Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to speak today on behalf of the Bloc Quebecois to the motion by the hon. member for Scarborough—Agincourt on recognizing the Armenian genocide.
This motion allows the Bloc Quebecois to reiterate the position it has stated many times before in this House, which is that it should recognize the existence of the Armenian genocide and add its voice to those of other parliaments affirming this genocide.
The Bloc Quebecois in fact, through the voice of its member for Ahuntsic at the time, Michel Daviault, initiated a major debate on this issue in April 1996, when we devoted an entire opposition day to this matter and tried to convince the members of the House to accord such recognition.
My colleague, the member for Laval East, has since then, in both 1997 and 1998, drawn attention to this unfortunate anniversary of the genocide, which falls on April 24 each year. So, the members of this House and all interested individuals and groups will not be surprised that we in the Bloc Quebecois support Motion M-329.
We support it because it is part of a movement whose aim is not to rewrite history or revise it, as some claim or would claim, but to commemorate it. The great moments of history must be commemorated, but so must its darkest moments, and the Armenian genocide is one of the darkest moments in the history of humanity.
It must not be forgotten, and must not be obliterated from people's memory. This Parliament, like the National Assembly and the Ontario legislature, must write a page in history by giving recognition to the Armenian genocide. Parliament must take the route traced by other parliaments in the international community, the Russian Duma, the Israeli Knesset and more recently the French National Assembly and the Belgian senate as well as the supranational institution that is the European parliament.
It is a page of history the successors to the Ottoman Empire would like us to forget, which the Turkish ambassador to Ottawa presented to me in a different light. I listened to him. I read the documents and commentaries he provided me with, but I also read and reread the testimonies of Armenians about the genocide of which they say they were victims.
I spoke to Garine Hovsepian, who was one of my students in the past and is now studying law in the United States. She is of Armenian origin and has told me of the sufferings of a people which, like so many others, has had to disperse all over the world, reinvent itself, create a diaspora. That dispersion was not ended with the creation of an Armenian state in 1918, and its rebirth in 1991. This created a land for the Armenians, a place for them, but did not bring back the dead, it did not erase the memories of the massacres of children, women and men.
The memory of the massacre in which 2.5 million Armenians met horrible deaths between 1915 and 1923 continues to shock the conscience of humanity 84 years later. What continues to shock that conscience, as do the more recent atrocities committed in Cambodia, Rwanda, Bosnia or Kosovo, is the barbary of that massacre. It was described in one of the most eloquent and credible descriptions of the Armenian genocide by the allied powers in a statement made on July 17, 1920, which has been kept in the French national archives:
The Armenians were massacred in conditions of incredible barbarity. During the war, the Ottoman government's actions in terms of massacres, deportations and mistreatment to prisoners went far beyond anything it had ever done in these areas.
It is estimated that, since 1914, the Ottoman government has massacred, under the untenable pretence of a presumed revolt, 800,000 Armenian men, women and children, and deported more than 200,000 Greeks and 200,000 Armenians. The Turkish government has not only failed to protect its subjects of non-Turkish origin against looting, violence and murder, but a large body of evidence indicates that it also took a hand in organizing and carrying out the most ferocious attacks against communities which it was its duty to protect.
After hearing the hon. member for Brampton Centre, who often speaks on behalf of the Armenian community in the House, refer to the Der-zor River, a historic site for Armenians scattered around the world, as a place where bones and human remains lie under a mere six inches of sand, there is no choice but to demand that responsibility be taken a step further, by acknowledging this fact as others did, such as Germany following the Holocaust, making an act of contrition and taking whatever steps are necessary to ensure this is not devoid of any real meaning.
It is not for me to elaborate, because I realize the frustration of people, who wish this chapter in history had never been written, are not proud of what their ancestors did and the fact that their government denies these crimes were ever committed, and take refuge in silence, something they should not feel duty bound to do, no matter how strong their sense of solidarity is. However, it is my duty and it is the duty of the Bloc Quebecois to make a statement of principle that crimes of genocide and crimes against humanity must be recognized. This will heal the deep wounds, help the victims of genocide make their peace with those they hold in contempt and help those who, generation after generation, have been held in contempt to cast off the burden of history.
As an internationalist, I would be remiss if I failed to mention that the crime of genocide, as a concept, has long been accepted in international law. The Turkish government cannot hide behind that fact there was no word in the League of Nations terminology between 1919 and 1923 to describe it—the term was coined in 1944 by a Polish lawyer named Raphael Lemkin—to contend that the crime was not committed. Did one of the first resolutions passed by the United Nations General Assembly on December 11, 1946, not state that genocide was a crime under international common law and thus may have been committed even before it was decided to give it that name?
Furthermore, this is in no way altered by the 50th anniversary of the adoption of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, which we celebrated even more solemnly than that of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights on December 9, because it codifies the existence of a crime and provides the legal framework by which states agree to prevent and punish the crime of genocide.
A recorded division on this motion would show every member of the Bloc Quebecois in favour. They were hoping to be able to vote on a motion that government members had not watered down, the way they did in 1996, relegating the genocide of the Armenians to the status of a tragedy. They would not be afraid of offending the Turkish government, which must face up to history and prepare to enter the 21st century by recognizing the first genocide of the 20th century. For they know, as do the Turks and many other nations, that although the truth hurts, it also frees nations to grow, to mature, to be appreciated.
Nor are they afraid to say to the other countries of the world that the existence of nations, on whatever continent, must never be threatened, that nations and their cultures enrich humanity's common heritage. They will not be afraid to say that this is also a question of justice and freedom, about which Albert Camus wrote the following, “If humanity fails to reconcile justice and freedom, it has failed at everything that matters”.