Author: Emil Lazarian

Unison.ie, Ireland
Oct 13 2006
French Pass Bill That Punishes Denial of Armenian Genocide
PARIS, Oct. 12 – The National Assembly, defying appeals from Turkey,
approved legislation Thursday that would make it a crime to deny that
the mass killings of Armenians in Turkey during and after World War I
were genocide.
The legislation, which was criticized by Turkey’s government and some
European Union officials, could further complicate talks for Turkey’s
admission to the Union.
With 106 deputies voting in favor and 19 against, the law sets fines
of up to 45,000 euros, or about $56,000, and a year in prison for
denying the genocide. Of the 577 members of the Assembly, 4 abstained
and 448 did not vote at all, raising the question of whether there
would be enough political will to push the law through the Senate.
Scholars and most Western governments have recognized the killing of
more than a million Armenians by Ottoman Turks from 1915 to 1919 as
genocide. But the subject is still taboo in Turkey, and charges have
been pressed against writers and others who have brought attention to
the genocide, including Orhan Pamuk, who was just awarded the Nobel
Prize in literature.
`The Turkish people refuse the limitation of freedom of expression on
the basis of groundless claims,’ the Turkish Foreign Ministry said in
a statement. `With this draft law, France unfortunately loses its
privileged status in the eyes of Turkish public opinion.’
Ali Babacan, the Turkish economy minister and the country’s lead
negotiator on talks with Europe, said he could not rule out
consequences for French companies.
`What happened in France today, we believe, is not in line with the
core values of the European Union,’ Mr. Babacan said, adding that the
government would not encourage a boycott of French goods.
In Brussels, the European Union warned that the law could have a
harmful effect on negotiations. `It would prohibit dialogue which is
necessary for reconciliation on the issue,’ said Krisztina Nagy, a
spokeswoman for the Union. `It is not up to law to write history.
Historians need to have debate.’
Turkey’s potential membership in the European Union has been a hot
political topic here ahead of the presidential elections next spring.
The leading candidates to succeed President Jacques Chirac, including
Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy and Ségolène Royal, have agreed
that Turkey must acknowledge the genocide before gaining membership.
But the new legislation has been more of a campaign issue in France,
which has one of Europe’s largest Armenian populations.
Although most of France’s top politicians supported the European
Union’s planned constitution, the French rejected it last year in a
referendum that was also seen as a vote against further European
expansion. The problem for politicians seeking to succeed Mr. Chirac
is how to oppose Turkish entry without taking on the xenophobic tones
of the far right.
After the vote, Mr. Chirac’s government, which opposed the
legislation, expressed eagerness for dialogue with Turkey and said
the bill was unnecessary and inopportune. `We are very committed to
dialogue with Turkey, as well as to the strong ties of friendship and
cooperation which link us to that country,’ said Jean-Baptiste
Mattéi, a spokesman for the Foreign Ministry.
Ms. Royal, who is the leading Socialist candidate for president, has
loudly supported the bill. On Wednesday, she reiterated that
`obviously,’ Turkey would have to recognize the genocide, and added,
`My opinion is that of the French people.’
Two other senior Socialists, Dominique Strauss-Kahn and Jack Lang,
had reservations about the bill.
On the center right, Mr. Sarkozy has opposed Turkey’s joining the
European Union, but he kept silent about the genocide bill, which was
sponsored by the Socialists.
A leading Turkish analyst of the European Union, Can Baydarol, said
that although the decision would seem to have no direct effect on
Turkey’s relations with Europe, the hostile attitude of French
lawmakers demonstrated some of the obstacles to Turkish membership.
`Now people see that more than the technical details, political
maneuvers will mark the years-long process on the way to full
membership,’ he said.
Sebnem Arsu contributed reporting from Istanbul.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

Ha’aretz, Israel
Oct 13 2006
Taking sides on genocide

By Jonas Attenhofer

On an official visit to Turkey, Swiss justice minister Christoph
Blocher expressed sympathy for his hosts’ anger at Switzerland’s
prosecution of two Turkish men who publicly denied the Armenian
Genocide. The two, a historian and a politician, are being prosecuted
under a Swiss anti-racism law.
Blocher, leader of the right-wing People’s Party, also mentioned
during his visit that the Department of Justice he heads was working
toward a revision of the law, which he said caused him pain as well.
These remarks caused an uproar in Swiss political and academic
circles, which broadly support the law that withstood a referendum in
1994. Aside from racism in general, the law explicitly prohibits the
public denial, grave belittlement, or attempted justification of
genocide and other crimes against humanity.
Upon his return to Switzerland, Blocher stated his intention of
working to exclude from the anti-racism law the section that
prohibits denial of a genocide. He was quoted as saying that this
particular passage could impair freedom of expression, as well as
Switzerland’s relations with other states. Regarding freedom of
expression, the question is whether a law that prohibits the
racially, ethnically or religiously motivated violation of the human
dignity of particular individuals, represents a serious limitation of
individual freedom.

The president of the Federal Supreme Court of Switzerland, Giusep
Nay, sees the law as a necessary limitation to freedom of expression.
He sees no threat to this freedom as expressed in the Swiss
Constitution and the United Nations Charter. A state’s interest in
limiting this basic right was explained by the Armenian Republic’s
ambassador to Switzerland, who observed that by allowing the denial
of past genocides, the perpetrators remain unpunished by public
opinion, and the prevention of future genocides is undermined.
The Swiss law covers only public statements. In a case in which a
group of Swiss soldiers gave the Nazi salute and expressed racist
sentiments while serving in the army, a military court recently
applied the term “public” to expressions made during military
training. If the anti-racism law were rescinded, it would become
easier to dismiss historic facts surrounding a genocide – effectively
favoring freedom of expression over the moral integrity of minority
groups. Equally controversial is the surrender of their moral
integrity by dropping the law in favor of good relations with states
that might disagree with it.
In the case of Switzerland and Turkey, Blocher’s call to weaken the
law has not earned much support among fellow cabinet members, whose
scheduled visits to Turkey have been cancelled by the host country
over frictions about the question of the Armenian Genocide. The Swiss
National Council had previously recognized the Armenian Genocide, and
this may be seen as the official Swiss position.
Blocher was sharply criticized by his colleagues in the seven-member
cabinet for disagreeing with a Swiss law while in a foreign country,
for not aligning his statements with the official positions of the
joint cabinet and for not fully coordinating his activities abroad
with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
As minister of justice, Blocher was not involved in any official
negotiations, but merely accepted an invitation by his Turkish
counterpart on the occasion of the 80th anniversary of the
establishment of Turkish civil law, which is modeled on the Swiss
Civil Code (ZGB). At the ceremony, the dean of the faculty of law of
Ankara University mentioned the constructive role Western European
law codes played in the shift from an Islamic society to a modern,
secular one.
Should neutral Switzerland engage in Armenian-Turkish mediation in
the future, recognition of the Armenian Genocide will unlikely be
subject to negotiations. Upholding its humanitarian tradition,
Switzerland can be expected to maintain a firm stance on the issue.
This also seems to be the intention of France’s Jacques Chirac and
Germany’s Angela Merkel, who want to make the issue a precondition
for Turkey to enter the European Union. France is presently
discussing implementation of a law that explicitly prohibits denial
of the Armenian Genocide.
The situation could have significance for the Middle East. The
European Union will eventually share a border with Iran. When a
Western European country considers weakening its stance against
public denial of the Holocaust, how is the message perceived in the
Middle East?
The writer is a law student at the universities of Zurich and Berne.

