Turkish EU minister said that the government of Armenia was not courageous enough to accept Turkey’s offer that archives should be examined by scholars. Read more…
Reporters Without Borders in Paris urged parliamentarians to refer the bill adopted on Monday to make it a crime to deny Armenian allegations on the Ottoman era incidents of 1915 to the Constitutional Council.
A letter by Jean-Francois Julliard, secretary general of Reporters Without Borders, said that parliamentarians must demand the bill’s referral to the Council, because it was against freedom of expression and the constitution.
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By Sophie Quintin Adali
Honorable members of the Senate and of the National Assembly,
There is something rotten in our Republic. The adoption by the two chambers of a law criminalizing a thought crime (denial of Armenian “genocide”) is both a shame for French democracy and a violation of the fundamental rights enshrined in the Constitution.
The September 2005 Declaration by the civic organization “Liberty for History” had warned about the dangers of so-called memory laws. “History should not be a subject of law-making. In a free state, it is neither for the parliament nor for the judiciary to define historical truth.” Reports have amply elaborated on the risks incurred. Yet their findings have been ignored. Read more…
Thousands of Turks from across Europe marched through the French capital on Saturday to denounce a bill that would make it a crime to deny that the killing of Armenians by Ottoman Turks nearly a century ago was genocide. Read more…
The French Senate is scheduled to vote on Monday on a law that would penalize those who deny genocide, taking another step along a path that has already damaged France’s relations with Turkey. Read more…