Mr. Speaker, I will be splitting my time with the member for Lethbridge.
What is going on in the Caucasus today is of grave and deep concern. Just over a century after a horrific genocide, the Armenian genocide of 1915-16, the world still has not learned from the lessons of the past. Just over a century later, we are witnessing a major humanitarian crisis unfold in Nagorno-Karabakh, in the western part of Azerbaijan. Tens of thousands, if not over 120,000, civilians are being slowly starved to death in that corridor because of the blockage of that corridor.
The former chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, Luis Moreno Ocampo, wrote a report recently in which he said, “There is an ongoing Genocide against 120,000 Armenians living in Nagorno- Karabakh”. That should raise alarm bells for all of us here in Canada, with Canada being a signatory to the 1948 genocide convention. Many people think of a genocide as an active, physical slaughter of innocent civilians, but the 1948 genocide convention contains many other reasons for an event's constituting a genocide. It can mean taking away children from a particular group. It can mean destroying the means of life for a particular group, either in part or in whole. It does not necessarily require mass killing.
By blocking the Lachin corridor, the Government of Azerbaijan is putting at risk the lives of some 120,000 civilians in Nagorno-Karabakh. They are putting at risk those lives through starvation, a silent killer. Starvation, in many respects, as Mr. Ocampo has written, “is the invisible Genocide weapon. Without immediate dramatic change, this group of Armenians will be destroyed in a few weeks.” This was written several weeks ago and should be of great concern to us.
The International Court of Justice has ordered Azerbaijan to remove the blockade. Instead, Azerbaijan has established a checkpoint on the road and has begun blockading even humanitarian aid being delivered by the International Committee of the Red Cross. The BBC has reported that people have been fainting in the bread lines. Other witness accounts have shown that people are slowly starving to death. However, because of world events, this humanitarian crisis in the Caucasus has gotten little attention.
The reason for today's concurrence debate in the House is to draw to the attention of the world the fact that this humanitarian crisis is unfolding and needs to stop. We call on the Government of Azerbaijan to immediately reopen the corridor, not just to humanitarian aid but also to passenger traffic and commercial traffic. We call on both sides in this conflict, the representatives of the Government of Baku and representatives of the community in Stepanakert, to immediately meet to sort out an agreement on transportation that would allow the corridor and alternative supply routes to reopen to ensure that food, medicine and other goods could flow into the region to ensure that 120,000 people are not slowly starved to death.
I want to finish my speech by delivering a message to both communities involved in this long-standing conflict. Canada was once a country where sectarian violence ruled the politics of the day. It was not that long ago, in the 19th century, that various sectarian elements in our society put forward their sectarian interests and used violence to advance their political causes.
It was not that long ago, in the mid-19th century, that Protestants and Catholics would be at each other's throats in a violent way, never co-operating on anything and, instead, using violence to advance their means, using discrimination and other forms of non-democratic tools to get their way and achieve their political ends. Thankfully, through a lot of hard work, dialogue, constitutional change and discussions that took place over many decades, we were able to leave that terrible time behind.
So too with the linguistic divide that once existed in this country between anglophones and francophones, we ultimately resolved our differences through constitutional change and legislative changes that endure to this day. It has not always been perfect, as we see with the continued debates on language that take place here and at the provincial level.
Nevertheless, we have achieved a remarkable degree of social peace and cohesion in this country by moving beyond these sectarian and linguistic divides toward a Canada where people can achieve the good life and a resolution to their differences through democratic dialogue and not through the end of a sword. Such, I hope, will be the ultimate result for the peoples living in the South Caucasus in that part of the world. Such, I hope, will be the end result for Armenians living in Azerbaijan and Azerbaijanis living throughout the region.
We call on the Government of Canada to be more categoric and clear with the international community on the need for Azerbaijan to lift the blockade to allow the free movement of goods, of people and of humanitarian aid. We call on the government to be more clear in calling on both parties, those in Stepanakert and those in Baku, to come together to iron out an agreement to allow the free movement of goods, people and humanitarian aid. We do that with a sense of urgency, because while this conflict has been going on for some time, it has become especially more urgent since Azerbaijan concluded its hostilities against Armenia a couple of years ago. I hope that in this time of conflict in Ukraine and other parts of the world, the world will not turn a blind eye a mere 107 years after another genocide took place in that part of the world.
For all those reasons, I call on the Government of Canada to use its diplomatic resources, to use its influence here and abroad, to deliver a clear message to the Government of Azerbaijan that this blockade of the Lachin corridor is completely unacceptable and that it is leading, in effect, to an ethnic cleansing through the means of a silent killer: starvation.