A Swiss court on Tuesday ruled that three Turks were guilty of racial discrimination after having claimed that the Armenian genocide was an "international lie."

Ali Mercan, the Europe-based representative of the Party of Turkish Workers, was sentenced to pay a fine of $3,900 by the district tribunal of Winterthur. Two others were ordered to pay lesser fines for complicity in racial discrimination. The defence lawyer said he would appeal the verdict, although it is milder than the sentence demanded by the prosecutor.

Denying the Armenian genocide
During a demonstration in June last year, Mercan had denied the Armenian genocide had taken place. The other two Turks were co-organizers of the demonstration. All three said during the court case that they were ready "at any time" to organize a new demonstration and to take the same line.

Historians estimate that up to 1.5 million Armenians were killed in 1915-18 in Ottoman Turkey in what is widely regarded as the first genocide of the 20th century. About 20 parliaments have passed resolutions to this effect. Turkey denies any genocide, saying the death toll has been inflated and the dead were victims of civil war and unrest.

Although the Armenian genocide is being denied by Turkey, a Turkish court martial ordered seven top leaders of the Young Turk regime, including Talat Pasha, to appear before the court in 1918. They were charged notably with "the massacre and destruction of the Armenians". The accusation was, in effect, that the Ottoman leaders had formulated a vast plan with this as its final goal. The accused were found guilty in absentia in July 1919.

Laws against Holocaust denial
It seems that with this sentence, the Armenian genocide has come to court. Just like the Holocaust and the Rwandan genocide. Denying the Nazi's mass murder of Jews during World War II is explicitly or implicitly illegal in 13 countries, including Austria, Belgium, France, Germany and Israel. In Rwanda it is illegal to deny the 1994 genocide, while in France, writer Pierre Pean stands accused of inciting racial hatred in Rwanda.

Many countries also have broader laws against libel or inciting racial hatred, as do a number of countries that do not specifically have laws against Holocaust denial, such as Canada and the United Kingdom. The Council of Europe's 2003 Additional Protocol to the Convention on cyber crime concerns the criminalisation of acts of a racist and xenophobic nature committed through computer systems. It includes an article titled denial, gross minimisation, approval or justification of genocide or crimes against humanity, though this does not have the status of law.

Of the countries that ban Holocaust denials, a number (Austria, Germany, and Romania) were among the perpetrators of the Holocaust, and many of these also ban other elements associated with Nazism, such as Nazi symbols.