Epress.am News from Armenia
Reporters Without Borders on Thursday published an open letter to French parliamentarians expressing its concern about the proposed law recently approved by the Senate to penalize denial of all genocides, including the Armenian Genocide, and asking that this law be submitted to the Constitutional Council.
The letter reads, in part:
“The substance of this law has been much debated but there are grounds for questioning its constitutionality as well. The exchanges between the law’s supporters and opponents, involving leading figures and going to the very heart of our fundamental rights, have been so heated that even its supporters must realize that the Constitutional Council’s opinion is indispensible. We therefore urge you to demand its referral to the Council.
“There are four key aspects of the law that disturb us: a conflict with the principle of the right to free expression, a lack of proportionality between the offence and penalty, a violation of parliament’s competence and a lack of clarity in the wording.
“We fully share the desire for justice expressed by our friends who have campaigned for this law’s adoption and we fully understand the grief of victims’ descendants. Combating genocide denial and the hatred it fuels are obviously necessary and praiseworthy goals. But we must stress that they cannot be achieved at the price of violating the constitutional principle of free expression. Turning historical fact into an unassailable dogma imposed by the state opens the door to dangerous excesses. This is precisely what the Turkish authorities do when they punish those who refer to the existence of the 1915 Armenian genocide.
“What safeguards protect us from future excesses? Many genocides clamour for attention and if legislators ‘recognize’ a dozen of them tomorrow, historical research will be turned into a minefield. Is genocide denial in the process of becoming ‘the new blasphemy,’ as the jurist Henri Leclerc said ?
“Contrary to another constitutional principle, the penalties envisaged by this law are neither necessary nor proportionate. Envisaging a prison sentence for abusing freedom of expression contravenes the European Convention on Human Rights, the principles of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe and other international obligations.
“There is another issue that justifies submitting this law to the Constitutional Council. As one of the Council’s previous presidents, Robert Badinter, said: ‘The French Parliament has not been empowered by the Constitution to determine historical fact.’ Are parliamentarians really doing the job they are supposed to do when they try to issue judgments on world history? Does this comply with the principle of separation of powers?
“Finally, we note the arguments of the parliamentarian who said judges should be allowed to distinguish between genocide denial that is a deliberate action bordering on incitement of hatred and genocide denial that simply stems from ignorance and propaganda. This is an important distinction. But these nuances have unfortunately not been reflected in a clear and precise way in the law.
“How is a journalist, blogger or historian to decide when a comment begins to constitute the ‘outrageous denial or minimization’ that is punishable under this law? A law’s clarity is a quality cherished by the Constitution because it makes its implementation predictable. If a judge is not limited to strict interpretation of the law, he has a degree of leeway bordering on the arbitrary, especially on an issue in which there could be considerable social pressure.
“Just as democracy cannot be imposed at gunpoint, so an evolution in attitudes and national reconciliation cannot be imposed by a repressive and draconian law, especially one adopted in another country.”