SWEDEN READIES TO SOFTEN ITS ‘GENOCIDE’ LAW, ANKARA CAUTIOUS

Today’s Zaman, Turkey
May 31 2007

The Turkish Foreign Ministry has requested information from the
Turkish Embassy to Switzerland over media reports suggesting that
Swiss Justice Minister Cristoph Blocher intended to make a major
change to Switzerland’s anti-racism law, which criminalizes denial of
the alleged genocide of Anatolian Armenians in 1915, Foreign Ministry
spokesperson Levent Bilman told reporters on Wednesday.

Media reports said that Blocher has drawn up a package for abolishment
or softening of Swiss Penal Code Article 261 — which makes punishable
the public incitement to racial hatred or discrimination under which
the leader of the neo-nationalist Turkish Workers’ Party (ÝP),
Doðu Perincek, was found guilty in March by a criminal court in
Lausanne for calling the alleged genocide of Armenians in 1915 an
"international lie" during Turkish rallies in Lausanne two years ago.

"If this is true and if there are efforts for removing the barriers
in front of freedom of expression in a way which befits a democratic
country, we can only feel pleasure over this," Bilman said, noting,
however, that the consequences of those reports should be waited for.

The March ruling by the Lausanne court has made Perincek the first
person sentenced under Switzerland’s anti-racism law for denying
the alleged genocide. The case has caused diplomatic tension between
Switzerland and Turkey.

–Boundary_(ID_/4Igz3Ttj8r2/QRmwO+YiQ)–