Czech News Agency (CTK)
CTK National News Wire
April 24, 2005
STETINA TO PROPOSE BILL ON CZECH RECOGNITION OF ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
PRAGUE, April 24 ; (RTJ)
Senator Jaromir Stetina wants to initiate a bill by which the Czech
Republic would recognise the violence inflicted upon Armenians in the
then Osman Empire in 1915 as genocide, he told CTK today.
“It is a shame that the Czech Republic does not have such a law yet,”
said Stetina, who attended a service organised by the local Armenian
community in Prague’s St Saviour’s Church in commemoration of the
genocide victims, whose number the Armenians put at 1.5 million.
“I’d like to beg the Armenian community in Prague to help me prepare
such a bill, and I’ll try to submit in the Senate as a bill for Czech
parliament to discuss,” said Stetina, unaffiliated senator who is a
member of the upper house’s Open Democracy group.
Stetina said his initiative has been motivated by the recent passing
of such a law in neighbouring Poland.
By passing its own, the Czech Republic would joint about twenty
countries which have passed one, including France, Russia, Italy,
Switzerland, Canada and Slovakia.
The EP labelled the 1915 transport and massacre of Armenians as
genocide in 1987.
Turkey refuses to call the 90-year old events genocide. It puts the
number of victims at 300,000 to 500,000.
Stetina said that Turkey, the successor state to the Osman Empire,
wants to enter the EU, and therefore it is important for it to cope
with its past.
Apart from the commemorative mass, Prague Armenians marked the bloody
events anniversary at a rally at Prague’s Old Town Square today. Two
hundred of Armenians and other people sympathising with them paid
tribute to the victims by a one- minute silence.