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Inquisitr
Jan 30 2015
Armenian Genocide Case: Free Speech, Or Human Rights Breach?
On January 28, 2015, the European Court of Human Rights convened in
Strasbourg in the Armenian genocide case of Dogu Perincek -vs-
Switzerland. As TIME reports, while visiting Switzerland in 2005,
Perincek, Chairman of Turkey's Worker's Party, called the 1915 killing
spree which claimed the lives of 1.5 million Armenians an
"international lie."
TIME reports that in 2007, the Swiss court fined Perincek on the
grounds that his statement violated that country's laws prohibiting
genocide denial. Perincek filed and won an appeal on the grounds that
the decision violated his right to free speech. Switzerland then
rebutted with a counter appeal, dealing another blow in the semantic
cage match that is the Armenian Genocide case.
As the Armenian Weekly reports, Perincek's lawyer Mehmet Cengiz
defended his client's right to free speech, arguing his statements
were a "legal assessment" of the events of 1915 and should not be
taken as "racist." His client never denied the massacres themselves,
he explained, but merely resented their labelling as "genocide." "The
dispute between the parties concerns the legal definition of the
tragic events that took place 100 years ago," Cengiz argued.
Perincek chimed in, maintaining to the ECHR that "Freedom of
expression means liberty for different, even deviating opinions."
Representing the Swiss government and Armenia as a third party,
Doughty Street Chamber attorney Geoffrey Robertson cautioned against
genocide denial, claiming it "can make genocide survivors and their
children and grandchildren feel the worthlessness and contempt and
inferiority that the initial perpetrators intended."
In a now widely circulated video, Doughty Street barister Amal
Alamuddin Clooney, who recently gained fame when she married George
Clooney (for more on this click here), evoked the horrors of the 1915
mass murders. She spoke of the beheadings, the death marches, the
concentration camp, the bloody Euphrates swelled with corpses. She
reminded the courts of the "90 kilos of evidence" it had examined
proving the occurrence of the killings and quoted the German
ambassador to Turkey who condemned the latter for seeking the "total
obliteration of the Armenians."
"Armenia is not here to argue against freedom of expression anymore
than Turkey is here to defend it," Clooney stated, once again exposing
the absurdity of the semantics debate that has characterized the
Armenian Genocide case. She closed with the most astute observation
that the primary perpetrators of the massacres that nearly
exterminated the entire Armenian race had been sentenced to death for
mass murder, not genocide, simply because the word "genocide" had yet
to be invented at the time of their trial.
A verdict has yet to be released.
http://www.inquisitr.com/1795032/the-armenian-genocide-case-free-speech-or-human-rights-breach/
From: Baghdasarian
Jan 30 2015
Armenian Genocide Case: Free Speech, Or Human Rights Breach?
On January 28, 2015, the European Court of Human Rights convened in
Strasbourg in the Armenian genocide case of Dogu Perincek -vs-
Switzerland. As TIME reports, while visiting Switzerland in 2005,
Perincek, Chairman of Turkey's Worker's Party, called the 1915 killing
spree which claimed the lives of 1.5 million Armenians an
"international lie."
TIME reports that in 2007, the Swiss court fined Perincek on the
grounds that his statement violated that country's laws prohibiting
genocide denial. Perincek filed and won an appeal on the grounds that
the decision violated his right to free speech. Switzerland then
rebutted with a counter appeal, dealing another blow in the semantic
cage match that is the Armenian Genocide case.
As the Armenian Weekly reports, Perincek's lawyer Mehmet Cengiz
defended his client's right to free speech, arguing his statements
were a "legal assessment" of the events of 1915 and should not be
taken as "racist." His client never denied the massacres themselves,
he explained, but merely resented their labelling as "genocide." "The
dispute between the parties concerns the legal definition of the
tragic events that took place 100 years ago," Cengiz argued.
Perincek chimed in, maintaining to the ECHR that "Freedom of
expression means liberty for different, even deviating opinions."
Representing the Swiss government and Armenia as a third party,
Doughty Street Chamber attorney Geoffrey Robertson cautioned against
genocide denial, claiming it "can make genocide survivors and their
children and grandchildren feel the worthlessness and contempt and
inferiority that the initial perpetrators intended."
In a now widely circulated video, Doughty Street barister Amal
Alamuddin Clooney, who recently gained fame when she married George
Clooney (for more on this click here), evoked the horrors of the 1915
mass murders. She spoke of the beheadings, the death marches, the
concentration camp, the bloody Euphrates swelled with corpses. She
reminded the courts of the "90 kilos of evidence" it had examined
proving the occurrence of the killings and quoted the German
ambassador to Turkey who condemned the latter for seeking the "total
obliteration of the Armenians."
"Armenia is not here to argue against freedom of expression anymore
than Turkey is here to defend it," Clooney stated, once again exposing
the absurdity of the semantics debate that has characterized the
Armenian Genocide case. She closed with the most astute observation
that the primary perpetrators of the massacres that nearly
exterminated the entire Armenian race had been sentenced to death for
mass murder, not genocide, simply because the word "genocide" had yet
to be invented at the time of their trial.
A verdict has yet to be released.
http://www.inquisitr.com/1795032/the-armenian-genocide-case-free-speech-or-human-rights-breach/
From: Baghdasarian