Representatives Anna Eshoo (D-CA), David Valadao (R-CA), Ted Lieu (D-CA), and Gus Bilirakis (R-FL) are re-introducing the Armenian Genocide Education Act, a bipartisan measure – building upon official U.S. Congressional and Presidential recognition of this crime – to fund Library of Congress educational programs about the history, lessons, consequences, and ongoing costs of the Armenian Genocide, reports the Armenian National Committee of America (ANCA).
This landmark legislation seeks to provide $10 million in funding over five years for the Library of Congress to educate Americans about Ottoman Turkey’s systematic and deliberate state-sponsored mass murder, national dispossession, cultural erasure, and exile of millions of Armenians, Greeks, Assyrians, Chaldeans, Syriacs, Arameans, Maronites, and other Christians, between 1915 and 1923.
“With Azerbaijan, backed by Turkey, openly seeking to complete the Armenian Genocide, it’s more urgent than ever for American school children to learn the lessons of this still unpunished – still ongoing – crime against all humanity,” said ANCA Executive Director Aram Hamparian. “Chief among these lessons is that we – as Americans – must never, for reasons of political convenience or practical expediency, turn a blind eye to state-driven genocidal campaigns to eradicate indigenous populations or other at-risk groups, anywhere in the world.”
Building upon the 2019 passage of H.Res.296 and S.Res.150 – which specifically rejected any official U.S. association with Armenian Genocide denial – the Armenian Genocide Education Act seeks to counter-discourse and propaganda that claims that Ottoman Turkey’s systematic and deliberate state-sponsored mass murder, national dispossession, cultural erasure, and exile of millions of Christians between 1915 and 1923 did not take place. A similar measure was introduced in the last session of Congress.
Members of Congress can join as original cosponsors of the measure in the days leading up to its introduction, timed around April 24th, the international day of justice for the Armenian Genocide.
