; and be it
further
   Resolved, That the State of California respectfully memorializes
the Congress and the President of the United States to act likewise
and to formally recognize and reaffirm the historical truth that the
atrocities committed against the Armenian people constituted
genocide; and be it further
   Resolved, That the State of California calls upon the Republic of
Turkey to acknowledge the facts of the Armenian Genocide and to work
toward a just resolution; and be it further
   Resolved, That the Chief Clerk of the Assembly transmit copies of
this resolution to the President of the United States, Members of the
United States Congress, the Governor, and the Turkish Ambassador to
the United States.