Vote on H.Res.306 Set for Dec. 13
WASHINGTON—On Tues., Dec. 13, the U.S. House of Representatives is set to vote on H.Res.306, a religious freedom measure that calls upon Turkey to return stolen Armenian, Greek, Assyrian, and Syriac church properties, reported the Armenian National Committee of America (ANCA).
This religious freedom measure, which was adopted 43 to 1 on July 20 by the Foreign Affairs Committee, was introduced by Representatives Ed Royce (R-Calif.) and Howard Berman (D-Calif.). It has been scheduled for a floor vote by House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) under a special parliamentary procedure known as the Suspension Calendar. The text of the resolution that is set to come before the House will be the same as the abridged version adopted at the committee level.
“The bipartisan consensus and cooperation we are seeing in support of pressing Turkey to return stolen Christian properties within its present-day borders both reflects and also reinforces America’s enduring commitment to religious freedom, as so powerfully reaffirmed in the enactment by Congress of the International Religious Freedom Act, and so enduringly represented on the international stage by America’s leadership in supporting the Universal Declaration of Human Rights,” said Aram Hamparian, the executive director of the ANCA. “We encourage supporters of religious liberty—of all faiths—to contact their legislators in support of H.Res.306, and call on all members of the U.S. House to cast their votes for this principled stand for freedom of faith.”
An ANCA Action Alert in support of H.Res.306 is available at http://www.anca.org/action_alerts/action_disp.php?aaid=51524506.
For minute-by-minute updates on House consideration of the matter, follow the ANCA Facebook page at http://www.facebook.com/ancagrassroots. The ANCA Facebook page is open to the public, although to participate in the discussion or offer comments, you will need sign in or register.
Historical background
Armenians, Greeks, Assyrians, Pontians, Arameans, and Syriacs have long lived in present-day Turkey. Thousands of years before the establishment of the Ottoman Empire, they gave birth to great civilizations and established a rich civic, religious, and cultural heritage. They were, upon these ancient and biblical lands, among the first Christians, dating back to the travels through Anatolia of the Apostles Thaddeus and Bartholomew. Armenia, in 301 A.D., became the first nation to adopt Christianity as a state religion.
During the World War I era, after centuries of growing intolerance and persecution, Ottoman Turkey perpetrated a government-sponsored campaign of genocide against its Armenian and other Christians subjects, resulting in the murder of over 2,000,000 Armenians, Greeks, Assyrians, Pontians, Arameans, and Syriacs, and the exile of hundreds of thousands others from their homelands of thousands of years. The Republic of Turkey, heir to the Ottomans, continued these genocidal policies against the remaining Christian population, through ethnic cleansing, violence, the destruction of churches and religious sites, illegal expropriation of properties, discriminatory policies, restrictions on worship, and other means. As a result, only a small fraction of the historic Christian population that once populated Anatolia remains in modern Turkey.
The endangered Christian communities within the borders of present-day Turkey, in addition to all the crimes and persecutions visited upon them throughout their histories, continue, to this day, to endure oppressive restrictions imposed by the government of Turkey on their ability to worship in freedom in their historic places of worship, which are today in Turkish hands as the result of genocide.
The U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom has designated Turkey as one of a handful of countries on their watch list for a third consecutive year. The State Department has documented the persecution of Christians in Turkey, including the improper confiscation of their properties. The remaining Christians in Turkey are, all too often, prevented from praying in their historic churches, many of which are desecrated on a daily basis and even used as storage sheds. In very rare instances, Turkey has undertaken repairs of selected Christian churches, but refused to return them to the rightful church owners, and instead converting them into museums, where prayer, as a rule, is prohibited.
For additional information, visit the special ANCA website devoted to the Return of Churches: www.anca.org/return.
Nice, but frankly it’s a cheap, easy vote with no teeth.
The House should first RE-acknowledge that the churches were taken thru genocide.
Question:
If Turkey wipes out an entire people, such as Armenians, is it sufficient to return their churches?
And who, may I ask, is going to attend and maintain those churches? Ghosts?
We will succeed… We will unite.. We will get our wealth back.. Click the below link and call your Representative urging them to vote for H. Resolution 306
http://www.anca.org/action_alerts/action_disp.php?aaid=51524506
Dave you are absolutely right… the world knows those churches were taken and destroyed (many many of them) because of Genocide that wiped out almost an entire civilization.. I despise those govt officials who re blinded by their greed and pocket books to sweep the truth under the rug…
Our “Genocided Churches” are calling Us… The Armenians and others
Please Respond
Dear friends, who live in USA
Please call to return our “Genocided Churches” back from our lands…
They are crying for our calls…
I think Our old God was somehow getting Deaf…
Now he Has Hearing Aids…
Freely supplied by USA’s new P. Obama’s government…
Better than Gingrich…
Who needs to go back to learn history lessons
in the primary schools…and Pass exams…
Thanks Gayane for sending the address…See above
Sylva
To Deaar DAve and Gayane,
You are expressing two different modalities.Dave´s(which is true and desirable )
Gayane, also in harmony with the manner by which the powers will by and by(yavash Yavash) bring culprit to no not acknowledge outright their guilt but gradually prepare their people(7o yrs lies)to realize that they cannot go on like that forever.
My viewpoint is in between the two.While pressure is brought upon culprit slowly rather than at once,the Armenians ought to follow up with their efforts to help them(Turks)caqrry out the church repairs and admit mass to be conducted threin etc.,
It is impossible to expect that great Turkey(well whether we like it or not their friends made her so) overnight concede to everything.
I am certain that meanwhile they(Turks) are also watching us.The not so enviable Armenian Diaspora structures-not harnessed to-so to say a Powerfull Supreme Council or better yet amalgamation ,first of all, into less FRAGMENTED ENTITIES. They will then speed up their reaction. Otherwise, they consider the Armenian Diaspora tending a half extended hand to Homeland and powerless ECONOMYWISE,to accomplish——
REPATRIATION, which this servant of the Armenian people is advocating through establishment of A NATIONAL INVESTMENT TRUST FUND.First Nucleus by our magnates and millionairess, then all the way down to 100 dolalr investors…by
a100,000 strong PCA (professiona colleaggeus Associations)members…
Time is very precious indeed.We waste it inadvertently,beating around the BUSH.
Sometimes we have to take a longer term view of our prospects. Armenian history is filled with events of massacre, population shifts, depopulation and regeneration. It will happen again. The face of the genocide will never be erased from its perpetrator. Reminders are constant.
Let’s look at the recent re-consecration of the St. Giragos church in Diyarbekir. Abused, abandoned, depopulated, but not forgotten. The political winds change and the Kurds comes forward with support. Armenians rally and the rest is current news. Then we learn of Islamized Armenians coming forward to be baptized in the faith of their ethnicity. What next…pilgrimages, trade, more churches, more Armenians.
This bill is symbolic of a pressure point on Turkey to keep the western Armenia discussion active and to preserve our culture. We don’t know the future , but we must have faith. Who predicted the 2nd republic, Karabagh and the many events of western Armenia in the last year. I find it amazing that the Turks with all their power have been unable to silence the open questions on the genocide to their own people and he world. We should be inspired and motivated by this to continue this sacred work. Recognition , in my view , is not the major issues. It is only a matter of time. We must prepare ourselves for reparations. There is much work to do . These issues are all connected. Let’s be wise enough to connect them.
Stepan jan- yes qo het hamamit em.. well said..
While they’re at it, they should get them to ADMIT they perpetrated genocide on ALL those peoples (armenians, assyrians, greek orthodox hellenics, cypriots) and give them back their property, their cities, and compensation for all the shit they stole from the families and the pain and suffering of all the orphans left. We know they locked them in their homes & burned them alive, took them on a boat into the sea and threw them overboard, burned women & children alive in camps, locked kids in the schools & put poison gas in there, gave babies shots of TYPHUS claiming they were giving them some kind of vaccinations. Italians, Americans and other Europeans working in Turkey (like building railroads, etc.) at the time wrote home to say they could not remain and watch these horrors transpire.
Turkey also needs to get out of Cyprus.