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French Lawmakers Challenge Constitutionality Of Genocide Bill

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  • French Lawmakers Challenge Constitutionality Of Genocide Bill

    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.

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