Month: October 2006

AMNESTY CALLS ON GOVT TO ABOLISH ARTICLE 301

The New Anatolian
Sept 28 2006

Stressing its "dismay" at journalist Hrant Dink facing yet more charges
under Article 301, Amnesty International pressed yesterday for the
controversial law to be not just changed, but done away with entirely.

"Amnesty International is dismayed at today’s news that yet another
case has been opened against journalist Hrant Dink on charges of
‘denigrating Turkishness’ under Article 301 of the Turkish Penal Code"
(TCK), said an Amnesty International USA statement. "The organization
considers that this prosecution is part of an emerging pattern of
harassment against the journalist exercising his right to freedom of
expression — a right which Turkey, as a state party to the European
Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms
and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, has a
legal obligation to uphold."

A new case was filed against Dink, a journalist and editor in chief
of Turkish-Armenian Agos weekly, on Monday on charges of denigrating
Turkish identity, by saying in an interview, "Of course, I call this
a genocide. Because the result itself identifies what it is and gives
it a name. You can see that a lot of people who have been living on
these lands for 4,000 years have disappeared."

In its statement, Amnesty pointed to how this is the third time that
Dink alone has faced charges under 301, adding, "Amnesty International
is particularly concerned at this latest prosecution because it seems
to constitute a pattern of judicial harassment against the writer
for peacefully expressing his dissenting opinion."

Maintaining that the group will consider Dink a prisoner of conscience
should he be found guilty, the group said that it considers the latest
prosecution to be particularly disappointing following the welcome
acquittal four days ago of another writer, novelist Elif Safak, on
charges under Article 301 relating to statements made by characters
in her novel "The Bastard of Istanbul."

"The organization had seen this as a positive step for freedom
of expression in Turkey but fears this acquittal may prove to be
the exception rather than the rule and demonstrates yet again the
failure of certain members of the Turkish judiciary and prosecution
to internalize international law, as required by Article 90 of the
Turkish Constitution," the group said. "The organization reiterates
its call for Article 301 to be abolished in its entirety, thereby
putting an end to arbitrary implementation of this ill-defined law."

The group also said that the prosecution arises from a complaint lodged
by elements of civil society opposed to the abolition of Article 301,
who have repeatedly staged provocative and sometimes violent protests
at trials, calling on the Turkish authorities to take all the necessary
measures to protect defendants, their lawyers and supporters.

Journalists call on govt, opposition to abolish Article 301

The Progressive Journalists Association (CGD) also called for the
abolition of Article 301, saying that Safak’s recent acquittal doesn’t
solve the problems related to the controversial article.

CGD head Ahmet Abakay said yesterday, "The article in question
constitutes a threat to all writers and journalists," adding that
the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) and the ruling
Justice and Development (AK) Party should compete over democracy,
not nationalism.

"I don’t agree with Dink’s statements which resulted in him being
prosecuted again," Abakay said. "But I fully support his freedom
to express his ideas freely. I’m calling on both the CHP and the AK
Party to do away with this shameful article."

In related news, a petition drive was launched on Tuesday to protest
the file cased against Dink and two other top staffers of Agos.

A call to support the campaign was made by musician Sanar Yurdatapan
and academic Taner Akcam.

The petition drive, called, "Hrant Dink Isn’t Alone," quoted Dink’s
remarks which have resulted in the court case, and said, "I agree
with and sign this statement. I want to go on trial in this case."

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

WAS THERE AN ISLAMIC "GENOCIDE" OF HINDUS?
Koenraad Elst

Kashmir Herald, India
Sept 28 2006

"The Partition Holocaust": the term is frequently used in Hindu
pamphlets concerning Islam and the birth of its modern political
embodiment in the Subcontinent, the state of Pakistan. Is such language
warranted, or is it a ridicule-inviting exaggeration?

To give an idea of the context of this question, we must note that
the term "genocide" is used very loosely these days. One of the
charges by a Spanish judge against Chilean ex-dictator Pinochet,
so as to get him extradited from Great Britain in autumn 1998,
was "genocide". This was his way of making Pinochet internationally
accountable for having killed a few Spanish citizens: alleging a crime
serious enough to overrule normal constraints based on diplomatic
immunity and national sovereignty. Yet, whatever Pinochet’s crimes,
it is simply ridiculous to charge that he ever intended to exterminate
the Spanish nation. In the current competition for victim status,
all kinds of interest groups are blatantly overbidding in order to
get their piece of the entitlement to attention and solidarity.

The Nazi Holocaust killed the majority of European Jewry (an estimated
5.1 million according to Raul Hilberg, 5.27 million according to the
Munich-based Institut fur Zeitgeschichte) and about 30% of the Jewish
people worldwide. How many victim groups can say as much? The Partition
pogroms killed hardly 0.3% of the Hindus, and though it annihilated
the Hindu presence in all the provinces of Pakistan except for parts
of Sindh and East Bengal, it did so mostly by putting the Hindus to
flight (at least seven million) rather than by killing them (probably
half a million). Likewise, the ethnic cleansing of a quarter million
Hindus from Kashmir in 1990 followed the strategy of "killing one to
expel a hundred", which is not the same thing as killing them all;
in practice, about 1,500 were killed.

Partition featured some local massacres of genocidal type, with the
Sikhs as the most wanted victims, but in relative as well as absolute
figures, this does not match the Holocaust.

Among genocides, the Holocaust was a very special case (e.g. the
attempt to carry it out in secrecy is unique), and it serves no
good purpose to blur that specificity by extending the term to all
genocides in general. The term "Holocaust", though first used in a
genocidal sense to describe the Armenian genocide of 1915, is now
in effect synonymous with the specifically Jewish experience at the
hands of the Nazis in 1941-45. But does even the more general term
"genocide" apply to what Hinduism suffered at the hands of Islam?

