New Hampshire Armenian Genocide Recognition

A PROCLAMATION
New Hampshire
April 8 2005

WHEREAS,  on April 24 1915-1923 the Young Turk government of the Ottoman Empire began a systematic premeditated genocide of the Armenian people – an unarmed Christian minority living under Turkish rule; and

WHEREAS, more than 1.3 – 1.5 million Armenians were exterminated through direct killing, starvation, torture, and forced death marched. Another million fled into permanent exile and an ancient civilization was expunged from their homeland of 2,500 years; and

WHEREAS, the Armenian Genocide is abundantly documented by Ottoman court-marial records, by hundreds of thousands of documents in the archives of the United States and nations around the world; and

WHEREAS, after 90 years the Turkish government continues to deny the genocide by blaming the victims and undermining historical fact with false rhetoric. the words “Armenian” and “Greek” are nonexistent in Turkish descriptions of ancient or Christian artifacts and monuments in Turkey; and

WHEREAS, it is important to remember that when Raphael Lemkin coined the word “genocide” in 1944 he cited the 1915 annihilation of the Armenians as a seminal example of genocide; and

WHEREAS, the denial of genocide strives to reshape history in order to demonize the victims and rehabilitate the perpetrators; and

WHEREAS, the United Nations, the European Parliament, the Association of Genocide Scholars, the Institute on the Holocaust and Genocide (Jerusalem), and the Institute for the Study of Genocide (NYC) have reaffirmed the extermination of the Armenians by the Turkish government as genocide;

NOW, THEREFORE I, JOHN LYNCH, GOVERNOR of the state of New Hampshire, do hereby proclaim APRIL 24, 2005 as a day to COMMEMORATE THE 90th ANNIVERSARY OF THE ARMENIAN GENOCIDE OF 1915 in New Hampshire.

Given at the Executive Chamber in Concord, this 8th day of April, in the year of Our Lord two thousand and five, and the independence of the United States of America, two hundred and twenty-nine.

N.H. House Resolution Honors Memory of Martyrs
Concord, New Hampshire
April 13 1967

WHEREAS, April 2&th is the 50th anniversary of the slaughter of one and a half million Armenian men, women and children in Turkish Armenia, and

WHEREAS, many descendants of this slaughter have fled to the sanctuary of the United States where they have found a life where they may live in peace, therefore be it

RESOLVED, that these descendants wish to offer a salute to the American way of life, and be it further

RESOLVED, that when the House adjourns today it adjourn in memory of those whose lives were lost in the massacre.

A RESOLUTION Remembering the Armenian Genocide of 1915-1923.
NEW HAMPSHIRE
April 24, 1990

Whereas, 1,500,000 people of Armenian ancestry were victims of genocide perpetrated by the governments of the Ottoman Empire from 1915 to 1923; and

Whereas, at the outbreak of World War I, the Young Turk regime decided to deport the entire Armenian population of about 1,750,000 to Syria and Mesopotamia; and

Whereas, the plan of genocide consisted of deporting all Armenians of whatever age or condition of health to the totally barren Der-El-Zor region of what is now Syria; and

Whereas, the Armenians were deported to Der-El-Zor on foot, a death march in which more than 1,000,000 died of starvation of were killed; and

Whereas, thousands of Christian Armenians were tortured and murdered for refusing to accept Islam as their religion; and

Whereas, the atrocities inflicted on Armenians held in concentration camps and on the death marches to Der-El-Zor in the Syrian desert resemble those of the Holocaust of World War II; now, therefore, be it

Resolved by the Senate:

That the Senate of the state of New Hampshire strongly urges that April 24, 1990, be a day of remembrance of the 75th anniversary of the Armenian genocide of 1915-1923; and

That the Senate calls upon the people of New Hampshire to observe that day by remembering the 1,500,000 people of Armenian ancestry who lost their lives in the genocide of 1915-1923.