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Legislative Council - Fifty-First Parliament, Third Session (51-3)
2009-03-25 Daily Xml
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ARMENIAN-AUSTRALIAN COMMUNITY

Adjourned debate on motion of Hon. D.W. Ridgway:

That this council recognises that the Armenian genocide is one of the greatest crimes against humanity and—

1. joins the members of the Armenian-Australian community in honouring the memory of the innocent men, women and children who fell victim to this genocide;

2. condemns the genocide of the Armenians and all other acts of genocide as the ultimate act of racial, religious and cultural intolerance;

3. recognises the importance of remembering and learning from such dark chapters in human history to ensure that such crimes against humanity are not allowed to be repeated;

4. acknowledges the significant humanitarian contribution made by the people of South Australia to the victims and survivors of the Armenian genocide; and

5. calls on the commonwealth government to officially condemn the genocide of the Armenians.

(Continued from 4 March 2009. Page 1502.)

The Hon. B.V. FINNIGAN (16:07): I thank the council for its indulgence in allowing me to bring forward this matter. I rise to support the motion to recognise and commemorate the Armenian genocide, and I commend the Leader of the Opposition for moving this motion. The reason I wanted to deal with it straight away was that we have representatives with us here today from the Armenian National Committee of Australia, and I acknowledge Mr Vick Kalloghlian, Mr Vache Kahramanian from the Armenian Cultural Association of South Australia and Mr Gevik Abedian, the President of that organisation. I do apologise if I mangled the pronunciation of their names.

I commence my contribution with the words of a great orator and wartime leader, who wrote:

In 1915 the Turkish Government began and ruthlessly carried out the infamous general massacre and deportation of Armenians in Asia Minor...the clearance of the race from Asia Minor was about as complete as such an act, on a scale so great, could well be. ...There is no reasonable doubt that this crime was planned and executed for political reasons. The opportunity presented itself for clearing Turkish soil of a Christian race opposed to all Turkish ambitions, cherishing national ambitions that could only be satisfied at the expense of Turkey, and planted geographically between Turkish and Caucasian Moslems. It may well be that the British attack on the Gallipoli Peninsula stimulated the merciless fury of the Turkish Government.

The author of those words was Winston Churchill, in the volume The World Crisis, Volume 5, published in 1929 by Scribner's Sons.

The Armenian genocide started on 24 April 1915, the eve of the landing of Australian and New Zealand troops at Gallipoli Cove. The genocide, often called the first of the 20th century and the event in connection with which the word 'genocide' was used for one of the first times, was centrally planned and administered by the Turkish government against the entire Armenian and Pontian Greek, Assyrian and other Christian populations of the Ottoman Empire.

It took place between 1915 and 1918 and then from 1920 to 1923. This horrendous act fits the definition of genocide, as it was the intentional attempt to exterminate all members of a certain race, nationality or ethnic group. It is estimated that 1.5 million Armenians perished between 1915 and 1923. The Ottoman parliament passed a law in May 1915 known as the Tehcir law 'for regulation for the settlement of Armenians relocated to other places because of war conditions and emergency political requirements'. By 1923 the entire land mass of Asia Minor and historic West Armenia had been expunged of its Armenian population.

Most Armenian political, religious and cultural leaders were arrested and murdered, beginning with the events of 24 April 1915. Many people were killed in their towns and villages or on death marches towards camps in the Syrian desert. Those Armenian males not executed were conscripted into the Ottoman army, disarmed and put in special labour battalions. Most were either worked to death or killed when they outlived their usefulness. The remaining population of elderly people, women and children, were rounded up by death squads and either forcibly converted to Islam or raped or massacred. Most of the survivors were deported from their ancestral lands and exiled around the world.

The horrors did not end there. The very existence of the former Armenian population in Turkey was denied, maps and histories were rewritten, and churches, schools and cultural monuments were desecrated and misnamed. Small children, who had been snatched from their parents, were renamed and farmed out to be raised as Turks.

Some people might question the relevance today of events that happened a long time ago. It is important to remember that in today's modern Republic of Turkey it is an offence under section 306 of the Turkish penal code, punishable by up to 10 years' imprisonment, to affirm the Armenian genocide.

