Friday, October 13, 2006

Why I'm against the new french law

The french parliament yesterday, finally approved a billing, making it a crime to deny the Armenian genocide.
First of all, I must say the whole idea seems stupid to me. I even have problem with denying holocaust being a crime. For me it is very simple. It is as if somebody comes and tells you that earth doesn't exist and you put him in jail for saying that loud. It is just like a Galileo situation except the inverse. somebody says earth is flat and it is the center of the universe and you put him in jail. Denying a certain fact, even if it is a hundred percent proved is just a stupidity not a crime!
And in the case of Armenians, it is not as if they haven't done similar things on the other side of the border in the very city where I was born. It is a complicated historical event which should be studied and further studies may very well prove that Armenians are right but passing laws like this will only worsen the problem. People should be free to talk about their thoughts even if it means it hurts the feelings of others. Is it now a crime in a western country to deny god, so say someone is gay, to ridicule somebody else, even if it is the president of United States?
It is opposed to the very idea of freedom of speech. When there are unquestionable evidents to a historical fact those evidents should be enough to prove somebody is speaking nonsense. Why making him the center of attention by putting him in jail. Then this would even validate Khomeini's Fatwa to condemn Salman Rushdie to death. Then they can say that according to their laws Rushdie has made a crime and he should be penalized and the penalty for his crime is death!
In every sense that I'm thinking about it, it just makes me wonder why and how could they do this! And you know what the funny thing is? This law potentially makes all the people of Turkey criminals. How weird is that! I've had a lot of Armenian friends in my hometown. This town is a good example of how the people from different ethnicity and religions can live along in peace, Kurds, Azeris, Asyrians, and Armenians and then suddenly somebody from outside comes and tries to defend the right of one of these groups against the others and every thing is ruined.
I'm sure I must be missing a point. Else, how is it possible that they are neglecting all these simple similarities and analogies with similar situations which now are just seem strange to us to just think about them.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

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