Arab News, Saudi Arabia
Oct 13 2006
Editorial: Confronting the Past
13 October 2006

TURKS prize the characteristics of toughness and fixity of purpose
that have made the ordinary Turkish soldier such an indomitable and
ferocious foe on the battlefield. The elite Janissaries from the
country’s Ottoman past, with their alarming tactic of relentless
advance using an eccentric swaying march, epitomize a sturdiness,
which after the humiliations of defeat in 1918, the Turks reasserted
under Ataturk’s leadership and threw occupation forces out of the
country.
However, in this formidable stubborn strength lies Turkey’s weakness
as the country bids for EU membership, for which in many other ways
it is eminently qualified. Turkey’s obdurate denial of the massacres
that took place for three years after an Armenian insurrection in
1915 is a folly that helps only those who wish to exclude it from the
EU.
With the 1983 return of democracy under Turgut Özal, work was
actually begun on a public-relations campaign that would at last have
recognized the horrors in Eastern Turkey. It would have argued that
the government of Enver Pasha feared a czarist Russian-inspired
rebellion that could have opened a further front for the already
overstretched Turkish armed forces. The point would also have been
made that Kurds, who turned on their more prosperous Armenian
neighbors, did much of the killing. In the event the project was
abandoned in favor of publishing a collection of source documents
that majored on the atrocities committed by Armenian rebels. History
is never black and white. Unfortunately almost a century after the
fact, Turkey is still stubbornly committed to a denial, not only that
there was official sanction for the massacres of maybe up to 1.5
million Armenians, but also of the fact that the massacres took
place. In France, which has a very large Armenian community,
legislators are making denial of the Armenian massacres a crime.
Regardless of the wisdom of this curtailment of free speech (proposed
by the opposition Socialists), the move is only the latest by French
parties of all political colors to block Turkey’s EU entry.
Socialist presidential challenger next year Segolene Royal, her rival
Nicolas Sarkozy, and President Chirac have all called for a
referendum on Turkish membership. Given current anti-Muslim feeling
and the articulate and wealthy Armenian community, that vote would
likely go against Turkey. Even in Italy and the UK, Turkey’s leading
supporters, there is now some concern that though many reforms
demanded by Brussels are being implemented by Ankara, Turks have not
grasped the wider implication of EU membership: that Europe is built
on compromise often hammered out in exhausting all-night
horse-trading sessions.
As the French themselves have been learning in recent years,
`nationalism’ is a dirty word in the EU. National pride is fine, but
it cannot be carried over into nationalist policies that tear apart
this unique economic and political organization of nation states.
Turkey’s staunch nationalism and obdurate refusal to confront a
tragic past plays right into the hands of its opponents.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

People’s Daily, China
Oct 13 2006
Turkey slams France over adoption of Armenian genocide bill

Turkish Foreign Ministry on Thursday slammed the French Parliament’s
adoption of a proposed draft law criminalizing any denial of the
alleged massacres of Armenians under the Ottoman Empire during World
War I.
Relations between Turkey and France have suffered “a heavy blow due
to irresponsible initiatives of several French politicians who are
not able to predict consequences of their policies,” the ministry
said in a statement.
“Despite our all diplomatic and parliamentary initiatives, and
efforts of our citizens living in France, non-governmental
organizations and business circles, the French parliament adopted the
bill submitted by the Socialist Party on criminalizing of any denial
of so-called Armenian genocide. We profoundly regret the adoption of
the bill,” the statement said.
French lawmakers on Thursday voted 106-19 for the bill, which calls
for up to a year in prison and fines of up to 56,000 U.S. dollars for
anyone who denies the Armenian genocide, according to the Turkish
media.
The bill must be passed by the Senate and signed by French President
Jacques Chirac, the reports said.
Reacting to the adoption of the bill, Turkish Parliament Speaker
Bulent Arinc said on Thursday, “It is a shameful and hostile
resolution. It is totally unacceptable.”
Arinc expressed his regret over adoption of the draft and said,
“France is considered the cradle of individual freedoms. This
decision contradicts with freedom of thought and expression.”
Turkey, a secular Muslim country which is seeking for the European
Union (EU) membership, has vowed to impose economic sanctions on
France if the bill is passed in the French parliament.
According to the Zaman daily newspaper, Turkey is the fifth- largest
customer of France outside the EU. The volume of trade between Turkey
and France is about 10 billion dollars. French exports to Turkey are
5.9 billion dollars while its import remains at 3.8 billion dollars.
Turkey has always denied that up to 1.5 million Armenians were
subjected to genocide in the period between 1915 and 1923.
However, it does acknowledge that up to 300,000 Armenians died during
fighting and efforts to relocate populations away from the war zone
in eastern Turkey.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

