Epress.am News from Armenia
François Hollande (pictured), the Socialist Party candidate for the 2012 presidential elections in France, in Alfortville on Monday declared in front of 400 French citizens of Armenian descent that he would ask the French Senate’s new left majority “to again take [up] the bill aimed at repressing Armenian Genocide denial,” reports journalist Jean Eckian from Paris.
Hollande recalled that French President Nicolas Sarkozy has not fulfilled his promise, which he made in 2007, on this matter.
The meeting with Hollande in the southeastern suburb of Paris was organized by the Armenian Revolutionary Federation (Dashnaktsutyun, or ARF-D), which supports the socialist leader’s candidacy in the presidential election, writes Eckian.
Recall, the French Senate adopted a special law in 2001 that recognized the Armenian Genocide. Turkey warned France against passing the bill, saying trade and diplomatic relations would suffer. In 2006, the lower house approved a bill which would criminally prosecute anyone who publicly stated that the 1915 mass killings of Armenians in Ottoman Turkey did not constitute genocide. However, the bill did not pass the approval of the Upper Chamber and thus was not adopted.