SWISS TO ASK EUROPEAN COURT TO REVIEW GENOCIDE DENIAL CASE
Reuters
March 11 2014
ZURICH
(Reuters) – Switzerland will ask the European Court of Human Rights
to review a case involving a Turkish politician who denied that mass
killings of Armenians in Ottoman Turkey in 1915 amounted to genocide,
the Justice Ministry said on Tuesday.
A Swiss court had fined the leader of the leftist Turkish Workers’
Party, Dogu Perincek, for having branded talk of an Armenian genocide
“an international lie” during a 2007 lecture tour in Switzerland.
The European court, which upholds the 47-nation European Convention
on Human Rights, said in December a Swiss law against genocide denial
violated the principle of freedom of expression.
The ruling has implications for other European states such as France
which have tried to criminalize the refusal to apply the term genocide
to the massacres of Armenians during the breakup of the Ottoman empire.
Turkey accepts that many Armenians died in partisan fighting beginning
in 1915 but denies that up to 1.5 million were killed and that this
constituted an act of genocide – a term used by many Western historians
and foreign parliaments.
In requesting a referral of the case to the court’s Grand Chamber,
Switzerland is primarily seeking to clarify the scope available to
domestic authorities in applying the anti-racism law, the Justice
Ministry said in a statement.
(Reporting by Alice Baghdjian; Editing by Mark Heinrich)
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress
Disclaimer: This article was contributed and translated into English by Emil Lazarian. While we strive for quality, the views and accuracy of the content remain the responsibility of the contributor. Please verify all facts independently before reposting or citing.
Direct link to this article: https://www.armenianclub.com/2014/03/14/swiss-to-ask-european-court-to-review-genocide-denial-case/
