European politicians criticize French genocide denial bill

Two heavyweights of the European Parliament have directed harsh criticisms at a French parliament draft law seeking to criminalize denying that the forceful deportation of Armenians by Ottoman rulers in 1915 was genocide. While European Commissioner for Enlargement Stefan Fule refused to comment directly on the motion in the French National Assembly, calling it "an initiative of the Parliament of a member state on which the Commission as a general rule will not comment," in a separate answer to a question by a Swedish member of European Parliament, Fule said the European Union is "not about judging history, but about reconciliation." In his response to the Swedish MEP's question, Fule called on Turkey and Armenia to ratify protocols they had earlier signed without creating any new preconditions and said normalization of Turkish-Armenian relations would contribute to security, stability and cooperation in the South Caucasus. He said vision, courage and dialogue were needed to heal the wounds of the past. Hannes Swoboda, deputy chairman of the European Socialists, and Alexander Graf Lambsdorff, deputy chairman of the Liberals, said in an interview with the Turkish television network STVHaber that such initiatives were not helpful at a time when Turkey has already started to look into its history from a different perspective, recalling an apology from Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan for the massacre of thousands of Alevi-Zazas in the city of Dersim in 1937 and 1938. "I am a liberal. Freedom of speech is the first and foremost principle for us. It is very, very important," Lambsdorff, a German, said. "I think if you want to restrict the freedom of expression, you need to have extremely good reasons, very, very good reasons. One such good reason in the German context is to make it illegal to deny the Holocaust because of our particular history. It refers only to us." He went on to say, "But the French are trying to legislate something that did not happen in France that is not a part of their national history, really. But it is part of the history of another country. Imagine, for example, Austria were to decide to make it illegal to deny that a large-scale killing of American Indians took place. That is nonsense. That is for historians to decide. I believe one can legitimately discuss whether it was a genocide or not but it should clearly not be part of the legislative process." Swoboda, an Austrian, said he holds the same view. "I have always defended the Austrian position, which is similar to the German one, on the Nazis and the Holocaust because we were the perpetrators. About others, we do not have the right to decide," he said. He also said Europe needs to be "much more easy-going with Turkey," and that "Turkey is now beginning to apologize for what happened to [its minorities]." He added that many countries, including Turkey, have incidents in their past which they need to apologize for, but this is different than imposing criminal sanctions through legislation. He also cautioned Turkey against exaggerating the bill as this would give more food to the Armenian Diaspora and anti-Turkey French politicians. "Let's deal with history from a historical and moral point of view but not through criminal sanctions. National parliaments are not good places to judge the histories of other countries," Swoboda said.