While the genocide was being carried out, almost all major powers condemned the Ottoman government's campaign of executions, yet it continued unchecked. At Versailles—at the end of the First World War—the United States, Britain and France could have forced the Turkish government to make restitution to the Armenian people for their immense material and human losses, but nothing was done.

Unfortunately, there have been many other acts of genocide in the world since the Armenian genocide, and it is still happening in some countries. In particular, I refer to the horrific treatment of the Pontian people. For the Pontian Greeks, all ended in tragedy in the years between 1914 and 1922. Of the 700,000 Greeks living in Pontus in 1914, some 300,000 were killed as a result of Turkish government policy and the remainder became refugees.

Three millennia of the Greek presence were wiped out by a deliberate policy of creating a Turkey for the Turks. The Pontian people were denied the right to exist, the right of respect for their national and cultural identity, and the right to remain on land they had lived on for countless generations. Like the Armenians, the Pontians are a distinct people with their own dialect, culture and traditions.

There have been many large scale massacres based on race or religion on almost every continent, including the Jewish Holocaust, the Balkans, the Hungarian minority in Romania, the hill tribes of South East Asia, Guatemala and Haiti and, of course, in almost every part of Africa.

Australia and South Australia are populated with significant communities of refugees who have suffered from so-called ethnic cleansing—and still they come to seek a better life here. In recent years we have received several thousand humanitarian refugees from the former Yugoslavia, Africa and the Middle East.

Besides the obvious cause of recognising the monstrous genocide of the Armenian people during and after the First World War, I believe that this parliament should support this motion to honour the Armenian community that today exists in Australia and South Australia. Although from the 2006 census about 16,000 Australians claim Armenian ancestry, the actual number of Armenians in Australia is estimated to be 50,000. The community is made up of Armenians hailing from not only Armenia but also 43 other countries, including Egypt, Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Israel, Turkey and India.

Here in South Australia more than 200 people identified themselves in the 2006 census as being of Armenian ancestry. Most Armenian South Australians are the descendants of Armenians who survived the 1915 genocide and settled in Middle Eastern countries after World War I. They came to South Australia after 1963 from countries including Palestine, Egypt, Syria, Iraq and Lebanon, where they settled after the genocide. They emigrated because of their uncertain future as minority groups in these lands. Having lived in a variety of places before their migration to Australia, most Armenians were multilingual and spoke English upon arrival.

The last significant wave of Christian Armenians arrived in South Australia from Iran after the 1980 Islamic Revolution. In South Australia we have a small close-knit Armenian community. Not surprisingly, that community is vocal in its campaign to pressure the Turkish government to admit the Armenian genocide occurred. Many things have occurred recently to give this resolution even greater impetus. Internationally we have seen a steady increase in the number of actions that constitute recognition of the Armenian genocide, whether those actions are in the form of parliamentary resolutions, laws, statements, declarations, communiqués or reports. The Armenian National Committee of Australia has compiled a list of 51 such actions. That list includes:

a 2007 resolution of the South American Parliamentarians Coalition;

statements and resolutions by parliamentary chambers in Chile, Argentina, Lithuania, Venezuela, Germany, Poland and Canada;

two resolutions of the European Parliament in 2005;

a Vatican City communiqué in 2000; and

a resolution of the New South Wales parliament in April 1997 and, I understand, a vast majority of the states of the United States.

Following on from the New South Wales parliament resolution, the New South Wales government installed a memorial stone inside Parliament House in Sydney in 1998. At that time the Hon. Bob Carr MP, then premier of New South Wales and minister for ethnic affairs, said:

The destruction of churches and the elimination of peoples is the destruction of cultural diversity on this planet. Surviving monuments and artefacts of Armenian civilisation are testimony to that nation, as is their acceptance of Christianity as a state religion in the year 301. The remaining churches represent a unique cultural and architectural style and reflect the rich Armenian civilisation. Today, as a result of the work of Armenians around the world, including that in Australia and the United States, an increasing number of people are aware, first, how tumultuous Armenian history has been and, secondly, of the scale of crimes committed against them, which began in 1915. Turkey must face up, as Germany has, to crimes committed in its name. The Armenian people are right to insist that this great crime against their people, their culture and the universal rights of humankind must be acknowledged.