Sabah, Turkey
Oct 13 2006
French companies say: “we believe in Turkey”
Renault, the longest standing French company in Turkey said:
“companies which contribute to export and the development of the
country believe in Turkey.”
After the approval of the Armenian genocide denial bill in France,
Renault declared in writing that: “Renault believes in Turkey and is
monitoring these happenings very closely.” The communication manager
of the company, Jean-Christophe Nougaret, stated that Renault has
performed commercial and industrial activities within the partnership
of OYAK for 37 years and thus Renault has been contributing to the
development and continuous growth of Turkey with its production and
export performances. ”
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

The Daily Star, Lebanon
Oct 13 2006
Outstanding – and outspoken – Turkish novelist Orhan Pamuk wins Nobel
Prize for Literature
Writer recently occupied international spotlight not for his work but
as a target of his country’s prosecutors
By Kaelen Wilson-Goldie
Daily Star staff
Friday, October 13, 2006
BEIRUT: His name has been floated for years now, with bookies often
quoting the odds in his favor over a pack of strong contenders –
including Syrian poet Adonis, American novelist Philip Roth, Polish
journalist Ryszard Kapuscinski, Mexico’s Carlos Fuentes, Algeria’s
Assia Djebar and Peru’s Mario Vargas Llosa. But the coveted Nobel
Prize for literature has eluded Orhan Pamuk – until now.
On Thursday, Turkey’s leading novelist finally got the award, making
him the first Nobel literature laureate from the Middle East – if one
considers Turkey to be a part of the region, and this newspaper does
– since the late Naguib Mahfouz of Egypt, who won in 1988. (Israel’s
Shmuel Yosef Agnon split the Nobel with German poet and playwright
Nelly Sachs in 1966. No Turkish writer has ever been honored in the
prize’s 105-year history).
Making the announcement at mid-day on Thursday, the Swedish Academy
in Stockholm – charged with doling out the award and its attendant
check for $1.36 million – praised Pamuk for discovering “in the quest
for the melancholic soul of his native city … new symbols for the
clash and interlacing of cultures.”
Pamuk has published one memoir – “Istanbul: Memories and the City” –
and nine novels, five of which have been translated into English.
Overall, his work has earned widespread critical acclaim and
international recognition while finding its way into print in some 40
different languages.
That said, with the exception of a pirated translation from Syria of
his first novel “Cavdet Bey,” his work is not widely available in
Arabic, and Pamuk himself has reportedly made a few disparaging
remarks in the past about there being little need for such
translations as so few Arabic speakers read novels.
However, outside literary circles and those who do, whatever the
language, read novels, Pamuk is best known as the famous writer who
went on trial in Turkey. In February 2005, he gave an interview to
the Swiss publication Das Magazin, in which he declared: “Thirty
thousand Kurds and a million Armenians were killed in these lands and
nobody but me dares to talk about it.” For that statement, a
prosecutor named Turgay Evsen charged Pamuk with violating Article
301 of Turkey’s controversial penal code, which prohibits public
denigration of Turkish national identity, the republic or the
national assembly.
In December 2005, Pamuk’s trial stalled as soon as it started. The
presiding judge, Metin Aydin, postponed the proceedings for two
months on a technicality and eventually the entire case was dropped.
Though he is known for his reclusive and introverted work ethic,
Pamuk never ceases to speak out in defense of free speech and on
behalf of lesser-known colleagues who, without the benefit of kicking
up an international storm of ultra-nationalist protestors on one side
and lemon-faced European Union observers on the other, have been or
are being brought up on the same charges, particularly the
Turkish-Armenian journalist Hrant Dink. Another Turkish novelist,
Elif Shafak, went on trial for violating Article 301 last month. Her
case, dropped for lack of evidence, had the rare distinction of being
based entirely on the words Shafak put into the mouths of fictional
characters in her novel “The Bastard of Istanbul.”
Beyond his ability to puncture the often tough tissue of
sociopolitical taboo, Pamuk is arguably unrivaled in his ability to
capture the complexities of the Turkish psyche and, more broadly, the
disappointments and depravations of those living in the developing –
but not yet embraced as developed – world.

