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Chirol
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Chirol

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October 13th, 2006

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It Only Matters If You’re Dead – Europe

As usual, Europe ignores smaller problems like North Korea, the Sudan, Iraq, Iran and others to focus on more important things, such as warping history, making free speech a crime and generally overlegislating. If you haven’t guessed already, it’s France.

French Lawmakers Approve ‘Armenian Genocide’ Bill

PRAGUE, October 12, 2006 (RFE/RL)—France’s lower house of parliament, the National Assembly, approved a bill today making it a crime to deny that the mass slaughter of Armenians in the final years of the Ottoman Empire was genocide.The bill, approved by 106 votes to 19, must still be approved by the Senate and signed by the president to become law. [...] The bill sets out maximum penalties of 45,000 euros or up to five years in prison for anyone who denies that the killings were genocide.

How about it being a crime to stand by and watch a genocide without intervening? Oh yeah, France already signed that law. Guess dead Armenians are more important. For all the Europeans talking about Big Brother in America, they’d better wake up and see where the real threats are coming from.

Comments to this entry

Curzon
October 13, 2006
12:47 am
I thought you'd be all over this. And I agree entirely on this absurd theme in European law and jurisprudence, as previously noted "here":http://www.cominganarchy.com/2005/07/19/european-jurisprudence-is-insane/ and "here.":http://www.cominganarchy.com/2005/10/22/european-jurisprudence-is-insane-part-2/

I'm one of many who believes that the campaign against the Armenians was a brutal guerilla war in which the Russian Empire used the Armenians to fight a proxy war for Moscow. The leaders of the Ottoman Empire, facing implosion and threats on all sides, deported as many as a million of Armenians, many of whom died. That's a conclusion I draw from a "review of the evidence,":http://www.amazon.com/Ataturk-Biography-Mustafa-Father-Turkey/dp/0688112838/sr=8-2/qid=1160699649/ref=sr_1_2/002-9014508-4494424?ie=UTF8&s=books as opposed to "well-organized propaganda.":http://www.armenian-genocide.org/ And it's an "ongoing debate in academia":http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armenian_Genocide#Academic_views_on_the_issue that hinges largely on the definition of genocide, and many scholars would agree with the above view:

A number of Western academics in the field of Ottoman history, including Bernard Lewis (Princeton University), Heath Lowry (Princeton University), Justin McCarthy (University of Louisville), Gilles Veinstein (College de France),[36] Stanford Shaw (UCLA, Bilkent University), J.C. Hurewitz (Columbia University), Guenter Lewy (University of Massachusetts), Roderic Davison (Central European University), Jeremy Salt (University of Melbourne, Bilkent University)[37] and Rhoads Murphey (University of Birmingham) have expressed doubts as to the genocidal character of the events. They offer the opinion that the weight of evidence instead points to serious intercommunal warfare, perpetrated by both Muslim and Christian irregular forces, aggravated by disease and famine, as the causes of suffering and massacres in Anatolia and adjoining areas during the First World War. They acknowledge that the resulting death toll among the Armenian communities of the region was immense, but claim that much more remains to be discovered before historians will be able to sort out precisely responsibility between warring and innocent, and to identify the causes for the events which resulted in the death or removal of large numbers in eastern Anatolia.


But so much for free speech as a basic principle of Western civilization. This is a discussion that, more than likely, we won't be able to have in France soon.
Joe
October 13, 2006
1:57 am
On the other hand, Turkey seems to have the exact opposite law on its books...
ElamBend
October 13, 2006
2:04 am
The best comment I heard about this was on the radio. A Turkish Armenian (oxymoron?), who does believe it was a genocide was proclaiming that the whole law was a croc. He stated his belief that France was only passing this law now as a 'poison pill' for Turkey joining the EU. He also said that if France passed the law, he was going to France and was going to deny the genocide on principle.
Two Cents
October 13, 2006
6:03 am
Joe,
And of course, the European leftists who are seemingly intolerant of free speech reward Orhan Pamuk for having the courage to speak out in Turkey, which seems fully tolerant of it, by awarding him the 2006 Nobel Prize in Literature.
patrick
October 13, 2006
11:05 pm
Actually, the Turkish government tried to prosecute Pamuk for what he said; fortunately the matter was dropped. They also attempted to prosecute Hrant Dink, a Turkish Armenian, for discussing the genocide; I am not certain of the status of this prosecution at present. Interestingly, Dink has publicly condemned the proposed French law and said that he would violate it if he visited France.