That concludes the words of the Hon. Bob Carr on that occasion. Just last month another New South Wales parliamentarian—this time a federal member of the Liberal Party—spoke out in support of the Armenian people and their efforts to have the Armenian genocide properly recognised. The former Howard government minister, Hon. Joe Hockey MP, told the House of Representatives on 20 October 2008 that the Armenian community was still struggling to achieve recognition of the genocide.

After recounting the facts of the case, Mr Hockey noted that the Australian government had not officially recognised the Armenian genocide. 'This weighs heavily on me', Mr Hockey told the house, 'particularly as my own grandfather was himself a survivor of the genocide. He never knew the fate of his siblings and his friends as they were presumably led to their death.' Mr Hockey said that Australia had prospered through the immigration of people from countless nations, including Armenia, and he urged parliament to recognise the Armenian genocide for what it was—not alleged, not supposed and not so-called.

Before closing, I mention two other developments that have made this resolution timely. In late August in Adelaide the Armenian Cultural Association of South Australia hosted an event called 'An SOS from beyond Gallipoli'. That event, which included a superb photographic exhibition, highlighted the efforts of Australia from 1915 to 1929 to help the people of Armenia in response to the genocide.

Members interjecting:

The PRESIDENT: Order! Members and people in the gallery are very interested in the contribution. Could we have some order or take the conversations outside, please.

The Hon. B.V. FINNIGAN: Those efforts are considered by many to have been Australia's first major international humanitarian relief mission. In 2008, very few Australians were aware of that effort and even fewer know that it was heroically led in part by a South Australian, Reverend James Cresswell of Adelaide's Congregational Church. Reverend Cresswell became the national secretary of the Armenian relief fund in 1922, and the following year he embarked on a trip that saw him investigating the conditions in which Armenian refugees and orphans were living. He oversaw many relief programs, including the setting up of an Australian-funded orphanage, which today remains an important site for the Armenian people.

Just one of the legacies of Reverend Cresswell's fine work is a collection of photographs he took during his travels through Greece and Armenia between 1921 and 1923. Those photographs were exhibited in Adelaide as part of the event I mentioned a moment ago, and I understand that they are being displayed in other parts of Australia.

The second event which has spurred on this resolution was of the Armenian National Committee of Australia Advocacy Week, held in November last year. The week is designed to raise the profile of Armenia and the importance of international recognition of the Armenian genocide. I realise that some people, including representatives of Turkey, will try to represent support of this resolution as somehow an attack on multiculturalism or on the local Turkish-Australian community. It is not and should not be taken as such. No-one is trying to reflect on the character of our Australian communities, and I respect the contribution all migrants have made to our nation.

In light of growing international awareness of the Armenian genocide, and given the horrific nature of the genocide itself, it is time we South Australians did our part. It is time for the South Australian parliament to stand up and be counted on this issue. I thank the Leader of the Opposition for moving this motion. I thank members of the Armenian National Committee of Australia, who have attended my speech today and to witness what I hope will be unanimous support for this resolution, and I commend them and their organisation for all the work they do on behalf of the Armenian community in Australia and, in particular, to highlight the atrocity of the Armenian genocide and to ensure that it is properly commemorated and remembered by Australians. I commend the resolution to the chamber.

The Hon. D.W. RIDGWAY (Leader of the Opposition) (16:22): I thank the Hon. Bernard Finnigan for his contribution on behalf of the government, and I thank the Legislative Council for its indulgence in allowing us to debate this matter a little earlier today. As the Hon. Bernard Finnigan mentioned, we have a number of members of the Armenian community in the gallery today, and one or two have to get back to Sydney at some point. We are doing this to facilitate that travel, and I thank the council for allowing that to happen.

Today is a very important milestone, with parliament recognising the Armenian genocide. It was an important time in the history of Armenia and I believe it is also important for South Australia, as the great multicultural community that we are, to recognise events that have happened around the world affecting all sorts of different people in all sorts of different places. We recognise that it is important to their community, and we also recognise that we are all Australians going forward. We look forward to working with them in the future as part of our wonderful South Australian and Australian multicultural community. With those few words I commend the motion to the council.

Motion carried.

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