ADLP letter to H. Berman

On the occasion of passing the 252 resolution on the Armenian Genocide Harutyun Arakelyan, the ADLP Leader sent a message to the US Congressman Berman of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs.

The letter reads:

“Dear Mr. Howard L. Berman

As a representative of a pan-Armenian political party existing since 19th century, I express my gratitude for your Armenian-favor policy of many years.

I express my gratitude to all the Congressmen who voted in favor of adopting the Armenian Genocide resolution, H. Res. 252 at the Committee on Foreign Affairs of the U.S. Congress on March 4, thus proving that justice is beyond everything and in this case there cannot be double standards.

Your inexorability towards Armenian question is of special admiration, especially considering the fact that you didn’t retreat even being a member of Turkish-American Friendship Committee.

Now about the main subject of my letter:

In Resolution 252 there is a well-grounded survey of the crimes committed against the Armenian people by the last government of the Ottoman Empire registered in the Archival documents of many countries and testifying to the fact that the actions committed in 1915-1923 against the Armenian people are crimes committed towards mankind. However, an inaccuracy took place in the resolution which probably should be ascribed to your assistants or to the Armenian favoring policy conducting other Congressmen’s assistants, who, preparing Resolution 252, made use of some doubtful sources distorting the Armenian history. Otherwise, the expression that Armenians were deprived of their 2500-year-old cradle would not have been introduced in the Resolution.

Being far from the desire to begin a historical dispute, I would merely like to mention that there are numerous evidences by foreign civilizations that the Armenian Nation lived and created in the Armenian Highlands for more than 4500 years, therefore it would have been righteous not to write in the Resolution any chronology concerning the Armenian Nation, and to mention merely that besides massacres, loots and plunders, also annihilation of Armenians and depriving them from their homeland took place.

However, I am well aware that any editorial amendment cannot be introduced in the Resolution now but I hopefully believe that your Committee will henceforth make use of merely Armenian Academic authoritative institutions.”