Genocide Denial

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La promulgation de la loi du 23 février 2005 « portant reconnaissance de la Nation et contribution nationale en faveur des Français rapatriés » donne lieu à un important débat public et à la diffusion d’une pétition d’historiens exigeant l’abrogation de toutes les lois dites mémorielles (loi de 2005 en cause, mais aussi loi Gayssot de 1990, loi reconnaissant le génocide arménien et loi Taubira de 2001). Cette pétition repose sur une dénonciation qui présuppose que lesdites lois, mises sur le même plan, auraient une fonction et un objet identiques. Or ce double présupposé est critiquable : d’une part, le fait d’appréhender ces textes comme ayant la même fonction, celle de sanctionner un comportement, est basé sur une confusion qu’il s’agit de clarifier ; d’autre part, considérer qu’ils ont le même objet, en l’occurrence l’établissement d’une vérité officielle par le Parlement ou les juges, relève d’un malentendu qu’il convient de dissiper s’agissant des lois de 1990 et de 2001. Ainsi le problème ne serait pas tant celui d’une inflation législative alarmante de lois scélérates, établissant une vérité d’Etat ; mais plutôt celui du sens, à peine caché, de l’adoption d’un texte tel que l’article 4 de la loi de 2005, qui impose une interprétation légitimement contestée par les historiens.
Sévane Garibian

K. Magliveras, “International Organisations and Denialism: The Case of the African Union” in H. Nelen, J.C.M. Willems & R. Moerland (eds.), Denialism and Human Rights, Intersentia, 2016, pages 267-284 See the edited volume at: http://intersentia.com/en/denialism-and-human-rights.html

To download click here : https://archive-ouverte.unige.ch/unige:23565

Tant le langage courant que le langage historiographique contemporain définissent le négationnisme comme une doctrine ou une position idéologique consistant à nier la réalité du génocide du peuple juif et, plus particulièrement, l’existence des chambres à gaz. Qu’en est-il en droit ? Dans l’ordre juridique français, c’est la loi dite Gayssot du 13 juillet 1990 qui pose l’interdit. De par ses termes très restrictifs, elle ne permet que la condamnation pénale de propos négationnistes visant les crimes nazis, et le caractère exclusif de la protection apportée par la loi transparaît clairement, tant en amont qu’en aval du texte. L’interdit est cadré par de nombreuses limites qui garantissent sa conformité aux libertés fondamentales propres à un Etat démocratique. Ainsi cette loi n’est-elle pas liberticide contrairement à l’opinion de ses principaux détracteurs. Elle est néanmoins critiquable, pour une raison différente : le caractère exclusif de l’interdit qu’elle pose se justifie aujourd’hui difficilement et une discussion sur son extension s’impose.
Sévane Garibian

Examining the concept of death can provide a new perspective on the question of why prominent sections of the Australian political and media establishment have resisted recognising the Stolen Generations as a genocide. This paper examines the role of death understood as definitional in genocide, and finality as the defining aspect of ‘death’ employed in this way. Genocide, in the popular imagination, is based on the Holocaust as paradigmatic case and invokes death as central symbol. Since mass death as a consequence of the state's actions toward its civilian subjects is posited as illegitimate, the legitimacy of a state which has committed genocide is in question. In the context of Australia's 'history wars,' the arguments of denialists are premised upon the position that if death did not occur then genocide did not occur, and if genocide did not occur, then the state is legitimate and national identity is secure. This argument relies on an implicit use of the metaphor of a collectivity as a human individual (subject to death). The argument that death (due to its finality) is necessary for genocide is itself used to ‘assassinate memory’ (Vidal-Naquet), to finalise the genocide that indigenous Australians have suffered. An emphatic response has and continues to be made by Aboriginal Australians’ assertion of survival.

Legal governance of memory has played a central role in establishing hegemony of monumental history, and has forged national identities and integration processes in Europe and beyond. In this book, a range of contributors explore both the nature and role of legal engagement into historical memory in selected national law, European and international law. They also reflect on potential conflicts between legal governance, political pluralism, and fundamental rights, such as freedom of expression. In recent years, there have been numerous monumental commemoration practices and judicial trials about correlated events all over the world, and this is a prime opportunity to undertake an important global comparative scrutiny of memory laws. Against the background of mass re-writing of history in different parts of the world, this book revisits a fascinating subject of memory laws from the standpoint of comparative law and transitional justice.

(Article language German, English Abstract)
Facticity, Identity, and Emotionality: Cultural Strategies addressing Genocide Denial in the Case of Srebrenica.
Twenty-six years after the Srebrenica genocide, the topic remains a discursive minefield. On the one hand, there are the facts and a self-confident commemorative culture of the genocidal events of July 1995. On the other hand, revisionism, negation and counter-memorialization. This essay is grounded in three sources: first, the findings of the "Srebrenica Genocide Denial Report 2021" by the Memorial Center Srebrenica; secondly, the proposals for breaking the narrative of genocide denial by Jasmila Žbanić, director of the film "Quo Vadis, Aida?"; and finally, the results of the anti-revisionist, cross-national projects "Ko/Tko je prvi počeo?" (Who started first?) and "Histoire pour la liberté" (History for freedom) complete this contribution. The aim of the essay is not merely to identify reasons, backgrounds, and interests in the revisionist discourse. Rather, it suggests possible solutions to this polarized situation which could be relevant beyond the regional framework.

"Heresy" is developed here as an analytical term for the criminalization of speech questioning the basic tenets of a belief system, such as internal criticisms of state socialism or denial of the applicability of the term genocide to some mass crimes in a European Union that purports to make central the protection of human rights. European legislation to criminalize "genocide denial" is critiqued through a close analysis of international legal decisions dealing with whether "genocide" took place in the Bosnian war of 1992—95. Although granting both the facts as these courts found them and the serious criminality of the actions involved, Robert M. Hayden argues that calling them "genocide" broadens the definition of that term to the extent of losing the possibility of uniform application. Criminalizing "genocide denial" is thus not only contrary to principles of free speech and intellectual inquiry but manifests the same problem that Amnesty International identified in its reports in the 1980s on the vagueness of the "verbal crimes" provisions of the criminal laws of the formerly socialist countries.

Postscript 2024: considering the censorship, and worse, of scholars who comment on Gaza after October 7 2023, this article seems prescient.

The Perinçek precedent of ECHR on freedom of expression-which denied the Armenian Genocide by means of its relativisation and banalisation-, was a regression in the fight for the historical truth and the recognition of genocide. The ECHR judgment shows signs of denial explained by the adoption of the theory of the uniqueness and extended to other forms related to the reluctance to characterise the facts as genocide. We witness a dangerous sort of judicial denial, taking into account the role of law in cases of mass violation of human rights. Jurisprudence should account the complexity and power of words in the current communicational society, or should desist its naming attempt. Especially if what is at work is the symbolic representation of a genocide experience that has been waiting 100 years for its recognition.

Le sujet de ce travail est la relation entre l’art. 17 (interdiction de l’abus de droit) et la liberté d’expression dans la jurisprudence de la Cour. L’ancienne Commission européenne des droits de l’homme et la Cour européenne des droits de l’homme ont interprété cette interdiction de l’abus de droit article au fil des années en l’utilisant notamment comme outil pour dénier la protection de l’art. 10 CEDH garantissant la liberté d’expression ou pour faciliter sa restriction au regard de l’art. 10 §2. Le but de ce travail sera d’analyser cette jurisprudence et d’en cerner les enjeux.
Après une première partie consacrée à l’importance de la liberté d’expression, aux restrictions « classiques » à celle-ci basées sur l’art. 10 §2 et au cas particulier de l’art. 17, suivront trois parties portant sur les différents cas de figure dans lesquels l’art. 17 trouve à s’appliquer pour restreindre la liberté d’expression. La première sera consacrée au traitement des affaires concernant la démocratie mise en danger par des partis anti-démocratiques ou par le discours d’incitation à la violence, la deuxième à celui des affaires concernant du discours de haine et la dernière au traitement du discours négationniste.
Tout au long de ces développements, la question sera celle de savoir dans quelle mesure l’art. 17 est un outil approprié pour restreindre comparativement à l’art. 10 §2 CEDH.

File 1 contains my review as published in "The California Courier" (pp.6-7), File 2 the full version in an online-edition. File 3 contains the German version of the review,published in "Jahrbuch Verfolgung und Diskriminierung von Christen 2021" (Yearbook Persecution and Dscrimination of Christians, 2021; pp. 54-59).

Laws regulating historical discourse, or “memory laws,” recognize past injustices, and, as in the case of legislation regarding the Holocaust, may punish denial. They also reflect the geopolitical interests of states or supranational institutions, especially in contested histories, such as the Ottoman Empire’s persecution of Armenian subjects during the First World War. Scholarship on such legislation examines its ethical legitimacy and political impact, debating its effect on free speech and democratic governance. This discourse considers whether memory laws should ever be adopted, whether they actually achieve their goals, and the extent to which they reinforce realpolitik in governing institutions. This article reveals a hitherto little-discussed dimension of laws regulating historical discourse: performativity. Laws have performative effects in the form of meanings, intentions, and interpretations that go beyond the letter of the law. By focusing on Armenian Genocide recognition in France and Germany, this article elucidates the performative aspects of memory laws, revealing thereby underlying ideological biases and political agendas.

There have been relatively few works focusing on the denial of the Holocaust from a purely legal perspective.

Examining different laws banning Holocaust denial from an internationally comparative legal perspective will be an interesting and challenging task. Even though each individual law banning Holocaust denial is nationally distinct, they all bear common ground in terms of being an infringement to freedom of speech.

The inclusion and analysis of the relevant legislation in Germany and Austria would have been indispensable had this essay focussed solely on a comparison of laws banning Holocaust denial.

However, this paper seeks to tackle the question as to the justification of such legislation, and not the individual merits of each law. It was therefore decided that it would be more challenging to examine issues outside of this more predictable perspective.

For this reason, the analysis of state legislation against Holocaust denial will be limited to Spain and France, two countries with particularly interesting case law concerning Holocaust denial (A).

By the same token the approach of countries which have not banned Holocaust denial – notably the United States and the United Kingdom will be examined (B).

The spotlight will then be turned to a detailed examination of the renowned Irving v Lipstadt trial, because this case exposes the true face of Holocaust deniers and will give a better idea of whether laws are indeed necessary to ban the phenomenon of Holocaust denial (C).

Laws banning Holocaust denial obviously entail an infringement of freedom of expression, but after examining legal arguments both for and against such legislation, the question this work will focus on is whether this infringement is legally justifiable (D).

This article examines the techniques used by Anne Frank in revising her diaries for what she intended to be a post war publication. The article begins by reviewing the scholarly and political contexts in which the Diaries are normally discussed. It then shows the extent to which Frank’s revisions of her diaries (from the “a” to “b” versions) were the result of a conscious rethinking of the work’s purpose and audience and begun only after several months’ deliberation. Finally, the article looks at the nature of the revisions Frank made to the content of her diaries, focussing primarily on the first few months. In these entries in particular Frank shows a willingness to alter the known facts of her history in order to improve the plot and emotional impact of her experiences. She shortens time-lines, reduces the number of characters, and deletes and adds events and dialogue all with an eye towards emphasizing the extraordinary nature of the events that had overfallen her and the degree to which they allowed for the development of her latent ability as an author. In rewriting the Diary as Het Achterhuis, Frank was not simply revising: her second version is an artistic reworking of the raw material in her daily journals, a reworking that reflects clear literary goals.
Key terms: Anne Frank; book history; authorial history; revision practices; authorial intention; diaries; Bildungsroman; children’s literature.