Complete genocide "Genocide" means the intentional attempt
to destroy an ethnic community, or by extension any community
constituted by bonds of kinship, of common religion or ideology,
of common socio-economic position, or of common race. The pure form
is the complete extermination of every man, woman and child of the
group. Examples include the complete extermination of the native
Tasmanians and many Amerindian nations from Patagonia to Canada by
European settlers in the 16th-19th century. The most notorious attempt
was the Nazi "final solution of the Jewish question" in 1941-45. In
April-May 1994, Hutu militias in Rwanda went about slaughtering the
Tutsi minority, killing ca. 800,000, in anticipation of the conquest
of their country by a Uganda-based Tutsi army. Though improvised
and executed with primitive weapons, the Rwandan genocide made more
victims per day than the Holocaust.

Hindus suffered such attempted extermination in East Bengal in 1971,
when the Pakistani Army killed 1 to 3 million people, with Hindus
as their most wanted target. This fact is strictly ignored in most
writing about Hindu-Muslim relations, in spite (or rather because)
of its serious implication that even the lowest estimate of the Hindu
death toll in 1971 makes Hindus by far the most numerous victims of
Hindu-Muslim violence in the post-colonial period. It is significant
that no serious count or religion-wise breakdown of the death toll has
been attempted: the Indian, Pakistani and Bangladeshi ruling classes
all agree that this would feed Hindu grievances against Muslims.

Nandan Vyas ("Hindu Genocide in East Pakistan", Young India, January
1995) has argued convincingly that the number of Hindu victims in
the 1971 genocide was approximately 2.4 million, or about 80%. In
comparing the population figures for 1961 and 1971, and taking the
observed natural growth rhythm into account, Vyas finds that the Hindu
population has remained stable at 9.5 million when it should have
increased to nearly 13 million (13.23 million if the same growth rhythm
were assumed for Hindus as for Muslims). Of the missing 3.5 million
people (if not more), 1.1 million can be explained: it is the number
of Hindu refugees settled in India prior to the genocide. The Hindu
refugees at the time of the genocide, about 8 million, all went back
after the ordeal, partly because the Indian government forced them
to it, partly because the new state of Bangladesh was conceived as a
secular state; the trickle of Hindu refugees into India only resumed
in 1974, when the first steps towards islamization of the polity were
taken. This leaves 2.4 million missing Hindus to be explained. Taking
into account a number of Hindu children born to refugees in India
rather than in Bangladesh, and a possible settlement of 1971 refugees
in India, it is fair to estimate the disappeared Hindus at about
2 million.

While India-watchers wax indignant about communal riots in India
killing up to 20,000 people since 1948, allegedly in a proportion
of three Muslims to one Hindu, the best-kept secret of the
post-Independence Hindu-Muslim conflict is that in the subcontinent
as a whole, the overwhelming majority of the victims have been
Hindus. Even apart from the 1971 genocide, "ordinary" pogroms in East
Pakistan in 1950 alone killed more Hindus than the total number of
riot victims in India since 1948.

Selective genocide A second, less extreme type of genocide consists
in killing a sufficient number who form the backbone of the group’s
collective identity, and assimilating the leaderless masses into
the dominant community. This has been the Chinese policy in Tibet,
killing over a million Tibetans while assimilating the survivors into
Chinese culture by flooding their country with Chinese settlers. It
was also Stalin’s policy in eastern Poland and the Baltic states
after they fell into his hands under the 1939 Hitler-Stalin Pact,
exemplified by the massacre of thousands of Polish army officers in
Katyn. Stalin’s policies combining murder of the elites, deportation
of entire ethnic groups and ruthless oppression of the survivors was
prefigured in antiquity by the Assyrians, whose deportation of the
ten northern (now "lost") tribes of Israel is attested in the Bible.

During the Islamic conquests in India, it was a typical policy to
single out the Brahmins for slaughter, after the Hindu warrior class
had been bled on the battlefield. Even the Portuguese in Malabar
and Goa followed this policy in the 16th century, as can be deduced
from Hindu-Portuguese treaty clauses prohibiting the Portuguese from
killing Brahmins.

In antiquity, such partial genocide typically targeted the men for
slaughter and the women and children for slavery or concubinage.

Thus, in 416 BCE, the Athenians were angered at the Melians’ reluctance
to join the war against Sparta, and to set an example for other client
states, Athens had Melos repopulated with Athenian colonists after
killing its men and enslaving its women. Another example would be the
slaughter of the Jews of Medina by Mohammed in 626 CE: after expelling
two Jewish tribes, the third one, the Banu Quraiza, were exterminated:
all the ca. 700 men were beheaded, while the women and children were
sold into slavery, with the Prophet keeping the most beautiful woman
as his concubine (she refused to marry him).

Hindus too experienced this treatment at the hands of Islamic
conquerors, e.g. when Mohammed bin Qasim conquered the lower Indus
basin in 712 CE. Thus, in Multan, according to the Chach-Nama, "six
thousand warriors were put to death, and all their relations and
dependents were taken as slaves". This is why Rajput women committed
mass suicide to save their honour in the face of the imminent entry of
victorious Muslim armies, e.g. 8,000 women immolated themselves during
Akbar’s capture of Chittorgarh in 1568 (where this most enlightened
ruler also killed 30,000 non-combatants). During the Partition pogroms
and the East Bengali genocide, mass rape of Hindu women after the
slaughter of their fathers and husbands was a frequent event.

At this point, however, we should not overlook a puzzling episode in
Hindu legend which describes a similar behaviour by a Hindu conqueror:
Parashurama, deified as the 6th incarnation of Vishnu, killed all the
adult male Kshatriyas for several generations, until only women were
left, and then had Brahmins father a new generation upon them. Just
a story, or reference to a historic genocide?

