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CYPRUS CRIMINALIZES DENIAL OF 1915 ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
Big News Network, Australia
April 3 2015
VoA - News Thursday 2nd April, 2015
NICOSIA - Cyprus on Thursday made it a crime to deny that Ottoman
Turks committed genocide against Armenian Turks a century ago, a move
likely to rile its old rival Turkey as peace talks on the ethnically
split island remain stalled.
The Cypriot parliament passed a resolution penalizing denial of
genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes, modifying existing
legislation, which required prior conviction by an international
court to make denial a crime.
"Today is a historic day," said Yiannakis Omirou, parliament speaker.
"It allows parliament to restore, with unanimous decisions and
resolutions, historical truths."
The east Mediterranean island, split in a Turkish invasion in 1974
after a brief Greek-inspired coup, was one of the first countries
worldwide in 1975 to recognize the Armenian killings as genocide. It
is commemorated on April 24.
The nature and scale of the killings remain highly contentious. Turkey
accepts that many Armenians died in partisan fighting beginning in
1915, but denies that up to 1.5 million were killed and that this
constituted an act of genocide, a term used by many Western historians
and foreign parliaments.
In a statement, Turkish Foreign Ministry spokesman Tanju Bilgic
said the Cypriot resolution was "null and void to us and not worthy
of comment."
"Those who have tried to exploit the events of 1915 at every
opportunity by using base political calculations have not been able to
achieve any result until now and won't do so in the future," he added.
Armenia accuses the Ottoman authorities at the time of systematically
massacring large numbers of Armenians and deporting many more,
including women, children, the elderly and infirm, in terrible
conditions on so-called death marches.
The issue has long been a source of tension between Turkey and
several Western countries, especially the United States and France,
both home to large ethnic Armenian diasporas. Cyprus, too, has an
Armenian population.
Cyprus has been at loggerheads with Turkey for decades. Its ethnic
Greek and Turkish Cypriot populations have lived estranged in the
south and north respectively since 1974. Seeds of division were sown
earlier when a power-sharing government crumbled amid violence in 1963.
Thursday's resolution was passed by Greek Cypriot lawmakers, who now
make up the island's only internationally recognized parliament.
http://www.bignewsnetwork.com/index.php/sid/231622049
Big News Network, Australia
April 3 2015
VoA - News Thursday 2nd April, 2015
NICOSIA - Cyprus on Thursday made it a crime to deny that Ottoman
Turks committed genocide against Armenian Turks a century ago, a move
likely to rile its old rival Turkey as peace talks on the ethnically
split island remain stalled.
The Cypriot parliament passed a resolution penalizing denial of
genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes, modifying existing
legislation, which required prior conviction by an international
court to make denial a crime.
"Today is a historic day," said Yiannakis Omirou, parliament speaker.
"It allows parliament to restore, with unanimous decisions and
resolutions, historical truths."
The east Mediterranean island, split in a Turkish invasion in 1974
after a brief Greek-inspired coup, was one of the first countries
worldwide in 1975 to recognize the Armenian killings as genocide. It
is commemorated on April 24.
The nature and scale of the killings remain highly contentious. Turkey
accepts that many Armenians died in partisan fighting beginning in
1915, but denies that up to 1.5 million were killed and that this
constituted an act of genocide, a term used by many Western historians
and foreign parliaments.
In a statement, Turkish Foreign Ministry spokesman Tanju Bilgic
said the Cypriot resolution was "null and void to us and not worthy
of comment."
"Those who have tried to exploit the events of 1915 at every
opportunity by using base political calculations have not been able to
achieve any result until now and won't do so in the future," he added.
Armenia accuses the Ottoman authorities at the time of systematically
massacring large numbers of Armenians and deporting many more,
including women, children, the elderly and infirm, in terrible
conditions on so-called death marches.
The issue has long been a source of tension between Turkey and
several Western countries, especially the United States and France,
both home to large ethnic Armenian diasporas. Cyprus, too, has an
Armenian population.
Cyprus has been at loggerheads with Turkey for decades. Its ethnic
Greek and Turkish Cypriot populations have lived estranged in the
south and north respectively since 1974. Seeds of division were sown
earlier when a power-sharing government crumbled amid violence in 1963.
Thursday's resolution was passed by Greek Cypriot lawmakers, who now
make up the island's only internationally recognized parliament.
http://www.bignewsnetwork.com/index.php/sid/231622049