(12/10/06) Tussen Nobelprijs en genocide

• 2006-10-12
• Europa in de wereld

Vrijwel gelijktijdig rolde het nieuws binnen dat Orhan Pamuk de Nobelprijs Literatuur had gewonnen enerzijds en dat het Franse parlement een verbod op het ontkennen van de Armeense genocide had goedgekeurd anderzijds.

De Europese Groene fractie feliciteert de schrijver, onder meer voor zijn doorgedreven strijd voor de vrijheid van meningsuiting. De Europese Groenen hopen dat de Franse Senaat het voorstel dat door de Kamer is goedgekeurd niet zal overnemen. Frankrijk blokkeert hiermee het debat zowel binnen als buiten Turkije. Pogingen om de EU en Turkije dichterbij te brengen zijn hiermee niet gediend.

Nobel Prize for Turkish writer counteracts damage done to open debate on Armenian genocide

Today at noon it was announced that Turkish writer Orhan Pamuk, formerly prosecuted in Turkey for having questioned openly the official Turkish position on the Armenian question, has won the Nobel Prize for literature. In parallel, the French Parliament adopted a bill criminalising the denial of the official French position on the Armenian genocide. Commenting on these developments, Green MEPs Daniel Cohn-Bendit , Joost Lagendijk , Cem Özdemir and Helga Trüpel declared: "We congratulate our friend Orhan Pamuk, whom we greatly admire for his work for his political courage, in starting the debate in Turkey on the Armenian question, as well for his staunch defence of the freedom of speech. Having defied a Turkish law impeding divergence from the official Turkish history of events in 1915, he has become the champion of free speech.

"The coincidence of the adoption by the French Parliament of a law criminalising the denial of the Armenian genocide and the award of the Nobel Prize to Pamuk is highly ironical. We sincerely hope that the French Senate will reject the bill, which has been adopted by the smallest possible number of Parliamentarians in the Lower House. By forcibly closing all public debate in France on the Armenian genocide, France will seriously obstruct the fight for the democratisation of the debate in Turkey and beyond. This would undermine the efforts of Pamuk and others who are trying to bring Turkey and the EU closer together."