Mr. Speaker, it gives me pleasure to rise today to speak to the motion presented by the member for Ahuntsic with regard to the commemoration of the Armenian genocide.
The member for Ahuntsic should remember that my colleague from Don Valley North introduced a private member's motion, Motion No. 282, on April 3, 1995. That motion, on which incidentally the member opposite spoke in favour, was a motion which called for the designation of the week of April 20 to 27 each year to commemorate the issue of man's inhumanity to his fellow man.
In speaking to that motion, which read:
That, in the opinion of this House, the government should designate the period from April 20 to 27 of each year as the week in which we commemorate the issue of man's inhumanity to his fellow man, to remind Canadians that the use of genocide and violence as an instrument of national policy by any nation or group at any time is a crime against all mankind which must be condemned and not forgotten.
I have deliberately chosen to speak to this issue of man's inhumanity to his fellow man during the week that we remember the tragedy of the Armenian genocide for one main purpose. During the years that followed, it was very difficult for many people of Armenian background to accept the genocide caused by the Turkish army and to understand why victims were whipped, clubbed and refused water as they passed by streams and wells. These were men, women and children. The victims were lashed when they lagged behind.
Telegrams to provincial capitals captured by the British army and reports by witnesses like Henry Morgenthau, the American ambassador to Turkey, provide evidence that the extermination of the Armenians was planned and organized by the central government.
The significance of this week in relation to man's inhumanity to man does not, however, end with the commemoration of the slaughter of the 1.5 million Armenians at the hands of the Turkish authorities. April 20 to 27 was chosen because April 19 and 20, 1939 was the beginning of the holocaust committed by the Nazis against the Jewish population. April 27 was the end of the apartheid regime of South Africa which gave the South African population the right to vote, one person, one vote.
Throughout history there are terrible examples of man's inhumanity to man. There was the holocaust which included the extermination of six million Jews in various concentration camps all over Europe. The Nazis were also responsible for the death of over one million gypsies, homosexuals and other minority groups deemed unacceptable by Hitler's Third Reich. The holocaust was a denial of God and of man. It was a destruction of the world in a miniature form.
Hitler, and those he appointed to his imaginary government, regarded the Jewish people as a political problem and its so-called solution as a political necessity that had to be addressed in Germany's foreign and domestic policy. The Nazis used mass terror, forced labour, starvation, forced immigration, deportation and other forms of oppression to achieve their end goal, the destruction and annihilation of the Jewish people.
In 1975 after a five-year civil war, the communist Khmer Rouge gained victory and power in Cambodia. They evacuated all of the cities, including Phnom Penh, the capital whose population had swollen with almost three million refugees. All were brutally driven from the city and some were killed immediately.
Whomever Pol Pot and his small group of communist leaders regarded as potential enemies of the ideal state they wanted to build were executed. Those killed included officers of the army, government officials, intellectuals, educated and professional people such as doctors and teachers.
Communists who became victims of infighting were often interrogated before being killed. The killings varied according to regions; meaning more were killed in certain areas and during different times. The killing became more rampant just before the end of the Khmer Rouge rule in 1979.
Rwanda is another recent example of one group pitted against another, where the world's complacency allowed the slaughter of hundreds of thousands. The genocide of Rwanda began in April 1994. It was preceded by a war launched in October 1990 by the Tutsi guerrillas of the Rwanda Patriot Front against the Hutu led government.
Before this, Rwanda was already one of the poorest nations in Africa. The war's origins go back to a wave of violence from 1959 to 1966, when the Hutu overthrew the Tutsi monarchy which had ruled for centuries. About 20,000 to 100,000 Tutsi were killed in a slaughter that the British philosopher, Bertrand Russell, described as the "most horrible and systematic massacre we have had occasion to witness since the extermination of the Jews by the Nazis". The violence caused about 150,000 Tutsi exiles to flee to Uganda, Burundi, Tanzania and Zaire.
The recent fighting in September 1994 had begun after Rwandan president, Juvenal Habyarimana, was killed in a mysterious plane crash in April. At least 500,000 were estimated to have been killed in the massacres which has prompted a UN investigation into the charges of genocide.
The list of horrors continues with the mass deportations and the so-called ethnic cleansing that the world witnessed in the former Yugoslavia. Only now are the independent observers free to investigate. The situation is tragic now that the extent of the mass executions are coming to light.
How can we pretend to live in a civilized world when decade after decade we witness such terrible crimes? We must condemn these crimes of the past, of the present and of the future. We must do so by recognizing the Armenian genocide for what it was, not allow revisionists to rewrite history along with that of many of the other atrocities that have occurred in the world.
Canada is a tolerant nation. Over half of its population are Canadians of other origins. I believe that we live in a very tolerant society where we respect each other and we respect the rule of law. I believe that we must do something and encourage the UN to implement an all-encompassing, international instruments which codify crimes against humanity. Whenever some crime against humanity occurs it not only affects the people directly involved but also affects all of us no matter where we live.
I hope that somehow around the world we are able to encourage peace between nations in a swift manner.