Tommy Broughan (Dublin Bay North, Independent) | Oireachtas source

Should we not have a particular interest in this, given what happened to our people between 1845 and 1852, which was effectively a genocide as well? According to the 1948 UN genocide convention, the crime is defined as acts "committed with intent to destroy, in whole or part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group". Between 1915 and 1917, after Turkey entered the First World War on the side of the central powers, the Armenians, a Christian people who played a valuable role in business and economics throughout the Ottoman empire, were targeted and identified as the enemy within. The leadership was rounded up in Constantinople in 1915 and this was followed by the deportation of hundreds of thousands of Armenians and the confiscation of their property, before they were driven into the deserts of northern Syria, which we are familiar with from recent events. There was mass shooting, burning and poisoning, and, at the end of it all, up to 1.5 million people were dead. The European Parliament has asked all member states to formally recognise this horrendous event as genocide.

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