Ryde City Council
unanimously passes Motion marking
90th Anniversary of Armenian Genocide
RYDE:
This evening Ryde City Council unanimously passed the
following Motion commemorating the Armenian Genocide, moved by
Independent Councillor Mr Sarkis Yedelian:
That this
Council:
(1)
acknowledges this year as marking
the occasion of the 90th anniversary commemoration of the Genocide
of the Armenians perpetrated
by the then Ottoman Government between the years 1915-1922;
(2)
joins with the Armenian community of Ryde in honouring the memory
of the 1.5 million
men, women and children who died in the first genocide of
the twentieth century;
(3)
recognises 24 April every year as a day of remembrance of the
Armenian genocide;
(4)
condemns the genocide of the Armenians and all other acts of
genocide committed as the ultimate act of racial, religious and
cultural intolerance;
(5)
calls on the Commonwealth Government to officially condemn:
(i) the
genocide of the Armenians
(ii) any attempt to
deny such crimes against humanity.
On April 24 of this year, on the eve
of the 90th anniversary of the ANZAC landings,
Armenians the world over, including the many thousands of
Armenian-Australians living in Ryde, will commemorate the 90th
anniversary of the Armenian genocide. In 1915, and in anticipation
of the Allied invasion, the Ottoman Empire set in motion a plan to
exterminate the entire Christian Armenian population living on
their ancestral lands of Eastern Anatolia, part of what is today
the Republic of Turkey. This state-sponsored program resulted in
the brutal extermination of some 1.5 million Armenian men, women
and children.
Clr Yedelian
said - ”As the first Australian Councillor of Armenian ancestry,
and a son of survivor of the Armenian Genocide, I feel honoured to
have moved this Motion.
The importance of this Commemorative Motion, however, goes
beyond the Armenian-Australian Community, many thousands of who
call the City of Ryde home.”
“In stark contrast to post-Nazi
Germany which has acknowledged and sought to atone for the crimes
of the Nazi regime, successive Turkish governments have refused to
come to terms with their own history.
The “industry of genocide denial” by successive Turkish
States, has set a very dangerous precedent, which has already been
relied upon by at least one mass murderer, Hitler, for his
genocidal crimes, and which cannot be left without redress”
Yedelian added.
As the City of Ryde has one of the
largest and growing Armenian-Australian constituencies, it fitting
that Ryde Council has added its name to the growing list of
multi-national, national, state/provisional and municipal
legislative bodies (including the NSW Parliament) that have
commemorated and reaffirmed the historical truth of the Armenian
Genocide, and which have provided a resounding response to
Hitler’s self-justifying question in 1939 before he embarked on
his genocidal deeds during World War II –
"Who remembers now the
destruction of the Armenians?"
As with a similar motion passed
unanimously by the NSW Parliament in 1997, Ryde Council Motion
also calls on the Federal Parliament to add its voice to this
important call.
[end]
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