…WHEN A WAITER DROPS A TURKEY
Kenneth Zammit Tabona
Times of Malta, Malta
Oct 17 2006
What happens when a waiter drops a turkey? The Downfall of Turkey,
the Spreading of Greece, the Breaking of China and the Leaving of
Hungary! Such was the rather droll method of remembering historical
facts employed in the schoolroom a century or so ago.
Since the downfall of Turkey, read The Ottoman Empire, the Middle
East and the Mediterranean Basin have been in a constant state of
flux. There was something about the Ottoman Empire which since its
inception in 1453 kept and contained the vicissitudes of its far-flung
territories strictly within its borders.
The Turkish menace waned slowly and painfully after Lepanto, stifled in
its own reactionary stance until a very imperialist and expansionist
Western Europe along with Russia decided that Turkey was The Sick Man
of Europe (please note “Europe” not “Asia”) and fought over it in the
Crimean War. It was in fact a scenario rather similar to that of the
Eastern bloc in our own lifetimes before the Wall fell and the USSR
was dismembered.
We were, in the days of Tito’s Yugoslavia, blissfully unaware of
situations like that between Serbs and Bosnians. We were brought
up to view a globe where any country beyond the Iron Curtain was
impenetrable. Very little news was allowed to be filtered through
and many of us were surprised at the avalanche that took place after
the liberalisation of Rumania, Bulgaria, Serbia, Montenegro etc;
incidentally all of which were countries that till the 19th century
were part of the Ottoman Empire.
Therefore the uncanny similarity in policy between the Ottoman and
Soviet empires kept the ethnic and religious conflicts and situations
in the countries in question very much under wraps. Today the situation
is vastly different. Europe itself has doubled in size and the EU is
poised to take in many other countries that formerly lay within the
bloc. Strangely enough it is not these countries that are causing
controversy but Turkey.
It all started when the present Pope was still Cardinal Ratzinger and
pronounced himself as being against Turkey’s entry into the EU because
Turkey, he said, has always been different; a very debatable point. He
added that the Turks had laid siege to Vienna, twice, if you please,
and other irrelevant historical facts that could have been easily
ascribed to Spain or his own homeland Germany, while conveniently and
inexplicably leaving out the two worst blots on the Turkish escutcheon;
the Armenian and Kurdish genocides.
Next month Benedict XVI is off to Turkey. Very few people realise how
controversial and significant this visit is. Apart from the Ratzinger
pronouncements, one must contend with the ill-advised and to me still
inexplicable remarks that caused such a furore in Regensburg last
month and also the stormy relations the papacy has always had with
Islamic Istanbul and previously Christian Constantinople for 1,000
years and more!
Let us not forget that it was a Turkish gunman who tried to assassinate
John Paul II. The visit will, I am sure, prove to be one of the great
watersheds of contemporary history. We will see which way the cat
will jump and pray that it will bring peace.
Recently French MPs approved an Armenian Genocide Bill by which
if it is ratified by the Senate will make it a crime to deny that
Armenians suffered genocide at the hands of the Ottoman Turks. This
has provoked anger in Turkey and has raised fresh doubts about its
EU ambitions. Denying the Armenian Genocide in France carries the
same penalties as denying the Jewish Holocaust.
The move has been identified as a vote-catching exercise for all
Armenians who live in France. However, as Turkey still officially
denies that 1.5 million Armenians were massacred during and after
WWI, when the empire was dismembered, the move is proving to be very
sensitive and controversial. It will also undermine the pro-EU movement
within Turkey itself and further strengthen the nationalists.
I do not profess to fully understand Turkey and the Turks. We in Malta
still hold, by and large, a warped impression, coloured by the Great
Siege mentality, which is completely unfocused.
Let me start by saying that, from the very beginning, the Ottomans
who conquered Constantinople in 1453 did not sack it as the Western
Christians did during the Fourth Crusade 200 years before under the
leadership of the unscrupulous blind doge, Enrico Dandolo. Mehmet II,
aptly called The Conqueror, merely let his troops wreak the minimum of
damage as allowed by convention and immediately set about reorganising
Byzantine bureaucracy in his own way.
