CITY OF FRESNO
Office of Councilmember Mike Karbassi
WHEREAS, the Ottoman Turkish Empire initiated an eight-year program of terror and mass execution beginning in 1915 that resulted in the deaths of more than 1.5 million men, women and children of Armenian heritage and which succeeded in the elimination of the more than 2,500-year presence of Armenians in their historic homeland; and
WHEREAS, the Armenian Genocide began with the arrest, exile, and murder of hundreds of Armenian intellectuals, and political, religious, and business leaders, starting on April 24, 1915; and
WHEREAS, this campaign of dispossession and murder was undertaken with a clear and ultimate purpose to annihilate the Armenian race through a practiced policy of coordinated deportation and massacre; and
WHEREAS, Raphael Lemkin, who coined the term genocide in 1944, and who was the earliest proponent of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide, invoked the Armenian case as a definitive example of genocide in the 20th century; and
WHEREAS, Fresno has become home to as many as 50,000 residents of Armenian descent, who have enriched our city and state through leadership in the fields of academia, medicine, business, agriculture, law, government, and the arts; and
WHEREAS, by honoring the survivors and consistently remembering and forcefully condemning the atrocities committed against the Armenian people as well as the persecution of the Assyrian and Greek populations of the Ottoman Turkish Empire, we guard against repetition of the crime of genocide; and
WHEREAS, leaders of nations with strategic, commercial, and cultural ties to the Republic of Turkey should be reminded of their duty to encourage Turkish officials to desist from efforts to distort facts and deny the history of events surrounding the Armenian Genocide; and
WHEREAS, April 24, marks the anniversary of the Armenian Genocide, on which Armenians throughout the Republic of Armenia and the Diaspora have come together to remember and demand justice for the victims and survivors of this crime again humanity.
NOW, THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED, Mayor Jerry Dyer and the Fresno City Councilmembers, do hereby proclaim April 24, 2022, to be:
“A Day of Remembrance of the Anniversary
of the Armenian Genocide”
in the City of Fresno.
IN WITNESS WHEREOF, we have hereunto set our hands and
affixed the seal of the City of Fresno, California, this 21 st
day of April 2022.
_____________________________________________ __________________________________________ JERRY DYER, Honorable Mayor ESMERALDA SORIA, Councilmember District 1
_____________________________________________ __________________________________________ MIKE KARBASSI, Councilmember District 2 MIGUEL ARIAS, Councilmember District 3
_____________________________________________ __________________________________________ TYLER MAXWELL, Council Vice President LUIS CHAVEZ, Councilmember District 5
_____________________________________________ __________________________________________ GARRY BREDEFELD, Councilmember District 6 NELSON ESPARZA, Council President