Pamuk is a brilliant literary stylist. He coils one story into
another and then another, all in the space of a single page, often
even a single paragraph. He crafts his novels into compelling,
blood-rushing narratives of pursuit – his books are essentially
detective stories shot-through with post-modern twists, turns,
doubling backs and returns.
“Snow,” his most recent novel to appear in English, follows the poet
Ka to the remote Turkish city of Kars, where he is to report an
investigative feature for a newspaper on a rash of suicides by
so-called “headscarf girls.” Really, though, he has traveled to this
foreboding corner of the country to find his first love, Ipek. Just
as he sits down with her in a cafe, a man one table over is shot to
death in the chest, a victim of political assassination.
Yet the core of “Snow” is filled with a certain melancholy
characteristic of all Pamuk’s work. The poet Ka – secular, Western –
wonders why people are growing so religious. He strains to understand
but at the same time seems to seek an alternative source of
spirituality – inseparable from the creativity of his craft – to
either fill the gap of godlessness or protect him from the impulse to
give up and go religious himself. (Pamuk, who was born to an elite
family in Istanbul, has said in the past that members of his social
class regard religion as the reserve of the poor and provincial).
Yet Pamuk’s take on class division betrays no arrogance. Rather, it
is part of a more mournful attempt to document and probe what is too
often reduced to a clash of civilizations. In 2001, Pamuk penned one
of the most cogent responses ever committed in print to the ways in
which the attacks of September 11, 2001, changed the dynamic of
global politics.
“The Western world is scarcely aware of [the] overwhelming feeling of
humiliation that is experienced by most of the world’s population,”
he wrote in The New York Review of Books. “This is the grim, troubled
private sphere that neither magical realistic novels that endow
poverty and foolishness with charm nor the exoticism of popular
travel literature manages to fathom. And it is while living within
this private sphere that most people in the world today are afflicted
by spiritual misery.
“The problem facing the West is not only to discover which terrorist
is preparing a bomb in which tent, which cave, or which street of
which city, but also to understand the poor and scorned and
‘wrongful’ majority that does not belong to the West.”
Pamuk’s strength as a writer lies in his skill for channeling such
concerns into fiction and then going one step further by inscribing
them onto the surface of the city he loves most. Mid-way through his
masterful novel “The Black Book,” Pamuk’s only work of fiction set
wholly in Istanbul, the protagonist Galip, who is searching for his
missing wife and her half-brother, whom he suspects may be together,
remarks: “While it was possible to perceive the city’s old age, its
misfortune, its lost splendor, its sorrow and pathos in the faces of
the citizens, it was not the symptom of a specifically contrived
secret but of a collective defeat, history, and complicity.” – With
agencies
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

