You haven't explained how they aren't contradictory. You've just claimed that, if one examines them in depth, they will be found not to be contradictory. Have you examined them in depth yourself?
I'm not sure why the burden is on me, but here is the first Google result when plugging in both case names[1]:
>The Court began by noting the decisions in its previous cases concerning the denial of the Holocaust and other statements relating to Nazi crimes. Previous statements have been held to be inadmissible, either as being ill-founded under Article 10(2) when read with Article 17 (citing Williamson v. Germany ECtHR [2019] 64496/17), or otherwise as having incompatible subject matter jurisdiction under Article 17 (Perinçek v. Switzerland ECtHR [2015] 27510/08). The Court reiterated that Article 17 is reserved for extreme cases and on exceptional bases, and should only be used in Article 10 cases if it is “immediately clear” that the statements in issue seek to employ the right to freedom of expression “for ends clearly contrary to the values of the Convention” (para 37) – such as inciting hatred or violence or aiming to destroy the rights and freedoms listed in the Convention. Any case concerning Holocaust denial must be taken on a case-by-case basis and depends on all the circumstances of that particular case, when it comes to the Court’s decision to either apply Article 17 directly to the applicant’s Article 10 application and declare it incompatible with the subject matter jurisdiction of the Court, or instead to apply the general law principles under Article 10 and invoke Article 17 at a later stage as an interpretive aid when examining the necessity of any alleged interference by the domestic courts.
So, quoting a court's justification of its decision, proves the court made the right decision?
Of course the ECHR is going to claim "this case is unique and isn't inconsistent with our rulings in other cases". Just because they claim that doesn't make it true.
>Do you agree there is a reasonable possibility the claim is true?
Sure, it is reasonable it is politically motivated. It is also reasonable it isn't. Giving the lack of definitive answer, I chose to give the benefit of the doubt to the ECHR. Either way, I don't understand what point you are trying to make.
Well, my point is this – if you try to justify laws against genocide denial, it is easier to justify them if those laws are consistent, and based on principle rather than politics. If there is a real possibility that we have unprincipled inconsistencies in them, that is a problem for their justification.
Why is the justification impacted by the consistency of certain implementations? Speed limits aren't consistent. You can't go above 60 mph anywhere in Hawaii, but some places in Texas you can go 85 mph. That doesn't mean speed limits aren't justifiable.
Laws are always going to vary from jurisdiction to jurisdiction. Sometimes that difference is based on principle. Sometimes it is based on politics. But even if it is tweaked due to politics, it doesn't invalidate the principle behind the entire law.
When laws treat members of different racial/ethnic/national groups differently, that's a form of discrimination. If there was a genocide against group A, and another against group B, and we say that it is illegal to deny the genocide against group A, but legal to deny the genocide against group B, that is treating group A and B differently. It is going to upset many members of group B, and damage social cohesion. Especially so if the different legal treatment is based on politics rather than principle.
I don't think your case of speed limits is really comparable. Nobody's personal identity is based on a speed limit, those laws – however rational or irrational they may be – are not relevant to personal identity. But genocide denial laws are relevant to personal identity – to racial/ethnic/national/etc identity – since different genocides have different victim groups, and there are people alive today who belong to those victim groups and identify with them, and the victims of a genocide (and their descendants) have a special interest in whether it is legal to deny that genocide.
>If there was a genocide against group A, and another against group B, and we say that it is illegal to deny the genocide against group A, but legal to deny the genocide against group B, that is treating group A and B differently.
That was not the ruling of the court. You are projecting that as the result of the court's decisions, but the court expressly said this was not what their ruling meant. Then you are assuming a motive based off that projection.
You are effectively pointing to one court case in which a woman was found innocent of murder and one in which a man was found guilty of murder and concluding that the system is obviously gender biased against men. My argument is not even necessarily that you are wrong, my argument is that you can't draw this conclusion from these two cases.
Well, I am not the only person who draws the conclusion that the ECHR judgement sets up a morally dubious hierarchy of genocides, in which the memory of the Holocaust is viewed as more worthy of protection than the memory of the Armenian genocide, and in which the threat of antisemitism is taken more seriously than that of anti-Armenianism. Here is a law professor making the exact same criticisms (Professor Uladzislau Belavusau at the University of Amsterdam): https://www.echrblog.com/2015/11/guest-commentary-on-grand-c... and also https://verfassungsblog.de/armenian-genocide-v-holocaust-in-...
Similar criticisms have been voiced by Ariana Macaya (law professor at the University of Costa Rica): http://www.qil-qdi.org/focus-sur-perincek-c-suisse-la-questi... (she writes in French, but if you can't read French, Google Translate does a pretty good job of it)
It is odd to accuse me of "projecting" in my criticism of a court decision, when law professors express essentially the same criticism. Are they projecting too?
I can point to legal experts who have a different conclusion.[1] Your linked experts are not inherently more right than mine.
Would you acknowledge that there is something more incendiary about a member of the German Parliament denying the Holocaust in an official Parliamentary speech compared to a foreign national denying the Armenian genocide in Switzerland where the Armenian population is estimated to be 3k-6k? That is the primary conclusion of the ECHR. There is no justification for extrapolating that out to the idea that every instance of denying the Holocaust is worse than any instance of denying the Armenian Genocide which appears to be your conclusion.
> Laws are always going to vary from jurisdiction to jurisdiction.
GP was talking about rulings from the same jurisdiction.
The crazy amount of mental gymnastics you’re doing to justify denial of a genocide because it’s not your pet genocide wild.
That isn't how the ECHR works. They do not dictate the laws for all of Europe. They evaluate whether the individual governments are violating someone's human rights. Those countries can obviously still have their own laws on free speech that will vary.
>The crazy amount of mental gymnastics you’re doing to justify denial of a genocide because it’s not your pet genocide wild.
Where did I justify the denial of genocide? This is a wild accusation, especially from someone who wanted evidence that denying genocide was bad.
