The Observer: Genocide Bill Adoption Made France Enemy of Freedom

PanARMENIAN.Net - British daily The Observer commented on Sunday that making denial of the Armenian Genocide a criminal offense is "wrong and bad," describing the French move as an "enemy of free speech." The daily underlined that quite apart from limiting free speech, and therefore legitimizing a desirable debate on historical questions, the French are "surely obliged to remember more distinctly, and more publicly, the collaboration of so many of their own people with the Nazi transport of Jews before starting on the business of criminalizing remoter cases of denial." The Observer also stated that the Armenian bill was designed to complicate Turkey's application to join the EU. "It is a bewildering reality that France sees Turkey's refusal to acknowledge what happened to the Armenians as an obstacle to membership, while at the same time continuing to regard its own wartime behavior as somehow irreproachable," it was added.