By ANC-AU | Saturday, 08 December 2018
"All told, it's estimated that 1.5 million people perished during this period," Keneally said. "Their stories echoed so strongly here at home because many of our brave Anzacs bore witness to it. Our soldiers were brought into direct contact with the extraordinary suffering of the Armenian people while serving our country in the Middle Eastern theatre of World War I."
She added: "Their accounts inspired the thousands of stories that were published in Australian newspapers at the time detailing the systemic attempt to eliminate the Armenian people and their culture. These newspapers reported 'atrocities', 'massacres' and 'decimation' but never used the term 'genocide', simply because we hadn't yet invented a word that could fully encapsulate the myriad cruelties that were inflicted on the Armenian people."
She said: "As a Catholic, I was stirred by the words of Pope Francis in 2015 when he called on the entire human family to heed the warnings of this tragedy to 'protect us from falling into a similar horror'. Pope Francis called the genocide: … the first of the deplorable series of catastrophes of the past century, made possible by twisted racial, ideological or religious aims … And warned that: Concealing or denying evil is like allowing a wound to keep bleeding without bandaging it."
Keneally added: "As a former member of the New South Wales parliament, and indeed Premier of the great state of New South Wales, I am proud that a motion was passed in 1997 that acknowledged the Armenian genocide and honoured its victims. Today, that historic action is still commemorated with a memorial on the ninth floor of the New South Wales parliament building."
"If we are to stop the bleeding, we must denounce crimes against humanity whenever and wherever they occur," she said. "I join my colleagues who have spoken in this house and in the other, both past and present, in calling on the federal parliament to acknowledge our first humanitarian effort as a country and to recognise the Armenian Genocide."
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