French President visits Tsitsernakaberd

ArmInfo.  French President Emmanuel Macron, as part of his state visit to Armenia, visited the Tsitsernakaberd Memorial Complex to the Victims of the Armenian  Genocide and honored the memory of the holy martyrs. He was  accompanied by Armenian President Vahagn Khachaturyan.

France officially recognized the Armenian Genocide of 1915 in the  Ottoman Empire by adopting Law No.  2001-70 on January 29, 2001.  April 24 is officially declared Armenian Genocide Remembrance Day in  France.

Furthermore, in 2016, the French legislature passed a bill  criminalizing the denial of the Armenian Genocide. However, on  January 27, 2017, the French Constitutional Court invalidated the  Senate resolution criminalizing the denial of the Armenian Genocide.  In its decision, the French Constitutional Court, in particular,  emphasized that this provision of the resolution restricted the  principle of freedom of speech.

This is the second time that the French Constitutional Court has  found a resolution criminalizing the denial of the Armenian Genocide  to be unconstitutional. The first time was in 2012. Subsequently,  French parliamentarians initiated a re-introduction of the resolution  in a slightly modified form. However, the adoption of the document  provoked outrage among the Turkish community in France, which  appealed to the Constitutional Court to review the legality of the  resolution.