Genocide in the Bible For full-blooded genocide, however, the book
to consult is the Bible, which describes cases of both partial
and complete genocide. The first modest attempt was the killing by
Jacob’s sons of all the males in the Canaanite tribe of Shekhem, the
fiance of their own sister Dina. The motive was pride of pedigree:
having immigrated from the civilizational centre of Ur in Mesopotamia,
Abraham’s tribe refused all intermarriage with the native people of
Canaan (thus, Rebecca favoured Jacob over Esau because Jacob married
his nieces while Esau married local women).

Full-scale genocide was ordered by God, and executed by his faithful,
during the conquest of Canaan by Moses and Joshua. In the defeated
cities outside the Promised Land, they had to kill all the men but
keep the women as slaves or concubines. Inside the Promised Land,
by contrast, the conquerors were ordered to kill every single man,
woman and child. All the Canaanites and Amalekites were killed. Here,
the stated reason was that God wanted to prevent the coexistence of
His people with Pagans, which would result in religious syncretism
and the restoration of polytheism.

As we only have a literary record of this genocide, liberal theologians
uncomfortable with a genocidal God have argued that this Canaanite
genocide was only fiction. To be sure, genocide fiction exists,
e.g. the Biblical story that the Egyptians had all newborn male
Israelites killed is inconsistent with all other data in the Biblical
narrative itself (as well as unattested in the numerous and detailed
Egyptian inscriptions), and apparently only served to underpin the
story of Moses’ arrival in the Pharaoh’s court in a basket on the
river, a story modelled on the then-popular life story of Sargon
of Akkad. Yet, the narrative of the conquest of Canaan is full of
military detail uncommon in fiction; unlike other parts of the Bible,
it is almost without any miracles, factual through and through.

And even if we suppose that the story is fictional, what would it
say about the editors that they attributed genocidal intentions and
injunctions to their God? If He was non-genocidal and good in reality,
why turn him into a genocidal and prima facie evil Being? On balance,
it is slightly more comforting to accept that the Bible editors
described a genocide because they wanted to be truthful and relate real
events. After all, the great and outstanding thing about the Bible
narrative is its realism, its refusal to idealize its heroes. We get
to see Jacob deceiving Isaac and Esau, then Laban deceiving Jacob;
David’s heroism and ingenuity in battle, but also his treachery
in making Bathseba his own, and later his descent into senility;
Salomon’s palace intrigues in the war of succession along with his
pearls of wisdom. Against that background, it would be inconsistent
to censor the Canaanite genocide as merely a fictional interpolation.

Indirect genocide A third type of genocide consists in preventing
procreation among a targeted population. Till recently, it was US
policy to promote sterilization among Native American women, even
applying it secretly during postnatal care or other operations. The
Tibetans too have been subjected to this treatment. In the Muslim
world, male slaves were often castrated, which partly explains why
Iraq has no Black population even though it once had hundreds of
thousands of Black slaves. The practice also existed in India on
a smaller scale, though the much-maligned Moghul emperor Aurangzeb
tried to put an end to it, mainly because eunuchs brought endless
corruption in the court. The hijra community is a left-over of this
Islamic institution (in ancient India, harems were tended by old men
or naturally napunsak/impotent men, tested by having to spend the
night with a prostitute without showing signs of virile excitement).

A fourth type of genocide is when mass killing takes place
unintentionally, as collateral damage of foolish policies, e.g.

Chairman Mao’s Great Leap Forward inducing the greatest man-made mass
starvation killing 20 million or more, or the British war requisitions
causing the Bengal famine of 1943 killing some 3 million; or as
collateral damage of other forms of oppression. Unlike the deliberate
genocide of Native Americans in parts of the USA or Argentina, the
death of millions of Natives in Central America after the first
Spanish conquests was at least partly the unintended side-effect
of the hardships of forced labour and the contact with new diseases
brought by the Europeans. In contrast with Nazi and Soviet work camps,
where forced labour had the dual purpose of economic profit and a slow
but sure death of the inmates, there is no evidence that the Spanish
wanted their Native labourers to die. After all, their replacement
with African slaves required a large extra investment.

The Atlantic slave trade itself caused mass death among the transported
slaves, just as in the already long-standing Arab slave trade, but
it is obvious that purely for the sake of profit, the slave-traders
preferred as many slaves as possible to arrive at the slave markets
alive. Likewise, the Christian c.q. Islamic contempt for Pagans made
them rather careless with the lives of Native Americans, Africans
or Hindus, so that millions of them were killed, and yet this was
not deliberate genocide. Of course they wanted to annihilate Pagan
religions like Hinduism, but in principle, the missionary religions
wished to convert the unbelievers, and preferred not to kill them
unless this was necessary for establishing the power of the True Faith.

That is why the mass killing of Hindus by Muslims rarely took place
in peacetime, but typically in the fervour immediately following
military victories, e.g. the fall of the metropolis of Vijayanagar in
1565 was "celebrated" with a general massacre and arson. Once Muslim
power was established, Muslim rulers sought to exploit and humiliate
rather than kill the Hindus, and discourage rebellion by making
some sort of compromise. Not that peacetime was all that peaceful,
for as Fernand Braudel wrote in A History of Civilizations (Penguin
1988/1963, p.232-236), Islamic rule in India as a "colonial experiment"
was "extremely violent", and "the Muslims could not rule the country
except by systematic terror. Cruelty was the norm — burnings, summary
executions, crucifixions or impalements, inventive tortures. Hindu
temples were destroyed to make way for mosques. On occasion there were
forced conversions. If ever there were an uprising, it was instantly
and savagely repressed: houses were burned, the countryside was laid
waste, men were slaughtered and women were taken as slaves."

