Your trusted source

Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee Bob Menendez led 37 of his Senate colleagues on Friday in requesting the Biden administration join the U.S. Congress in officially recognizing the Ottoman Empire's genocide against the Armenian people. As the Foreign Relations Committee said on its website, to date, no U.S. president has made it U.S. policy to affirm the historical facts of the Armenian Genocide, which lasted from 1915 to 1923 and resulted in the forced deportation of around 2 million Armenians, 1.5 million of whom were brutally killed. 

“We join the Armenian community in the United States and around the world in honoring the memory of these victims, and we stand firmly against attempts to pretend that this intentional, organized effort to destroy the Armenian people was anything other than a genocide,” the Senators wrote in a letter to President Biden. “You have correctly stated that American diplomacy and foreign policy must be rooted in our values, including respect for universal rights. Those values require us to acknowledge the truth and do what we can to prevent future genocides and other crimes against humanity.”

Beyond recognizing the facts of the Ottoman Empire’s systematic extermination of Armenians, the Senators stressed that the move would rectify the executive branch’s position regarding the Genocide by aligning it with congressional consensus as well as President Biden’s previous remarks.

“Administrations of both parties have been silent on the truth of the Armenian Genocide. We urge you to break this pattern of complicity by officially recognizing that the Armenian Genocide was a genocide,” added the Senators.

It is noted that Menendez has led a decades long fight to honor the memory of those who perished during the Armenian genocide, calling for a U.S. foreign policy that reflects appropriate understanding and sensitivity concerning issues related to human rights, crimes against humanity, ethnic cleansing, and genocide. On December 12, 2019, the Senate unanimously passed Menendez’s Senate Resolution affirming the historical facts of the Armenian Genocide, making clear that U.S. policy must reject efforts to deny the truth of this tragedy.