French pass Armenian genocide law

FRENCH lawmakers have easily passed a measure to make it a crime to deny that the mass killings of Armenians in 1915 by Ottoman Turks amounted to genocide.

State TV in Turkey, which had promised retaliation if the bill passed, said the country’s ambassador, Tahsin Burcuoglu, to France would be withdrawn.

There was no official vote count in the ballot in France’s lower house, with passage determined by a simple show of hands. The measure must still be passed in the senate, where its fate is less clear.