TURKS PROTEST AT FRENCH EMBASSY IN BUCHAREST OVER ‘GENOCIDE’ BILL
Agence France Presse — English
October 18, 2006 Wednesday 1:31 PM GMT
Some 30 Turkish residents in Romania demonstrated Wednesday outside
France’s embassy in Bucharest against a French bill making it a crime
to deny Ottoman Turks committed genocide against Armenians.
They held up banners in French saying that politicians should not
legislate on historical truth.
The Mediafax news agency said that some of the demonstrators left a
letter of protest at the embassy.
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 Thursday.
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.