Trent Zimmerman (North Sydney, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I move:

That this House:

(1) recognises that 9 December 2021 is the United Nations' International Day of Commemoration and Dignity of the Victims of the Crime of Genocide and the Prevention of this Crime;

(2) notes that 9 December 2021 is also the 73rd anniversary of the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide;

(3) further recognises that that development of the Genocide Convention was motivated by genocidal crimes of the 20th Century including:

(a) the genocide committed by the Ottoman Empire between 1915 and 1923 of Armenians, Assyrians, Greeks and other Christian minorities; and

(b) the genocide of six million Jews committed by Nazi Germany and its collaborators between 1941 and 1945;

(4) acknowledges the importance of recognising, condemning and learning from these and subsequent genocidal crimes to ensure that such crimes against humanity are not allowed to be repeated;

(5) remembers the loss and suffering caused by genocides in the modern era and their enduring impact on the lives of many Australians and their descendants; and

(6) calls on the Government to:

(a) affirm its long-standing support for the prevention of genocide and the punishment of those who perpetrate or instigate genocidal crimes; and

(b) formally recognise the genocides committed by the Ottoman Empire between 1915 and 1923 of Armenians, Assyrians, Greeks and other Christian minorities.

There are two places in world I've visited which have moved me to my very core. They both represent some of the darkest chapters in modern human history. Sitting on the western slope of Mount Herzl in Jerusalem lies Yad Vashem, Israel's official remembrance and memorial centre for those who perished in the Holocaust. I visited Yad Vashem three times. The third time was just as powerful as the first. Within the complex, nothing touched me more than the children's memorial, where the loss of 1.5 million Jewish children is remembered. All of the victims of the Holocaust were innocent of any crime other than being who they were culturally or by their faith, yet there is something especially moving and disturbing in reflecting on those children, in their age of innocence and with their lives before them, being murdered without compunction or compassion. How could this ever be so?

On a ridge above the Armenian capital of Yerevan sits an austere but impressive memorial and museum dedicated to the 1.5 million Armenians killed during the Ottoman Empire, in one of the greatest tragedies of the modern era. Just over two years ago, I visited Yerevan with my federal colleagues the members for Goldstein and Bennelong. We planted a tree in the grove of remembrance and we laid a wreath. These were small gestures that reflected our determination to ensure that the suffering of the Armenian people during its genocide is never forgotten.

Both places are heart wrenching and sobering. Both so clearly convey the barbaric impact and magnitude of genocidal crimes designed to exterminate a people based on their ethnicity and beliefs.

On 9 December this year, as happens every year, the United Nations will mark the crimes of genocide that have killed so many millions in the modern era. It will reflect on that great early achievement in the United Nations' history, the adoption of the convention against genocide. The immediate impetus for that convention was the events of the Holocaust and the global determination to make sure that international law recognised the crime against humanity that genocide represents. But, as one of its primary authors, Raphael Lemkin, often acknowledged, the roots lay earlier—in the genocide undertaken by the Ottoman government. The Holocaust and the Armenian genocides are linked so clearly in driving the creation of that convention, yet they have been treated differently.

Australia and the international community, with few exceptions, recognise the Holocaust for what it was: a genocide perpetrated by Nazi Germany and its collaborators. Importantly, this is accepted by current generations of Germans, and their governments have strived for atonement and reconciliation in a way that has been both moving and incredible. Yet similar recognition has not been given to the Armenians or the Assyrians or the Greeks, past or present, for the genocide they faced in the Ottoman Empire, despite the enduring scars and legacies. In contrast to Germany, the successor of the Ottoman state, modern Turkey, stridently resists recognition of that genocide for what it was, let alone makes any efforts to heal the wounds wrought by those events.

It is time that changed, and Australia must play its part by joining what has been a slow but growing number of nations that have recognised the Armenian and other genocides of the Ottoman regime. This year, the United States, in a historic statement made by President Biden, joined the list of over 30 other nations that have now done so. These events started 106 years ago, yet they remain relevant today. For the Armenian, Syrian and Greek people, and their diasporas, that great loss haunts their communities. So many count grandparents and other relatives amongst the dead or dislocated. However, the case for recognising the genocide has a much more profound calling, not only based on identifying the truth of past events but also on our efforts to prevent these tragedies occurring again and befalling other communities. We should never forget the words of Hitler, who on the eve of launching his own murderous assault on the people of Poland said, 'Who, after all, speaks today of the annihilation of the Armenians?'

