04/21/10 - Capitol Hill Commemoration interview with Rep. Royce - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z70ILrnxP00.

03/04/10 - Royce issues press release in support of resolution after House Committee on Foreign Affairs mark up of H. Res. 252.

03/04/10 - Remarks offered at House Committee on Foreign Affairs markup of H. Res. 252 - Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I am a cosponsor of this resolution, and I have worked on this issue since I was in the state senate in California where I authored a resolution recognizing the Armenian Genocide, the first of any such state. My resolution passed in California a generation ago. Now it is time for Congress to act.

When I was young, I knew a survivor. He was the sole survivor from his village, and he himself would have been slaughtered had not a Turkish neighbor hid him when he was a child. This resolution focuses singularly on the United States? record of the Armenian Genocide. As the text indicates, our national archives is filled with thousands of pages documenting the premeditated extermination of the Armenian people.

Our own Ambassador to the Ottoman Empire, Henry Morgenthau, recalled in his memoirs, and he was an eyewitness to history, so this is our Ambassador. He says that the Ottomans never had the slightest idea of reestablishing the Armenians in a new country, he said, knowing that the great majority of those would either in his words die of thirst and starvation or be murdered by the wild Mohammedin desert tribes. Again to use his words as an eyewitness to history, he said it was a campaign of race extermination of the Armenian people.

The United States has been a global leader in promoting human rights around the world. On the issue of the Armenian Genocide, however, we lag behind. The French, Swiss, Swedish, Russians, Germans, those governments recognize the Armenian Genocide. As a global leader in human rights, it is imperative for the United States to stand on principle and recognize the annihilation of the Armenians as genocide.

This resolution does not reference the Government of Turkey. It references the Ottoman Empire. The Turkish Government was not involved in this. The Ottoman Empire was. It is important that this committee doesn?t lose sight of truth versus propaganda, right versus wrong.

While the Armenian Genocide was the first of the twentieth century, the blind eye cast to the slaughter of Armenians was a point, speaks today of the annihilation of the Armenians. He pointed this out when he was being internally challenged on his policies.

The lesson of the genocide is an argument I first learned from my father, who served with General Patton?s Third Army and later the Seventh when they cut through Germany and finally liberated the concentration camps at Dachau. He had his brother?s camera, and he documented on film the ovens with bodies stacked like cordwood, the rail cars, the trenches filled with the dead in the Holocaust, and still he finds the need to use those photographs even today as he confronts those who deny that genocide.

So history is a continuum. Yesterday impacts today, which impacts tomorrow. It is much harder to get tomorrow right if we get yesterday wrong. The world?s strength to oppose killing today is made greater by accountability for actions present, but also past. It is weakened by denial of accountability of past acts.

Not recognizing the Armenian Genocide as such weakens us. For the sake of genocides past and present, I urge the passage of this bipartisan resolution. 1.5 million Armenians were murdered. Five hundred thousand were removed from their homeland. Passing this resolution will be a victory for human rights. I yield back, Mr. Chairman.

12/10/09 - Met with Chairman of Armenian National Assembly Foreign Relations Committee, Armen Rustamyan.

6/4/2009 - Allison Shulman of the Dickstein Shapiro, LLP emailed Amy Porter regarding an invitation to a July 16th event with the Turkish Ambassador..

6/15/2009 - Allison Shulman of the Dickstein Shapiro, LLP emailed Amy Porter regarding an invitation to a July 16th event with the Turkish Ambassador..

7/6/2009 - Allison Shulman of the Dickstein Shapiro, LLP emailed Amy Porter regarding an invitation to a July 16th event with the Turkish Ambassador..

7/10/2009 - Allison Shulman of the Dickstein Shapiro, LLP emailed Amy Porter regarding an invitation to a July 16th event with the Turkish Ambassador..