A senior Azerbaijani official has condemned the French Senate's passage of a bill criminalizing the denial of genocide.
The bill will make it a crime to deny that the killings of Armenians in Ottoman Turkey in 1915 were genocide.
Elnur Aslanov, head of the political analysis and information department at the Presidential Administration, told journalists that the bill was baseless,Gun.Az reported.
“The position of the Azerbaijani leadership on this issue is obvious. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs has declared it. The Presidential Administration has also expressed its view," Aslanov said, referring to a Foreign Ministry statement issued yesterday.
Aslanov said that instead of judging events that happened 100 years ago, France would do better to assess the Khojaly genocide that happened 20 years ago. Over 600 Azerbaijani civilians were massacred by Armenian forces in 1992 as they fled the town of Khojaly during the war over Nagorno-Karabakh.
“If the French senators advocate truth so much, then let them assess the Khojaly event,” the senior official said.
Elnur Aslanov said that the decision of the French Senate was a blow to freedom of speech, investigation and research.
“What will researchers do from now on? This law takes away their freedom. Given this, we condemn the decision of the French Senate and consider it baseless. We hope that the French leadership will act from a more constructive and rational position.”
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