These crimes cannot be forgotten, and Australia must play its part in making sure they're not. We owe it to truth and justice, and we owe it to the memory of the millions who perished and their descendants—and to the hope of atonement. And we owe it to the world as we strive to achieve a more peaceful global community, free of crimes that threaten whole communities based on their attributes of race, or culture or belief. 1948 was a landmark year, with the optimism and determination of the still-young United Nations to address crimes against humanity like genocide—that's the most evil of all. It is that spirit we should remember on 9 December and it is that spirit we should be leaving as our own legacy.

Sharon Bird (Cunningham, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Is the motion seconded?

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

I second the motion, and I rise in support of the motion moved by my friend, the member for North Sydney. Together, we convene the Australia-Armenia parliamentary group.

The International Day of Commemoration and Dignity of the Victims of the Crime of Genocide and the Prevention of this Crime is an important one, and those of us who are making a contribution to the debate tonight would like to see it receive more attention. In particular, we'd like to generate more attention for the Armenian genocide. For too many years, survivors and their descendants of that terrible event have been ignored. Their calls for historic justice have largely fallen on deaf ears.

A little more than 106 years ago, more than three million Armenian, Assyrian and Greek peoples lost their lives for no other reason but for their ethnicity and their beliefs. That is genocide: there is no other word for it. And it's time that the Australian parliament joined with many others who have recognised it as such. This is important, not only to give closure to those affected by the events of 1915 but to send a clear signal to the world that genocidal behaviour will not be tolerated by our community of nations. Support for the UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide means taking resolute action on all genocides—tolerating genocide denial does all of us harm. It's a stain on our conscience and it prevents survivors from achieving proper healing. I understand the events of 1915 are a sensitive issue amongst Australians of Turkish heritage. But recognition of the crimes of the Ottoman Empire's leaders is no more a reflection on our Turkish friends here in Australia than is the recognition of the crimes of the Nazis on Australians of German heritage—zero reflection.

Earlier this year, as indicated by the member for North Sydney, the United States took the important historic step of recognising the Armenian genocide. President Biden's recognition is a significant shift in US foreign policy. In recognising the genocide of 2015 he has led the way, and has joined some 32 other countries around the world in making such a recognition. It's time for the Australian parliament to do the same. By continuing to remain silent, and tolerating genocide denialism, we are effectively diminishing the very legacy established by our forefathers and the great work they did to help the victims of this horrible crime. Our Anzacs were there, by their side, in 1915, and Australia accepted many refugees. Armenian and other diaspora have generously continued to support those who have an ongoing disadvantage because of the genocide. I have seen the Australian Armenians do that firsthand.

I've had the confronting experience of visiting the former Auschwitz concentration camp in Poland. One million people were gassed to death in that camp. Six million Jews across Europe were murdered in the Holocaust. It is surely the worst atrocity in modern human history, if not all of human history. Visiting Auschwitz today, you see people shedding tears. Even the most hardened of them. It's difficult not to. The families of those Armenians, Assyrians and Greeks who were victims of the 1915 genocide do not ask for our tears; they simply ask for recognition.

Like the member for North Sydney, I have had the confronting experience of visiting the Armenian genocide memorial in Yerevan, Armenia's modern capital. There, too, it is difficult not to be overwhelmed by emotion. I predict that in coming years more parliaments around the world will add themselves to the list of those recognising the events of 1915. I hope the Australian parliament is amongst them—indeed, I hope the Australian parliament does that soon and leads the way for others.

John Alexander (Bennelong, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Thank you to my friend and colleague the member for North Sydney for bringing forward this important motion. The word 'genocide' is a terrifying one. It is the chilling finality of homicide but on a mass scale—not killing one person, but killing one race, one ethnicity. The concept is as horrifying as it is unimaginable. That genocide exists at all is tragic. That we saw so many in the last century on so many different continents and in so many disparate situations is truly frightening. Some genocides are organised—the Germans. Some are chaotic and opportunistic—Rwanda. Destroying a race is nearly impossible and, thankfully, all genocides fail in that goal. Genocide leaves deep scars in communities. It is not just the loss of the victims, the empty seats at the dinner tables and children growing up as orphans. It's also the deep psychological cuts and the branding aimed to dehumanise before the killing starts. The effects of this dehumanisation live on for decades to come. What can we do?

