Epress.am News from Armenia
Turkey’s EU affairs minister has challenged France’s controversial genocide-denial bill in Switzerland, saying such efforts have no chance of survival, Today’s Zaman reports.
Turkish EU Affairs Minister Egemen Bağış told reporters in Zurich on Sunday that a bill which was recently been approved by the French Senate and which makes it a crime to deny the Armenian Genocide of 1915 in Anatolia is null and void for Turkey, adding that “we believe there are more sane people in France than insane ones.”
The French Parliament approved the bill last Monday, complicating an already delicate relationship with Turkey. French President Nicolas Sarkozy — who personally supported the bill — plans to sign the measure into law within the required 15-day period after the bill’s passage on Monday.
“We are today in Switzerland and I am saying the 1915 incidents were not a genocide. Let them come and arrest me,” Bağış stated.
Switzerland has a penal code article that punishes acts of racism, including public denial of genocides, established against a backdrop of right-wing attacks targeting asylum seekers in the country two decades ago. Swiss authorities say the measure is not similar to French genocide law in many ways and that it is fundamental to fighting xenophobia in the country.
Bağış said efforts like these have no chance of survival and that these laws are nothing but a piece of paper.