Only a couple of days after the entry into the Rome of the East,
Mehmet conferred ecclesiastical concessions on the Oecumenical
Patriarch Gennadios, a move that drove the wedge between Eastern and
Western churches even deeper than ever before.
When one examines Mehmet’s portrait by Gentile Bellini, who lived
in Constantinople as the Sultan’s guest from 1479 to 1481, we see
a sensitive and pensive aristocratic face that belies his fierce
reputation as the Scourge of Europe.
Mehmet’s adoption of Byzantine policies and methods was so successful
that it did not take countries like France long to reap the advantages
and establish diplomatic relations with what came to be known as The
Sublime Porte. This policy existed with variations right up to 1924.
Just to give you an example of the friendly relations countries like
France and its allies like the Order of Malta under de Rohan enjoyed
in the 18th century, our own Antoine Favray spent time in Istanbul
painting the portraits of the French Ambassador to Turkey, the Comte
de Vergennes, and his wife in Ottoman dress. His paintings of harems
and zenanas grace many a wall in museums and private houses in Malta.
It goes further into the 19th century too.
The Most Noble Amodeo, Count Preziosi worked in Constantinople from
1842 to his death in 1876 while other artists like Thomas Allom and
Jean Etienne Liotard worked in both Turkey and Malta.
Turkey is a country of strong contrasts and contradictions. While it
professes to be a secular state, Islamic permutations have allowed
crimes like honour killings to proliferate, not only within its own
borders but also in the countries that have adopted millions of Turks
as cheap labour like Germany!
Freedom of speech is as curtailed as it is in other Islamic states
as can be attested by Orhan Pamuk, Turkey’s best-known contemporary
novelist, who has just won the 2006 Nobel Prize for literature. Mr
Pamuk faced trial for “insulting his country” earlier this year. This
coincided with the French parliamentary move to criminalise denying
the Armenian Genocide.
Mr Pamuk’s novels also criticise the mania, started by Mustafa Kemal
Ataturk, to make Turkey more Turkish which because of the complexity
of the Byzantine/Ottoman Empire entailed ethnic cleansing to achieve.
Anyone who has read Louis de Berniere’s excellent and riveting
novel Birds Without Wings will be horrified by the displacements of
entire peoples from Greece to Turkey and vice versa for instance. The
Greco-Turkish problem in Cyprus is a direct consequence of this.
It is Mr Pamuk, however, who symbolises free thought and is held
by the West as one of the reasons that could make Turkey a valid
and contributing member of the EU family. The Turks themselves must
face the fact that they must be part of a homogenous whole and that
mediaeval mentalities have no place in it. In fact joining the EU
requires Turkey to make such a great leap forward (with apologies
to the late Chairman Mao) that I cannot see it happening for another
decade at least.
I have been told by many who follow my weekly scribbles that I am,
at times, a bit too historical to follow. To explain a situation like
this entails delving into the past to find out why and how things
developed the way they have. Events rarely happen in isolation.
I am sure there are scholars and historians far more well-informed
and accomplished than I on the subject next to whom I am mere acolyte.
We cannot ignore the situation that has developed in the world between
what used to be conveniently called the struggle between the Cross
and Crescent. Although what is happening today is a direct derivation
of that same struggle we must realise that not since the death of
Suleiman the Magnificent has the Crescent been such a threat to our
own Western civilisation and way of life.
Today’s Islamic states with their oil and riches hold the world to
ransom. Allowing Turkey to join the EU and encouraging it to adopt
many of our own mores while abandoning their own outdated ones will
in the long run benefit both and will symbolise the beginning of a
rapprochement that will, with a bit of luck and goodwill, enable the
Cross and the Crescent to co-exist in future and bring what may be
called “Peace in Our Time”.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

ARMENIA AND FINLAND SIGN AGREEMENT ON AVOIDING DOUBLE TAXATION
Armenpress
Oct 16 2006
YEREVAN, OCTOBER 16, ARMENPRESS: Armenia and Finland signed an
agreement on avoiding double taxation of goods and property.
The foreign ministry said the agreement was signed by minister Vartan
Oskanian and Finnish ambassador to Armenia, Teri Hakkala.

ROBERT FISK – LET ME DENOUNCE GENOCIDE FROM THE DOCK
AZG Armenian Daily
17/10/2006
The Independent (London), October 14, 2006 Saturday,
First Edition
This has been a bad week for Holocaust deniers. I’m talking about
those who wilfully lie about the 1915 genocide of 1.5 million
Armenian Christians by the Ottoman Turks. On Thursday, France’s
lower house of parliament approved a Bill making it a crime to deny
that Armenians suffered genocide. And, within an hour, Turkey’s most
celebrated writer, Orhan Pamuk – only recently cleared by a Turkish
court for insulting “Turkishness” (sic) by telling a Swiss newspaper
that nobody in Turkey dared mention the Armenian massacres – won the
Nobel Prize for Literature. In the mass graves below the deserts of
Syria and beneath the soil of southern Turkey, a few souls may have
been comforted.
While Turkey continues to blather on about its innocence – the
systematic killing of hundreds of thousands of male Armenians and of
their gang-raped women is supposed to be the sad result of “civil war”
– Armenian historians such as Vahakn Dadrian continue to unearth new
evidence of the premeditated Holocaust (and, yes, it will deserve its
capital H since it was the direct precursor of the Jewish Holocaust,
some of whose Nazi architects were in Turkey in 1915) with all the
energy of a gravedigger.
Armenian victims were killed with daggers, swords, hammers and axes
to save ammunition. Massive drowning operations were carried out in
the Black Sea and the Euphrates rivers – mostly of women and children,
so many that the Euphrates became clogged with corpses and changed its
course for up to half a mile. But Dadrian, who speaks and reads Turkish
fluently, has now discovered that tens of thousands of Armenians were
also burned alive in haylofts.
He has produced an affidavit to the Turkish court martial that
briefly pursued the Turkish mass murderers after the First World War,
a document written by General Mehmet Vehip Pasha, commander of the
Turkish Third Army. He testified that, when he visited the Armenian
village of Chourig (it means “little water” in Armenian), he found all
the houses packed with burned human skeletons, so tightly packed that
all were standing upright. “In all the history of Islam,” General Vehip
wrote, “it is not possible to find any parallel to such savagery.”
The Armenian Holocaust, now so “unmentionable” in Turkey, was no
secret to the country’s population in 1918. Millions of Muslim Turks
had witnessed the mass deportation of Armenians three years earlier
– a few, with infinite courage, protected Armenian neighbours and
friends at the risk of the lives of their own Muslim families – and,
on 19 October 1918, Ahmed Riza, the elected president of the Turkish
senate and a former supporter of the Young Turk leaders who committed
the genocide, stated in his inaugural speech: “Let’s face it, we
Turks savagely ( vahshiane in Turkish) killed off the Armenians.”
Dadrian has detailed how two parallel sets of orders were issued,
Nazi-style, by Turkish interior minister Talat Pasha. One set
solicitously ordered the provision of bread, olives and protection for
Armenian deportees but a parallel set instructed Turkish officials to
“proceed with your mission” as soon as the deportee convoys were far
enough away from population centres for there to be few witnesses to
murder. As Turkish senator Reshid Akif Pasha testified on 19 November
1918: “The ‘mission’ in the circular was: to attack the convoys and
massacre the population??? I am ashamed as a Muslim, I am ashamed as
an Ottoman statesman. What a stain on the reputation of the Ottoman
Empire, these criminal people???”
