Persecution denial
Negationism, better prevention or punishment?
Editorial by Marcello Flores, historian and professor at the university of Siena
It is sad to be forced to come back once again to the topic of genocide denial. After the passing of this law which has faced a long passage through the Chambers of the Italian Parliament, I felt compelled to share a commentary.
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"Those who deny do not really ignore"
After a long passage through the Senate, the Chamber of Deputies approved the law that introduced into the Italian criminal code the crime of Holocaust denial. We talked about it with Donatella di Cesare, philosopher and Professor at the Università La Sapienza of Rome, who followed the law's passage very closely.
Proposals for Turkish-Armenian dialogue
Gérard Malkassian is one of the promoters of call "We make a dream, together" that was launched on the centenary of the Armenian genocide. The text raised issues like the wish for a peaceful future based on dialogue for Turkey and Armenia, and stimulated a conversation with Gabriele Nissim on the possible reconciliation pathways for these two peoples.
"Negationism affects the very identity of Turkey"
On past 23 April, Turkish PM Recep Erdogan offered his condolences to the Armenian victims killed in 1915, yet he did not mention the word “genocide”. We asked Agopik Manoukian, honorary President of the Armenians in Italy, to tell us about the peculiar features of Turkish genocide denial.
Denying, minimizing the magnitude of and justifying genocide
Editorial by Anna Foa, historian and professor at the University "La Sapienza" of Rome
There is not just one kind of genocide denial, as there is not just one type of genocide. By this term, “genocide denial” or “negationism”, we in fact describe all attitudes aimed at declaring every genocide as null or
…Memory of Last Survivors
Ovsanna Kaloustian, aged 106, tells about the Armenian Genocide of 1915. She is aware of the role she plays in memory and fighting the denial of the massacres and deportations. "God let me live this long so that I could tell the story," she says.
Denial
the enemy of truth about genocide
One of the reoccurring features of genocidal phenomena is the persecutors' attempt to conceal the evidence of the massacres and deny the exterminating intention, by putting the blame on the very victims, through a planned operation of mystification of the truth.
To carry out this plan a key factor is to bow language to the perpetrators' own needs. The Nazis placed an obsessive emphasis on using "neutral" terms to describe their antiJewish policy, not only towards the outside, but also among themselves: they said "final solution" instead of extermination, "transportation" instead of "deportation"; the same linguistic devices which had been used by the perpetrators of the first genocide case in the Twentieth century.