Robertson Archives

Robertson: If you deny one genocide, why make it illegal to deny another

October 16, 2015 By administrator

Geoffrey Robertson

If you deny one genocide, why make it illegal to deny another, in particular one as brutal and barbaric as Armenian Genocide, attorney Geoffrey Robertson said on Al Jazeera.

He recalled that a number of states have criminalized denial of the Holocaust. The attorney believes that Europe has another perception on denial of crimes, as compared for example with U.S., as the continent was occupied once.

Mr. Robertson believes that “we do not have to privilege Holocaust as the only genocide” as there are such genocides as in Rwanda, Armenian Genocide, genocide by Yazidis and Christians perpetrated by ISIS.

The attorney believes that Switzerland will not have to change the law because of the European Court of Human Rights, as the judgment noted that the law must be used in the context.

“I don not think it will require change in the law, but more sensible prosecution policy,” he added.

Robertson and Clooney: ECHR decision is a victory for Armenia

October 15, 2015 By administrator

Attorneys representing Armenia as a third party in Perincek v Switzerland case Geoffrey Robertson QC and Amal Clooney issued a statement on European Court of Human Rights decision in the case.

The statement reads:

“We are pleased that the European Court of Human Rights today endorsed our argument on behalf of the Government of Armenia, which intervened in the case between Dogu Perincek and Switzerland. The decision is a victory for Armenia.

Today the European Court ruled that the applicant’s freedom of speech should not have been restrained because it was not likely to incite violence or racial hatred. Thus Perincek should not have been prosecuted by the Swiss authority because his rant, in the Turkish language, would have had no impact at all on social harmony and race relations in Switzerland.

Armenia intervened in the case for one reason: the lower court had cast doubt on the fact that a genocide against the Armenian people occurred in 1915. As counsel we sought to correct this grave error, and the Grand Chamber has done so. Today’s judgment did not dispute the fact of the Armenian genocide: ten judges said the question should not have been addressed at all whilst seven stated that “the Armenian genocide is a clearly established historic fact”.

The judgment also upholds the Armenians’ right under European law to have their dignity respected and protected, including by recognition of a communal identity forged through suffering from the annihilation of over half their race by the Ottoman Turks (see para 227).

The court’s decision upholding the importance of freedom of expression has important consequences for Turkey, which has the worst record of any state before the European Court on free speech. Turkey can no longer justify prosecuting those like Hrant Dink who are accused of “insulting Turkishness” contrary to article 301 of the Penal Code by writing about the reality of the Armenian genocide. These prosecutions are plainly contrary to the free speech guarantee under article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights as interpreted in the Perincek case. We call on Turkey to abolish article 301 and cease malicious prosecutions pursued on its terms.

Perincek is a provocateur who should not have been made the martyr that he was so keen to become. We note that the Court rejected his demand for 120,000 euro compensation, and awarded him nothing – not even his own legal fees.”

Earlier ECHR ruled there had been a violation of Article 10 (freedom of expression) of the European Convention on Human Rights, thus the petition filed by Switzerland was rejected.

Internationally renowned lawyer Robertson urges Australia to recognize Armenian ‘genocide’

April 25, 2015 By administrator

High-profile human rights lawyer Geoffrey Robertson QC has addressed members of the Australian Armenian community in a solemn night of commemoration.
Source: AAP
Internationally renowned human rights lawyer Geoffrey Robertson has called on the Australian government to recognise the slaughter of hundreds of thousands of Armenians in modern-day Turkey 100 years ago as genocide.

As Australians prepared to commemorate the centenary of the Gallipoli landings, more than 2000 members and supporters of the Australian Armenian community gathered at Sydney Town Hall to remember the victims of mass killings that began in the Ottoman Empire on April 24, 1915.

Turkey has consistently denied the deaths of up to 1.5 million Armenians amounted to genocide.

“Isn’t it ironic that here we are, 100 years after (Gallipoli), celebrating the courage of young Australians in facing Turkish bullets, and we have a government that lacks the courage to stand up to Turkey?” Mr Robertson said in his keynote address.

“I can’t refute what is obvious to every honest scholar, that what went on in 1915 was genocide.”

Mr Robertson said the key difference between the original Anzacs – including his great-uncle Bill Robertson, who was among the first to die in sniper fire at Anzac Cove – and the Armenians, who were killed only hours earlier and in the years that followed, was that the diggers had volunteered to fight.

“They were victims of a crime,” he said of the Armenians.

“They deserve not just mourning, they deserve a particular concern and commemoration. Not just a remembrance, but a demand.”

British attorneys, Swiss state and Armenia to defend Armenian Genocide issue

December 24, 2014 By administrator

YEREVAN. – Armenia to have a strong team of attorneys in Strasbourg at the appeal of Perincek vs. Switzerland case before the Grand Chamber of the European Court of Human Rights on Jan. 28, Armenian News – NEWS.am reports.

