OSCE OFFICIAL CRITICISES FRENCH BILL ON ARMENIA GENOCIDE
Agence France Presse — English
October 18, 2006 Wednesday 7:55 PM GMT
An official at the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in
Europe on Wednesday criticised a French bill making it a crime to
deny Ottoman Turks committed genocide against Armenians.
Miklos Haraszti, an OSCE representative for freedom of media, asked
Senate members to reject the amendment when it reaches the second
French chamber, saying it was an attack on freedom of expression.
"I acknowledge the humanitarian intentions of those members of
the assembly who support this proposal. However, the adoption of
the amendment raises serious concerns with regard to international
standards of freedom of expression," Haraszti wrote.
"It is in the name of these same standards that I continue to call upon
Turkey to remove Article 301 of the Penal Code, ‘Insulting Turkish
identity’, which prosecutors in Turkey repeatedly use in the context
of the Armenian genocide debate."
The 56-member OSCE, originally set up as a point of contact between
NATO and Warsaw Pact countries, has evolved since the end of the Cold
War into an organisation mainly concerned with safeguarding human
rights, democracy and the rule of law in Europe.
The bill, which needs to be approved by the French senate and president
to become a law, provides for a year in jail for anyone who denies
that the World War I massacres of Armenians amounted to genocide.
It was voted by the lower house of the French parliament last week.
Armenians claim up to 1.5 million of their kin were slaughtered in
orchestrated killings between 1915 and 1917.
Turkey categorically rejects the genocide label, arguing that
300,000 Armenians and at least as many Turks died in civil strife
when Armenians rose for independence in eastern Anatolia and sided
with invading Russian troops as the Ottoman Empire was falling apart.