You can't fix it or undo a genocide. You can't bring people back from the dead. Genocide leaves a legacy that can never be forgotten and will mark a people for centuries. Perpetrators can apologise. But what apology can compensate for the lives of millions lost? There is only one thing that can be done; we can discuss. There can be no healing without acknowledgment. The Jewish will never forgive and they will never forget, but they can start to heal at memorials around the world, including in Germany, where they can air their grievances, mourn openly, and continue a discourse with their former persecutors. The Armenians, similarly, will never forgive or forget the atrocities that were visited upon them in the fading light of the Ottoman Empire. There is nowhere they can mourn, no place to discuss, because the genocide is not acknowledged by the descendants of the perpetrators or by many countries around the world.

There are tens of thousands of Armenians in Australia. We have one of the largest Armenian diasporas in the world. We've had an Armenian Treasurer, and our biggest state was run by an Armenian until recently. Yet we still cannot officially acknowledge the genocide at a national level. My local council has and my state has, but the government I work in still has not. This is shameful. In my years representing the largest Armenian Australian populated electorate of Bennelong, I have witnessed that this community is made up of active and vital contributors to our contemporary understanding of what it means to be Australian. These Australians are the descendants, the grandchildren and great-grandchildren, of those who tragically died from starvation, deportation and death marches.

I have pushed during my time in this place to have the Armenian genocide recognised by our government. Not recognising the past's harrowing realities leaves room for mankind's most atrocious perpetrators to continue pursuing heinous crimes against humanity. The open wounds of the Armenian genocide are a primary example of this. In September 2021 I had the privilege of joining a federal Australian delegation to the republics of Armenia and Artsakh. I visited the Armenian genocide memorial with parliamentary colleagues intent on seeing motions like this lead to what we must do: recognise the Armenian, Assyrian and Greek genocides as a proud signatory to the UN convention we celebrate today. On 9 December 2021, the United Nations International Day of Commemoration and Dignity of the Victims of the Crime of Genocide and of the Prevention of this Crime, surely this is the time to acknowledge this genocide and give these people the opportunity they need to grieve. The word 'genocide' didn't come from a lab or through an experiment. It was first used in 1944 in reference to the killing of Armenians in the 1910s, the very intent of which coined this most odious of words. We should now recognise this for the sake of our Armenian Australians.

Josh Burns (Macnamara, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I start my remarks by acknowledging the member for North Sydney for moving this motion and all those who have contributed to this discussion and who will contribute to it. It takes courage to put your name to a motion such as this, and I acknowledge the member for North Sydney for doing so. As this motion states, 9 December is the United Nations International Day of Commemoration and Dignity of the Victims of the Crime of Genocide and of the Prevention of this Crime. It's been 73 years since the 1948 convention, in which the punishment of the crime of genocide was ratified. The Holocaust had only ended three years earlier, the darkest hour of mankind where over six million Jews, gypsies, political prisoners and other enemies of the state were murdered at the hands of the Nazis. My grandmother was born in Germany and fled in October 1938, only one week before Kristallnacht, the night of the broken glass. Many members of her family were not as lucky. They were unable to escape and they stayed on in Germany. In 1941 they were some of the very first people that were sent to Auschwitz and they obviously didn't survive.

The term 'genocide' was coined by Raphael Lemkin, a Polish Jewish lawyer. He not only coined the term 'genocide' in 1944 when looking at the Holocaust but also referenced the genocide committed against the Armenians, the Assyrians, the Greeks and other minorities between 1915 and 1923 at the hands of the Ottoman Empire. To this day, this genocide has not yet been recognised by the Australian government. This genocide has been recognised by 33 other countries, including Germany, France, Italy, Canada and most recently the United States. President Biden made that historic declaration this year, on Armenian Genocide Remembrance Day, and he was the very first US President to acknowledge and recognise the Armenian genocide. I want to take this moment to say that, prior to the US President making that recognition, the genocide was recognised by both houses of Congress, the House of Representatives and the Senate—chambers from which the Australian parliament drew inspiration and for which we named our chambers, following the US example, our House of Representatives and our Senate—and in their honour and we should follow suit. When houses of parliament seek to make recognitions such as this we don't do it lightly, but we do it in a way that is intent on speaking the truth and intent on recognising history as it was. It was significant that the US houses of Congress did recognise the Armenian genocide, and I thank the member for North Sydney for taking the steps today to replicate that recognition so that Australian houses of parliament have the opportunity do the same. Hopefully, one day the Prime Minister of Australia will follow suit and recognise the Armenian genocide in the same way that the US President did.

