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  • Money before morality

    South China Morning Post
    May 5, 2004

    Money before morality

    The dead, wrote German novelist W.G. Sebald, are forever returning to
    us. Unhappily, some governments continue to deny them, in the name of
    trade, realpolitik or revisionism. Even as the Dalai Lama was leaving
    millions of Canadians light-headed last month with his mantra of
    gentleness and compassion, the federal government shrugged off a
    genocide. It came after Canada's parliament voted to recognise the
    slaughter of 1.5 million Armenians by Ottoman Turks 89 years ago. One
    US president called it "the great crime of the first world war". But
    Canada's minister of foreign affairs repudiated the vote, effectively
    apologising to Turkey, a trading partner. So much for compassion and
    altruism.

    "Turkey is an incredibly important country," wrote columnist Jeffrey
    Simpson in the Globe and Mail, the country's national newspaper.
    Parliamentarians, he said, have no business meddling in foreign
    policy, especially when it concerns a "disputed" atrocity nearly a
    century ago. "Canada should mind its own business," the headline
    read.

    "Business" is what this is all about. Canadian companies are trying
    hard to sell subway cars and engineering services to Turkey. Hundreds
    of millions of dollars are at stake, and a Canadian cabinet minister
    warned that the genocide vote could have "negative consequences" on
    trade.

    It is not the first time Canada has put money ahead of morality. A
    Canadian oil company operated for three years in Sudan with Ottawa's
    approbation, pumping out profits for a Muslim government that was
    bombing civilians in Africa's longest civil war. And with the Dalai
    Lama here seeking support for his people's struggle against Beijing
    rule, Ottawa gave Tibet only the barest official nod. China, of
    course, is Canada's second-largest trading partner. Enough said.

    Half a dozen other countries have already recognised the 1915
    genocide. They, like the Canadian parliamentarians, felt it was
    important to do so because Turkey continues to deny that a genocide
    even happened. This denial is offensive to Armenians, and to anyone
    who believes that history matters. We deny it at our peril. Hitler
    told his generals: "Kill without mercy. Who today remembers the
    extermination of the Armenians?"

    So why is it important that civilised nations condemn genocides past
    and present? "It's easy for the international community to say,
    'never again'," says Robert Adamson, of the Global Justice Programme
    at the University of British Columbia. "But there has to be some
    recognition of what went wrong and who was responsible. People have
    to be brought to account for these injustices." The moral is: if you
    ignore yesterday's barbarity, you risk ignoring what is happening
    today.
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