Targeted News Service Tuesday 9:20 AM EST Rep. Hoyer Issues Statement on Anniversary of Armenian Genocide WASHINGTON House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer, D-Maryland, issued the following statement on the 103rd anniversary of the Armenian genocide: "As we mark the 103rd anniversary of the beginning of the Armenian Genocide, we remember the 1.5 million people killed and the millions of other lives uprooted. America has a responsibility to be a moral leader in the world by promoting tolerance, human rights, and justice - just as we have a responsibility to partner with the international community to prevent and deter ethnic violence wherever it occurs. Today, the most fitting remembrance of the Armenian Genocide, the first genocide of the twentieth century, is to recommit ourselves to the work of stopping ethnic violence in the twenty-first century - in Myanmar, in Darfur, and elsewhere. "I join with the Armenian-American community, many members of which are descendants of the Genocide's survivors, in marking this somber anniversary. No one can deny history, nor can we shun the obligations that history bequeaths us: to remember, to educate, and to be agents of peace and refuge when confronted with the evils of hatred and injustice."