Nouvelles d’Arménie, France
Jan 1 2007

Tessa Hofmann/Sarkis Bezelgues ‘Recognition’ of genocide and
penalization of genocide denial

German Journal for Politics and Economics of the Middle East 2/2006

Table of Contents

Tessa Hofmann/Sarkis Bezelgues ‘Recognition’ of genocide and
penalization of genocide denial

Abstract : The political, legal and human rights background and the
impact of the motion of the German Bundestag of June 16, 2006,
"Remembering and commemorating the expulsions and massacres of the
Armenians in 1915 – Germany must make a contribution to
reconciliation between Turks and Armenians".

The ‘recognition’ of genocides committed in the first half of the
20th century and be-fore the UN Convention on the Punishment and
Prevention of Genocide (1948) causes particular legal, political and
moral problems. Communities of survivors and their descendents fight
for the public and official recognition of such crimes, and, be-ing
rejected by the States responsible for the crimes, they address to
the international community with the request to acknowledge formally,
by parliamentary resolutions and similar official statements, the
crime as a historic fact. The most prominent ex-ample of genocide
‘recognized’ by an increasing number of parliaments and yet ‘de-nied’
by the legislative and government of the Turkish Republic is the case
of the an-nihilation of the Armenian population in the Ottoman Empire
during 1915/16.

This article is a critical assessment of the motion, issued
unanimously by the German Bundestag on June 16, 2005 (Printed Paper
15/5689). The authors discuss the motifs and legal implication of
this implicit German version of genocide recognition, which avoids
the term genocide, but is explicit in admitting Germany’s
co-respon-sibility for the ‘annihilation’ of the Armenian citizens of
the Ottoman Empire. Beside genocide recognition, the penalization of
genocide denial is yet another main concern of communities of
genocide survivors and their descendants. Here, the authors explain
the meaning of genocide denial and explore the surprisingly poor
‘equipment’ of the German penal law situation, which has no other
tools to counter qualified genocide denial than §§ 130 (3) and 185
(German Penal Code), which prosecute denial of the NS genocide crimes
as insult, or protect the memory of de-ceased persons from insult (§
189). The authors also analyse whether the penalization of qualified
genocide denial under the German penal law infringes the basic and
human rights of free opinion, as stated in the German constitution
(Grundgesetz article 5 [1]).

In conclusion, the authors compare the German situation with the
legal state of af-fairs in other EU member states such as Spain and
France. Quoting the contradicting governmental opinion of Turkey and
of dissident Turkish human rights defenders, as articulated at the
occasion of a debate in the French National Assembly (May 18, 2006)
about a bill on the legal prosecution of genocide denial, the authors
predict in-tensified differences between the liberty of speech and
opinion and the protection against genocide denial as the ‘second
killing’ (Elie Wiesel).

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