Ever since the adoption of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, the crime of genocide has been one of the most controversial matters in international humanitarian law, history and politics as the latter two areas of study largely misinterpreted the term which had originated in the former, and, as such, national lawmakers referred mostly to the “common sense” established by politicians and historians in drafting pieces of legislation. Hence, their preference was extremely crucial in the enactment of “genocide denial” laws, as they struggled to create a “common identity” out of the “common tragedy”. This approach worked rather smoothly when addressing Holocaust denial, as the Holocaust was the “exemplary” genocide and its denial had, in most cases, amounted to “hate speech”; however, the application of the laws that penalised a presumed denial of other events referred to as “genocides” by politicians and historians became a matter of debate, as it clashed with a fundamental human right: freedom of expression. This study thus assesses the exceptional regime regarding Holocaust denial, the presumed link between “hate speech” and “genocide denial” and the justification of penalising “genocide denial” from a comparative and critical point of view.

HOUSED IN THE LEAGUE OF NATIONS ARCHIVE at Geneva is a collection of intake surveys from the Rescue Home in the northern Syrian city of Aleppo. These documents record the histories of some 2,000 Armenian girls, boys, and young women who were rescued—or, more often, rescued themselves—from Arab, Kurdish, and Turkish households into which they had been taken during and after the First World War and as a consequence of the Armenian Genocide of 1915.

International crimes are defined by international conventions as well as by the statutes of international courts. The crime of genocide belongs to a group of international crimes against humanity and international law, which is primarily defined by the UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide of 1948. According to this concept, and from the international law perspective, genocide denial is to be considered as a criminal act, i.e. separate and autonomous international crime which could be defined and determined in a form of an international convention. The question is whether this international convention would contain legal norms of jus cogens nature that affects erga omnes. If the answer is affirmative, then this would mean that potential perpetrators of this crime would be prosecuted in accordance with the basic principles of universal jurisdiction in international law. Regarding national level, essential elements of the crime of genocide denial should be harmonised with suggested international legal regulation and should be formulated either in a separate national legal code per se or in a separate section of a national criminal code.
The fundamental argument for the criminalisation of genocide denial might be that this represents very dangerous social phenomenon, which should be criminally sanctioned, and therefore it should gain all the determinants of an international criminal act, due to many reasons, particularly as genocide denial might be considered as the last stage in the execution of the crime of genocide. The phenomenon of denial may lead to reperpetration of the crime of genocide, and could also be considered as an obvious indicator for a possible prediction of a new crime of genocide.
Some countries already possess legal sanctions for genocide denial, as this phenomenon is recognised as a crime/criminal act within their national legal systems through a special code addressing denial only (lex specialis), through criminal code, or as the hatred speech. However, there are countries (e.g. USA) which do not accept the concept of the criminalisation of genocide denial and which take criminalisation as an attack to the basic human rights and freedoms such as a freedom of speech and expression. Taking into account the abovementioned, the author of the paper is therefore introducing a new concept on how this phenomenon could be regulated on international level, suggesting that the international community (i.e. United Nations) could adopt an international convention on the prohibition of genocide denial. International convention on the prohibition of genocide denial must provide answers to many, still controversial questions: what is exactly meant by the notion of genocide denial; which particular form of genocide denial has to be expressed or committed in order to be forbidden and punishable by law; could the crime of genocide denial
be committed by natural persons or legal entities or both; what kind of penalties/sanctions should be envisaged for the crime of genocide denial. Furthermore, should this convention be mandatory for all countries in the world or one country could make a reservation on it, and should this convention be incorporated into national legal systems or to be directly applicable are also issues of a great significance and importance for the presented concept.

In this article I argue that the notable memory boom in Turkey since the 2000s about the Armenian genocide has diverted the attention away from the importance of formal genocide acknowledgement; in addition, the responsibility of genocide denial is assigned to the Turkish State only. Looking at the memory frames in the current public discourse however, in qualitative terms there is more of a continuity than rupture in denialist discourse patterns. Most importantly, the public talk about the Armenian genocide serves as a key argument in the Turkish State’s denialist program, where it argues that the “Armenian issue” is not a taboo topic in Turkey anymore. Taking into consideration that the engagement of Turkish civil society has garnered much – if not most – attention in Turkey and internationally, I ultimately argue, to focus on the needs and the claims of the victims rather than making the emergence of a strong civil society in Turkey an end in itself.

