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Arbiters Of Morality: France And The Armenian Genocide

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  • Arbiters Of Morality: France And The Armenian Genocide

    ARBITERS OF MORALITY: FRANCE AND THE ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
    by Vinay Lal

    The Daily Star, Bangladesh
    http://www.thedailystar.net/2006/11/28/ d611281502114.htm
    Nov 28 2006

    The French have long believed in themselves as one of the supreme
    arbiters of the moral history of humanity, as exercising a unique
    civilizing mission on less fortunate parts of the world, and the
    ardor with which they cling to an exalted vision of themselves as
    moral legislators has clearly not diminished over the years.

    On October 12, the French Assembly approved, by a vote of 106-19,
    legislation that would make it a crime in France to deny that the mass
    killings of Armenians which took place between 1915-17 in Ottoman
    Turkey constitute "genocide." The Senate vote is still awaited,
    but following in the wake of legislation from 2001 under which the
    mass killings of Armenians are recognized as genocide, the present
    legislation seems headed for approval.

    France has nearly 500,000 Armenians, more than any other country in
    Western Europe, and it would be idle to pretend that politicians do not
    court minorities. However, Turks too number over 300,000 in France,
    and one can be certain that the recent legislation will aggravate
    their mood of discontent. Whatever the appeals to the Armenian-French
    constituency, this legislation must clearly be located within the
    vortex of a more complex geopolitics.

    Among the considerations that weigh most heavily, one must number the
    strained relations between Turkey and the European Union, the suspected
    alienation of Muslim minorities from the dominant European cultures
    amidst which they find themselves, the growing tensions within the
    Muslim ummah, and the wave of Islamophobia which has swept European
    countries. The bill will doubtless convey to Turks the message that
    they have not yet attained that state of enlightenment which might
    warrant their admission into the European Union.

    Among the critics of the French legislation is the Turkish writer
    Orhan Pamuk, who last year admitted in an interview that Turkey
    should be held responsible for the genocide. He was put on trial
    for, in effect, insulting the nation and denigrating "Turkishness,"
    but immense pressure, largely from the European Union, contributed
    to his acquittal by the court. It is altogether likely that the
    bill may have been partly motivated by the desire to strengthen the
    hand of Turkish secularists and "moderate Muslims," such as Pamuk,
    who are viewed as being locked in battle with Muslim extremists and
    nationalist hard-liners.

    Pamuk nonetheless has criticized the French legislation as an
    attempt to stifle freedom of speech and as a betrayal of the ideals
    championed by France for over two centuries. In Pamuk's critique,
    framed very much by the parameters of Western liberal thought, when
    two or more interpretations vie for attention the more sound position
    always prevails.

    In 1972, France passed a law which makes it a crime to deny the
    Holocaust. Though the Holocaust is far from being the only genocide in
    a violence-filled century, it occupies in the West a singular status
    as furnishing the paradigmatic instance of genocide and crimes against
    humanity. The obsession with the Holocaust has, so to speak, obscured
    the recognition of other equally horrific atrocities. The Socialist
    legislator, Christophe Masse, in his defense of the bill described it
    as helping to "ease the unhealthy rivalry that exists among victims
    of genocides and that is fueled by their inequality before the law."

    Ironically, this, the only defense of the legislation of any merit
    that one might invoke, is also the one that will be categorically
    rejected in Europe and the Anglo-American world, and even adduced as
    an expression of support for anti-Semitism. Whatever else might be
    permitted in the West, any interpretation of the Holocaust which merely
    questions its canonical status as the ultimate form of victimhood
    opens itself to vicious attack and ridicule.

    That a genocide of Armenians took place under Ottoman Turks is
    beyond question. Succeeding Turkish governments have not only fudged
    the numbers, but claim, astoundingly, that Armenians died mainly on
    account of war, disease, and hunger. In Turkey, by way of contrast with
    France, the admission of an Armenian genocide can lead to criminal
    prosecution. However, not only is there overwhelming evidence to
    establish that the death of Armenians was the consequence of a policy
    of deliberate policy, but the Turkish government at the conclusion of
    World War I itself court-martialed, before the world, the Young Turks
    (or CUP leaders) by whose orders a genocide was perpetrated.

    As Peter Balakian has so amply demonstrated in The Burning
    Tigris: The Armenian Genocide and America's Response (2003), the
    government-appointed Commission of Inquiry gathered insurmountable
    evidence of the massacres and it became part of the official record.

    If the Turkish government of that day set an example to the world
    in creating the model for war crimes trials, the present Turkish
    government has unfortunately chosen to make a foolish spectacle of
    itself by its denial of the genocide.

    But what of France? The history of French colonial rule in Algeria,
    Indochina, Haiti, the Ivory Coast, Congo Brazzaville, and elsewhere
    is littered with corpses of colonized people. The assassinations
    of Algerians settled in France remain unpunished more than four
    decades after Algeria's declaration of independence, and it is no
    more shocking that the French National Assembly in February 2005
    passed a law requiring school children to be taught "the positive
    role of the French presence overseas, notably in North Africa."

    As the unrest of recent years suggests, France's treatment of its
    own North African minorities leaves much to be desired. If France
    wished to be daring, it might consider enacting legislation that
    would make it an offence to deny French colonial atrocities. That is
    exceedingly unlikely. Colonizing nations can be stripped of their
    colonial possessions, but they find it exceedingly difficult to
    shed their past and their habits of evasion of responsibility. The
    passage of the recent legislation on the Armenian question, far from
    signifying any enlightened view, is the most decisive indicator of
    France's inability to own up to its wretched colonial past.
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