PARIS. – Famous singer Charles Aznavour, director Robert Guédiguian, lawyer Serge Klarsfeld, philosophers Bernard-Henri Lévy and Michel Onfray, as well as Turkish writer Erol Özkoray have signed a joint appeal aiming to persuade the French Senate to ratify the bill penalizing the Armenian Genocide, passed by the French National Assembly last December.

“As Elie Wiesel has written, the denial of the genocide is killing its victims for the second time. We welcome the adoption of the bill on racism, discrimination and denial by the French National Assembly on December 22.

Our target is the ban of denial on state level that the Turkish authorities bring up to France. In order the text to become a law, we call the French President, the government and the leading parties to confirm their gesture and let the Senate ratify the bill,” reads the appeal published in Le Journal du Dimanche.