ARMENIAN DIASPORA HAILS SENATE’S APPROVAL

Today’s Zaman
Jan 24 2012
Turkey

Although Monday’s French Senate approval of a genocide denial bill
left Turkey fuming, the same vote won praise from the Armenian diaspora
as well as from Yerevan, which hailed the decision as one that should
be written in gold in history.

Alexis Govciyan, national president of the Council of Coordination
of Armenian Organizations in France, stated that the law that would
protect “the memory of the victims of the genocide and the dignity
of their descendants like us will be respected,” after the bill was
voted on Monday evening, AP reported. A similar reaction came from
Yerevan following the Senate vote, with Armenian Minister of Foreign
Affairs Edward Nalbandian saying: “This day will be written in gold;
not only in the history of friendship between the Armenian and French
peoples, but also in the annals of the history of the protection of
human rights.” Armenia hailed the Senate vote, which came a decade
after France officially recognized the deaths of Armenians in 1915
as genocide and constituted one more step towards making it a crime
to say otherwise, blocking the possibility for a Turkish argument to
debate the issue.

Members of the Armenian diaspora all over the world are readying for
the centennial of the “Armenian genocide” in 2015, lobbying in third
country parliaments to pass genocide recognition and denial laws.

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress