An unfortunate action of the South Australian goverment!

Minister Atkinson’s speech in PONTIAN BROTHERHOOD MEMORIAL PLAQUE UNVEILING.

January 8th, 2009
Saturday, 20 December 2008. Migration Museum of South Australia, Kintore Ave, Adelaide Australia

Agapitoi filoi Dear friends Pontians
A-gha-pea-Tea Fee-lee Ponn-dee
This is a solemn day as well as a day of celebration. Thank you for giving me the opportunity of participating in the Pontian Brotherhood of South Australia’s 50th Anniversary celebrations, and to unveil the memorial plaque reflecting this commemoration today.

The plaque remembers the Pontian Hellenic innocents who were lost in the tragedy of the Pontian genocide; the sad episode in history that Hellenic people call

“The Catastrophe.”
It is a duty I carry out with a sense of great sadness for the loss of more than 350,000 Pontian lives and a sense of the enormity of the crime that was visited upon the Pontian people.I also have a sense of optimism arising from the history of progress that the Pontian people created after this tragedy and the way they forged forward, without ever losing the link to their past.That history of progress includes the achievements of the Pontian Diaspora, both in Greece and elsewhere on the globe, and not least the achievements and contributions, over 50 years thus far, of the Pontian community and the Pontian Brotherhood of South Australia.In this, your year of celebrations for the first 50 years of the Pontian Brotherhood, you have resolved to honour your fallen compatriots, with a memorial plaque.You have chosen, quite appropriately, this ark of the history of many peoples and a place of many worthy memorials, the Migration Museum of South Australia, as the plaque’s home.
South Australia welcomed Pontian refugees and their descendants as migrants from Greece, and this simple act of homage today recounts a narrative of persecution and dislocation, of privation and loss, but also a narrative of hope.As a result of the disintegration of the decayed and corrupt Ottoman Empire by 1918, nationalist Young Turks had overturned the old regime.
They had set about creating a Turkey for Turks only by speeding up a process that Imperial Turkey had begun in 1914, with her entry into World War I as an ally of Germany and the Central Powers.This process was the sad and criminal ethnic cleansing of Hellenes, Armenians and Assyrians. And I am pleased to see the President Gevik Abedian and the Secretary, Alec Balayance of the Armenian Association here with us today.

All these people belonged to that land, and had preceded the Turks by many centuries. In the case of the Hellenes, by some 2,600 years!And so, the nationalist Turks led by Kemal Mustafa’s forces, and their frenzied followers began to persecute them through beatings, murder, forced marches and labour, theft of their properties and livelihood, rape, torture and deportations.More than three hundred and fifty thousand Pontian Hellenes died, as well as one and a half million Armenians and hundreds of thousands of Assyrians.

More than one and a half million Pontian Hellenes fled to Greece as refugees, and put a huge strain on the country, unprepared as she was for these events.And so, nearly three thousand years of Hellenic civilisation and history in Asia Minor, once a crucible of Hellenism, was extinguished in the bloodied lands and waters of Pontus and in the fires of Smyrna.Regrettably, the West remained mostly unmoved, and the cries of the victims were not heeded.

So claims no less a qualified person than George Horton, for 30 years Consul General of the United States for the “Near East” who was based in Smyrna.and gives an eyewitness account of the genocide in his book, “The Blight of Asia”, published in 1926.
Yet Pontian Hellenes bear no malice towards the people of Turkey, with whom they had once shared a homeland, a history, and a friendship.It is incumbent on a Turkey that aspires to be part of Europe to acknowledge the deeds of the past, instead of denying that which so many had borne witness to.

Every day that passes without acknowledgement of these tragic acts re-victimizes those who survived and their descendants.
A simple apology from Turkey will begin the healing, and bring on the dawn of a reconciled future in which the tormented spirits of the victims will finally rest.
The Pontian Hellenes have moved forward in every other way: their progress out of such adversity and tragedy has been remarkable by any standard.

The flowering of subsequent generations that hold tenaciously to their culture and heritage, so far from home, and the existence and fruitful activity of organisations such as the Pontian Brotherhood of South Australia are ample proof of this.

And they are reason for celebration, too.As the lyricist Pythagoras (Pith-a-GORR-as) says in “Mikra Asia” (Mik-RAH A-SEE-a): “Road by road we found earth and water, we came out of our pain and our desolation, like clouds we drifted to other skies, and our children have had children and grandchildren.”And so, today, we have gathered here to honour the memory for those Pontian Hellenes lost in the “Catastrophe” that was the Pontian Genocide.

I dare to hope, and work for the day, when no one will ever deny the truth of the Pontian Genocide.To the memory and honour of the Pontian Hellenes who perished in the genocide of 1916 to 1922, I unveil this memorial plaque.
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