“It’s a difficult thing to live in a country that has erased your past.” – Teju Cole, Open City
Amnesty International is concerned about a new French law that would “…[make] it a criminal offense to publicly question events labeled ‘genocide’…”. The bill cleared the upper house of the French Parliament on 23 January 2012 and could be signed into law by President Nicolas Sarkozy as early as the end of this month.
The international human rights group notes that such “…legislation would criminalize the exercise of freedom of expression that is seen as ‘outrageously’ contesting or trivializing historical events or their characterisation.” Such legislation would also be largely redundant in the broader context of France’s current laws pertaining to freedom of expression, which can classify certain forms of historical denial as hate-speech.
The new law appears to be transparently aimed at Turkey, for the would-be European Union entrant’s longstanding refusal to acknowledge the violence directed against Armenians, from 1915-16 and through to the final days of the then Ottoman Empire in 1923, as genocidal. The Armenian Genocide, recognized by at least twenty members of the international community, resulted in significant displacement and approximately one and a half million deaths. Continue reading
