Armenian Genocide Denial

Now here's a fascinating prospect.

The French Government is currently legislating to make Armenian Genocide denial a criminal offence, a law the Brussels Journal believes will be enacted sometime in the late spring. However, over in Turkey, just mentioning the massacre is a criminal offence.

Armenia says Ottoman Turks killed 1.5 million people systematically in 1915 - a claim strongly denied by Turkey. The bill sponsored by the opposition Socialist party provides for a year in jail and a $50,000 fine - the same punishment that is imposed for denying the Nazi Holocaust.

Hence if Turkey joins the EU then we will have the delicious situation that denial of the Armenian Holocaust is a criminal offence in France, whilst mentioning it is a criminal offence in Turkey.

As the Brussels Journal concludes,

The happy result of this could be that the entire population of France could be lifted and placed, Midnight Express like in Turkish prisons. Of course the entire population of Turkey could then find itself extradited to France and imprisoned there.

Only in the EU!

A rare word of good sense from French Prime Minister, Dominique de Villepin

"It is not a good thing to legislate on issues of history and of memory"

Indeed.