The Armenian Genocide. Lest we forget.

This ANZAC Day by all means we must remember the 62,000 Australians and 18,000 New Zealanders who gave their lives in the War to End All Wars so that we could enjoy our freedoms today.  Of these, 8,709 Australians and 2,779 New Zealanders died at Gallipoli.

But we should also find the time and more importantly, find those politicians courageous enough to stand also up for the 1,500,000 Armenians who 100 years ago were beaten, raped, degraded, dehumanised, delegitimized, starved and butchered in an orchestrated campaign to eradicate the Christian religion, culture and adherents in Anatolia.

Let’s hope that in the days after, if not the days before the Gallipoli Dawn Service, that our leaders find the courage to reject chronic Turkish denialism of the genocide. The well-oiled global effort to dilute, rebut, minimise, belittle and explain with assertions of moral equivalence every reference to the events which encompassed an intentional orchestrated genocide of Armenians, Pontian Greeks and Assyrian Christians in Asia Minor must be exposed for the nefarious and fascist bullying which it is.

On the 100^th anniversary of the Ottoman Empire’s sponsored barbarism, either Abbott or Bishop must find the strength to fly to Yerevan to mourn with a Christian people who suffered unspeakable atrocities in an event that Pope Francis rightly called the “First Genocide of the 20^th Century ”.

Lest we forget