Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 4:38 pm on 25 January 2022.
Thank you very much indeed, Jenny Rathbone, and thank you for speaking up for your constituents, the Armenian community and the massacre, and also your Jewish people and community and families in your constituency, and all our constituencies in Wales. Thank you for acknowledging some of the atrocities and shocking events leading to global changes, Indian independence.
Interestingly, today, I spoke at an event on global solidarity that was organised by Hub Cymru Africa, and we talked about the importance of global solidarity and for Wales to be reaching out, and building on from the League of Nations to the United Nations, the crucial role played by uniting together in terms of ensuring that we have peace and we can't have global solidarity without peace. So, we live in a challenging world.
Holocaust Memorial Day is an opportunity for us to acknowledge and recognise those atrocities and genocides that are in history, and it is acknowledged by the Holocaust Memorial Day that this is a time for everyone. So, I think, as has been very clearly said by those who organise Holocaust Memorial Day, it,
'encourages remembrance in a world scarred by genocide', and we promote and support Holocaust Memorial Day—the international day on 27 January—to remember the 6 million Jews murdered during the Holocaust, and the millions of people killed under Nazi persecution, and in the genocides that followed in Cambodia, Rwanda, Bosnia, Darfur. I've just met some of those acknowledged, but most importantly, marking, as I make this statement today, the anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau, the largest Nazi death camp. So, that Holocaust threatened the fabric of civilisation. Genocide still must be resisted every day and, as they say, in the UK, in Wales, prejudice and the language of hatred must be challenged by us all.