Paris Link, France
Oct 13 2006
Armenian genocide: The EU is picking the wrong battle
Thu, 12 Oct 2006 22:40:00
Gareth Cartman
A law, proposed by the Socialist party, has been voted through the
Assemblée Nationale today. Turkey is furious, as is the EU. However,
they forget one thing – the holocaust is banned in many countries
across Europe. Time to be less selective with our memories.
A little perspective. Holocaust denial is illegal in the following
countries:
Austria (6 month to 20 years prison sentence),
Belgium (maximum one year sentence or a fine),
Czech Republic (6 month to 2 years prison sentence),
France (maximum two year sentence or a fine),
Germany (maximum five year sentence or a fine),
Israel (maximum five year sentence),
Lithuania (maximum ten year sentence),
Poland (maximum three year sentence),
Romania (6 month to 2 year sentence),
Slovakia (maximum three year sentence)
Switzerland (maximum 15 month sentence or fine)
Today, French socialists have voted through a law that will make
denial of the Armenian holocaust illegal as well, with a one year
jail sentence and a fine. Not wishing to take part in a debate that
they morally could not win, the UMP refused to take part, making the
actual vote (106-19) something of a cakewalk for the Socialists.
The reaction has been hostile. Firstly, the Turks have taken to the
streets in protest outside the French embassy in Ankara. There has
been talk of a boycott of French products, which the government moved
to deny quickly – stressing that the people would make that choice.
The government then went on to mention that French companies would be
viewed unfavourably when seeking to enter markets in Istanbul.
France has reconfirmed its commitment to dialogue with Turkey and has
stressed that the passing of this law will in no way hinder talks
regarding accession to the EU, to which France has always been
relatively favourable.
EU spokesmen have spoken furiously against the law today. Quoted in
Libération, British Lib-Dem vice-president for the Turkish
delegation, Andrew Duff, said that it was a sad day for liberal ideas
in France, and that the Assemblée Nationale had rejected the
fundamental rights of freedom of speech. Voltaire must be turning in
his grave, he said.
While the EU is attempting to force Turkey to overturn its own laws
which “offend the Turkish identity” (and mentioning the Armenian
Genocide is a possible method of offending this identity), it feels
that the French law will hinder negotiations. Indeed, if Turkey is to
promote freedom of speech by overturning their own law, this law in
France hardly gives the Turks the best example of how to do so.
Jacques Chirac – the man who started the debate by declaring in
Yerevan that the Turks must acknowledge the genocide – has been
strangely quiet on the issue. Chirac has been strongly against
historic laws, throwing France’s colonial glorification out of the
law books, acknowledging the role the Harkis played for France in the
Algerian war and revising the pensions of colonial-origin soldiers
recently.
The majority of historians agree that the genocide of the Armenians
did indeed take place. Not just the majority, but almost every single
historian. To its credit, even Turkey has welcomed a debate on the
subject and university professors have acknowledged that the genocide
did take place. Between 1915 and 1917, over 1.5 million Armenians
were massacred as the Ottoman Empire drew to a bloody close.
The genocide took place. Of that there can be no doubt. Today’s law
may not be the most necessary law in the world, and it may not be the
most popular, but the EU are picking the wrong battle. While voices
against this law claim that it will hinder negotiations, it should
indeed help negotiations. Concerned only with its own negotiations
and business, the EU ignores the fact that holocaust denial is
illegal in most countries across Europe – why should denial of the
Armenian genocide cause such a problem?
This is not about freedom of speech – holocaust deniers or
revisionists frequently take their claims to the European Court using
the Freedom of Speech Law as the basis of their ultimate defence.
They are thrown out of court each time. Besides, what use is freedom
of speech when it is to deny the genocide of 1.5 million Armenians?
If Turkey has pretentions to EU accession, then the EU will be all
the better for its eventual inclusion. But the EU cannot and must not
accept Turkey unless it acknowledges the genocide. The law passed
today is not foolish, useless or even vain. It is necessary – and not
without precedent. Remember.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