The case involves the conviction by Swiss national courts of a minor Turkish political party leader Dogu Perincek, who had traveled to Switzerland in 2005 with the explicit intent of denying the truth of the Armenian Genocide.

In Strasbourg Armenia will be represented by Amal Ramzi Alamuddin, wife of prominent actor and human rights activist George Clooney, a highly regarded London attorney specializing in international law, criminal law, human rights, and extradition. Eminent British lawyer Geoffrey Robertson QC, who is the joint head of Alamuddin’s Doughty Street Chambers, will also represent Armenia in vs. Switzerland case.

Amal Ramzi Alamuddin has been involved in several major court hearings such as defending Julian Assange of WikiLeaks and former Ukrainian Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko. She has also worked with the Prosecutor of the UN Special Tribunal for Lebanon, and the International Criminal Tribunal for former Yugoslavia. Alamuddin was born in Lebanon to a Druze father and Sunni Muslim mother in 1978. At the age of two, her family moved to the Britain. She received her law degree from New York University School of Law and clerked at the International Court of Justice. After returning to London in 2010, she became a barrister at the Doughty Street Chambers. She served as advisor to Kofi Annan, UN Special Envoy on Syria, and as Counsel to the 2013 UN Drone Inquiry team.

Geoffrey Robertson QC, a founder and joint head of Doughty Street Chambers, has had a distinguished career as a trial and appellate counsel, an international judge, and author of leading textbooks. He has argued many landmark cases in media, constitutional and criminal law, in the European Court of Justice, the European Court of Human Rights, British Supreme Court, the UN War Crimes courts and the World Bank’s International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID).

Note that in 2008, Perincek appealed the Swiss ruling to the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR). A majority of five out of seven ECHR judges ruled in 2013 that Switzerland had violated Perincek’s right to free expression. According to experts, the ruling was an unfair and unacceptable double standard, as the court considered denial of the Jewish Holocaust a crime, while Armenian Genocide denial an infringement on free speech. Azbarez noted that the five judges who ruled against Switzerland made countless judgmental and factual errors, misrepresenting Perincek’s allegations, misinterpreting Switzerland’s laws and court rulings, lacking basic knowledge of the Armenian Genocide, and repeatedly contradicting themselves. Two of the seven judges disagreed with the majority’s ruling and submitted a comprehensive 19-page report on the Armenian Genocide, siding with the Swiss court.

On March 17, 2014, Switzerland decided to appeal the ruling to ECHR’s 17-judge Grand Chamber, to defend the integrity of its laws and the country’s legal system. Specifically, the Swiss government challenged the court’s decision on three grounds:

1. ECHR had never before dealt with the juridical qualification of genocide and the scope of freedom of expression;

2. The undue restriction of “the margin of appreciation” available to Switzerland under ECHR’s jurisprudence;

3. The establishment of ‘artificial distinctions’ – in the absence of an international verdict, ECHR should have considered the Turkish Court’s 1919 guilty verdicts against the masterminds of the Armenian Genocide as evidence related to World Court’s jurisprudence.

Video: International Judge Geoffrey Robertson explain Turkish crime against Humanity (Armenian genocide)

August 3, 2014 By administrator

International Judge Geoffrey Robertson

Bibliography:

Geoffrey Robertson: is founder and head of Doughty Street Chambers, the UK’s leading human rights practice, which comprises some 80 barristers and 30 staff. He is a Bencher of the Middle Temple; and a Recorder (part-time judge) in London; an executive Member of Justice, and a trustee of the Capital Cases Trust. He is visiting Professor in Human Rights at Queen Mary College, University of London. He lives in London with his wife, author Kathy Lette, and their two children.

Armenian genocide:
In April 1915 the Ottoman government embarked upon the systematic decimation of its civilian Armenian population. The persecutions continued with varying intensity until 1923 when the Ottoman Empire ceased to exist and was replaced by the Republic of Turkey. The Armenian population of the Ottoman state was reported at about two million in 1915. An estimated one million had perished by 1918, while hundreds of thousands had become homeless and stateless refugees. By 1923 virtually the entire Armenian population of Anatolian Turkey had disappeared.

The Ottoman Empire was ruled by the Turks who had conquered lands extending across West Asia, North Africa and Southeast Europe. The Ottoman government was centered in Istanbul (Constantinople) and was headed by a sultan who was vested with absolute power. The Turks practiced Islam and were a martial people. The Armenians, a Christian minority, lived as second class citizens subject to legal restrictions which denied them normal safeguards. Neither their lives nor their properties were guaranteed security. As non-Muslims they were also obligated to pay discriminatory taxes and denied participation in government. Scattered across the empire, the status of the Armenians was further complicated by the fact that the territory of historic Armenia was divided between the Ottomans and the Russians.