South Australia’s Minister for Infrastructure and Transport and Minister for Energy and Mining, Tom Koutsantonis MP, has today put forward two motions calling on the SA Parliament to recognise that September marks the 100-year anniversary of the Asia Minor Catastrophe and that October 28 is OXI Day.
In his notice of motion concerning the Asia Minor Catastrophe, Mr Koutsantonis called on Parliament to formally recognise that Smyrna “burned for nine days between the 13th and the 22nd of September 1922 – destroying the Greek city of Smyrna in Asia Minor.”
Mr Koutsantonis also requested the House of Assembly remember the “tens of thousands of innocent lives that were lost,” whilst urging the government to call on Turkey to recognise its “deliberate burning of the city and systematic genocide and ethnic cleansing of Greeks and Armenians in Smyrna.”
In the second motion on Greece’s National Day, the SA Minister called for recognition that “the 28th of October is OXI Day – the anniversary of the day the Greek Prime Minister rejected Mussolini’s ultimatum in 1940 and expressed that it would not surrender to Axis powers.”
He also moved that the SA Government share in celebrations for OXI Day in Australia, welcome the visiting contingent of the Hellenic Presidential Guard to Adelaide in October and endorse the unveiling of the new monument at St George Greek Orthodox Church in Thebarton commemorating the Australian‑Hellenic military cooperation in WWII.
