YEREVAN. – The bill that criminalizes the denial of genocides—including the Armenian Genocide—which the French Senate had passed, is a result of the joint work by our entire people, the state, and the Diaspora, the ruling coalition’s Republican Party of Armenia MP Mkrtich Minasyan said during a pres conference on Thursday. He added, however, that the bill’s cancellation by the French Constitutional Council is altogether another issue.    

“The Constitutional Council of France did not deny that [the Armenian] genocide had occurred. And in honor to Sarkozy, he immediately commissioned [for a new bill], and I am hopeful that this time the law will be adopted in a way that the Constitutional Council will be unable to declare it unconstitutional,” Mkrtich Minasyan argued.     

In his turn, the opposition Free Democrats Party member and former FM Alexander Arzumanyan noted that this is the domestic affair of another country, that the French Armenians are the citizens of that country, and that they demand from that country’s government to change and adopt laws, which could be sensitive. 

“As for us, let us not get ahead of ourselves before the process is over,” Arzumanyan stated. He also noted that, from the legal perspective, the French Constitutional Council’s decision was fairly normal. Now, as per Armenia’s former FM, it is the French authorities’ turn to introduce an improved bill.