French Senate passes a new ‘memory law’

“Concerned about the retrospective moralization of history and intellectual censure, we call for the mobilization of European historians and for the wisdom of politicians. History must not be a slave to contemporary politics nor can it be written on the command of competing memories. In a free state, no political authority has the right to define historical truth and to restrain the freedom of the historian with the threat of penal sanctions. We call on historians to marshal their forces within each of their countries and to create structures similar to our own, and, for the time being, to individually sign the present appeal, to put a stop to this movement toward laws aimed at controlling history memory. We ask government authorities to recognize that, while they are responsible for the maintenance of the collective memory, they must not establish, by law and for the past, an official truth whose legal application can carry serious consequences for the profession of history and for intellectual liberty in general. In a democracy, liberty for history is liberty for all.”Pierre Nora, Président, Liberté pour l’histoire, 2008.

FRENCH SENATE PASSES GENOCIDE BILL

On Monday 22 January the French Senate has approved a bill making it illegal to deny the mass killing of Armenians by Ottoman Turks nearly a century ago was genocide.

The Historical Justice and Memory Research Network report that, ” Turkey has previously condemned the bill, threatening ‘permanent consequences’ should it pass. After the vote, Turkey’s Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said ’European values are under threat…If each parliament takes decisions containing its own views of history and implements them, a new era of Inquisition will be opened in Europe.” If President Sarkozy ratifies the bill, denying the genocide could result in a fine of 45,000 Euros. Under French law, denying the holocaust is already a crime. In Turkey public affirmation of the Armenian genocide is treated as a crime as it is considered an insult to Turkish identity.”

According to BBC News, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the Turkish prime minister has described the bill as “racist”, adding that it “murdered freedom of thought”.  The report adds that, “The Turkish government argues that judging what happened in eastern Turkey in 1915-16 should be left to historians, and that the new French law will restrict freedom of speech.”

France formally recognized the killings as a genocide - in a 2001 law - but the new bill will go further, punishing anyone who denies this with a year in jail and a fine of 45,000 euros ($57,000).

The ‘genocide bill’ but one in a series of similar laws. In France four ‘memorial laws’ were enacted between 1990 and 2005: The first, passed in 1990, and known as the Gayssot Act,  made denial of the Nazi Holocaust of European Jews, along with other crimes against humanity as defined by the 1945 Nuremberg tribunal, punishable by law;  The second passed in 2001 and known as the Taubira Act, recognised slavery as a crime against humanity, and argued that the topic be given a ‘consequential place’ in teaching and research; The third , also passed in 2001, acknowledged the Armenian Massacre of 1915, labelling it a ‘genocide’; The fourth act tabled in 2005, insisted on the recognition of the positive role of colonialism, particularly in North Africa. This Act triggered a storm of protest and some of its more controversial provisions were withdrawn after a judicial review by the French Constitutional Council. These laws, collectively known as the ‘memorial laws’, sparked a national debate on the role of the state in framing the collective memory of its citizens and a storm of protest from historians demanding that the French Parliament put a to stop to legislating the past.

Supporters of the ‘memory laws’ claim that they are aimed at repairing the wrongs of history.  Opponents argue that the ‘memory laws’  instrumentalised historical knowledge, distorted history, restricted the freedom of expression and opinion, officialised historical truth and criminalised the past. 

FRANCE’S NATIONAL ASSEMBLY PASSES GENOCIDE BILL

On December 22, France’s National Assembly passed a bill making it a crime to deny the Turkish Ottoman genocide of Armenians in 1915, citing human rights and the protection of memory. This bill has provoked worldwide comment!

Today’s Zaman reports that the bill has triggered “outraged reactions in Turkey that argue the French bill compromises freedom of expression and utilizes a historical issue sensitive to Armenians and Turks as a tool of domestic politics ahead of French elections” and describes bus loads of protesters pouring into Paris with banners bearing slogans such as, “No to Sarkozy Shame Law,” “History for Historians, Politics for Politicians” and similar words.

The Guardian suggests that n France genocide has become a brickbat, arguing that the bill on the denial of Ottoman atrocities against Armenians is an attack on free speech, one of many around the world. Similar views are expressed on many other websites.

The Armenian Reporter, noting that the French genocide bill revivies Armenian debate in Turkey, says that, “the bill has provoked strong reactions from the Turkish government and sparked a debate among Turks and Armenians worldwide” and that ” the response from Ankara was swift and furious. Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan announced that he had recalled his ambassador from France, frozen all military cooperation with France, and suspended economic and political meetings”.

Valerie Boyer, the French lawmaker who drafted the bill says, in a Facebook post, quoted on the Public Radio of Armenia website, that, ““All Frenchmen of Armenian descent, who live in France have the right, to protect the memory of their ancestors slaughtered in 1915,” Valerie Boyer, a French lawmaker who drafted the bill criminalizing the denial of the Armenian Genocide” adding that “This law aims to punish all those, who will question the fact of Genocide in French territory,” she further explained that, “The Armenian genocide is recognized in Russia, Canada, Argentina, Italy, Sweden and even in Germany. Its denial is penalized in Switzerland. Yet, none of these States is being threatened in its diplomatic relations or business by Turkey.” .

Timothy Garton Ash writing in the Los Angeles Times, in a piece headlined, Speech crimes and France argues that “the question is not whether the atrocities committed against the Armenians by the Ottoman Empire were terrible, or whether they should be acknowledged in Turkish and European memory. They were and they should be. The question is: Should it be a crime under the law of France, or other countries, to dispute whether those terrible events constituted a genocide, a term used in international law? And is the French Parliament equipped and entitled to set itself up as a tribunal on world history, handing down verdicts on the past conduct of other nations? The answer: No and no.”

Pierre Nora, Président, Liberté pour l’histoire, in an article entitled, “The genocide law: We have lost a battle but not the war”, published in Le Monde on 28 December 2011 says that, “We could not have expected a worse outcome than this. And if the Senate does approve this disastrous law on “the criminalization of the denial of any legally defined genocide,” the hopes of all those who have criticized the extension of historical memory laws, and all the efforts of Liberté pour l’histoire since the founding of that organization in 2005, will be wrecked” but concludes his piece determindly noting that, “There are setbacks that simply renew the will to fight. There are laws that other laws can undo, political institutions that other institutions can rectify.”

Françoise Chandernagor, Vice-President, Liberté pour l’histoire, in an article entitled, “The historical memory laws: lawmakers create a monster”, published in Le Figaro on 29 December 2011, labels the bill as ‘heretical” saying that “The law adopted on 21 December not only makes it impossible for historians to carry out any research on the circumstances, methods, or magnitude of the extermination of the Armenians in 1915; it also creates a mechanism of repression to punish automatically anyone who minimizes any past crimes that our Parliament will one day choose to define as genocide”.

See also “Parliament can offer history more than just legislation” on the ActiveHistory.ca website.

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