Joel Fitzgibbon (Hunter, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I'm proud that, for many years now—more recently, with the member for North Sydney—I've co-convened the Australia-Armenia parliamentary group. My relationship with the community was, in part, born out of the relationship that the Anzacs forged with Armenian forces during the First World War and, of course, my interest in the terrible events of 1915 known as the Armenian genocide. It's been a little more than a year since Azerbaijan launched indiscriminate and unprovoked attacks against the Republic of Artsakh. Formerly known as Nagorno-Karabakh, the former Soviet Union satellite remains occupied by Turkish-backed Azerbaijani forces. The Azerbaijani invasion resulted in the death of around 5,000 young Armenian men. Azerbaijani forces destroyed civilian infrastructure, including hundreds of schools and places of worship. More than 100,000 innocent civilians have been displaced.

The Australian Armenian community has been in a state of overwhelming devastation, shock, and despair as they've witnessed their homeland desecrated at the hands of Azerbaijani forces, including paid Turkish-backed Syrian mercenaries. The relative silence of the international community is, of course, of great concern to the Armenian diaspora. Azerbaijan's military aggression against indigenous Armenians in Artsakh involved alleged war crimes using cluster and white phosphorus munitions and attacks on Armenian churches, hospitals, civilians and schools. Armenians around the world are rallying to assist those who were displaced, to their great credit. Australian Armenians have joined the diaspora around the world in calling for the international community to call out Azerbaijan and to stop their belligerent activities. Australia should do just that. A number of countries, including France and the USA, and bodies such as the European parliament have rightly publicly condemned Azerbaijan's deliberate violations of international law. We should join with the many across the globe by making our unhappiness about the situation in Artsakh well known and by recognising the right to self-determination for the people of Artsakh.

The conflict is a test for the robustness of our international architecture and the rules based order we all rely so much upon. We must pass the test.