Wales-Armenia Solidarity Press Release -Speech by Lord Dafydd Elis-Thomas,

Wales-Armenia Solidarity Press Release

Speech by Lord Dafydd Elis-Thomas, Presiding Officer of the National Assembly of Wales at the unveiling of the Welsh National Monument to the Armenian Genocide on 3 November 2007 translated into English

It is a great honour to be here today at the invitation of "Wales-Armenia Solidarity" to receive this stone cross-the khatchkar-on behalf of the people of Wales,and to see the cross being consecrated in memory of the Armenians who were killed during one of the worst Genocides ever seen in the world,the genocide of a million and a half of the people of Armenia by the Turkish State in 1915.

It is a great pleasure also to welcome to Wales the Ambassador of Armenia in the UK, Dr Vahe Gabrielyan, as well as Bishop Nathan Hovhannissian, the Primate of the Armenian Apostolic Church in the UK.

It is a reflection of the consuming interest in Wales in the history of Armenia that the finance for this beautiful monument was raised wholly by Welsh Armenians. It is a symbol of the special sympathy of the people of Wales for the people of Armenia that here, in the building raised in order to promote peace throughout the world after the horrors of the First World War,that the cross is placed.

This building is a symbol of the wish and the ambition of Wales to have a voice in international affairs and I am pleased to say that Wales has recognised the right of Armenia to her freedom and has called on the rest of the world to recognise the suffering of her people.

It is not just a matter of sentiment that Wales identifies with a small country with an unique language, a religious character which derives from the world's oldest Christian Church;and experience of living next to a rabid and imperialistic neighbour.

The relationship of Wales with one of the world's oldest countries and the world's oldest Christian Church back to the end of the nineteenth century and the massacre of the people of Armenia in 1894 in Sasoon.

Llewelyn Williams the Liberal MP from Wales wrote a book "Armenia Past and Present" on the shame of the massacre. Protest meetings were held, poems were written, and money was collected to ease the suffering, and a "Wales-Armenia Society" was formed.

When the terrible Genocide happened, of course, we were in the middle of the Great War, and to our shame, not the same attention was paid to the sufferings of Armenia in 1915 as was the case in 1894-96.

In the wake of Turkey's victory over the allies in Gallipoli in 1915, the Turkish state began the work of trying to exterminate the whole Armenian population of the country. On the 24th April, the intellectuals were arrested and murdered and the wider Armenian population then suffered the same fate.

As Robert Fisk noted in his powerful book,"The Great War for Civilization" this was the first ever genocide and it is significant that it was the silence of the rest of the world in the face of such a tragedy that led the Nazis to consider the Genocide of the Jews.Hitler was quoted in August 1939 - when ordering his generals to attack Poland - who today remembers the destruction of the Armenians?

I am glad that people are not turning their back on Armenia today as they did a century ago.

The National Assembly has given true support to the campaign to recognise the reality of the Genocide

In October 2002, the majority of National Assembly Members supported a motion by Rhodri Glyn Thomas A.M.(the present Transport minister) to this effect

- Recognising the truth of the Genocide that occurred under the government of Turkey in 1915

- Calling on Turkey to end her economic blockade on Armenia

- Call on The UK Parliament not to support Turkey's application for EU membership until she recognises the Genocide of 1915 as well as ending her economic blockade of Armenia.

The majority of Welsh MPs have also signed similar motions in the House of Commons in 2006 and 2007.

In 2001, the First Minister of Wales laid a wreath of flowers to remember the victims of the Genocide and in the National Holocaust Day ceremony this year in Cardiff, the Armenians were remembered as well as the Jews and the Darfuris.

So this occasion is not only a way of remembering the million and a half that lost their lives in the Genocide, but also an opportunity for us to redress in a small way because the rest of the world failed to intervene.