Senator Joe Bullock of Western Australia delivered a speech in Australia's Senate, blasting the anti-Armenian stance on Nagorno-Karabakh recently expressed by his fellow Federal Australian politician, Member of Parliament for Cowan, Luke Simpkins, Asbarez reports.
The source says that Simpkins, the Chair of the Azerbaijan Australia Parliamentary Friendship Group, recently travelled to Azerbaijan as a guest of the petro-Dictatorship, and has since refused to meet with the Armenian side of the Nagorno- Karabakh issue. Despite this unbalanced approach, and despite the Australian media questioning his relations with Azerbaijan and his other activities abroad, Simpkins has remained steadfast in what the Armenian National Committee of Australia (ANC Australia) has called his "assumed role as the chief communicator of the Azeri propaganda in Australia's Parliament".
Joe Bullock recalled that in 301 AD, "eleven years before Constantine famously saw the vision of the cross of Christ on the Milvian Bridge, King Tiridates III of Armenia was converted to the Christian faith by the preaching of St Gregory the Illuminator, and the Kingdom of Armenia became the first Christian nation. Before his death in 331, St Gregory had also brought the Christian faith to the region of Nagorno-Karabakh. His grandson, St Grigoris, is buried in the fourth-century monastery of Amaras, which still functions today as a primary centre of the Armenian Apostolic Church. Through 1,700 years the people of Nagorno-Karabakh have maintained their Christian faith and their Armenian identity, despite long periods of subjection to Islamic Turkish and Persian khans."
He also stressed that on 5 July 1921 the Caucasus Bureau of the Russian Communist Party "decided to transfer the Nagorno-Karabakh region from Armenia and incorporate it into the Azerbaijan Soviet Socialist Republic".
He proceeded to call out Simpkins's "uncritical support for Azerbaijan", sighting the history of the region of Nagorno- Karabakh and why this democracy does not deserve the treatment the West Australian MP is serving. In his speech, Bullock also acknowledged the historical reality of the Armenian Genocide, as well as the rights to self-determination for the Armenians of Nagorno Karabakh.
After highlighting the historical background of how Nagorno Karabakh was always Armenian, and explaining the oppressive Azeri regime forcing the Armenians of the region to vote for Independence in a referendum, Bullock said: "To speak, as the Member for Cowan [Simpkins] has repeatedly done in the other place [House of Representatives], of the 'illegal occupiers of the Nagorno-Karabakh region of Azerbaijan' is ludicrous. How can people who have lived continuously in this region for centuries illegally occupy their own land?"
"Furthermore, such uncritical support for Azerbaijan's absurd demand that this brave little nation commit suicide, dismantle its 25-year-old democracy and hand over its people to the tender mercies of the Azerbaijan government can only serve to strengthen the intransigence of the Azerbaijanis in refusing to recognise the reality of Nagorno-Karabakh's nationhood. As Nobel Peace prize winner Andrei Sakharov said in November 1989, shortly before his death: For Azerbaijan the issue of Karabakh is a matter of ambition; for the Armenians of Karabakh, it is a matter of life or death," he said.