Though all these small acts of terror added up to a death toll of
genocidal proportions, no organized genocide of the Holocaust type
took place. One constraint on Muslim zeal for Holy War was the
endemic inter-Muslim warfare and intrigue (no history of a royal
house was bloodier than that of the Delhi Sultanate 1206-1525),
another the prevalence of the Hanifite school of Islamic law in
India. This is the only one among the four law schools in Sunni Islam
which allows Pagans to subsist as zimmis, dis-empowered third-class
citizens paying a special tax for the favour of being tolerated; the
other three schools of jurisprudence ruled that Pagans, as opposed to
Christians and Jews, had to be given a choice between Islam and death.

Staggering numbers also died as collateral damage of the deliberate
impoverishment by Sultans like Alauddin Khilji and Jahangir. As
Braudel put it: "The levies it had to pay were so crushing that one
catastrophic harvest was enough to unleash famines and epidemics
capable of killing a million people at a time. Appalling poverty was
the constant counterpart of the conquerors’ opulence."

Genocide by any other name In some cases, terminological purists
object to mass murder being described as "genocide", viz. when it
targets groups defined by other criteria than ethnicity. Stalin’s
"genocide" through organized famine in Ukraine killed some 7 million
people (lowest estimate is 4 million) in 1931-33, the largest-ever
deliberate mass murder in peacetime, but its victims were targeted
because of their economic and political positions, not because of their
nationhood. Though it makes no difference to the victims, this was not
strictly genocide or "nation murder", but "class murder". Likewise,
the killing of perhaps two million Cambodians by the Khmer Rouge
was not an attempt to destroy the Cambodian nation; it was rather an
attempt to "purify" the nation of its bourgeois class.

The killing of large groups of ideological dissenters is a constant
in the history of the monotheistic faiths, of which Marxism has
been termed a modern offshoot, starting with the killing of some
polytheistic priests by Pharaoh Akhenaton and, shortly after, the
treacherous killing of 3,000 worshippers of the Golden Calf by Moses
(they had been encouraged to come out in the open by Moses’ brother
Aaron, not unlike Chairman Mao’s "hundred flowers" campaign which
encouraged dissenters to speak freely, all the better to eliminate
them later). Mass killing accompanied the christianization of Saxony
by Charlemagne (ca. 800 CE) and of East Prussia by the Teutonic
Knights (13th century). In 1209-29, French Catholics massacred the
heretical Cathars. Wars between Muslims and Christians, and between
Catholics and Protestants, killed millions both in deliberate
massacres and as collateral damage, e.g. seven million Germans in
1618-48. Though the Turkish government which ordered the killing of
a million Armenians in 1915 was motivated by a mixture of purely
military, secular-nationalistic and Islamic considerations, the
fervour with which the local Turks and Kurds participated in the
slaughter was clearly due to their Islamic conditioning of hatred
against non-Muslims.

This ideological killing could be distinguished from genocide in the
strict sense, because ethnicity was not the reason for the slaughter.

While this caution may complicate matters for the Ukrainians or
Cambodians, it does not apply to the case of Hinduism: like the Jews,
the Hindus have historically been both a religion and a nation (or at
least, casteists might argue, a conglomerate of nations). Attempts to
kill all Hindus of a given region may legitimately be termed genocide.

For its sheer magnitude in scope and death toll, coupled with its
occasional (though not continuous) intention to exterminate entire
Hindu communities, the Islamic campaign against Hinduism, which was
never fully called off since the first naval invasion in 636 CE,
can without exaggeration be termed genocide. To quote Will Durant’s
famous line: "The Islamic conquest of India is probably the bloodiest
story in history. It is a discouraging tale, for its evident moral is
that civilization is a precious good, whose delicate complex of order
and freedom, culture and peace, can at any moment be overthrown by
barbarians invading from without or multiplying within." (Story of
Civilization, vol.1, Our Oriental Heritage, New York 1972, p.459)

Hinduism’s losses There is no official estimate of the total death
toll of Hindus at the hands of Islam. A first glance at important
testimonies by Muslim chroniclers suggests that, over 13 centuries and
a territory as vast as the Subcontinent, Muslim Holy Warriors easily
killed more Hindus than the 6 million of the Holocaust. Ferishtha
lists several occasions when the Bahmani sultans in central India
(1347-1528) killed a hundred thousand Hindus, which they set as a
minimum goal whenever they felt like "punishing" the Hindus; and they
were only a third-rank provincial dynasty. The biggest slaughters took
place during the raids of Mahmud Ghaznavi (ca. 1000 CE); during the
actual conquest of North India by Mohammed Ghori and his lieutenants
(1192 ff.); and under the Delhi Sultanate (1206-1526). The Moghuls
(1526-1857), even Babar and Aurangzeb, were fairly restrained tyrants
by comparison. Prof. K.S. Lal once estimated that the Indian population
declined by 50 million under the Sultanate, but that would be hard
to substantiate; research into the magnitude of the damage Islam did
to India is yet to start in right earnest.

Note that attempts are made to deny this history. In Indian schoolbooks
and the media, an idyllic picture of Hindu-Muslim harmony in the
pre-British period is propagated in outright contradiction with
the testimony of the primary sources. Like Holocaust denial, this
propaganda can be called negationism. The really daring negationists
don’t just deny the crimes against Hindus, they invert the picture and
blame the Hindus themselves. Thus, it is routinely alleged that Hindus
persecuted and destroyed Buddhism; in reality, Buddhist monasteries
and universities flourished under Hindu rule, but their thousands of
monks were killed by Ghori and his lieutenants.

Apart from actual killing, millions of Hindus disappeared by way of
enslavement. After every conquest by a Muslim invader, slave markets
in Bagdad and Samarkand were flooded with Hindus. Slaves were likely to
die of hardship, e.g. the mountain range Hindu Koh, "Indian mountain",
was renamed Hindu Kush, "Hindu-killer", when one cold night in the
reign of Timur Lenk (1398-99), a hundred thousand Hindu slaves died
there while on transport to Central Asia. Though Timur conquered
Delhi from another Muslim ruler, he recorded in his journal that he
made sure his pillaging soldiers spared the Muslim quarter, while in
the Hindu areas, they took "twenty slaves each". Hindu slaves were
converted to Islam, and when their descendants gained their freedom,
they swelled the numbers of the Muslim community. It is a cruel twist
of history that the Muslims who forced Partition on India were partly
the progeny of Hindus enslaved by Islam.

Karma The Hindu notion of Karma has come under fire from Christian
and secularist polemicists as part of the current backlash against
New Age thinking. Allegedly, the doctrine of Karma implies that the
victims of the Holocaust and other massacres had deserved their fate.

A naive understanding of Karma, divorced from its Hindu context,
could indeed lead to such ideas. Worse, it could be said that the
Jews as a nation had incurred genocidal karma by the genocide which
their ancestors committed on the Canaanites. Likewise, it could be
argued that the Native Americans had it coming: recent research (by
Walter Neves from Brazil as well as by US scientists) has shown that
in ca. 8000 BC, the Mongoloid Native American populations replaced
an earlier American population closely resembling the Australian
Aborigines — the first American genocide?

More generally, if Karma explains suffering and "apparent" injustice
as a profound form of justice, a way of reaping the karmic rewards
of one’s own actions, are we not perversely justifying every injustice?

These questions should not be taken lightly. However, the Hindu
understanding of reincarnation militates against the doctrine of
genocidal "group karma" outlined above. An individual can incarnate
in any community, even in other species, and need not be reborn among
his own progeny. If Canaanites killed by the Israelites have indeed
reincarnated, some may have been Nazi camp guards and others Jewish
Holocaust victims. There is no reason to assume that the members of
today’s victim group are the reincarnated souls of the bullies of
yesteryear, returning to suffer their due punishment. That is the
difference between karma and genetics: karma is taken along by the
individual soul, not passed on in the family line.

More fundamentally, we should outgrow this childish (and in this
case, downright embarrassing) view of karma as a matter of reward
and punishment. Does the killer of a million people return a million
times as a murder victim to suffer the full measure of his deserved
punishment? Rather, karma is a law of conservation: you are reborn with
the basic pattern of desires and conditionings which characterized
you when you died last time around. The concrete experiences and
actions which shaped that pattern, however, are history: they only
survive insofar as they have shaped your psychic karma pattern,
not as a precise account of merits and demerits to be paid off by
corresponding amounts of suffering and pleasure.

One lesson to be learned from genocide history pertains to Karma,
the law of cause and effect, in a more down-to-earth sense: suffering
genocide is the karmic reward of weakness. That is one conclusion
which the Jews have drawn from their genocide experience: they created
a modern and militarily strong state. Even more importantly, they
helped foster an awareness of the history of their persecution among
their former persecutors, the Christians, which makes it unlikely
that Christians will target them again. In this respect, the Hindus
have so far failed completely. With numerous Holocaust memorials
already functioning, one more memorial is being built in Berlin by
the heirs of the perpetrators of the Holocaust; but there is not even
one memorial to the Hindu genocide, because even the victim community
doesn’t bother, let alone the perpetrators.

This different treatment of the past has implications for the future.

Thus, Israel’s nuclear programme is accepted as a matter of course,
justified by the country’s genuine security concerns; but when India,
which has equally legitimate security concerns, conducted nuclear
tests, it provoked American sanctions. If the world ignores Hindu
security concerns, one of the reasons is that Hindus have never
bothered to tell the world how many Hindus have been killed already.

Healing What should Hindus say to Muslims when they consider the record
of Islam in Hindu lands? It is first of all very important not to
allot guilt wrongly. Notions of collective or hereditary guilt should
be avoided. Today’s Muslims cannot help it that other Muslims did
certain things in 712 or 1565 or 1971. One thing they can do, however,
is to critically reread their scripture to discern the doctrinal
factors of Muslim violence against Hindus and Hinduism. Of course,
even without scriptural injunction, people get violent and wage wars;
if Mahmud Ghaznavi hadn’t come, some of the people he killed would
have died in other, non-religious conflicts. But the basic Quranic
doctrine of hatred against the unbelievers has also encouraged many
good-natured and pious people to take up the sword against Hindus
and other Pagans, not because they couldn’t control their aggressive
instincts, but because they had been told that killing unbelievers
was a meritorious act. Good people have perpetrated evil because
religious authorities had depicted it as good.

This is material for a no-nonsense dialogue between Hindus and
Muslims. But before Hindus address Muslims about this, it is imperative
that they inform themselves about this painful history.

Apart from unreflected grievances, Hindus have so far not developed
a serious critique of Islam’s doctrine and historical record. Often
practising very sentimental, un-philosophical varieties of their own
religion, most Hindus have very sketchy and distorted images of rival
religions. Thus, they say that Mohammed was an Avatar of Vishnu,
and then think that they have cleverly solved the Hindu-Muslim
conflict by flattering the Prophet (in fact, it is an insult to
basic Muslim beliefs, which reject divine incarnation, apart from
indirectly associating the Prophet with Vishnu’s incarnation as a
pig). Instead of the silly sop stories which pass as conducive to
secularism, Hindus should acquaint themselves with real history and
real religious doctrines.

Another thing which we should not forget is that Islam is ultimately
rooted in human nature. We need not believe the Muslim claim that the
Quran is of divine origin; but then it is not of diabolical origin
either, it is a human document. The Quran is in all respects the
product of a 7th-century Arab businessman vaguely acquainted with
Judeo-Christian notions of monotheism and prophetism, and the good
and evil elements in it are very human. Even its negative elements
appealed to human instincts, e.g. when Mohammed promised a share in
the booty of the caravans he robbed, numerous Arab Pagans took the
bait and joined him. The undesirable elements in Islamic doctrine
stem from human nature, and can in essence be found elsewhere as
well. Keeping that in mind, it should be possible to make a fair
evaluation of Islam’s career in India on the basis of factual history.

OP&st=D&no=138

ARMENIA IN PLACE OF HONOUR

ArmeniaDiaspora.com
Sept 28 2006

France, September 28, /FranceDiplomatie/. 30 September 2006 marks the
start of Armenia Year in France. Under the title "Armenie mon amie"
[My friend Armenia], it celebrates a longstanding relationship between
the two countries.

A people that has been a standard bearer of civilisation For several
hundred years the Armenians and the French have maintained a special
relationship. At a meeting in Spring 2004, Robert Kotcharian, President
of the Republic of Armenia, and the President of the French Republic,
Jacques Chirac, expressed the joint wish to celebrate the links that
unite the two peoples with an Armenia Year. Cultural events will take
place both in that country and in France from the end of September
2006 to July 2007.

This friendship dates back to the Crusades ten centuries ago, and has
developed over the course of history. "The last Armenian prince was
a Frenchman, Leon V, in the 14th century, and the word "baron" means
"sir" in present day Armenian", explains Nelly Tardivier, the general
organiser of the event. "This Year is an invitation to an old friend,
to a remarkable culture and a people that has been a standard bearer
of civilisation." With its own alphabet and enriched by a unique
Christian culture – several sacred texts now exist only in their
Armenian version – this civilisation is three thousand years old.

A people that has been a standard bearer of civilisation The advisors
to the French kings, Mazarin and Richelieu, studied Armenian,
19th-century intellectuals pondered the "Armenian question" and
trading links between the two nations were already considerable.

It is even said that it was an Armenian who brought coffee to France.

Today there are almost 450,000 French citizens of Armenian origin,
largely the children of refugees who landed in Marseille at the
end of the First World War, fleeing the genocide perpetrated by the
Ottoman Empire.

Armenia Year will start with a visit to the country by Jacques Chirac
together with a series of French cultural events in the capital,
Yerevan, and other towns in the Republic, from September to November.

A concert in Yerevan by the most famous French Armenian, Charles
Aznavour, will mark the start of the festivities. Also on the programme
will be readings from works in the French repertoire or related to
Armenia by actors from the Comedie Francaise in Yerevan and Gumri,
a production in Armenian of Les Caprices de Marianne [The Moods of
Marianne] (1833) by Alfred de Musset and the arrival in Yerevan of
one of the Louvre’s major works, Bonaparte au pont D’Arcole (1798)
by Antoine Gros.

AL- ANFAL AND THE FINAL SOLUTION WERE TWO FACADES OF ONE COIN CALLED GENOCIDE
By Eamad Mazouri

Kurdish Media, UK
Sept 28 2006

Mass graves in Iraq
Archive photo
As, I was preparing to write this article, and to my delight, I read,
that soon in Denmark, there would be a seminar focusing mainly on
Al-Anfal, The Final Solution and the Armenian Massacre before and
during WWI. Seminar: al-Anfal, Holocaust and Armenian genocide

More than once, I have promoted the idea that Kurds should never
let the world fail to remember about the massacres they have been
subjected to in their more recent history. The main focused subject of
the Kurdish media must remains the Genocide committed against Kurdish
population, mostly civilians, including the use of weapon of mass
destruction, such as chemicals and biological by Saddam’s regime. Major
resources need to be put at the disposal of those efforts to remind
the world incessantly of these horrendous atrocities. Grand Monuments
should be erected and seminars and symposiums ought to be organized
to keep this painful memory constantly alive in the consciousness of
mankind forever.

This subject matter is gaining more momentum as the trial of deposed
dictator Saddam Hussein, his cousin Ali Hasan Al-Majid (known by
Kurds as Ali the Chemical) and the other 6 co-defendants has started.

Their charges range from war crimes to crimes against humanity and
Genocide.

Those who are following the trial have by now witnessed the gripping
testimonies of surviving Kurds. Horror stories and heart wrenching
tales of how Kurdish villages and towns were destroyed and demolished,
how people were exterminated and the rest rounded up, men, women and
children separated and mass transported like cattle to concentration
camps in various places build specifically for this purpose, and
some to the southern and western deserts left for certain death in
a very systematic method and operation dedicated to it most of the
state’s institutions and apparatus. Not to mention the mass graves,
those are being discovered on daily basis all over Iraq.

For those who have lived under the regime and are familiar with its
diabolic nature, it came as no surprise the insolent attitude of
the dictator and his co-culprits by not showing a slightest sign of
remorse towards the victims or the ordeal of those survived. On the
contrary, they have been defiant to the court and the suffering of
the victims. This psychotic behaviour should tell the court and the
whole world what these characters are about, what they have done and
what they are capable of doing if given another chance.

Twentieth century has been described as a bloody one. Many mass-
murders based on hatred were committed against certain groups of people
in order to annihilate that particular group. These include but are
not limited to Ottomans’ massacres against Armenians, the holocausts
against Jews, Genocide acts in Bosnia, Rwanda and finally in Kurdistan.