Le Devoir
L’histoire kidnappée
Serge Truffaut
Édition du vendredi 13 octobre 2006
Mots clés : Québec (province), Violence, Gouvernement, turquie,
union européenne, génocide arménien
Malgré l’opposition du gouvernement et surtout d’un nombre imposant
d’historiens renommés, les députés français, de gauche comme de
droite, ont adopté une loi punissant toute négation du génocide
arménien. Que des politiciens brident ainsi le travail
d’universitaires est affligeant à bien des égards.
Depuis que la Turquie a exprimé le souhait de rejoindre l’Union
européenne, ses dirigeants savent qu’ils ont une obligation : mener
à son terme le devoir de mémoire en ce qui concerne le génocide
perpétré contre les Arméniens. Pendant des mois et des mois, les
Turcs ont retardé toute analyse à la loupe des horreurs commises en
1915, allant jusqu’à voter une loi interdisant toute évocation
publique du drame. C’est d’ailleurs dans le cadre de cette loi que le
Prix Nobel de littérature 2006, Orhan Pamuk, a été constamment
ennuyé par les censeurs du régime.
Toujours est-il que la perspective de voir la porte de l’Europe rester
fermée en raison du refus de s’atteler à la reconnaissance du
génocide, refus considéré par beaucoup d’élus européens comme
un rejet des «valeurs communes» que partagent tous les membres de
l’UE, avait fini par convaincre le gouvernement turc d’agir autrement.
Ainsi, lorsque le premier ministre Stephen Harper a épinglé son
homologue turc sur cette question en mai dernier, ce dernier a
souligné qu’une initiative avait été prise consistant à
rassembler des historiens arméniens et turcs chargés de se pencher
sur le sujet. Bref, Ankara a convenu, péniblement il est vrai,
d’amorcer le travail de mémoire.
Antérieurement à cette friction canado-turque, des universitaires
français de renom, très agacés par la colonisation de l’espace
dévolu à l’histoire par les bien-pensants de l’Assemblée nationale
mais surtout par la foule des effets pervers qu’une avalanche de textes
législatifs avait entraînés, étaient montés aux barricades —
à juste titre — pour freiner ce que certains d’entre eux appellent la
tyrannie de la repentance.
Regroupés au sein d’une organisation au nom qui en dit long —
Liberté pour l’Histoire –, Pierre Vidal-Naquet, Michel Winock,
Jean-Pierre Azéma, Marc Ferro et plusieurs autres avaient composé un
texte exigeant des législateurs qu’ils mettent un terme à une
entreprise qui sape les bases mêmes du métier d’historien et qu’ils
abrogent pas moins de quatre lois.
Dans leur pétition, ces intellectuels rappelaient que «l’histoire
n’est pas une religion […], l’histoire n’est pas la morale […],
l’histoire n’est pas l’esclave de l’actualité […], l’histoire n’est
pas la mémoire […], l’histoire n’est pas un objet juridique. Dans un
État libre, même animé des meilleures intentions, il n’appartient
ni au Parlement ni à l’autorité judiciaire de définir la
vérité historique. La politique de l’État, même animée des
meilleures intentions, n’est pas la politique de l’histoire». Il va de
soi qu’on ne saurait mieux dire.
Ce combat lancé par des personnes aussi respectées qu’admirées,
qui avait d’ailleurs convaincu aussi bien le président Jacques Chirac
que le socialiste Jack Lang que cette loi ajouterait aux restrictions
à la liberté d’expression que les lois précédentes avaient
provoquées, a donc été rejeté tant par les formations de droite
que celles de gauche.
À ce propos, il faut retenir qu’un important contingent de députés
de l’UMP, le parti de Chirac, a emprunté une position inverse à
celle défendue par ce dernier pour mieux obéir aux mots d’ordre de
l’agité de la politique française, soit Nicolas Sarkozy. On peut
parier qu’en agissant de la sorte, le candidat à l’Élysée tenait
à afficher une fois de plus sa distance avec Chirac mais également
avec le premier ministre Villepin tout en espérant récolter les
votes des gens qui ne veulent pas que la Turquie se lie à l’UE.
L’utilisation de l’histoire comme d’un procureur du temps présent a
toujours été un exercice périlleux.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

