Turkish PM warns US on Armenian genocide bill News
Turkish PM warns US on Armenian genocide bill

[JURIST] Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan [official profile; BBC profile] said Sunday that the US Congress would damage the American relationship with Turkey if it supports a resolution [text, PDF] recognizing the WWI-era killings [BBC backgrounder] of Armenians by Ottoman Turks as genocide. Although the Bush administration has spoken out against such a bill, the Democratic-led Congress may decide to pass a resolution condemning the mass killings in April.

Last week, Turkish Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul [official profile] also spoke out against the proposed resolution [JURIST report]. Turkey has maintained that the deaths do not amount to genocide [JURIST comment] and has recently objected to similar legislation or proposed legislation in Argentina and France [JURIST reports]. Reuters has more.

THIS DAY @ LAW

Georgia became first US state to ban lynching

On December 20, 1893, Georgia became the first state in the Union to pass a law against lynching, making the act punishable by four years in prison. The statute was not particularly effective—read the text of the 1899 pamphlet Lynch Law in Georgia by anti-lynching activist Ida Wells-Barnett.