Once again, I emphasize that Kurds in general; their friends and
sympathizers, the civilized world and the entire humanity should never
let the world forget these horrible atrocities. No group of people has
to live in fear of being subjected once more to such a crime, ever
again. This task falls on the shoulders of every decent human being
to try to eliminate that awful possibility. However, I must point
out that although the world of post WWII and Holocausts thought for
once that no such crimes could or should be recurring again, it did,
and repeatedly in various countries, and in the latest the victims
were helpless Kurdish civilians; women, children, elderly and even
babies that their heartbreaking photos dominated TV screens all over
the world. Let us hope that the prosecution in Saddam’s ongoing trial
is skilled, competent, experienced, qualified and capable to prove
to the world that he is responsible for those crimes.

"Kurds rightfully have always referred to al- Anfal attacks as
Genocide.

In December 2005 a court in The Hague ruled that the killing of
thousands of Kurds in Iraq in the 1980s was an act of Genocide".

One thing, history has taught humanity that perpetrators of Genocide
acts and Genocide usually do not use the term Genocide while referring
to their mass-murder, but find substitute terms such as final solution
as by the Nazi during WWII against Jews. In Iraq the Ba’ath regime
of dictator Saddam did not break out of the rule by using various
phrases and expressions such as Kurdish solution or al-Anfal as it
was officially called later on.

Just "like the Nazi Germany, the Ba’ath regime covered its actions
in euphemisms. Where Nazi officials spoke of "executive measures,"
"special actions" and "resettlement in the east," Ba’athist bureaucrats
spoke of "collective measures," "return to the national ranks" and
"resettlement in the south." But beneath the euphemisms, Iraq’s
crimes against the Kurds amount to genocide, the "intent to destroy,
in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group,
as such." Definition of Genocide

"L. Elizabeth Chamblee in her "POST-WAR IRAQ: PROSECUTING SADDAM
HUSSEIN" states that the multilateral treaty, the 1948 Convention
on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (Genocide
Convention), to which Iraq acceded on January 20, 1959, defined
genocide in Article II as:

Any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole
or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group, as such:

(a) Killing members of the group; (b) Causing serious bodily or mental
harm to members of the group (c) Deliberately inflicting on the group
conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction
in whole or in part; (d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births
within the group; (e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to
another group.

To convict Hussein of genocide he must have "committed" one or more
of the above forbidden acts against members of a protected group
with the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, that group. Hussein
did not have to perform the acts himself. Instead, under Article III
of the Genocide Convention, acts punishable under the treaty include
"Genocide; conspiracy to commit genocide; direct and public incitement
to commit genocide; attempt to commit Genocide; [and] complicity in
genocide." Thus, if Hussein specifically ordered or even turned a
blind eye to any of these acts, his failure to act would constitute
genocide under the Genocide Convention. The International Court of
Justice, the ITCY and ITCR statutes, as well as the International
Criminal Court statute all follow the Convention’s definition and
its general elements".

On the other hand, Encarta encyclopedia defines, Genocide as, a crime
of destroying or conspiring to destroy a group of people because of
their ethnic, national, racial, or religious identity.

The definition continues to emphasize that, the perpetrator is usually
a non-democratic country that views the targeted group of people as
a barrier or threat to maintaining power, fulfilling an ideology,
or achieving some other goal .The perpetrator see the victim as
inferiors, subhuman who don’t deserve to live. This approach is used
mostly to mentally prepare the ruling group and state institutions
and apparatus to carry out the dreadful policy.

In 1948 the General assembly of the UN passed an act called the
International Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime
of Genocide. It took effect in 1951, provided a legal definition
of genocide and established it as a crime under international
law. According to the Genocide Convention, any of the following actions
when committed with the intent to eliminate a particular national,
ethnic, racial, or religious group constitutes Genocide:

Killing members of the group, causing serious bodily or mental
harm to members of the group, deliberately inflicting on the group
conditions of life calculated to kill, imposing measures intended to
prevent births within the group, and forcibly transferring children
out of group.

In spite of these laws, the world was never serious about the
legal concept of Genocide Convention except when their interests
are intertwined with the application of the convention. In general,
the enforcement of the Genocide Convention has proven difficult. The
UN has not established an international office or system to enforce it.

Furthermore, victims do not have a permanent international criminal
court to which they can bring their complaints. In 1988 UN delegates
adopted a statute that would create a permanent international criminal
court to try individuals accused of genocide and other violations of
international criminal law. The court would have been established if
60 countries ratified the statute, and would have been headquartered
in The Hague, Netherlands. Regrettably, after George W.

Bush took office in the White House he refused to seek the
Congressional ratification of such a law.

Al-Anfal vis-?-vis The Final solution

Mass-killing, destruction of villages, deportation to forced
concentration camps is the first steps towards Genocide. In both
scenarios these acts stand salient and well documented. In fact,
in both instances victims were used as test subjects for chemical
and biological experiments.

Holocaust encyclopedia states that, the Nazis, under cover of the
war, developed the technology, bureaucracy, and psychology of hate
to efficiently murder millions of Jews. The details of the "Final
Solution".

were worked out at the Wannsee Conference. All Jews in Germany and
the occupied countries were deported to sealed ghettos as a holding
area. Many were then shipped in cattle cars to labor camps where
they lived under brutally inhuman conditions. Hundreds of thousands
were sent directly to the gas chambers in death camps. As the Allies
advanced on the camps, death marches further depleted the ranks of
potential camp survivors." All the steps taken by the Nazis were aimed
at removing the Jews from German society. As well as exterminating
Gypsies Polish and Ukrainians.