How extraordinary that Turkish dignitaries could speak such truths
in 1918, could fully admit in their own parliament to the genocide
of the Armenians and could read editorials in Turkish newspapers of
the great crimes committed against this Christian people. Yet how
much more extraordinary that their successors today maintain that
all of this is a myth, that anyone who says in presentday Istanbul
what the men of 1918 admitted can find themselves facing prosecution
under the notorious Law 301 for “defaming” Turkey.
I’m not sure that Holocaust deniers – of the anti-Armenian or
anti-Semitic variety – should be taken to court for their rantings.
David Irving is a particularly unpleasant “martyr” for freedom of
speech and I am not at all certain that Bernard Lewis’s one-franc fine
by a French court for denying the Armenian genocide in a November
1993 Le Monde article did anything more than give publicity to an
elderly historian whose work deteriorates with the years.
But it’s gratifying to find French President Jacques Chirac and his
interior minister Nicolas Sarkozy have both announced that Turkey
will have to recognise the Armenian death as genocide before it
is allowed to join the European Union. True, France has a powerful
half-million-strong Armenian community.
But, typically, no such courage has been demonstrated by Lord Blair
of Kut al-Amara, nor by the EU itself, which gutlessly and childishly
commented that the new French Bill, if passed by the senate in Paris,
will “prohibit dialogue” which is necessary for reconciliation between
Turkey and modern-day Armenia.
What is the subtext of this, I wonder. No more talk of the Jewish
Holocaust lest we hinder “reconciliation” between Germany and the
Jews of Europe?
But, suddenly, last week, those Armenian mass graves opened up
before my own eyes. Next month, my Turkish publishers are producing
my book, The Great War for Civilisation, in the Turkish language,
complete with its long chapter on the Armenian genocide entitled “The
First Holocaust”. On Thursday, I received a fax from Agora Books in
Istanbul. Their lawyers, it said, believed it “very likely that they
will be sued under Law 301” – which forbids the defaming of Turkey
and which right-wing lawyers tried to use against Pamuk – but that,
as a foreigner, I would be “out of reach”.
However, if I wished, I could apply to the court to be included in
any Turkish trial.
Personally, I doubt if the Holocaust deniers of Turkey will dare to
touch us. But, if they try, it will be an honour to stand in the dock
with my Turkish publishers, to denounce a genocide which even Mustafa
Kamel Ataturk, founder of the modern Turkish state, condemned.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

ANTI-IRANIAN MILITARY ACTIONS TO LAST TWO-THREE DAYS
By Petros Keshishian
AZG Armenian Daily
17/10/2006
If the diplomats fail to talk over Iran to give up its nuclear program,
the country will be attacked within the coming year. The Israeli
mass emdia sources informed about this, referring to Tomas McInneray,
retired general of US Armed Forces.
General McInneray stated that the Anti-Iranian military action will
last for two-three days. In the course of the military action the
the US Navy and US Armed Forces will destroy about 1500 targets.
Moreover, the special detachments should kill or arrest the Iranian
authorities.
Besdies, he said that the American should annihilate the Iranian Navy
to prevent the Iranian military ships block the Persian Gulf.
General McInneray is sure that in the beginning of the attack about
six dozen of fighters and “Steals” bombers will attack the main
objects. Then, about 400 military planes will begin the attack. At
the same time 150 special planes will secure siccesful implementation
of the operation.
The American military ships and submarines will carry about 500 rockets
to hit the Iranian targets. General McInneray expressed hope that the
American special forces will manage to get the necessary information.
He added that annihilation of 20-25% of the Iranain Armed Forces
will be enough to deprive the current Iranian authorities of their
power. General McInneray isn’t sure that Israel will be able to attack
Iran independently.

UNITED ARMENIAN FUND RENDERS $6,2 MILLION OF HUMANITARIAN AID TO ARMENIA
By Ruzan Poghosian
AZG Armenian Daily
17/10/2006
The United Armenian Fund has been rendering humanitarian aid to
Armenia by sea boxes since the first nine months of 2006. The Fund
has already rendered $ 6,2 million of humanitarian aid to Armenia.
Chairman of the Fund Harout Sasuonian expressed gratitude to all of
the donators who participated in the humanitarian aid. The following
donators participated in the program: World Vision U.S. Inc.
($459,000), Hope for the City ($489,000), “medical Aid to Armenians”
($365,000) organizations, Centre Hospitalier Lucien Hussel from France
($312,000), The Armenian Evangelical Union of Armenia ($293,000),
World Vision Canada ($251,000), Vahe Enterprises ($244,000), Mihran
Mahmouzian and Jack Mazmanian ($235,000), Roubik and Gilta Asatrians
($221,000) ans others.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

ZAVEN ANDRIASIAN U20 CHESS WORLD CHAMPION
AZG Armenian Daily
17/10/2006
Armenian international master Zaven Andriasian became World Chess
Champion under 20 at the juniors and girls championship held in
Yerevan. Drawing the last game against Georgian Levan Pantsulaia,
Zaven gained 9.5 points and left the closest rivals Vitiugov Nikita,
Kryvoruchko Yuriy and Pantsulaia Levan behind by 0.5 point.
Zaven managed to reach the frontrunners defeating Kryvoruchko and
Vitiugov in rounds 11 and 12.
17-year-old Zaven was European champion U18 in 2005 and took the
second prize this year. This is a wonderful achievement for Zaven
himself and for the Armenian chess school that keeps supply the world
chess with new talents.

FAMOUS SINGER DIES IN CAR ACCIDENT IN ARMENIA
AZG Armenian Daily
17/10/2006
Obituary
Famous singer Vardouhi Vardanian died in car accident.
The accident happened at about 2:30 PM on 17 km of Sevan-Martouni-Getap
highway. The Press office of RA Police informed that the singer’s
car BWM 520 had ridden out of the highway and turned over. Two other
passengers had been in the car, Arman Khachatrian(born in 1977),
and Yeghisheh Gertsian (born in 1974) had been taken to the hospital
with heavy injures.

OLIGARCHS PROFIT BY THE EXCHANGE RATE
A1+
[08:10 pm] 16 October, 2006
“40% of the economy of Armenia is shadow, but the authorities are bold
enough to announce about the dynamic development of the economy”,
announced leader of the National Unity Artashes Geghamyan who was
the main speaker during the discussions dedicated to the exchange
rate of the Armenian dram organized by the anti-criminal movement.
Mr. Geghamyan tried to solve the riddle of the fall of the USD in
exchange. “Everything is very simple: they try to explain away saying
that a number of developed countries including the Great Britain,
Norway and the Netherlands, had the same disease. The so-called
‘disease’ came into existence in 1950a when stores of natural gas
were found in the Netherlands as a result of which the Dutch currency
rose in exchange. Today, they try to do the same in Armenia without
finding any natural stores”.
Who will profit by this situation? Mr. Geghamyan himself answered his
question, “Those people who engage in importing goods. We are aware
of the fact that the import field is monopolized and is in the hands
of a few people”. Without mentioning names, Mr. Geghamyan continued,
“Importing their goods, the oligarchs have an income of 10%. They have
appropriated more than 12 billion 171 million. The importers have an
income of more than 350-400 million USD which is free from taxation”.

ARTICLE 301 CASES AGAINST WRITERS CONTINUE
Kurdish Info
ews&file=article&sid=4361
Date: Thursday, October 12 @ 03:15:41 CDT
Bianet-Balbal protests obstacles in front of freedom of opinion and
Penal Code article 301 at Justice Ministry gates after being sentenced
to 10 months for his book “Flowers of Blood From A Captive General
on Ararat”.
The suffering of Turkish writers and publishers under controversial
Penal Code article 301 continued in the first week of October with one
author staging a protest in front of the Justice Ministry in capital
Ankara and a publisher standing trial in Istanbul for publishing
books containing Armenian memoirs of the past.
One Turkish activist, meanwhile, was acquitted of article 301 charges
where the prosecution previously demanded imprisonment for public
“remarks” he had made.
The end of last week saw a protest staged by the author of “Flowers
of Blood From A Captive General on Ararat”, Mustafa Balbal, who was
sentenced two months ago to 10 months imprisonment under article 301
for his book.
“301 is the greatest shame challenging the freedom of expression”
Balbal said, calling for certain codes in Turkey that “were inspired
by the Fascist Italian Constitution” to be lifted.
Taking his place at the gates of the Ministry but barred from making
a statement there, the author then moved to ministry’s Guven Park
entrance where he covered his mouth with black tape in protest of
obstacles before freedom of expression and article 301.
Balbal is one of many Turkish writers who have faced the threat
of the docks for books of historical value and research under the
controversial article.
His own work of research, based on the memoirs of those who witnessed
the uprising on and around Mount Ararat at the beginning of the 20th
century, covering the life of Sheik Zahir who lost four brothers in
the uprising before being killed himself, is still banned in Turkey
after being prosecuted for “conducting separatist propaganda”.
He himself was charged and found guilty of “public denigration of the
Turkish Republic State” and “insulting the armed forces of the state”
in the book that was published in August 2002 – and originally seized
on an order issued by the now-defunct State Security Court (DGM). He
was sentenced to five months each on both counts.
Armenian Memoirs Case Continues
Balbal’s peaceful self-style protest of 301 and its consequences in
capital Ankara came in the wake of the ongoing trial of a well-known
Turkish publisher in Istanbul who faces a prosecutor’s demand for up
to 13.5 years imprisonment publishing the memoirs of two Armenians
in the Turkish language.
Belge Publishing House owner and journalist Ragip Zarakolu appeared at
the Istanbul 2nd Criminal Court of First Instance on Thursday where
he is charged under article 301 for publishing Dora Sakayan’s “An
Armenian Doctor’s Experiences: The Ä°zmir Diary of Garabet Hatcherian
on 4 March” and George Jerjian’s “Freedom Will Free Us”.
His case was monitored by Sanar Yurdatapan of the Initiative Against
Though Crime and in this most recent hearing, the defendant submitted
a letter sent by Sakayan himself to the bench.
“”Who should Zarakolu be prosecuted for giving Turkish readers a book
based on Dr.Hatcherian’s diary?” Sakaryan’s letter asked. “Does the
Turkish reader need to be told what to read and what not to read? Can
Turkish readers themselves not decide on whether the book contains
insults against Turkishness?”
Sakaryan stressed in the letter that the author of the book was not
Zarakolu himself but was Dr. Garabet Hatcherian who he described
as “a loyal citizen of Turkey and an officer of the Turkish army”
expressing belief that the court would acquit the publisher.
Article 301, said Zarakolu after the hearing, “is putting both the
government and Turkey into a difficult situation. It is putting them
in difficulty in front of the European and world public opinion”.
The Zarakolu case was adjourned to December 14.
One Acquittal But Still..
Balbal’s protest in Ankara and Zarakolu’s trial in Istanbul follow
one acquittal last Tuesday where “Haksoz” magazine author and Free
Opinion and Education Rights Association (Ozgur-Der) member Mustafa
Bahadir Kurbanoglu was cleared of charges under article 301.
Unlike the author and publisher, Kurbanoglu was charged due to
“remarks” he made in April 2006 during an Ozgur-Der gathering at
Istanbul’s Fatih Sarachane Park. His public criticism of the dismissal
from duty of Van prosecutor Ferhat Sarikaya under a decision taken
by the Supreme Board of Judges and Prosecutors was deemed an offense.
“Even if I’m acquitted, 301 is still in place” Kurbanoglu said after
his verdict.
What is Article 301?
Article 301, on the denigration of “Turkishness”, the Republic, and
the foundation and institutions of the State, was introduced with
the legislative reforms of 1 June 2005 and replaced the controversial
Article 159 of the previous penal code. It states that:
“1. Public denigration of Turkishness, the Republic or the Grand
National Assembly of Turkey shall be punishable by imprisonment of
between six months and three years.
