(Reuters) - Denying
that mass killings of Armenians in Ottoman Turkey in 1915 were genocide is not
a criminal offence, the European Court of Justice ruled on Tuesday in a case
involving Switzerland. The court, which upholds the 47-nation European
Convention on Human Rights, said a Swiss law against genocide denial violated
the principle of freedom of expression.
 |
| Armenian Genocide memorial in Lyons, France |
The ruling has
implications for other European states such as France which have tried to criminalize
the refusal to apply the term "genocide" to the massacres of
Armenians during the breakup of the Ottoman empire. A Swiss court had fined the
leader of the leftist Turkish Workers' Party, Dogu Perincek, for having branded
talk of an Armenian genocide "an international lie" during a 2007
lecture tour in Switzerland.
Turkey accepts that many Armenians died in partisan fighting beginning in 1915 but denies that up to 1.5 million were killed and that it constituted an act of genocide - a term used by many Western historians and foreign parliaments.
Turkey accepts that many Armenians died in partisan fighting beginning in 1915 but denies that up to 1.5 million were killed and that it constituted an act of genocide - a term used by many Western historians and foreign parliaments.
The court drew a distinction between the Armenian case and appeals it has rejected against convictions for denying the Nazi German Holocaust against the Jews during World War Two. Read more . . .
No comments:
Post a Comment