Mr. Speaker, what we have heard is part of the problem we have in the House where there is a play on words and we do not say what we mean. On a number of occasions I have had cause to lament that sort of thing and be upset by it. Obviously, we are all opposed to genocide and the planned killing of people by their own governments or by other governments. We must make a clear statement to all humanity.
It is with pleasure that I speak to the motion which condemns genocide as an instrument of national policy. While there are few problems with the wording of the proposed amendment, I am going to suggest at least one subamendment at the end of my presentation.
As the foreign affairs critic for the Reform Party, I am pleased to say that I will be supporting the motion with the amendments. It is important that we clearly let the world know what we think of these acts.
When we received the motion yesterday, it was difficult to decide how to approach it. In many respects it is a motherhood issue. We are all opposed to genocide. This morning I intend to try and develop my and my party's approach to the subject and try to put a little more humanity and understanding into it.
Genocide strikes at the very root of humanity. It is the sort of thing that causes us to shudder no matter where in the world it takes place. When a government or a group attempts to obliterate a people through violent means to achieve their own selfish political goals, all humanity is diminished and suffers because of it.
Those who have committed genocide often attempt to blame the victims or deny reality, but the truth must be remembered. To honour the memory of the victims we must remind our children of
what happened. We must not let these memories die. Hopefully they will prevent future atrocities.
It is a cliche, but a true one when we say those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it. This truth has haunted us in the House of Commons over the past couple of years as we have watched in horror as hundreds of thousands of people, if not millions, have been slaughtered in places like Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia.
The saddest thing about these recent genocides is that historians 100 years from now will probably see them as only two of a long series of genocides stretching throughout the century. The ultimate horror is that there have been so many mass slaughters this century it is tough to keep track of them. The future does not bode well for stopping them, even though we say this must be the last.
There is the Armenian genocide that this motion speaks to. We have the Jewish Holocaust. We have Stalin's purges. We have the Chinese situation in Nanking. We have mass murder in East Timor, the disappearance in Central and South America of many people, tribal slaughter in Burundi, government sponsored famine in Ethiopia, and the list goes on and on. As I said at the beginning, it touches all of us as human beings living on this planet.
Each one of these represents a human disaster of epic proportions, but all have been reduced to historical footnotes because there are so many. That is why I believe the House should vote in favour of the motion, which serves to remind us and helps us to keep a vigilance; a vigilance that we cannot forget history.
The motion does not cost anything, but it is a powerful show that the House is not indifferent to genocide. It shows that members in this place prefer to speak out rather than perpetually sit in an uncomfortable silence waiting for the next disaster.
A few members today have presentations which will deal specifically with the genocide of the Armenians during the early years of this century. I would like to support those members but I must tell them I do not know a lot about Armenian history and I will leave it to my colleagues to talk about it in their presentations. I will deal with several other issues that relate to genocide with which I am more familiar.
Obviously we could go back to World War II and the Jewish Holocaust. It is amazing that some people deny this happened. Obviously it did happen. It should have been a valuable lesson in history, but unfortunately it was not. The Jews in Europe had suffered for centuries from prejudices and intolerance, but the rise of Hitler brought the hatred of Jews to a whole new level.
Under the Nazis the Jews became the scapegoat for all the ills of society. Hatred became a unifying force and the Jews were systematically dehumanised by Nazi propaganda to such a degree that their mass murder went from being an outrageous idea to the final solution to Germany's problems.
The use of propaganda and the media to dehumanise and discredit people who were subsequently massacred is unfortunately a tradition that has stood the test of time. Therefore this is the first lesson we must learn. We might call it the CNN factor. The use of television, the use of communication today is an important part of ploys used by many terrorist groups. Last week we had an example of that. We must be conscious of it. We must remember the media can be used to promote hate and that it must be monitored in Canada and throughout the world.
We must have set standards in the international community so that we see both sides of the story, not simply the side the CNN reporter wants us to see. We must not let the media be manipulated by various powers. I am sure some terrorist groups have a training program which involves the use of the media. We must be conscious of that and vigilant that we get both sides.
Another lesson we learned from the Jewish Holocaust is the indifference of the international community. As Europe's Jews desperately tried to escape they found many countries would not accept them. Not only that, the international community appeased Germany and continually caved in to its increasingly outrageous policies. This gave the perception of silent approval of Germany's actions, a perception that proved fatal to over six million Jews.
Clearly the international community can never again sit by in stunned silence while such outrages occur. We must be vigilant, speak out and take firm action when the need arises.
I will now talk about a couple of recent examples of genocide. I will start with the former Yugoslavia and then I will talk a bit about Rwanda and conclude with an overall approach to genocide itself.