Last week's vote aiming to make it an offence in France to question the Armenian genocide has met with some formidable opposition, reports David Tresilian in Paris French MPs last week passed a bill aiming to make it an offence in France "to question the Armenian genocide", being the massacres carried out against the Armenian population of Anatolia in the dying days of the Ottoman Empire during the First World War in which hundreds of thousands of Armenians are believed to have died. The bill, introduced into the lower house of the French parliament by the socialists with the support of members of France's ruling centre- right parties but not of the government itself, was passed by 106 votes for and 19 against, with only 125 of the parliament's 577 MPs turning out to vote. The bill, which will not become law until it is passed by the parliament's upper house and signed by the president, would make it a criminal offence in France to question the "existence of the Armenian genocide", those doing so risking up to five years in prison and a 45,000 Euro fine. France has already legislated on other historical issues, the so-called "Gayssot law" of July 1990 making it an offence in France to deny the extermination carried out by the Hitler regime against Europe's Jews, and another law of January 2001 "publicly recognising the Armenian genocide" but not making it an offence in France to deny it. Response to the vote was immediate both in France and in Turkey, with French commentators expressing reservations at the apparent use of legislation to decide historical questions and thereby threatening important freedoms, and the Turkish government protesting against what it said was French interference in Turkey's domestic affairs. According to an editorial in the left-of-centre newspaper Libération, the proposed law was "ill- considered" since it would prevent freedom of historical research, and the vote was an "abuse of intellectual authority" on the part of the French parliament. According to an editorial in the establishment newspaper Le Monde, "history is an affair for historians" not for the French state, and politicians should not try to set up a "ministry of truth" to decide historical questions. The Liberty for History group, which brings together famous names from the French historical profession including Marc Ferro, Jacques Julliard, Pierre Nora and Mona Ozouf, also declared its opposition to the proposed law. While expressing its "profound sentiment of solidarity" for the "victims of history", the group deplored the movement in France to "establish an official version of the past", which "threatened freedom of thought and expression." However, comment in the French press has focused at least as much on the electoral advantages of the proposed law and its meaning in the context of French politics as it has on the question of historical truth. France has a sizeable Armenian minority, and with only months to go before the French presidential elections in April 2007, candidates from both the socialist and centre-right parties have been looking for support, with the centre-right frontrunner, Nicolas Sarkozy, and the socialist favourite, Ségolène Royale, both reportedly in favour of the proposed law. The vote is also being seen as part of a campaign in France to frustrate Turkish accession to the European Union, not only by insisting that the Armenian massacres constitute genocide, but also by making recognition of Armenian genocide a precondition for Turkish membership of the EU, the Turkish Republic being the successor state to the Ottoman Empire. Opinion polls in France have consistently indicated that a majority of French citizens oppose Turkish membership of the EU, and since it is believed that the Turkish government will not be able to agree to recognition of the Armenian genocide, insisting on such a condition would help to scupper Turkish membership. For foreign observers, the French vote has come as an example of the country's susceptibility to grandstanding legislation on issues that are usually considered to be matters for historical research, deciding by legal means questions that elsewhere are seen as matters for debate. Under the 1948 UN Convention that defines the crime of genocide in international law, the term refers to "acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such", and it is not clear that there was such an intention on the part of those carrying out the Armenian massacres. According to a spokesman for the European Commission in Brussels, should the proposed French legislation come into effect, it would "prevent the dialogue and debate necessary for reconciliation" and would have a "disastrous effect" on freedom of expression in Turkey, where "it would only oppose one official version of the truth to another." For its part, the Armenian Patriarchate in Istanbul commented that "the French, who have already placed various obstacles in the way of Turkey's joining the European Union, have now struck a serious blow to the already limited dialogue between Turkey and Armenia... one that will only play into the hands of extreme nationalists and racists in both Turkish and Armenian societies."
