Civilnet
Switzerland’s Federal Office of Justice said it will appeal the European Court of Human Rights decision of December 17, 2013, which overturned the conviction of Turkish nationalist Dogu Perinçek for denying the Armenian Genocide during a series of lectures in 2005 in Switzerland. After a complaint launched by the Switzerland-Armenia Association and based on the Swiss Criminal Code to combat racism, the Lausanne Police Court found Perinçek guilty for inciting racial discrimination in 2007. The Swiss Federal Office of Justice will be requesting that the Grand Chamber of the ECHR review the ruling.
Armenian organizations globally had called on Switzerland to appeal the decision particularly in light of the fact that the ECHR had questioned the veracity of the Armenian Genocide. In its ruling the ECHR had said: “The Court also pointed out that it was not called upon to rule on the legal characterization of the Armenian genocide. The existence of a ‘genocide,’ which was a precisely defined legal concept, was not easy to prove. The Court doubted that there could be a general consensus as to events such as those at issue, given that historical research was by definition open to discussion and a matter of debate, without necessarily giving rise to final conclusions or to the assertion of objective and absolute truths.”
The ECHR Grand Chamber will still have to decide whether or not to accept the referral.
Here is a statement by the International Institute for Genocide and Human Rights Studies (A Division of the Zoryan Institute) on the Swiss Government’s decision to appeal the ECHR ruling.
Here is the press release issued by the Swiss Federal Office of Justice.
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