Reagan Signs Bill Implementing Genocide Treaty

In an impromptu ceremony here Friday, President Reagan signed legislation implementing a treaty first signed 40 years ago outlawing genocide.

“We gather today to bear witness to the past and learn from its awful example, to make sure we are not condemned to relive its crimes,” he said at the ceremony, which was held in a hangar at O’Hare International Airport.

By signing the Genocide Convention Implementation Act, Reagan puts an end to a long, contentious chapter in U.S. history.

It began on June 16, 1949, when President Harry S. Truman first asked the Senate to consent to the Genocide Treaty that was drawn up in response to the Nazi Holocaust in which more than 6 million Jews were killed.

However, it was held up for four decades, primarily by a group of conservative lawmakers who contended it would undermine rights of Americans under the Constitution and infringe on U.S. sovereignty.

In signing the legislation, which was finally approved by Congress last month, Reagan said he was “delighted to fulfill the promise made by” Truman, allowing the United States to finally join 97 other signatory nations.

As a result, U.S. law will now conform to that treaty, which defines genocide as an action with a “specific intent to destroy . . . a national, ethnic, racial or religious group.”

The law applies to activities in which members of those groups are killed, seriously injured or permanently impaired through the use of drugs, torture or “similar techniques” aimed at causing “the physical destruction of the group.”

If death results, people found responsible could be fined up to $1 million and imprisoned for life.

The signing also marked a final triumph for retiring Sen. William Proxmire (D-Wis.), who delivered more than 3,300 speeches in favor of the treaty before the Senate finally voted to ratify it in 1986.

However, it took two more years to win congressional passage of the legislation to implement the treaty.

Asked why Reagan chose to sign the measure in Chicago, where he later appeared at a campaign rally on behalf of Vice President George Bush, instead of in Washington as originally planned, White House spokesman Marlin Fitzwater said the city has a large Jewish population that has a “special interest” in it.