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FRENCH LAWMAKERS CHALLENGE CONSTITUTIONALITY OF GENOCIDE BILL
Monsters and Critics
Jan 31 2012
Paris - A group of French senators on Tuesday launched a constitutional
challenge to a bill adopted by the French parliament that bans people
from denying genocides.
The RDSE, a group of mainly left-wing senators, petitioned the
Constitutional Council, the country's highest court on constitutional
matters, to vet the bill.
The RDSE told dpa 77 senators drawn from all parties represented
in the Senate had signed the petition - more than the 60 signatures
required for the court to examine the legislation.
The court said it had also received a similar petition from a group
of at least 60 parliamentarians.
On January 23, parliament definitively adopted a bill making it a
crime punishable by a year in prison and 45,000 euros (57,000 dollars)
to deny or 'outrageously minimize' a genocide officially recognized
by France. President Nicolas Sarkozy has yet to sign it into law.
The bill caused anger in Turkey, because it punishes those who deny
that the mass killings of Armenians by Ottoman Turks nearly a century
ago constituted genocide.
Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan described the bill
as 'racist.' His government has threatened sanctions if Sarkozy
promulgates it.
The RDSE said in a statement that its intention was 'not to question
in any way the existence of the Armenian genocide.'
At the same time, the senators considered that the bill trampled
the principle of freedom of expression as well as constitutional
provisions on the legality of offences and sentences.
The nine-member Constitutional Council issues rulings on the
constitutionality of bills before they become law. The court has one
month in which to issue the ruling.
Its members are appointed by the president and heads of the two
houses of parliament and are mainly senior civil servants, legal
experts and former politicians. Former presidents Jacques Chiracs
and Valery Giscaird d'Estaing are currently members.
France officially recognizes only two genocides: the Nazi Holocaust
of Jews during World War II and the deaths of hundreds of thousands
of Armenian citizens of the Ottoman Empire between 1915 and 1917.
Armenians say around 1.5 million people were either killed or died
during forced deportations in eastern Turkey in 1915, at the height
of World War I.
Turkey estimates between 300,000 and 500,000 people died but denies
there was a systematic policy to destroy the Armenian community.
Monsters and Critics
Jan 31 2012
Paris - A group of French senators on Tuesday launched a constitutional
challenge to a bill adopted by the French parliament that bans people
from denying genocides.
The RDSE, a group of mainly left-wing senators, petitioned the
Constitutional Council, the country's highest court on constitutional
matters, to vet the bill.
The RDSE told dpa 77 senators drawn from all parties represented
in the Senate had signed the petition - more than the 60 signatures
required for the court to examine the legislation.
The court said it had also received a similar petition from a group
of at least 60 parliamentarians.
On January 23, parliament definitively adopted a bill making it a
crime punishable by a year in prison and 45,000 euros (57,000 dollars)
to deny or 'outrageously minimize' a genocide officially recognized
by France. President Nicolas Sarkozy has yet to sign it into law.
The bill caused anger in Turkey, because it punishes those who deny
that the mass killings of Armenians by Ottoman Turks nearly a century
ago constituted genocide.
Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan described the bill
as 'racist.' His government has threatened sanctions if Sarkozy
promulgates it.
The RDSE said in a statement that its intention was 'not to question
in any way the existence of the Armenian genocide.'
At the same time, the senators considered that the bill trampled
the principle of freedom of expression as well as constitutional
provisions on the legality of offences and sentences.
The nine-member Constitutional Council issues rulings on the
constitutionality of bills before they become law. The court has one
month in which to issue the ruling.
Its members are appointed by the president and heads of the two
houses of parliament and are mainly senior civil servants, legal
experts and former politicians. Former presidents Jacques Chiracs
and Valery Giscaird d'Estaing are currently members.
France officially recognizes only two genocides: the Nazi Holocaust
of Jews during World War II and the deaths of hundreds of thousands
of Armenian citizens of the Ottoman Empire between 1915 and 1917.
Armenians say around 1.5 million people were either killed or died
during forced deportations in eastern Turkey in 1915, at the height
of World War I.
Turkey estimates between 300,000 and 500,000 people died but denies
there was a systematic policy to destroy the Armenian community.