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Prague: Stetina to propose bill on Czech recognition of Armenian

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  • Prague: Stetina to propose bill on Czech recognition of Armenian

    Czech News Agency (CTK)
    CTK National News Wire
    April 24, 2005


    STETINA TO PROPOSE BILL ON CZECH RECOGNITION OF ARMENIAN GENOCIDE

    PRAGUE, April 24 ; (RTJ)


    Senator Jaromir Stetina wants to initiate a bill by which the Czech
    Republic would recognise the violence inflicted upon Armenians in the
    then Osman Empire in 1915 as genocide, he told CTK today.

    "It is a shame that the Czech Republic does not have such a law yet,"
    said Stetina, who attended a service organised by the local Armenian
    community in Prague's St Saviour's Church in commemoration of the
    genocide victims, whose number the Armenians put at 1.5 million.

    "I'd like to beg the Armenian community in Prague to help me prepare
    such a bill, and I'll try to submit in the Senate as a bill for Czech
    parliament to discuss," said Stetina, unaffiliated senator who is a
    member of the upper house's Open Democracy group.

    Stetina said his initiative has been motivated by the recent passing
    of such a law in neighbouring Poland.

    By passing its own, the Czech Republic would joint about twenty
    countries which have passed one, including France, Russia, Italy,
    Switzerland, Canada and Slovakia.

    The EP labelled the 1915 transport and massacre of Armenians as
    genocide in 1987.

    Turkey refuses to call the 90-year old events genocide. It puts the
    number of victims at 300,000 to 500,000.

    Stetina said that Turkey, the successor state to the Osman Empire,
    wants to enter the EU, and therefore it is important for it to cope
    with its past.

    Apart from the commemorative mass, Prague Armenians marked the bloody
    events anniversary at a rally at Prague's Old Town Square today. Two
    hundred of Armenians and other people sympathising with them paid
    tribute to the victims by a one- minute silence.
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