The Guardian, UK
Oct 13 2006
A world without taboos
Is modern society as enlightened as it’s champions like to believe?
Ralf Dahrendorf
October 13, 2006 07:30 PM |
Not long ago, one might have concluded that, at least in Europe,
there were no taboos left. A process that had begun with the
Enlightenment had now reached the point at which “anything goes”.
Particularly in the arts, there were no apparent limits to showing
what even a generation ago would have been regarded as highly
offensive.
Two generations ago, most countries had censors who not only tried to
prevent younger people from seeing certain films, but who actually
banned books. From the 1960s, such proscriptions weakened until, in
the end, explicit sexuality, violence, blasphemy – while upsetting to
some people – were tolerated as a part of the enlightened world.
Or were they? Are there really no limits? Outside Europe, the
“anything goes” attitude was never fully accepted. And there were
limits in Europe, too. The historian David Irving is still in
detention in Austria for the crime of Holocaust denial. This is, to
be sure, a special case. The denial of a well-documented truth may
lead to new crimes. But is the answer to the old question, “What is
truth?” always so clear?
What exactly are we doing if we insist on Turkey’s acknowledgement
that the Armenian genocide did take place as a condition of its
membership in the European Union? Are we so sure of Darwin’s theories
of evolution that we should ban alternative notions of genesis from
schools?
Those concerned with freedom of speech have always wondered about its
limits. One such limit is the incitement to violence. The man who
gets up in a crowded theatre and shouts, “Fire!” when there is none
is guilty of what happens in the resulting stampede. But what if
there actually is a fire?
This is the context in which we may see the invasion of Islamic
taboos into the enlightened, mostly non-Islamic world. From the fatwa
on Salman Rushdie for The Satanic Verses to the killing of a nun in
Somalia in response to Pope Benedict’s Regensburg lecture and the
Berlin Opera’s cancellation of a performance of Mozart’s Idomeneo,
with its severed heads of religious founders, including Muhammad, we
have seen violence and intimidation used to defend a particular
religion’s taboos.
There are questions here that are not easily answered by civilised
defenders of the Enlightenment. Toleration and respect for people who
have their own beliefs are right and perhaps necessary to preserve an
enlightened world. But there is the other side to consider. Violent
responses to unwelcome views are never justified and cannot be
accepted. Those who argue that suicide bombers express understandable
grudges have themselves sold out their freedom. Self-censorship is
worse than censorship itself, because it sacrifices freedom
voluntarily.
This means that we have to defend Salman Rushdie and the Danish
cartoonists and the friends of Idomeneo , whether we like them or
not. If anyone does not like them, there are all the instruments of
public debate and of critical discourse that an enlightened community
has at its disposal. It is also true that we do not have to buy any
particular book or listen to an opera. What a poor world it would be
if anything that might offend any group could no longer be said! A
multicultural society that accepts every taboo of its diverse groups
would have little to talk about.
The kind of reaction we have seen recently to expressions of views
that are offensive to some does not bode well for the future of
liberty. It is as if a new wave of counter-enlightenment is sweeping
the world, with the most restrictive views dominating the scene.
Against such reactions, enlightened views must be reasserted
strongly. Defending the right of all people to say things even if one
detests their views is one of the first principles of liberty.
Thus, Idomeneo must be performed, and Salman Rushdie must be
published. Whether an editor publishes cartoons offensive to
believers in Muhammad (or Christ, for that matter) is a matter of
judgment, almost of taste. I might not do it, but I would
nevertheless defend the right of someone who decides otherwise. It is
debatable whether recent incidents of this kind require a “dialogue
between religions.” Public debate making clear cases one way or the
other seems more appropriate than conciliation. The gains of
enlightened discourse are too precious to be turned into negotiable
values. Defending those gains is the task that we now face.
Project Syndicate, 2006.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

PanARMENIAN.Net
Paris Ready to Continue Dialogue with Turkey
13.10.2006 13:24 GMT+04:00

/PanARMENIAN.Net/ After the French parliament backed a bill that would
punish those who deny the Armenian Genocide, which has caused a deal
of great tension between Turkey and France, Paris stated that it
wanted to continue its dialogue with Turkey. The French Foreign
Ministry has stated that Paris is willing to carry on the dialogue
with Turkey. Ministry spokesman Jean-Baptiste Mattei said at a news
conference, `We are willing to carry on our dialogue, strong
cooperation and friendship with Turkey.’ Mattei also remarked that the
bill was `unnecessary and inappropriate.’ Also reiterating that a long
period of time awaited the bill’s passing, he noted he would speak
about the steps the government took at each phase of this long
process. Catherine Colonna, the minister in charge of European
affairs, spoke in the General Assembly hall before the vote on behalf
of the government and opposed the bill. Stating that the bill should
not be voted on, she said, `As the government, we are against the
bill’, reports zaman.com
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress