France Silenced its Citizens, Although the Armenian Genocide is Proven: Opinion from Russia

The scandal between Turkey and France is absolutely meaningless, believes Konstantin Eggert, an analyst with Russian paper Kommersant:

“What do you think, gentlemen, is it worth punishing citizens for denying Stalin’s crimes and the existence of the Gulag in the Soviet Union? In fact, a similar question was put to a vote in the French parliament and the answer was, ‘yes, it’s worth it’.”

“Almost a century ago the Ottoman Empire killed up to one and a half million Armenians. Authorities of the dying empire encouraged the massacre since the Christian Armenians were considered the ‘fifth column’ of the Entente, which Turkey was fighting at the time. And during this entire century, during the days of Ataturk and his successors and with military dictatorships and under democratic conditions, Turkey denied that there was an act of deliberate extermination of people based on ethnicity.

“Perhaps the world’s most influential Armenian Diaspora lives in France. It has long sought to recognize genocide denial as a crime. In Germany and Austria, Holocaust denial is similarly punishable by law. I think the French Parliament’s decision is wrong. In Germany and Austria, the initiators of the most monstrous genocide in history, it’s more or less understandable. But in France, it’s a reason to gag its citizens, a violation of the principle of freedom of speech. I don’t deny the Armenian Genocide; on the contrary, I consider it to be historically proven. The question is where is the limit of the intervention of a democratic state in the lives of its citizens?

“My opinion is that free speech shouldn’t be restricted, except in those cases that really should be the subject of criminal law. For example, calls for murder or disseminating child pornography. Societies which protects even criminal’s right to speech, as a rule are healthier and more stable than those countries where this right is restricted. The UK, where Hitler’s Mein Kampf can be purchased in any major bookstore, hasn’t turned into a fascist state.

“Meanwhile in Germany, where traders in Berlin flea markets sell photo albums, medals and cap badges of the Third Reich era to tourists “under the table,” recently exposed an extensive network of neo-Nazis who were engaged in the murders of immigrants.

“Think about where you like to live — in the US, where the infamous cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad were published without major problems, or in the EU, where they’re afraid to print them? I hope Russia will avoid this trap and allow the fascists and Stalinist, libertarians and monarchists, the crazy and the sane can voice any opinion. Because where words are prohibited, sooner or later, they may begin to tell citizens how and what to think.”