CYPRUS CRIMINALISES DENIAL OF 1915 ARMENIAN GENOCIDE BY TURKS

April 2nd, 2015 George Psyllides Cyprus

Cyprus

Cyprus on Thursday made it a crime to deny that Ottoman Turks committed
genocide against Armenian Turks a century ago.

The Cypriot parliament passed a resolution penalising denial of
genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes, modifying existing
legislation, which required prior conviction by an international
court to make denial a crime.

“Today is a historic day,” speaker of parliament Yiannakis Omirou
said. “It allows parliament to restore, with unanimous decisions and
resolutions, historical truths.”

The island was one of the first countries worldwide in 1975 to
recognise the Armenian killings as genocide. It is commemorated on
April 24.

The nature and scale of the killings remain highly contentious. 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.

Armenia accuses the Ottoman authorities at the time of systematically
massacring large numbers of Armenians, then deporting many more,
including women, children and the elderly and infirm in terrible
conditions on so-called death marches.

The issue has long been a source of tension between Turkey and
several Western countries, especially the United States and France,
both home to large ethnic Armenian diasporas. Cyprus too has an
Armenian population.

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress