UPROAR AS FRENCH PARLIAMENT SHELVES VOTE ON ARMENIAN ‘GENOCIDE’

Agence France Presse — English
May 18, 2006 Thursday 5:06 PM GMT

PARIS, May 18 2006

Angry scenes broke out in the French National Assembly on Thursday
after lawmakers were forced to call off a vote on a bill that would
make it a punishable offence to deny the Armenian “genocide”.

Discussion of the controversial opposition bill — which has sparked
a diplomatic row between France and Turkey — will now be pushed back
to October at the earliest, under the parliamentary calendar.

Shouts filled the assembly as the bill’s supporters accused members
of the ruling Union for a Popular Movement (UMP) of stalling debate
and preventing the vote from taking place within the allotted time.

Dozens of lawmakers — angrily yelling “Vote! Vote!” — had to be
evacuated from the building after the leader of the assembly declared
the session closed.

In the public gallery, the many French Armenians who turned out to
support the bill reacted with dismay and anger, one of them — the
filmmaker Robert Guediguian — even breaking down in tears.

In Ankara, the government called for the bill to be abandoned
altogether, and for France to back the establishment of a
Turkish-Armenian committee of historians to study the World War I
massacres of Armenians.

“Our expectation from now on is to give up bringing the proposal
to the agenda of the French parliament again,” the Turkish foreign
ministry said.

But Maxime Sisvalian, a representative of France’s large Armenian
community, estimated at 500,000 people, slammed the postponement as an
“injustice”.

The Socialist bill would make punishable by up to five years in prison
and a fine of 45,000 euros (57,000 dollars) the crime of denying that
Turkish troops committed genocide against the Armenians between 1915
and 1917.

The same punishment is on the statute books for people who deny that
the Jewish Holocaust took place.

Earlier French Foreign Minister Douste-Blazy came out openly
against the bill, which follows on from a 2001 French law officially
recognising the massacres of Armenians as genocide.

“If adopted, this text would be seen as an unfriendly gesture by the
great majority of the Turkish people,” he told lawmakers, warning
its adoption would have “serious political consequences and weaken
our position not only in Turkey but across the entire region.”

“Turkey is a leading economic and trade partner… We cannot accept
this bill,” Douste-Blazy said.

The Socialist Party (PS) slammed the government’s position.

“The risk of diplomatic or commercial consequences can in no case
be invoked to justify giving up on human rights,” said PS spokesman
Julien Dray.

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan — backed by Turkish
business leaders and unions — appealed this month to France to block
the contentious bill, warning of the threat to bilateral relations.

Ankara briefly recalled its ambassador from Paris for consultations
amid rising tensions over the bill.

While the 2001 law was passed when the PS had a majority in the
National Assembly, the new bill would have needed support from ruling
party deputies — who had been given a free vote on the text.

The bill has provoked divisions within both the UMP and the PS.

Former Socialist minister Jack Lang said it would “undermine the
efforts of those in Turkey who are trying to bring Ankara to recognise
its history”, and warned against a trend towards “criminalising
public expression”.

Armenians claim up to 1.5 million of their kin were slaughtered in
orchestrated killings between 1915 and 1917 by Turks, as the Ottoman
Empire, modern Turkey’s predecessor, was falling apart.

Turkey categorically rejects the claims, saying 300,000 Armenians and
at least as many Turks died in civil strife when the Armenians took
up arms for independence in eastern Anatolia and sided with invading
Russian troops.