Madam Speaker, I would like to start by congratulating the representatives of the Armenian community and all the Armenian Canadians with whom I have had the pleasure to work for years and whom I am pleased to represent today in the House of Commons, at least in part.
I would also like to congratulate my colleague for Don Valley North, who is a member of this community and of the Liberal government, for his continuous and exceptional work on this issue. Like him, I deplore the fact that a Bloc member has played on the feelings of a community by announcing the tabling of this motion before it was brought forward in the House.
The 20th century has seen two world wars and numerous historical conflicts. In spite of this, crimes against humanity are not a thing of the past but continue to be daily occurrences in too many countries, countries which routinely practice torture, slavery, and the massive deportation of their civilian population. Everyday, we are witnessing the persecution of minorities on the basis of their opinion, race or religion.
To this day, these unacceptable acts of inhumanity continue despite the fact that the Geneva convention condemns such actions. Even though the international community has admitted that these acts should not be practised, we are still a long way from achieving this goal.
The Nuremberg war crimes tribunal for the first time tried those guilty of committing crimes against humanity. These crimes were
defined in article 6 of the London charter and included murder, extermination, enslavement, deportation and other inhumane acts committed against any civilian population before or during the war, or persecution on political, racial and religious grounds.
While not all the criminals have been tried, the international community recognizes the holocaust and commemorates it every year so that everyone around the world will remember this tragedy to ensure that it will never occur again. Regardless of this, we still live in a world where ethnic cleansing is practised, the most recent example being the horrors that were committed in the former Yugoslavia.
Can we continue to be an active member of the international community and allow these atrocities to continue? I think not. However, we must first be able to internationally acknowledge that atrocities against humanity are unacceptable.
The Armenian genocide which took place during the first world war is perhaps the most vivid example of genocide as an instrument of national policy by the Ottoman Turks. What makes the Armenian genocide such a particular example is that unlike the genocide of the Jewish people which took place during the second world war, the international community did not try the war criminals or even formally acknowledge that this massacre took place.
Why, people may ask, is it so important to recognize an event that occurred over 80 years ago? We must always remember that those who disregard history are condemned to repeat it. Just think if the international community had reacted to this as it should have at the time. Would the atrocities of the second world war ever have taken place? Perhaps not.
There is nothing we can do to bring back these victims or to change the past, but there is a need to designate a week of the year, as my colleague from Don Valley proposed last April, as a week of remembrance of the inhumanity of people toward one another to ensure that future generations do not forget these tragic events and more important, do not repeat them.
While the European community and several other countries such as Italy, France, Israel and most recently Russia have passed parliamentary decrees formally recognizing this event, the international community as a whole has not taken the steps necessary to condemn these horrible acts of inhumanity.
I repeat, our government has recognized this tragic incident that saw 1.5 million people brutally executed by the Ottoman Turks who sought to ethnically cleanse their land of foreigners. We understand the suffering that this brought and the need for the Armenian community to have this tragedy recognized by all members of the international community. That is why we are supporting a week to commemorate crimes against humanity.
As representatives of a country recognized for its support of human rights, we know that Canadians condemn the practice of genocide and the use of violence as an instrument of power. Failure to acknowledge that such actions took place would amount to supporting their use as an instrument of national policy.
The sad reality is that news reports are still dominated by the horrors resulting from a lack of respect for human rights.
While these atrocities are some examples of crimes committed against humanity, there are unfortunately many others, both past and present. Some are well known; others, such as the Asia Minor catastrophe of 1922, are not so well known.
At the end of the first world war, close to two million Greeks were living in a region of Asia Minor on the west coast of modern Turkey. Greeks had been living in that region for over 3,000 years. In 1922, these people, like the Armenians and other Turkish minorities, were the victims of the first ethnic cleansing operation of the 20th century.
During that tragic summer, 600,000 Greeks from Asia Minor were killed by the forces of Mustafa Kemal, the father of modern Turkey. One and a half million people were also forced to leave their ancestral homes and ended up in Greece as refugees. These operations were neither sporadic nor spontaneous, but rather in line with the new Turkish state's cold and calculated ethnic cleansing policy. During this series of well-organized massacres, the government also burned down churches, schools, even cities and towns with Greek ties.
Although foreign diplomats and correspondents, as well as thousands of people from all kinds of backgrounds, witnessed these atrocities, the international community did nothing to condemn them.
Although the United States, Britain, France and Italy had ships and troops stationed on the coast of Asia Minor, they refused to intervene. The failure of these countries to condemn the actions of the Turkish government at that time encouraged other states to practise genocide as a government policy.
Unchecked aggression only leads to further acts of barbarism and genocide. In the last four years alone we have witnessed the
cataclysm that has befallen the former Yugoslavia. All the warring factions are guilty of mass killings, ethnic cleansing and cultural genocide in varying degrees. The war crimes tribunal of which Canada is a representative as one of the judges is presently examining the evidence before it. It will no doubt bring out the sad and tragic reality of what took place in the former Yugoslavia.
The cycle of violence has not stopped. We only need to look to the mass murders that have taken place in Somalia, Rwanda and Cambodia to confirm that fact. In all these examples the killing, destruction and forcible movement of populations have been acts of deliberate policy and not random excesses of rebels or uncontrolled government forces. Many governments have shut their eyes and not acknowledged that these atrocities took place.
By recognizing these historic events as crimes against humanity, we affirm that such crimes, both past and present, cannot be tolerated. As members of Parliament, we must urge the international community to redouble its efforts to prevent crimes against humanity.
Canada will continue to take a leadership role on the world stage to promote peace among the members of the international community. We have no lessons to be learned from the official opposition. As we all know, its mandate is to break up this country which is so respected on an international level. Our reputation for the respect and promotion of human rights precedes us and can no doubt help us to achieve this goal.
What I am about to say may be taken as partisan but we have no lessons to be learned from the opposition. As my colleague from Don Valley said, talk is cheap. The opposition can present a motion, it can say anything it wants, but its words do not have the same consequences.
A government like ours which has shown it is a responsible government at all levels acts responsibly. There are legal and international consequences for words as well as for actions. We have no lessons to learn from the hon. members on the other side of the House. During the recent referendum in Quebec we know what high regard they had for the ethnic communities there. I have lived in Quebec, I was raised in Quebec, I have spent many years fighting many of the words of discrimination and racism that exist in that society. We have no lessons to be learned.
