Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise in debate on this motion because history does matter and as we know those who do not learn from the lessons of history are bound to repeat them.
Unfortunately, that is the sad history of the 20th century, what Pope John Paul II has called the century of tears. It was a century when ideologies of nationalism and totalitarianism, ideologies of hatred, conjoined with the technology of mass killing, brought about genocides through the last century which resulted in unimaginable human suffering. The first instance of which was the Armenian genocide of 1915.
I spoke last year in favour of a similar motion and outlined the historical record regarding the Armenian genocide, which I believe is largely beyond any serious historical question. There are those unfortunately, from the Turkish community and the Turkish government, who claim that what happened in 1915 and 1916 was the tragic result of the fog of war, the chaos of the first war in the Anatolian peninsula, that tragedies happened on both sides and that there were moral equivalents all around.
However this just does not square with the facts. It is unfortunate. One thing I would like to disassociate myself from the member for Burnaby--Douglas is that I believe the Turkish people and the Turkish government today are striving mightily to adopt standards of human rights and democracy which we ought to applaud and support. I strongly support our Turkish friends as an ally within NATO, defending our common values. To point out the reality of the genocide of 1915 is not in any way to diminish our contemporary friendship with the people of Turkey, Turkish immigrants to Canada and the Turkish state.
Rather than going back and quoting historical sources, about which there is unfortunately endless debate, I have chosen instead to spend a few minutes quoting from contemporary Canadian media at the time of the Armenian genocide. I want to put ourselves in the minds of people who sat in this House 85 years ago as this tragedy occurred. I want us to imagine how we might respond if we were faced with the kinds of headlines that I will present tonight. I will be quoting directly from not redactions but from actual photocopies of newspaper articles from the major Canadian media based on firsthand, eye witness, confirmed, verified accounts by western media outlets operating in and around Turkey in 1915 and 1916. This is a random selection which gives us a true sense of the historical flavour, not the opinion of historians, not the opinion of Armenian apologists, not the opinion of myself, but the actual historical record as presented to Canadians in Armenia at the time.
From Le Droit , July 19, 1915, “Chrétiens massacrés”, is a story about the massacre of Christians. In August 4, 1915, “Le Massacre des Arméniens” is another story detailing the beginning of the genocide. September 1915, from L'Action Catholique , “Le Massacre des Arméniens”. It states:
Horrible scenes of carnage are taking place in inland Turkey. Help has been sought from the Greeks. The Turks have started systematically exterminating the Armenians again, throughout their Empire. Reports of horrific scenes of carnage have reached us. Women have been raped or sold as slaves, men have been slaughtered. La Presse of Montreal, on September 21, 1915, reported as follows:
Massacre of 100,000 Armenians. The convention of the Swiss Protestant Church, currently in session here in Nuptal, has decided to send United States President Wilson a telegram asking him to intervene to protect the Armenians against the Turks. Armenian refugees in Switzerland estimate that 100,000 of their fellow citizens have already been massacred. Le Canada , on September 22, 1915, under the heading “Unspeakable Atrocities”, reported the following:
Viscount Bryce, a former British ambassador, spoke of the vile acts committed by the Turkish government to exterminate Armenian Christians. Men of military age have been slaughtered in cold blood. Younger Armenian women are being abducted and taken to Turkish harems. The reminder of the population, older women and children, are taken to places unfit for humans in Asia Minor, and others to the desert between Syria and the Euphrates River. Many are killed along the way; and all die sooner or later. Le Devoir , in October 1915, under the heading “Armenians Massacred”, said:
Viscount Bryce estimates that some 800,000 were killed in Armenia. This is deliberate and premeditated extermination by the Turkish government. L'Événement , in October 1915, stated:
The Turks are wiping out the Armenians.
I will switch to some of the English clippings from that time. The Vancouver Daily Province , of February 23, 1915, said, “Done to death by the Turks. Hundreds of Armenians were massacred in Trans-Caucasia. Corpses left in the streets for dogs to devour”.
The Toronto Daily Star of April 26, 1915, stated, “Terrible tails of Armenian slaughter. Ten villages wiped out in massacres by Mohammedans. Pools of blood seen. Mothers threw their babes in river to save them from death by hunger”.
The Ottawa Evening Journal of July 1915 stated, “Turks drag 10,000 Armenian Christians to Tigras, shoot all and throw bodies into river”.
The Winnipeg Free Press of August 20, 1915, stated, “Massacre by Turks. Frightful outrage is perpetrated upon Armenians in Biblis”. It talked about 1,000 women and children being slain. The Globe , the predecessor to the Globe and Mail on August 26, 1915, stated, “Turks slay 14,000 in one massacre. Blackest page in Ottoman history revealed by former Italian consul who said, “The results of the proclamation was carnage on a big and bloody scale. Out of 14,000 Armenian Catholics and Protestants residing in Trezibond, only 100 escaped”.
It goes on and on. The Montreal Daily Star of September 1915 stated, “Correspondents confirm the reports of the wiping out of Armenians. Christian cities cease to exist as such and inhabitants are driven far from home”.
The Globe on September 24, 1915, stated, “Armenian men are systematically murdered. Extermination, the watchword”.
The London Evening Free Press , on September 23, 1915, stated, “A slaughter of Armenians is growing worse”.
The Toronto Daily Star on September 30, 1915, stated, “Nothing in the whole range of human history, ancient, medieval or modern, will begin to compare with the systematic, diabolism of the process of extermination to which the Armenians are at present subjected--the sudden destruction of a whole people in the name and by the methods of ordinary civil war would be bad enough, but the method used by the Turks to get rid of Armenians is immeasurably worse”.
The Ottawa Evening Telegraph on Tuesday, October 5, 1915, stated, “Not since the dark middle ages a thousand years ago have such barbarous practices been witnessed. The crimes now being perpetrated upon the Armenian people surpass in their horror and cruelty anything that history has recorded during the past 1,000 years. The educated and the ignorant, the rich and the poor are all being subjected to every form of barbarity and outrage”.
The stories go on about people being burned or skinned alive, parents watching their children being dismembered and disembowelled. This is not a question of historical debate. These are contemporary, verified firsthand accounts which appeared in the Canadian media.
When people ask why then should the House take a position on historical debate, it is precisely because history matters. Let me close by quoting from our esteemed colleague for Mount Royal.
He wrote, “The Armenian genocide provides us with two important and enduring lessons. First, the danger of crimes of indifference, of conspiracies of silence. Indeed, we have witnessed an appalling indifference to ethnic cleansing in the early part of the century, the unbearable genocides of the past 50 years to the unspeakable genocide of Rwanda.
It is our responsibility, then, to break down the walls of indifference, to shatter the conspiracies of silence wherever they may be. In the case of the Armenian genocide the indifference not only existed at the time but since, and so Hitler's famous dictum, itself a commentary on the dangers of indifference and silence. As Hitler arrogantly put it, who remembers the Armenians?
Is that the indifference to memory as well as to the killing itself that paves the way for the next killing fields?”
We all at this time and in this place of history, remember the Armenians. Let us do so by passing this resolution.