I think it is worth mentioning in this debate the differences between Australia and America. Obviously, Australia has an important relationship with Turkey. Each and every year Australians go and commemorate in Turkey, on the beaches of Gallipoli, and the Turkish government has, for decades, collaborated with the Australian government in order to mark that difficult battle and allow Australians to go and pay our respects. That should not be put in jeopardy or diminished in any way shape or form.

What we are doing here today is simply recognising what was. We are simply recognising that, in order to move on and to acknowledge the atrocities committed against the Armenians, the Assyrians and the Greeks, we must be honest. Being honest with the Turkish government and the Turkish people is the least we could do as friends of the Turkish government, the Turkish people and the Turkish Australians who are proudly part of our wonderful country.

This motion for reform and recognition is what must happen. It happens slowly, but it happens purposefully. I'm pleased to add my name, as the descendant of people who understand acutely what genocide is. We recognise that what happened to the Armenians was a genocide. We stand with them, we acknowledge the truth of what happened and we hope for better days in the future.

Julian Leeser (Berowra, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Let me pay tribute to those who have already spoken in this debate and associate myself with their words, particularly the members for North Sydney, Bennelong, Macnamara and Hunter, as well as my friend the member for Adelaide, who's going to speak shortly. I associate myself with everything they have said about the Armenian genocide, although, in my remarks today, I'm largely going to focus on the Holocaust.

There is of course a link between the Armenian genocide and the Holocaust. It is the phrase the member for North Sydney reminded us of, when Hitler famously said: 'Who, after all, speaks today of the annihilation of the Armenians?' That demonstrates what happens when people forget what's happened and they misunderstand the particularity of what's gone on in a particular genocide. I'll return to that thought at the end.

In recent years, the consciousness of the Holocaust has been placed in sharper focus in Australia by a wonderful book by the late Eddie Jaku, The Happiest Man on Earth, which he wrote at 100 years of age. Eddie died earlier this year. Despite the extraordinarily difficult war that he faced, despite the fact that he repeatedly escaped and was drawn back in and despite the fact that he saw most of his family murdered, he managed to maintain his humanity and the wisdom of someone who had every right to be angry at the world but who, through the reflection in his book, was happy and grateful for his family, his friendships and the kindness of strangers. His victory over Hitler was to live a happy life and to give happiness to others. He beautifully said in his book:

… you must remember that you are lucky to be alive … Every breath is a gift. Life is beautiful if you let it be. Happiness is in your hands.

Eddie Jaku's life was witness to the truth that we must never forget our humanity or the humanity of others.

Eddie Jaku was one of many Holocaust survivors whose numbers are gradually thinning in this country. On a per-capita basis, Australia is home to more Holocaust survivors than any other nation on the planet. People like Frank Lowy, Judy Cassab and Eddie Jaku have changed the face of Australia. While my generation had the privilege of meeting and knowing these survivors, by the time the children who are born in a few years time are old enough to understand what happened in the Holocaust those survivors will be gone. For a coming generation without survivors, the danger is that the Holocaust will seem as long ago as the pogroms, the crusades or slavery in Egypt, and it will then be up to us to tell the next generation our own memories of the survivors and their stories to help turn our memories into the memories of the next generation. The importance of that task shouldn't be underestimated.

Sadly we're witnessing a growth of Holocaust denial around the world. This comes in two forms. In parts of the Muslim world it is a way of playing into an anti-Jewish message that bolsters an anti-Israel message. In the West it is fuelled by social media and a regression to what I've termed the 'pre-Enlightenment age', where people seem incapable of reasoning and assessing sources of information with the ability to tell fact from fiction. Former US President and Supreme Allied Commander Europe General Dwight D Eisenhower saw the potential for denial in April 1945. He wrote about Ohrdruf, a subcamp of Buchenwald which he'd just visited:

The things I saw beggar description… the visual evidence and the verbal testimony of starvation, cruelty and bestiality were… so overpowering… I made the visit deliberately, in order to be in a position to give firsthand evidence of these things if ever, in the near future, there develops a tendency to charge these allegations merely to 'propaganda'.