K. Magliveras, “International Organisations and Denialism: The Case of the African Union” in H. Nelen, J.C.M. Willems & R. Moerland (eds.), Denialism and Human Rights, Intersentia, 2016, pages 267-284

Book webpage: http://intersentia.com/en/denialism-and-human-rights.html

The year 2015 marked the centenary of the Armenian Genocide, the destruction of the Ottoman Armenians by the Committee of Union and Progress and the Ottoman state apparatus, and one of the first mass murders of the twentieth century. Last year saw unprecedented media focus and wider discussion of the tragedy, its legacies, and wider reflections about the interface of historical memory and national state projects. The Armenian Genocide is an interesting case study not just in and of itself, but in its unmitigated denial by Turkish state actors and the complicity of the international community in its almost complete erasure from history.

The centenary of the Genocide, however, constituted a turning point in witnessing a clear proliferation in cultural production on this theme, including these four books. Each is important
in its own right and remit, and each contributes to the field and reflects the achievements in genocide scholarship over the last decade.

Law’s claim of mastery over past political violence is frequently undermined by reversals of that relationship of mastery, so that the violence of the law, and especially its symbolic violence, becomes easily incorporated into longues durées of political violence, rather than mastering them, settling them, or providing closure. Doing justice to the past, therefore, requires a political and theoretical attunement to the ways in which law, in purportedly attempting to address past political violence, inscribes itself into contemporary contexts of violence. While this may be limited to an analysis of how law is an effect of and affects the political, theoretically this attunement can be further refined by means of a critique of dynamics that are internal to law itself and that have to do with how law understands its own historicity, as well as its relationship to history and historiography. This article aims to pursue such a critique, taking as its immediate focus the ECHR case of Perinçek v Switzerland, with occasional forays into debates around the criminalisation of Armenian genocide denialism in France. The Perinçek case concerned Switzerland’s criminalisation of the denial of the Armenian genocide, and concluded in 2015 after producing two judgments, first by the Second Chamber, and then by the Grand Chamber of the ECHR. However, although they both found for the applicant, the two benches had very different lines of reasoning, and notably different conceptions regarding the relationship between law and history. I proceed by tracing the shifting status of ‘history’ and ‘historians’ in these two judgments, and paying attention to the deferrals, disclaimers and ellipses that structure law’s relation to history. This close reading offers the opportunity for a critical reappraisal of the relationship between law, denial and violence: I propose that the symbolic violence of the law operative in memory laws is a product of that which remains unresolved in law’s understanding of historicity (including its own), its self-understanding vis-à-vis the task of historiography, and its inability to respond to historical violence without inscribing itself into a history of violence, a process regarding which it remains in denial.

Against the backdrop of a recent proliferation of so-called memory laws across Central and Eastern Europe, the article provides a framework that distinguishes between three different categories of punitive memory laws – anti-hate speech, anti-communist and anti-liberal memory laws – based on their legal, political and discursive context on the one hand, and their intended purpose on the other. It proceeds to assessing laws on historical denialism that have been adopted by parliaments in Latvia and Lithuania after 2008 within this framework and provides detailed analysis of parliamentary and public debates that accompanied the legislative processes as well as first instances of case law.

General comments: Those who are familiar with the subjects of Rwanda and the 1994 genocide against the Tutsi will have observed that Filip Reyntjens is not a big fan of the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF), the ruling party of Rwanda. They will also be aware that his resentment over being barred from this African country since March 1995 has gradually turned into an obsession that still defines his work on Rwanda today. In the Reyntjens universe, there are only two kinds of people: 1) the ones that support his radical opposition against the RPF, and 2) everyone else. Because this binary worldview excludes a middle ground, Reyntjens accuses hundreds of scholars, journalists, diplomats, politicians, human rights activists, genocide survivors, and others of being willing allies, groupies even, of the RPF. At a conference in 2017, Reyntjens targeted everyone who had openly criticized the BBC documentary "Rwanda's Untold Story", a journal article by one of his protégés, or his booklet "Le génocide des Tutsi au Rwanda". 1 Earlier this year, he expanded his list of suspects to include 170 experts who criticized a British university for inviting the controversial author Judi Rever as a subject matter expert. 2

