YEREVAN. – The law criminalizing the denial of genocides will make it impossible to conduct the Turkish policy of denial in France, representative of the Armenian community said.
“This was a pre-election promise of Francois Hollande, and he kept it. This is a bill to criminalize the denial of all genocides and crimes against humanity. The bill will be reviewed in September and will be mst likely adopted. With the adoption of this draft law in France, no one will any longer have the right to say that there was no Armenian Genocide, and this also applies to other genocides as well,” co-chairman of the Coordination Council of Armenian Organizations of France Mourad Papazian told Armenian News-NEWS.am.
The National Assembly (NA) of France adopted the amendments proposed to the bill on “Equality and citizenship” on July 1. The amendments propose to establish 45,000 euro penalty for denying the crimes against humanity. In fact, the document specifically mentions about criminalizing the Armenian Genocide denial.
Asked whether it is possible that the French Constitutional Council could reject the law as it happened last time, Mr. Papazian said that this time the bill had been studied by lawyers and such an outcome is almost impossible: “We made sure that there were no gaps. We are pretty sure that this time the court will not give up. But, of course, we cannot be 100%”.
Representatives of the Armenian community of France are doing everything to ensure that in September the bill would pass the Senate. Mr. Papazian added that the Turkish side is also active in the opposite.