Armenian Diaspora criticizes Belgian Parliament for genocide law

The Belgian authorities have acted inconsistently by criminalizing the denial of a number of genocides, but failed to include the massacres of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire into the law. This was stated by members of the Armenian community in Europe.

The "Caucasian Knot" has reported that in 2015, the Belgian government recognized the Armenian Genocide.

According to the new Belgian law, any denial of genocides in Rwanda and Bosnian Srebrenica entails criminal liability. At the same time, the authors of the law failed to include a reference to the Armenian Genocide, Gaspar Karapetyan, the head of the "Ay Dat" commission in Europe, has noted.

He stressed that many articles in the leading Belgian mass media were ignored, as well as demands of independent human rights defenders, the "Araratnews" reports.

"The decision of the Belgian Parliament to exclude the Armenian Genocide from the law is deeply disappointing," the "Armenian News" quotes Mr Karapetyan as saying.

The "Caucasian Knot" has reported that on February 22, 2018, most of the MPs of the lower house of the parliament of the Netherlands neighbouring on Belgium voted for the recognition of the Armenian Genocide. According to their decision, on April 24, 2018, and henceforth, once every five years, a member of the government of the country will attend memorial events in Yerevan. After this, the charge d'affaires of the Netherlands was summoned to the Turkish Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA).