Rep. TJ Cox votes for 1915 Armenian genocide resolution; passes House 405-11

For the first time the Congress, by a lopsided 405-11 vote, officially designated the 1915 mass killings of an estimated 1.5 million Armenians at the hands of the Ottoman Empire, as a genocide. Past efforts to recognize the Armenian genocide, have failed to materialize, due to the United States’ relationship with Turkey, a NATO alley that had continually denied that the atrocities amounted to genocide.

Cox voted for the legislation. The local congressman represents a large swath of Armenian Americans in the San Joaquin Valley. “I’m very glad to cosponsor this legislation establishing a formal remembrance and recognition of the Armenian Genocide, and I’m proud our nation has finally found the courage to acknowledge this tragedy and injustice,” he said.

“Our previous silence was an insult to the Armenian-American community. We must acknowledge acts of war against innocent civilians wherever they occur, to defend human dignity, and stop these atrocities from happening again.”

The history behind the killings of Armenians was tied to the breakup of the Ottoman Empire. In 1915, during World War I, the Ottomans, Germany’s allies, ordered mass deportations of Armenians from the empire’s eastern provinces to prevent them from joining forces with Russia. Some estimates indicate that 1.5 million Armenians died from the forced exodus via starvation and killings by Ottoman Turk soldiers and police.

Many survivors ended up in the United States. An estimated 40,000 Armenians live in Fresno. The largest Armenian populations today exist in Russia, the United States, France, Georgia, Iran, and Germany.

Turkey has long disputed the number of Armenian deaths, suggesting instead that it may have been far lower than 1.5 million.