The hearing in this Wednesday, January 28 before the Grand Chamber of the European Court of Human Rights in the case Perincek v. Switzerland will major issue to determine whether the application of the Swiss anti-racist standard in the denial of Armenian genocide is a violation of freedom of expression (art. 10 ECHR). At the time of the commemoration of the centenary of the genocide, the issue is fundamental.
In the first judgment of 17 December 2013, the Court upheld the appeal of Mr. Perincek – convicted in Switzerland by three successive instances of racial discrimination – and held that the conviction of Mr. Perincek by the Swiss courts violated Article 10 of the Convention establishing the right to freedom of expression. The Court has built on the absence of a “general consensus” on the legal definition of genocide of the Armenian experience as well as a pressing social need which could justify the criminalization of Holocaust denial.
To recall, Mr. Perincek visited in 2005 in several cities in Switzerland at the head of an organization called Talaat Pasha Committee (named after the major responsible for the genocide of the Armenians and for that condemned at the time by a military court Turkish) to repeat in public, in six different occasions, that the “Armenian genocide was an international imperialist lie.”
In the past, the European Court had yet clear that the denial of a crime against humanity was one of the worst forms of racial defamation and incitement to hatred (Garaudy v. France).
In this case, since the MEDZ Yeghern was the basis for the definition of legal concepts of crime against first humanity and genocide then, and since the absolute majority of the scientific world as Genocide the extermination of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire during World War I, his denial and intentional justification can not be tolerated. In sentencing Mr. Perincek, the Swiss courts have made this plain. The Switzerland-Armenia Association (SAA), which initiated the case in Switzerland by filing a complaint against the applicant was admitted by the Grand Chamber of the European Court of Human Rights to intervene in this case. On this occasion, the ASA was first wished to recall the need to protect the victims of crime perpetrated in 1915 by the Ottoman Empire. These victims have been forgotten by the Court in its previous judgment.
The ASA then argued that the Swiss courts have carefully examined the case and properly understood the wrongfulness of Mr. Perincek. The ASA is concerned that the Court was substituted for the Swiss courts, contradicting and putting the particular question the consensus on the qualification of the massacres of 1915.
Finally, the ASA announced that it had been deeply wounded by some passages in the judgment of 17 December 2013 and in particular in that the Court has made a distinction between genocide, which leads to a difference in treatment between unhappy victims of genocide.
While the centennial of the Armenian Genocide will be commemorated this year, the ASA hopes that the European Court of Human Rights be no mistake about the will of Mr. Perincek and confirmed in the present case, the wrongfulness of his remarks.
Additional Information:
The following people – accompanied by the Board of the SAA before the Court, Mr. Frédéric Krenc (+32/2/5331085) – will be present at the hearing on 28 January 2015.
Andreas Dreisiebner (German, English) – President of the ASA – Tel. : + 4179 671 8619
Mr. Sarkis Shahinian (French, German, Italian, English) – Honorary President of the ASA – Tel. : + 4176 399 1625
Jean Eckian © armenews.com