Criminalizing Genocide Denial
December 21, 2008 by Ken
Filed under Is that an Elephant
According to the CNN Turk, A decision was made at the meeting of the EU Ministers of Justice and Internal Affairs meeting in November 2008. To pass a bill criminalizing the denial of the fact of Genocide. The law will be introduced in the EU member countries in the course of two years.
According to the law, everyone who publicly denies the fact of the Genocide and the crimes against the humanity will be sent to prison for 1-3 years.
CNN Turk adds that the law imposes punishment on the denial of the genocides that were committed after 1938; it does not embrace the Armenian Genocide.
This is the only place I have seen this reported, although it was one of the issues promoted by German EU presidency and was widely reported at that time the Telegraph say the proposal went much further and would criminalise those who question the extent of war crimes that have taken place in the past 20 years.
And quotes some academic opposition to the measure:
Deborah Lipstadt, the professor of Modern Jewish and Holocaust Studies at Emory University, Atlanta, who believes the German proposals are misplaced.
“I adhere to that pesky little thing called free speech and I am very concerned when governments restrict it,”
“How will we determine precisely what is denial? Will history be decided by historians or in a courtroom?”
David Chandler, the professor of international relations at the University of Westminster’s Centre for the Study of Democracy, fears that the draft law could inhibit his work.
“My work teaching and training researchers, and academic work more broadly, is focused upon encouraging critical thinking. Measures like this make academic debate and discussion more difficult,”
Norman Stone, the professor of history at Turkey’s Koç University, argues that any attempt to legislate against genocide denial is “quite absurd”.
“I am dead against this kind of thing,” he said. “We can not have EU or international legal bodies blundering in and telling us what we can and can not say.”
Just so we know when our lot intoduce it as their idea!
