PARIS (PanARMENIAN.Net, AFP) — The Coordination Council of Armenian Organizations of France (CCAF) urged all French people upholding principles of democracy and humanity to join a peaceful rally on January 23 to support the bill penalizing Armenian Genocide denial.
On December 22, 2011, the French National Assembly passed a bill criminalizing public denial of the Armenian Genocide. If passed and signed into law by the Senate, the bill would impose a 45,000-euro fine and a year in prison for anyone in France who denies this crime against humanity committed by the Ottoman Empire.
The Genocide bill will be debated at French Senate on January 23.
Meanwhile, Turkey’s main opposition party said Friday it had appealed to France’s socialist leader over French plans for a law that reinforces the view of Turkey’s Ottoman-era massacre of Armenians as genocide.
In a letter to Francois Hollande, the social democratic Republican People’s Party (CHP) denounced the French bill, which would outlaw denial that the 1915-17 massacre of Armenians by Ottoman Turk forces amounted to genocide.
Hollande is the Socialist Party’s contender in the French presidential elections later this year.