Eisenhower, remarkably, organised delegations of journalists, politicians and filmmakers to go in and see what happened firsthand.

The traditional view is that it is up to us to educate the next generation so that they view the Holocaust not just as the experience of Jews, Romas, homosexuals and people with intellectual disabilities, but rather as a human experience where the most civilised and enlightened society on the planet can quickly turn to monstrous barbarism and engage in murder on an industrial scale. That has been the traditional view of the importance of Holocaust education. But I have been struggling with a rather arresting series of podcasts and a book by an extraordinary Jewish American author, Dara Horn, which has just come out, with the confronting title People Love Dead Jews and a companion podcast series, 'Adventures with dead Jews'. Dara Horn is critical of the way we remember these events, because they lose their particularity. She says in particular that, when going to the US Holocaust Museum in the United States in Washington, you are encouraged to think of yourself as a child going through the same set of circumstances—it could be any one of us—and we forget the particularity of the culture that was lost in the Holocaust. Similarly, to take us back to where we began: when we fail to remember it, we forget the culture of the Armenians.

Steve Georganas (Adelaide, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I congratulate and other speakers before me, and the member for North Sydney for bringing this motion to the House. It would be remiss of me if I didn't participate in this debate as a member of this parliament who represents one of Australia's largest Greek Australian communities, many of whom are descendants of those atrocities that took place that we are discussing here today. So I rise to support this motion, which recognises the United Nations International Day of Commemoration and Dignity of the Victims of the Crime of Genocide and of the Prevention of this Crime, but I also rise to support this motion that actively recognises the genocides committed by the Ottoman Empire between 1915 and 1923 of Greeks, Armenians, Assyrians and other Christian minorities—in what was known as Asia Minor—and one of the greatest crimes against humanity in modern history.

The term 'genocide' is relatively new as a historical concept. Genocide itself isn't a very old term. It was developed partly in response to the horrendous murder of Jewish people during the Holocaust, but also in response to the brutal cleansing that took place in this campaign committed by the Ottoman Empire between 1915 and 1923. In this period millions of Greeks, Armenians, Assyrians and other Christian minorities from the Pontus region and other parts of modern day Turkey, were deported, massacred or marched to their deaths. Some of these stories have been handed down. It's only two generations ago. In fact, my son's best friend's grandparents came from Pontus. He was a small child and I recall him telling us the story of the long march from the Pontus region through to modern day Greece. Along that March, many perished from starvation, being murdered along the way, and through illnesses et cetera. Approximately 300,000 people lost their lives. It was a brutal cleansing campaign.

It all started in the early morning of 24 April 1915, when the Ottoman authorities arrested some 250 Armenian political, religious, educational and intellectual leaders and community figureheads in the capital Constantinople, making the first stage of the Ottoman Turks' attempt to exterminate the Armenian, Assyrian and Greek populations of the Ottoman Empire.

The Greek genocide began with a series of pogroms in eastern Thrace and on the Aegean coast of Anatolia, beginning in January 1914, when the Ottoman Turkish government declared that only those Greeks who became Muslims or changed their religion would be allowed to remain in Thrace. Maps and history were rewritten. Churches, schools and cultural monuments were desecrated and misnamed. There were even stories of children being snatched from their parents; they would be renamed and farmed out to be raised as Ottomans.

On that particular day, 300 kilometres south of the empire's capital, young Australian men began to fight against the Ottoman soldiers during the Gallipoli campaign, one of the most significant and formative events in the military history of Australia. Some of the first documented evidence of genocide taking place was from ANZACs, some of whom were prisoners, who witnessed some of the atrocities and began writing little notes on pieces of paper that still exist today.

The neglect and the plight of the peoples of this region, the Assyrians, the Greeks, and the Armenians—I'm sure it was an absolute bloodbath in terms of the cleansing that took place—is absolutely something that should be recognised by our government and by this parliament. As we heard earlier, President Biden has recognised the genocide. Many countries around the world have recognised it, and it's about time that we did too.

If we don't recognise humanity's mistakes, they're there to be committed again. It's not about pitting one ethnicity against another. As we heard, we recognised the Holocaust of World War II. It doesn't mean that German people are bad; it just means that we recognised an atrocity so it could never ever take place again.

Sharon Bird (Cunningham, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The time allotted for the debate has expired. The debate is adjourned, and the resumption of the debate will be made an order of the day for the next sitting.