Mr. Speaker, that does clarify what I will be doing at the end of my presentation.
I will use a couple of examples. I will use recent ones familiar to the House. Those still speak to the motion of the Armenian question.
When we look at the former Yugoslavia, I know members do not need a history lesson on some of the problems. However, there are a few facts we need to outline as to exactly what happened.
It is fair to say, hopefully in an unbiased evaluation of the situation, that there is no side right or wrong. There are lots of wrongs but it is a matter of not being able to pick the good guy from the bad guy. That is a big problem in today's post-cold war situation in which we find ourselves.
It is often easier for people of the world community to sit idle while these wrongs are occurring. I have mentioned that the media plays a major role in promoting and sometimes in formulating ideas within our community which are incorrect.
We must also recognize in the former Yugoslavia that this is a civil war. It is not like the gulf war. Civil wars are different from where we have an aggressor attacking another country. In looking at the facts we must always recognize that. We must look at the external forces which come into play when such acts of genocide occur. We must also always understand history and look back however far we have to to understand the nature of the problem.
If we look at the former Yugoslavian problem we need to go back at least 1300 years and even back to Greek and Roman times.
We can go through the 6th century and the Slavic tribes as they worked through that area. We can look at the effect of Rome and Constantinople, the Catholic and Orthodox church in the 10th century. We can go through the Islamic expansion of the 14th century. Very clearly we start to see the effects of not only the people but of external forces coming into play.
We have to also recognize the way governments rule. The Muslim rule of the 15th century was pretty grim stuff. The Turkish empire and the way it handled things was a pretty rugged way of running a government by our standards.
As we move to more modern times we see the influence of the Treaty of Berlin of 1878. We look at the alliances that occurred up to the end of the first world war. Then we look at what happened during the mid-war period and then on to the second world war and the alliances there. In Hitler's alliances with Croatia, 400,000 Serbians living in Croatia were massacred because of outside forces. They were massacred for all kinds of reasons.
Then we come to Tito's time. Tito ruled Yugoslavia with an iron hand from 1945 until 1980 when he died. There are six republics and we must understand the history of those republics and why they lived in so-called peace.
From there in 1991 when the Croats and Slovenians declared independence, I guess not unlike Quebec's declaring independence from Canada, we can see the terrific pull that would have on the people of that country.
The point is that no matter what history tells us and no matter what politics tells us, genocide is not acceptable under any conditions. Countries and the peoples of the world must find a way to deal with their problems, but not to those kinds of extremes. That has to come loud and clear from countries like ours. It has to come loud and clear from the UN. The UN desperately needs to be modernized and become efficient so it can respond to these issues.
If there is one thing we can blame ourselves and the world community for it is the inability, the lack of desire, or whatever the reason, to modernize a 50-year old organization that can today not deal with its problems because it is top heavy, bureaucratic, under funded, inefficient, and so on. We must deal with that problem. That is our problem. It will lead to future genocide in other countries if we do not have a UN that can respond effectively, efficiently and quickly. We are all concerned and desire that. We have to have a plan. We have to do something about it. We as parliamentarians must demand that we take that leadership role as Canadians.
I move on to Rwanda. I know members across have heard my speech on Rwanda before. I do not intend to repeat all of that but I do think it demonstrates something that was very graphic to everyone. The genocide that occurred in Rwanda was unbelievable. It is certainly in all of our minds. We saw it because of CNN.
In 1985 I was on an Air France 747 with 20 people. We landed in Kigali, the capital of Rwanda. My wife and I got off the plane. The rest said "good luck". I did not really know what they were talking about, but it seemed like we had landed in the jungle, and the plane left. Then we had armed guards around us and we went through the immigration procedure and had all of our medical certificates and documents in order.
As we moved away from the airport we moved into gorgeous countryside that is very similar to what we might see in Belgium.
As I only have two minutes left I would like to move a subamendment. I move:
That the amendment be amended by inserting after the word "tragedy" the following: "of genocide."
It would then read the "tragedy of genocide."
As we went through that countryside we saw the markets. We spent close to a month in that country. We were out in the villages, we were travelling with a local Rwandan gentleman who
introduced us to his parents and his relatives. In the markets we saw the salt and the utensils. We saw the barter system. Some people walked 20 and 30 miles to get to the market.
We went to the tea plantations developed by China. We saw the hotels and some of the infrastructure that the Belgians and the French had built. As we got more and more involved in that country we saw some warnings. The NGOs told us there was unrest. The church said there was unrest. The French troops said there was unrest. The United Nations said there was unrest.
I cannot help now thinking, was that what it was like in the period from 1930 when the people knew that something was wrong in Germany?
Obviously genocide is something about which we must all speak. It must be done through the UN, through this Parliament. It is a motherhood topic for all of us.