At last. #PresidentBiden has turned his back on a century of denial. He charts a new way forward. It is worth noting that Joe Biden has been in government for 36 years. He has borne witness as a government official to the great events of history since the mid-eighties. Now, he is doing something that should have been done a long time ago.
“Each year on this day (April 24), we remember the lives of all those who died in the #Ottoman-era #ArmenianGenocide and recommit ourselves to preventing such an #atrocity from ever again occurring,” he said. “And we remember so that we remain ever vigilant against the corrosive influence of hate in all its forms.”
But our #PrimeMinister, #ScottMorrisonMP, is yet to follow Biden’s lead and acknowledge the urgings of the Armenian National Council of Australia (ANC-AU) and no less than forty Australian political figures, a sustained plea that culminated in a streamed vigil on April 23, headed by the ANC-AU Chief Executive Haig Kayserian.
By not acknowledging the #ArmenianGenocide, #Australia remains complicit in Turkish dictator Erdogan’s agenda and Turkish official narrative that was founded in 1923 with Kemal’s refusal to acknowledge the crimes committed all through the collapsed Ottoman Empire. By buying into the Special relationship 30 years ago, we have ‘bought’ Anzac Cove in name and annual event, but paid the price in truth.
It is time to change that. The fact that Covid has caused the annual commemoration at Anzac Cove to be closed for the second successive year can be used in a constructive way. #Erdogan would cancel it anyway, if we were to stand on the right side of history and acknowledge the #ArmenianGenocide.
However, the bravery and resilience of the original Anzacs notwithstanding, there is a contemporary mandated reverence for everything about our military tradition. The role our soldiers play now, the way more recent alleged atrocities in Afghanistan are danced around, and the way the original Anzacs have been eulogised is so deeply embedded into our popular Australian culture, that it is un-Australian to criticise or challenge it. And nothing these days is worse than being branded ‘un-Australian’.
#Morrison is afraid of conservative backlash, should his actions lead to the rupturing of the so-called Special Relationship with Turkey. But it is time #Australia, as a first-world democracy, acknowledged the truth and officially ceased buying into the Turkish position that is founded on the great lie that a coordinated mass destruction of the Armenian people did not occur.
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