MPs vow to go on supporting Australia's recognition of Genocide

MPs vow to go on supporting Australia's recognition of Genocide

PanARMENIAN.Net - COVID-19 forced the Australian National Commemoration of the Armenian Genocide to go virtual this year, but that did not stop a record number of Federal and State Parliamentarians joining growing calls for a change in the national position on the Armenian Genocide, which the Armenian National Committee of Australia (ANC-AU) labelled "untenable".

The position of Australia to appease its ally, the denialist dictatorship of Turkey, remained unchanged for 2020. However, messages correctly characterising the events of 1915 as genocide by Federal parliamentarians Trent Zimmerman, Joel Fitzgibbon, Tim Wilson, Kristina Keneally, Adam Bandt and Rex Patrick, as well as New South Wales State Premier Gladys Berejiklian, Shadow Treasurer Walt Secord and the Speaker of the Legislative Assembly Jonathan O'Dea means Canberra's position is becoming more impossible to sustain, means Canberra's position is becoming more impossible to sustain.

The livestream commemoration event had over 15,000 tune in during the first 12 hours from broadcast, where ANC-AU Executive Director Haig Kayserian called out the Australian Government.

"The Australian Government’s position on the Armenian Genocide is a kind of Houdini Act that attempts an array of verbal gymnastics and poorly-veiled illusion. All these euphemisms, all this effort to not upset a dictatorship posing as a friendly ally," Kayserian said, before reading statistics that since the 2016 attempted coup, Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has jailed hundreds of thousands of journalists, academics and judges.

"The 'truth' that Australia is going with is that the Armenian experience at the hands of the Ottoman Empire was not a genocide. This is an active ignorance of the overwhelming facts," Kayserian added.

"This is clearly offensive and unacceptable to us descendants of genocide survivors who proudly call Australia home."

The broadcast featured evidence of ANC-AU's claim that a growing number of Federal Australian politicians are actively distancing themselves from the official position, and calling on Australia to unequivocally recognise the Armenian, Assyrian and Greek Genocides.

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