On 15 October 2015, the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) made a controversial ruling: Switzerland had violated Dogu Perincek’s right to freedom of speech. Perincek is a Turkish politician who made a series of provocative speeches in Switzerland saying there was “no Armenian genocide”; this historical event in the Ottoman empire in 1915 and after was an “imperialist lie”. Swiss courts condemned him under anti-racist laws. In its decision, the ECHR considered that the Swiss courts had “censured (Perincek) for having simply expressed an opinion divergent from those in Switzerland.”
The case of Perincek vs Switzerland concerned whether denial of the Armenian genocide in Europe would be tolerated or penalised.The ECHR opted for the former. It said that “it was not required to determine whether the massacres and mass deportation suffered by the Armenian people at the hands of the Ottoman Empire from 1915 onwards could be characterized as genocide.” Elsewhere the court refers to the genocide as “tragic events”.
By its decision, the European court has violated my right to justice. Perincek was using the fundamental right to freedom of expression to commit a crime; in fact, it was the latest act in a long chain of a hundred years of crime without punishment, the negation of genocide. For in talking about the Armenian genocide, we are not talking about the past, about history, but about a crime that has continued to take place. As many scholars have argued, denial is the last stage of genocide.
