The Same Mentality

"Free speech in all its forms, including freedom of the press, airwaves, and web, is something beyond law that goes into the dye and fabric of a society. It is not licence, and it dies when it becomes licentious. It exists, while it survives, for a purpose -- “that we may know the truth, and the truth will set us free”. Free speech exists so that the truth may be defended; and so that ugly lies, dressed up as pretty platitudes and plausibilities, can be exposed and destroyed.

Hrant was a true hero of journalism -- though few of his licentious colleagues around the world will ever remember his name, or care for his mission. The massacre of around 1.5 million Armenians is not something that will ever stay swept under a Turkish carpet. Its denial by Turkish nationalists and Muslim chauvinists can serve no honest cause. Lies serve only lies.

Yet freedom is indivisible. Hrant had last made news in October, when he attacked a French parliamentary bill, that would have made denial of the Armenian holocaust a criminal offence. He called this the flip side of the coin, and said, “Those who restrict freedom of expression in Turkey and those who try to restrict it in France are of the same mentality.”"