PUNISHING THE DENIAL OF THE ARMENIAN GENOCIDE: BRUSSELS CRITICISES THE FRENCH VOTE
By Anne-Marie Mouradian in Brussels
Translated by Geraldine Ring

Caucaz.com, Georgia
Oct 24 2006

Approved by France’s lower house of parliament, the National Assembly,
on October 12, the bill would make it a crime for French citizens to
deny that the Armenian genocide occurred. Such a decision is being
made in a country home to 500,000 descendants of survivors of the
Armenian massacres and where earlier this year Turkish organisations
held demonstrations denying the genocide. The law, which foresees
the same penalties as those instituted in 1990 by the Gayssot Law on
the denial of the holocaust, still has to go to the upper house, the
Senate, for another vote. If the law comes into force, it will appear
as an ultimatum and "have serious consequences for relations between
the European Union and Turkey", said Olli Rehn, EU Commissioner for
Enlargement, who is leading membership negotiations with Ankara.

The Commissioner is convinced that the law would have a negative impact
and an "effect contrary to the objective sought." "We have always
told Turkey that it must reconcile with Armenia on issues related to
the past, as well as current difficulties such as the reopening of
the border. This law would prohibit debate efforts and the necessary
dialogue," said Krisztina Nagy, spokesperson for Commissioner Rehn. She
added that, "Certainly, progress on the subject is still minimal, but
a conference held last year by historians and Turkish Prime Minister
Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s call to set up a commission of historians to
shed light on these events are encouraging signs."

Brussels, which is also critical of the Turkish deadlock on the
issue of Cyprus and the slowness of reforms, does not want to get too
involved with an issue that is not part of the membership criteria
defined in Copenhagen in 1993. The European Commission has always
avoided clashing head on with Ankara on this hypersensitive issue and
explains that it is not its role to make statements on the nature of
the "painful events" of 1915.

The European Parliament, on the other hand, clearly requested Turkey
to recognise the Armenian genocide in 1987. Without making it a
precondition, it reaffirmed on September 27 that it is "crucial that
a country on the road to membership confront and recognise its past."

However, some Euro-MPs have criticised the National Assembly’s vote.

The president of the European Parliament’s EU-South Caucasus
delegation, France’s Marie-Anne Isler Beguin (Green Party), believes
that such a law "would fuel the arguments of those against Turkey’s
entry to the EU" and would also be "paradoxically counterproductive
for Armenians in Armenia."

"It is not at all a question of denying a genocide that the French
state has officially recognised since 2001, and even less a question
of imagining the EU integration of a Turkey which itself has not
recognised this genocide. The recognition of a historical reality
should not lead to the criminalization of matter which calls this
reality into question, not the least because this would touch upon
one of our democracies’ most fundamental rights, the freedom of
expression," said Mme Isler Beguin.

Does that mean the Gayssot Law which applies to the denial of the Shoah
should be abolished? Or is there "genocide and genocide"? In Belgium,
where talks of a similar law seem to have come to a standstill and
where those who deny the Armenian genocide hold seats in community
councils, the Coordinating Committee of Belgian Jewish Organizations
(CCOJB) and the Secular Jewish Community Centre are asking for the
crime of denying the Shoah to be extended to the Armenian and Tutsi
genocides. A similar wish has been expressed by the Belgian Movement
Against Racism, Anti-Semitism and Xenophobia, presided over by Radouane
Bouhlal, who applauded the French National Assembly’s vote.

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