France votes on ‘Armenian genocide’
Al-Ahram Weekly, Egypt
Oct 19-25 2006
Last week’s vote aiming to make it an offence in France to question
the Armenian genocide has met with some formidable opposition,
reports David Tresilian in Paris
French MPs last week passed a bill aiming to make it an offence in
France "to question the Armenian genocide", being the massacres carried
out against the Armenian population of Anatolia in the dying days of
the Ottoman Empire during the First World War in which hundreds of
thousands of Armenians are believed to have died.
The bill, introduced into the lower house of the French parliament by
the socialists with the support of members of France’s ruling centre-
right parties but not of the government itself, was passed by 106
votes for and 19 against, with only 125 of the parliament’s 577 MPs
turning out to vote.
The bill, which will not become law until it is passed by the
parliament’s upper house and signed by the president, would make it a
criminal offence in France to question the "existence of the Armenian
genocide", those doing so risking up to five years in prison and a
45,000 Euro fine.
France has already legislated on other historical issues, the so-called
"Gayssot law" of July 1990 making it an offence in France to deny the
extermination carried out by the Hitler regime against Europe’s Jews,
and another law of January 2001 "publicly recognising the Armenian
genocide" but not making it an offence in France to deny it.
Response to the vote was immediate both in France and in Turkey, with
French commentators expressing reservations at the apparent use of
legislation to decide historical questions and thereby threatening
important freedoms, and the Turkish government protesting against
what it said was French interference in Turkey’s domestic affairs.
According to an editorial in the left-of-centre newspaper Liberation,
the proposed law was "ill- considered" since it would prevent freedom
of historical research, and the vote was an "abuse of intellectual
authority" on the part of the French parliament. According to an
editorial in the establishment newspaper Le Monde, "history is an
affair for historians" not for the French state, and politicians should
not try to set up a "ministry of truth" to decide historical questions.
The Liberty for History group, which brings together famous names
from the French historical profession including Marc Ferro, Jacques
Julliard, Pierre Nora and Mona Ozouf, also declared its opposition
to the proposed law. While expressing its "profound sentiment of
solidarity" for the "victims of history", the group deplored the
movement in France to "establish an official version of the past",
which "threatened freedom of thought and expression."
However, comment in the French press has focused at least as much on
the electoral advantages of the proposed law and its meaning in the
context of French politics as it has on the question of historical
truth.
France has a sizeable Armenian minority, and with only months to go
before the French presidential elections in April 2007, candidates
from both the socialist and centre-right parties have been looking
for support, with the centre-right frontrunner, Nicolas Sarkozy, and
the socialist favourite, Segolène Royale, both reportedly in favour
of the proposed law.
The vote is also being seen as part of a campaign in France to
frustrate Turkish accession to the European Union, not only by
insisting that the Armenian massacres constitute genocide, but also
by making recognition of Armenian genocide a precondition for Turkish
membership of the EU, the Turkish Republic being the successor state
to the Ottoman Empire.
Opinion polls in France have consistently indicated that a majority
of French citizens oppose Turkish membership of the EU, and since it
is believed that the Turkish government will not be able to agree to
recognition of the Armenian genocide, insisting on such a condition
would help to scupper Turkish membership.
For foreign observers, the French vote has come as an example of the
country’s susceptibility to grandstanding legislation on issues that
are usually considered to be matters for historical research, deciding
by legal means questions that elsewhere are seen as matters for debate.
Under the 1948 UN Convention that defines the crime of genocide in
international law, the term refers to "acts committed with intent
to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or
religious group, as such", and it is not clear that there was such
an intention on the part of those carrying out the Armenian massacres.
According to a spokesman for the European Commission in Brussels,
should the proposed French legislation come into effect, it would
"prevent the dialogue and debate necessary for reconciliation" and
would have a "disastrous effect" on freedom of expression in Turkey,
where "it would only oppose one official version of the truth to
another."
For its part, the Armenian Patriarchate in Istanbul commented that
"the French, who have already placed various obstacles in the way of
Turkey’s joining the European Union, have now struck a serious blow to
the already limited dialogue between Turkey and Armenia… one that
will only play into the hands of extreme nationalists and racists in
both Turkish and Armenian societies."
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