HR 25
Page 1
Date of Hearing: April 7, 2025
ASSEMBLY COMMITTEE ON RULES
Blanca Pacheco, Chair
HR 25 (Harabedian) – As Introduced March 19, 2025
SUBJECT: The Armenian Genocide.
SUMMARY: Recognizes April 24, 2025, as “State of California Day of Commemoration of the
110th Anniversary of the Armenian Genocide of 1915–1923;” and, commends educators who
teach about human rights and genocide and intends for them to continue to enhance their efforts
to educate students at all levels about the experience of the Armenians and other crimes against
humanity. Specifically, this resolution makes the following legislative findings:
1) Armenians have resided in the Armenian Highlands for approximately four millennia, and
have a long and rich history in the region, including the establishment of many kingdoms,
and despite Armenians’ historic presence, stewardship, and autonomy in the region, Turkish
rulers of the Ottoman Empire and the Republic of Turkey subjected Armenians to severe and
unjust persecution and brutality, including wholesale massacres beginning in the 1890s.
2) The Armenian nation was subjected to a systematic and premeditated genocide officially
beginning on April 24, 1915, at the hands of the Young Turk Government of the Ottoman
Empire from 1915 to 1919, inclusive, and continued at the hands of the Kemalist Movement
of Turkey from 1920 to 1923, inclusive, whereby over 1.5 million Armenian men, women,
and children were slaughtered or marched to their deaths in an effort to annihilate the
Armenian nation in the first genocide of modern times, while thousands of surviving
Armenian women and children were forcibly converted and Islamized, and hundreds of
thousands more were subjected to ethnic cleansing during the period of the modern Republic
of Turkey from 1924 to 1937.
3) California is home to the largest Armenian American population in the United States, and
Armenians living in California have enriched our state through their leadership and
contribution in business, agriculture, academia, government, and the arts, many of whom
have family members who experienced firsthand the horror and evil of the Armenian
Genocide and its ongoing denial.
4) Every person should be made aware and educated about the Armenian Genocide and other
crimes against humanity. The State of California has been at the forefront of encouraging
and promoting a curriculum relating to human rights and genocide in order to empower
future generations to prevent the recurrence of genocide.
5) April 24, 1915, is globally observed and recognized as the commencement of the Armenian
Genocide.
6) Armenians in California and throughout the world have not been provided with justice for the
crimes perpetrated against the Armenian nation despite the fact that over a century has passed
since the crimes were first committed.
 HR 25
Page 2
7) To this day, the Armenian people continue to face a threat to their very existence in their
ancestral lands at the hands of Turkey and Azerbaijan, seen during the 2020 Nagorno-
Karabakh war with the perpetration of horrific war crimes and the ethnic cleansing of the
region’s indigenous Armenian population, in addition to Azerbaijan’s invasion and
occupation of Armenia’s sovereign territory in September 2022, and the ongoing blockade of
the Lachin Corridor that has left 120,000 Armenians without access to food, fuel, medicine,
and other humanitarian goods for over three months.
FISCAL EFFECT: This resolution is keyed non-fiscal by Legislative Counsel.
REGISTERED SUPPORT / OPPOSITION:
Support
None on file
Opposition
California Turkish Alliance
Turkish Consulate General
Analysis Prepared by: Michael Erke / RLS. / (916) 319-2800