8322 - Recognizing is not enough

N. Lygeros
Translated from the Greek by Evi Charitidou

The problematic of the French legislation on penalization of genocide’s negation shows the road to take in Greece, too, not only as regards the genocide of the Jews and Armenians, but Pontiacs also. Recognition is not enough to crack down on genocide of memory. Recognition is merely the first step of the correction process. The problem is not a special recognition of one case of genocide, but of all. The new resolution of the French Parliament comes to complement a legislative vacuum. For, there was a difference in dealing with the genocide of the Jews and the one of the Armenians, whereas they are both recognized by France. In regards to the former there has been the Gayssot law since 1990, whilst for the latter a proposal submitted few years ago was rejected. Now with the resolution of the Parliament there is not a special aim but a general one, because it concerns all the recognized cases of genocide. The same methodology may be applied in Greece as well, where the genocide of the Jews was recognized after WWII, the genocide of the Armenians in 1984 and of the Pontiacs in 1994. A new resolution by the Greek Parliament similar to the one taken by France would have a direct effect to all these cases of genocide. In this way and in a general context we follow human rights as well as the rights of Humanity. The context of Humanism exists to support this realm of action. We should not forget though the relation between Humanism and Hellenism. Moreover, we all realize that the recognition as shown by recent history does not effectively deal with genocide of memory, because there still are even now efforts to prove that these cases of genocide do not exist. The recognition does not forbid this type of actions, for there is no legislation supporting it. And this allows barbarity and horror to blaspheme victims, survivors and just humans by presenting them simply as defenders of another version of history. Our indifference helps them. And penalization only is able to protect them.