I believe in free speech and hate censorship. I think freedom of speech includes offensive and false speech (e.g. that the Holocaust never happened or that 9/11 was a "controlled demolition" by the US government) and this law offends me on that grounds.

However, the fact, accepted by most historians (note that Lewis and Lewy are in a distinct minority on this issue) is that what happened to the Armenians in the last years of the Ottoman Empire was a genocide by any accepted definition of the term. It was not the Nazi Holocaust, but neither was Rwanda and neither is Darfur. But who would deny that those two events were genocide?
Two Cents
October 14, 2006
7:16 am
patrick,
>fortunately the matter was dropped
Isn't this evidence that the judicial powers are separated from the legislative & administrative branches and functioning properly, and that Turkey is indeed, a modern state?

I am not knowledgable enough to judge whether what happened in Armenia was genocide or not. (If I ever do become truly interested in the indicent, I would like to make the decision myself.) However, when France, a country that was not directly involved in the incident, tries to make a issue of it nearly a century later and take extreme measures as to place restrictions on the freedom of speech in its society, my guess would be that there is more to it than the protection of truth, and that it is strongly motivated by current political affairs.
patrick
October 15, 2006
3:34 am
Yes, it is good that the Pamuk proescution was dropped. It is worth noting that Pamuk, albeit controversial (he is particularly disliked by nationalists and Islamists) is a celebrity; attempts were made to prosecute others (Dink and Shafat) after charges were dropped against him.

But the fact that Turkey has a law that forbids people from stating what is generally accepted by historians outside the country is evidence of a problem. So is the fact that France just passed a law criminalizing the statement of the opposite opinion.

The only connection between France and Armenia is that France has the largest Armenian community in Europe (possibly close to the size of the Armenian community in the US) and both communities have their origin with refugees from the Genocide.

Another aspect to this is that public opinion in France (and many other European countries) is very much opposed to Turkey's entry into the EU. The Europeans do not see the secular character of the Turkish state and the relative moderation of Islam in Turkey as things that will persist into the near future. Also they do not want to add to the problems they are having with integration of Muslim minorities by importing more Muslim immigrants.
ComingAnarchy.com » Blog Archive » Lest I be criticized for being soft on Nazis…
February 18, 2007
9:37 am
[...] There are plenty of reasons to punish Papon for his crimes over his career. As chief of the Paris police in 1958, he massacred protestors at student and leftist demonstrations, and the “disappearance” of colonial dissidents. Yet when it comes to the European view of war crimes, it’s almost as if the statute of limitations works in reverse: the incident has to “ripen” before anyone gives a shit. At least the case of Papon was one where the investigation was undertaken before he was dead... but to engage in an exhaustive investigation, followed by a trial, conviction, and then early parole on “health issues” (he lasted more five more years), seems absurd to me. [...]
ComingAnarchy.com » Blog Archive » Pot? Kettle? Black? Slavery and Comfort Women
February 26, 2007
9:19 am
[...] Exactly what business other countries have sticking their beaks in how other country’s treat history is beyond us here at CA, and it’s been addressed previously here. To go a step further, I personally think it’s batshit crazy for another country to criticize another country’s history for no other apparent reason than to 1.) appeal to domestic interest groups, and 2.) pat themselves on the back for being so self-righteous, especially when, such as in this case, the result will be nothing other than piss off Washington’s only remaining major geopolitical ally, and reward a country (ROK) whose people loathe America. [...]