Mr. Speaker, I rise to support Motion M-282 put forward by my colleague, the hon. member for Don Valley North, to designate the period from April 20 to 27 of each year as the week in which to commemorate and pay tribute to the victims of crimes against humanity and to strongly condemn such crimes, in particular the use of genocide and violence.
I congratulate my colleague from Don Valley North for this motion.
I also support the amendment moved by my Bloc colleague for Ahuntsic. As you know, I immigrated from Chile in 1974 following the September 11, 1973 coup d'état. More than 30,000 Chilean men and women were killed or reported missing under General Pinochet's dictatorship. It was a very dark period in Chile's history. Opponents of the military regime fell victim to a kind of genocide. Other dictatorships and civil wars in Latin American countries, including Argentina, El Salvador, Brazil and Uruguay, caused the death or disappearance of thousands of people. International organizations and global public opinion were powerless to stop these gross and flagrant abuses of human rights.
Fortunately, all this is in the past and a wind of democracy is now blowing across Latin America. However, the people have demanded that their new democratic governments enact laws providing for prosecution of those responsible for these terrible crimes and compensation for the families of victims. In Chile, for instance, President Patricio Aylwin apologized on behalf of the government after publicly recognizing that such crimes had indeed been committed.
It must be pointed out, however, that the efforts made to uncover the truth and punish those responsible for these actions have been rather limited so far. There must be no prescription for crimes against humanity. The UN must take more concrete initiatives in this area. Conventions have been signed but are not being enforced. A case in point is the current slaughter in the former Yugoslavia, which we are all powerless to stop or bring under control.
In 1985, following the atrocities committed in several countries of the hemisphere, the Organization of American States adopted the Inter-American Convention Against Torture.
Today, the OAS is more active in the area of human rights violations and tries to promote democracy as a means of preventing such violations in the future. But these efforts need to be stepped up and Canada, which joined the OAS in 1990, can do much more in that regard. The international community cannot and must not tolerate these violations of international law. We must learn from past mistakes and the inhumanity displayed by certain countries, governments and military or police forces.
I rose in this House on numerous occasions to denounce the genocide in Rwanda in 1993 and 1994. On the eve of the 21st century, it is unthinkable and intolerable that such situations continue to occur.
Canada must do its share, following the civil war in Rwanda, notably by taking in refugees. So far, according to my information, ICSI has not processed more than a hundred refugee claims. It is obvious that Canada is not rising to the occasion with respect to Rwanda.
And unless the international community, and the UN in particular, mobilizes, the same thing is bound to happen in Burundi, where thousands have died already and many more are fleeing, mostly women and children.
We must ensure that the same atrocities that were observed in Rwanda are not repeated in Burundi.
Both before and after being elected to this place, I have repeatedly denounced the Armenian genocide of 1915-16, in which more than one million were killed.
I take this opportunity to, once again, show solidarity with the Armenian community in Quebec and Canada, a community of which the hon. member for Don Valley North is a member. I congratulate him on his excellent work on that issue.
Also, I rise in my place to denounce most vigorously the crimes committed by the Nazis against the Jews in the Second World War.
All present or future generations must remember the holocaust in which six million Jews were exterminated. In a few weeks, we will be commemorating the anniversary of the Holocaust. I will take part in the ceremonies marking that day and, on behalf of all Bloc Quebecois members, we will, once again, denounce the slaughter of European Jews during the Second World War.
I also take this opportunity to tell the Jewish community how much we appreciate their tremendous contribution to Canadian and Quebec society at every level, whether economic, political, cultural or social.
I hope that the international community will work relentlessly to ensure that no horrible crimes of the sort are ever committed again.