Negationism

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The denial of genocides is referred to as negationism , especially in France ( negationnisme ), and more rarely in Great Britain ( negationism ) .

The historian Henry Rousso coined the term in 1987. Unlike the German term Holocaust denial , it refers not only to denying, belittling and relativizing the Holocaust against European Jewry , but also to denying or minimizing other genocides and democides . Currently, the denial of the Armenian genocide is the subject of jurisdiction and criminal prosecution in some European countries, but also the denial of the Srebrenica massacre .

According to Gunnar Heinsohn , a genocide denier finds himself in a strange moral paradox:

“On the one hand, by denying it, he is in the moral consensus of condemning genocide. On the other hand, by denying it, he protects the murderer and thus pleads for the impunity of this genocide. "

According to Deborah Lipstadt , the denial of a genocide represents its last stage, since the victims and their descendants are also deprived of the right to remember the disaster they suffered.

Countries (alphabetically)

Belgium

In Belgium , in November 2005, the lawsuit of a politician of Turkish origin who had sought damages in court after he was wrongly accused of negationism (or 'negationist') in connection with the Armenian genocide was dismissed in November 2005 was. The court found in its judgment that “the position of Mr. E. Kir's refusal to qualify the massacres and deportations of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire in 1915-1916 as genocide before a commission of independent historians addressed the issue have expressed, disregarding the numerous serious work already completed on this topic amounts to postponing any decision on such a qualification of the processes for an indefinite period of time, which de facto means to negate the same (ie the conceptual classification of the massacres as genocide). "

Germany

In Germany , the Berlin-Brandenburg Higher Administrative Court issued a significant judgment on March 17, 2005, in connection with the challenge of a demonstration ban, referring to the (negationist) description of the Armenian genocide as a "genocide lie". For the demonstration of Turkish associations in Berlin in honor of Talat Pascha , which was initially forbidden, but then re-approved by the OVG decision , who as Minister of the Interior of the Ottoman Empire was one of the main culprits in the genocide of the Armenian people and who carried out an assassination attempt in Berlin in 1921 the Armenian student Soghomon Tehlirian was killed, made the verdict a condition not to describe the qualification of the Armenian massacre as genocide, either verbally or in writing, as a “genocide lie”, as this would render the criminal offense of Section 189 of the Criminal Code ( denigration of the memory of deceased ) is fulfilled.

France

Analogous to the criminality of the specific Holocaust denial since 1990, the French parliament has tried several times in recent years to criminalize the genocide of the Armenians. Most recently, a corresponding parliamentary initiative failed on May 18, 2006; the bill that was introduced did not even get to the vote after delay tactics and appropriate intervention by the parliamentary president. An expansion of the legislation against racism known under the catchphrase “Loi Gayssot” , which so far only criminalizes Holocaust denial, is a very controversial issue in French society. That depends u. a. also related to the fact that a broad front of intellectuals and historians are fundamentally against any intervention by the legislature in historical research. The background to this is a controversy about the historical assessment of France's role during colonialism (especially in the Algerian war), which the ruling conservatives should also adopt in a draft law that is not too critical.

On October 12, 2006, the French National Assembly adopted a new bill introduced by the Socialist Party (at the proposal of Jean-Claude Gayssot ) with 106 votes in favor and 19 against. The law was not ratified by the French Senate .

The European Union had condemned the draft law at the time. Enlargement Commissioner Olli Rehn pointed out that the move was counterproductive , especially in a critical phase of the accession talks with Turkey . Rehn saw the danger that the reform process in Turkey could be slowed down. The President of the European Commission José Manuel Barroso made a similar statement .

The Greens had called on the French Parliament not to adopt this law. They see this law as a transparent campaign gift to the radical forces in the Armenian diaspora. The proposal to create an independent commission of historians is said to be the sensible way forward. From the point of view of Hrant Dink , the then editor of the Turkish-Armenian weekly Agos , who was murdered in 2007 , this type of law prevents any debate between Turks and Armenians. Hrant Dink emphasized that in future it would no longer be possible to argue against laws that forbid classifying the events as genocide if France now does the same in reverse. Dink expressed his protest by saying that he would be the first to go to Paris to break the law. The Armenian Patriarch of Istanbul, Mesrop Mutafyan , saw the law as harmful to dialogue. In particular, the positive perception of the Armenian and Greek minorities of Istanbul in Turkey in recent years saw the Patriarch threatened by a setback. Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said that a lie remains a lie even if another parliament decides otherwise. If this law is adopted, Turkey will react economically. Erdoğan rejected the proposal from his faction to classify the French massacres in Algeria as genocide.

In December 2011, the National Assembly again passed a law that “publicly praising, denying or grossly trivializing genocide, crimes against humanity or war crimes” can be punished with imprisonment or fines. This also includes the genocide of the Armenians. The French MPs criticized the "intolerable attempts" by the Republic of Turkey to put pressure on the French parliament. In an immediate response, the Turkish government withdrew its ambassador from France. In January 2012, the law was also confirmed by the Senate , but was rejected the following month by the French Constitutional Court as a violation of freedom of expression .

Switzerland

In Switzerland , Holocaust denial falls under the criminal offense of racial discrimination , so that the term can be extended to other genocides in the sense of the broader French term negationism . Accordingly, the judicial authorities opened criminal proceedings in 2005 against the historian Yusuf Halaçoğlu (head of the Turkish Historical Society ) and the chairman of the Turkish workers' party Doğu Perinçek , who had denied the genocide of the Armenians. Doğu Perinçek said he wanted to be arrested specifically to show his protest.

Spain

In Spain there is a law in force (Article 607, paragraph 2 of the Criminal Code) which punishes denial or justification of genocide in a very broad sense with imprisonment of up to two years. However, this law has not yet been applied.

Turkey

See also

Single receipts

  1. ↑ Swiss deny Srebrenica genocide - First criminal complaint , TRIAL (Track Impunity Always) - Swiss Society for International Criminal Law, press dossier, April 19, 2010 ( Memento of February 26, 2016 in the Internet Archive )
  2. ↑ UN chief prosecutor: Denial of the genocide in Srebrenica unacceptable , stol.it, Nachrichten für Südtirol, June 8, 2012 ( Memento of September 10, 2015 in the Internet Archive )
  3. ↑ Gunnar Heinsohn: Lexicon of Genocides . Rowohlt, Reinbek bei Hamburg 1999, ISBN 3-499-22338-4 , p. 238.
  4. ↑ TRIBUNAL DE PREMIERE INSTANCE DE BRUXELLES 279/14/05 14ème Chambre ( French ) Tribunal de première instance. Retrieved September 13, 2019.
  5. ^ Higher Administrative Court Berlin-Brandenburg, decision of March 17, 2006
  6. ↑ Appel de Blois ( Memento of March 1, 2009 in the web archive archive.today ) of the association Liberté pour L'Histoire
  7. ↑ Genocide of the Armenians: Greens demand the withdrawal of the French law on the genocide of the Armenians  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.@1@ 2Template: Dead Link / www.greens-efa.org  
  8. ↑ a b Der Spiegel: Armenian Law. Turks angry with France
  9. ^ Frankfurter Rundschau: Controversy over the Genocide Act ( Memento from January 14, 2012 in the Internet Archive ). Retrieved on December 28, 2011.
  10. ↑ Décision n ° 2012-647 DC du 28 février 2012 , judgment of the Constitutional Court, accessed on 19 September 2015.

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