Armenian, Greek and Assyrian Genocide

The Hon. A. KOUTSANTONIS (West Torrens) (15:30): Today, I rise to talk about the genocide of Greeks, Assyrians and Armenians in Asia Minor. This has caused controversy among some sections of the Australian community by those who ask, 'Why talk of past murders, past genocides, past trials that affect people who are currently not living in Australia?'

The reason I think it is important that we raise awareness about the Armenian, Greek and Assyrian genocides is the same reason that in a speech to his generals in 1939 Hitler argued for 'lebensraum'—that is, breathing space for the German people to be as brutal as possible and to cleanse those eastern regions of populations—because, after all, who still speaks of the Armenian slaughter? His rationale was to be as brutal as possible because no-one talks of the Armenians anymore. If we do not speak out today, what happened 100 years ago in Asia Minor can occur again. Nationalist tensions are rising again.

Reports of what occurred in Asia Minor—in Anatolia, between the Black Sea heading south—are horrific. Over a million Greek Christians were murdered, over 1½ million Armenians were murdered and 500,000 Assyrians were murdered. It was wholesale slaughter of the Christian population of Asia Minor and desecration of Christian places of worship. People were sold into slavery, people were sold into brothels and people were murdered, they were raped and they were tortured. It was called the 'Turkification of the peninsula'.

It is one of the most brutal chapters of world history. It is one of the most brutal chapters that any foreign correspondent or ambassador has witnessed. President Woodrow Wilson at the time said, and I quote:

I am in hearty sympathy with every just effort being made by the people of the United States to alleviate the terrible sufferings of the Greeks of Asia Minor. None have suffered more or more unjustly than they.

His ambassador to the Ottoman Empire at the time, Mr Morgenthau, was so moved by what he saw in Asia Minor that he wrote a book in which he talked at length about the atrocities he witnessed firsthand. He was appalled that this was occurring in what he thought was a civilised time, a time when modern nations settled their differences through battle, through organised military structures or through diplomacy, but the targeting of civilian populations in this way was, quite frankly, unprecedented in an organised way. In his memoir published in 1981, he states:

Will the outrageous terrorising, the cruel torturing, the driving of women into the harems, the debauchery of innocent girls, the sale of many of them at eighty cents each, the murdering of hundreds of thousands and the deportation to, and starvation in, the deserts of other hundreds of thousands, the destruction of hundreds of villages and cities, will the wilful execution of this whole devilish scheme to annihilate the Armenian, Greek and Syrian Christians of Turkey—will all this go unpunished?

I can go on and read quote after quote about the atrocities that occurred. The atrocities that occurred still reverberate today in communities in Canada, in Australia, in Great Britain and all around the world wherever Armenian, Syrian, Lebanese and Greek populations reside.

My mother-in-law's family were refugees from Asia Minor who fled to the island of Lesvos at the exchange of populations; therefore, my children are descendants of those of Asia Minor who fled. It always moves me when I go to the Pontian Brotherhood and hear the songs and see the costumes of communities against whom an organised plan of extermination was perpetuated to try to extinguish their culture, yet we are still here. The day of 19 May will be remembered as a day of mourning for all those who suffered at the brutal and murderous hands of the Turkish occupiers.