Mehmet Perinçek, Rus Devlet Arşivlerinden 150 Belgede Ermeni Meselesi (İstanbul: Kırmızı Kedi Yayınları, genişletilmiş altıncı basım, 2013) adlı kitabında ve başka yerlerde Ermeni milliyetçi partisi Taşnaksütyun'un işlediği cinayet vb suçlara dair çarlık ve Sovyet arşivlerinden belgeler yayımlayarak bunların güya " Türkiye'nin tezlerini esas olarak doğruladığını " ve Ermeni Soykırımı'nın " uluslararası bir yalan " olduğunu " tartışmasız bir biçimde gözler önüne serdiğini " iddia ediyor (agy, sf. 22). Yine Perinçek'e göre " halklar arasında karşılıklı kırımlar (mukatele) yaşanmıştır " , " Çarlık Rusyası ordularında 200.000 Ermeni askeri savaşmıştır " , " Osmanlı/Türk devleti ile çeteler arasında çatışmalarda karşılıklı kayıplar verilmiştir " ve " Osmanlı devleti ve Müslüman halk savaş önlemleri almış ve ayaklanan Ermeni çetelerini bastırarak haklı bir savaş vermiştir, kendi vatanını savunmuştur " (agy). Hemen söyleyeyim, Perinçek'in bütün bu iddiaları yalandır, çarpıtmadır, eksik bilgidir, tahrifattır, falsifikasyondur.

This essay describes the attempt of a small group of white colonist artists and scholars to prevent genocide denial and problematize white supremacy in the "Timber!" Exhibition held at the East Gippsland Art Gallery in 2018. It is a story of how the directors of the history society, the art gallery and the local council all chose to normalise white supremacy.  To explore the broader context, I’ll begin by looking at some artists who resisted dominant settler colonialism in a range of exhibitions at the East Gippsland Art Gallery.

The Srebrenica crime gained several dimensions in the last 25 years: the legal qualification of genocide, The Hague judgments and life sentences, established facts, a memorial, survivors’ testimonies. Still, except on July 11, every day in this small town is ‘the day after’: post-genocidal, empty and contested. The continuation of life in trauma and negation of an enormous crime thus prolong the agony of victims, survivors and their families. Transgenerational transfer of divided memory normalises the climate of impunity, atomised truths which habituate between two opposite memory politics and fragile personal, alternative narratives. The shaping of collective memory thus occurs between the denial and
facts about the Srebrenica genocide, preventing all attempts of the criminal law and symbolic reparations to come down to the Srebrenica soil. The absence of legislation which would prohibit the negation and denial of committed crimes, as well as the glorification of the crime and war criminals, makes it impossible to stop such practice. In overcoming the past, in the case of Srebrenica, it is necessary to understand that empathy and readiness to call genocide by its name will not come simply and naturally, and that the ethnically divided society of Bosnia and Herzegovina does not have a political, collective, or systematic commitment to peace building outside the exclusive ethnical narratives about the past.

To access the article: https://philpeople.org/profiles/imge-oranli/publications

Genocide denialism is an understudied topic in the epistemic injustice scholarship; so are epistemic relations outside of the Euro-American context. This article proposes to bring the literature into contact with an underexplored topic in a ‘distant’ setting: Turkey. Here, I explore the ethical and epistemological implications of the Turkish denial of the Armenian genocide as a pervasive and systematic epistemic harm. Using an interdisciplinary methodology, I argue that a philosophical exploration of genocide denialism requires examining the role of institutions and ideology in relation to the epistemic harm done by individual perpetrators. More specifically, I suggest that the individual, ideological, and institutional roots of genocide denialism constitute a regime of epistemic injustice in Turkey.

Recognizing the moral equivalence of Nazism and communism does not entail the punishment or trivialization of the two types of crimes but simply putting them in the same category. To reach this standard, there is however another way: decriminalization of all types of denial, whatever their nature. Instead of the victims putting pressure to have denial punished, we can imagine a reversed situation: the victims putting pressure for enhanced freedom of expression. And what could be more natural than that? For the people hunted by Nazis and communists did not suffer because of too much freedom of expression but of the lack thereof.