2. Public denigration of the Government of the Republic of Turkey,
the judicial institutions of the State, the military or security
structures shall be punishable by imprisonment of between six months
and two years.
3. In cases where denigration of Turkishness is committed by a
Turkish citizen in another country the punishment shall be increased
by one third.
4. Expressions of thought intended to criticize shall not constitute
a crime.”
–Boundary_(ID_VopFDez5pG1tynKi5IFIx Q)–
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

DES HISTORIENS VEULENT SAISIR JACQUES CHIRAC SI LE SENAT CONFIRME CETTE ” PROVOCATION ”
Jean-Baptiste de Montvalon
Le Monde
14 octobre 2006 samedi
LE TEXTE etait, a leurs yeux, ” affligeant ” ; son vote constitue
” une veritable provocation “. Reunis dans la soiree du jeudi 12
octobre, quelques heures après l’examen par l’Assemblee nationale de
la proposition de loi visant a sanctionner la negation du genocide
armenien, les membres de l’association Liberte pour l’histoire ont
redige un communique virulent.
Promettant, ” si le Senat devait confirmer le vote de l’Assemblee
“, de demander au president de la Republique de ” saisir le Conseil
constitutionnel (…) pour qu’il annule ” cette loi, ces historiens
– parmi lesquels Jean-Pierre Azema, Elisabeth Badinter, Marc Ferro,
Jacques Julliard, Pierre Milza, Pierre Nora, Mona Ozouf, Rene Remond,
Jean-Pierre Vernant – font part de leur vive inquietude.
Tout en exprimant leur ” profond sentiment de solidarite ” pour les ”
victimes de l’histoire “, ils deplorent que la France soit ” engagee
dans un processus accelere de lois etablissant des verites d’Etat sur
le passe “. ” Un mouvement rapide d’appropriation de l’histoire par
des memoires particulières et de recul des libertes democratiques
” se poursuit, constatent-ils, ” alors meme que le president de
la Republique a declare que “ce n’est pas au Parlement d’ecrire
l’histoire”. ”
” VERITES OFFICIELLES ”
Liberte pour l’histoire revient sur l’autre affront de la journee :
le rejet d’un amendement UMP qui visait a exclure les ” recherches
universitaires ou scientifiques ” du champ d’application de la
loi. ” L’Assemblee nationale vient d’ôter le masque : ce ne sont pas
d’eventuels “troubles a l’ordre public” qu’elle entend empecher par
ces lois, c’est bien la recherche universitaire et tous les enseignants
qu’elle veut, sous peine d’amende ou de prison, soumettre aux verites
officielles qu’elle edicte “, relèvent les historiens.
Soucieux que leur reaction ne soit pas percue comme corporatiste,
ils soulignent qu’ils ” se trouvent en première ligne d’un combat qui
interesse tous les citoyens et met en cause la possibilite pour chacun
d’acceder a la connaissance et au libre examen “. ” Ce sont bien les
libertes de pensee et d’expression qui sont menacees “, insistent-ils.
En decembre 2005, ces historiens avaient signe une petition reclamant
l’abrogation partielle de plusieurs lois ” memorielles “, dont celle
sur la reconnaissance du genocide armenien. Si l’alinea de la loi sur
les rapatries consacrant le ” rôle positif ” de la colonisation a ete
par la suite abroge par decret, les historiens redoutent desormais
un engrenage.
Des dispositions similaires pourraient etre proposees au sujet
de l’esclavage, reconnu par la loi Taubira comme un ” crime contre
l’humanite “. ” Demain, ce sera le tour des Vendeens, et après-demain
des Albigeois ! “, s’exclame Pierre Nora, qui se dit ” epouvante ”
par cette ” formidable regression “.
–Boundary_(ID_w0Hof95CIBiKnT2UKX8cdg)–