"After the beginning of World War II, anti-Jewish policy evolved
into a comprehensive plan to concentrate and eventually annihilate
European Jewry. What is clear is that the genocide of the Jews was
the culmination of a decade of Nazi policy, under the rule of Adolf
Hitler. The "Final Solution" was implemented in stages. In January
1942, the Nazis began the systematic deportation of Jews from all
over Europe to six extermination camps established in former Polish
territory — Chelmno, Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka, Auschwitz-Birkenau,
and Majdanek. Extermination camps were killing centers designed
to carry out genocide. Over three million Jews were gassed in
extermination. In its entirety consisted of gassing, shootings,
random acts of terror, disease, and starvation that accounted for
the deaths of about six million Jews — two-thirds of European Jewry"
How it was carried out, these were the preparations steps:

1. An entire state bureaucracy was mobilized solely for the purpose
of annihilating Jews.

2. German technological expertise was harnessed to make the mass
murder as efficient and low-cost as possible.

3. Special camps were created solely for the purpose of killing Jews
and other "undesirables."

4. The conditions in these death camps and other concentration camps
were brutal, and designed purposely to make survival only temporary
Comparing al-Anfal Campaign to the above mentioned procedures,
it is easy to find the many similarities both campaigns share with
same objective of terminating people as a whole. From the documents
seized after the Kurdish uprising of 1991, and later on following
the liberation of Iraq there are testimonies to the fact that the
whole state bureaucracy was drummed up to accommodate this particular
objective; the extermination of Kurds in Iraq.

Official correspondents among various state institutions are
unambiguous, straight forward and very much indicting when it comes
to the intention and the partial implementation of Genocide.

L. Elizabeth Chamblee in her report continues on the Kurdish Genocide
by Saddam’s regime "The plight of the Kurds at the hands of Hussein’s
regime began well before the first Gulf War. Beginning in 1985,
Hussein’s plan to address "Kurdish affairs" formed a systematic
program of destruction for Kurdish villages through chemical
weapons and military force, subsequent relocation of the Kurds in
concentration camps, and summary executions upon arrival. In 1988,
Iraqi forces killed as many as 182,000 Kurds and destroyed at least
4,000 Kurdish villages".

"Once it finished using chemical and conventional bombing, the army
and domestic militia dynamited and bulldozed Kurdish villages. The
Iraqi army destroyed at least 703 Kurdish villages in 1987 alone
After the armies razed the village of Serkand Khailani, officials
arrested most of the villagers and later subjected the leaders to
beatings with cables, suspensions from ceiling hooks, and electric
shocks to the earlobes. Some of those arrested were executed. Others
were sent to the collective camps. The Iraqi government painstakingly
videotaped and documented a number of these events Al -Anfal Campaign
against Kurds "Surat al-Anfal, a Verse on Jihad ("the Spoils of War")
is the eighth chapter of the Qur’an, with 85 verses. It is a Madinan
sura, recorded after the Battle of Badr.The al-Anfal Campaign was
an anti-Kurdish campaign led by the Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussein
between 1986 and 1989 (during and just after the Iran-Iraq war). The
campaign takes its name from Surat Al-Anfal in the Qur’an, which
was used as a code name by the former Iraqi Baathist regime for a
series of military campaigns against the peshmerga rebels as well
as the mostly Kurdish civilian population of southern Kurdistan. The
campaign was headed by Ali Hasan al-Majid, a cousin of the Iraqi leader
Saddam Hussein. The al-Anfal campaign included the use of ground
offensives, aerial bombing, systematic destruction of settlements,
mass deportation, concentration camps, firing squads, and chemical
warfare, which earned al-Majid the nickname of "Chemical Ali".

A report of Human right watch on al-Anfal campaign was detailed and
vivid and established beyond any doubt those gross crimes of Saddam’s
Regime against Kurds as Genocide, especially the Attack on Halabja
with Chemical weapons and al-anfal Campaign, which has been described
as a campaign of extermination against the Kurds of northern Iraq.

"The campaigns of 1987-1989 were characterized by the following gross
violations of human rights:

Mass summary executions and mass disappearance of many tens of
thousands of non-combatants, including large numbers of women
and children, and sometimes the entire population of villages; ·
The widespread use of chemical weapons, including mustard gas and
the nerve agent GB, or Sarin, against the town of Halabja as well as
dozens of Kurdish villages, killing many thousands of people, mainly
women and children; · The wholesale destruction of some 2,000 villages,
which are described in government documents as having been "burned,"
"destroyed," "demolished".

and "purified," as well as at least a dozen larger towns and
administrative centers (nahyas and qadhas); · The wholesale destruction
of civilian objects by Army engineers, including all schools, mosques,
wells and other non-residential structures in the targeted villages,
and a number of electricity substations; · Looting of civilian property
and farm animals on a vast scale by army troops and pro-government
militia; · Arbitrary arrest of all villagers captured in designated
"prohibited areas" (manateq al-mahdoureh), despite the fact that
these were their own homes and lands; · Arbitrary jailing and
warehousing for months, in conditions of extreme deprivation, of
tens of thousands of women, children and elderly people, without
judicial order or any cause other than their presumed sympathies
for the Kurdish opposition. Many hundreds of them were allowed to
die of malnutrition and disease; · Forced displacement of hundreds
of thousands of villagers upon the demolition of their homes, their
release from jail or return from exile; these civilians were trucked
into areas of Kurdistan far from their homes and dumped there by
the army with only minimal governmental compensation or none at all
for their destroyed property, or any provision for relief, housing,
clothing or food, and forbidden to return to their villages of origin
on pain of death. In these conditions, many died within a year of their
forced displacement; · Destruction of the rural Kurdish economy and
infrastructure." "According to Iraq’s report to the UN, the know-how
and material for developing chemical weapons were obtained from firms
in such countries as:

The United States, West Germany, the United Kingdom, France and
China. By far, the largest suppliers of precursors for chemical
weapons production were in Singapore (4,515 tons), the Netherlands
(4,261 tons), Egypt (2,400 tons), India (2,343 tons), and Federal
Republic of Germany (1,027 tons).

One Indian company, Exomet Plastics (now part of EPC Industries) sent

2,292 tons of precursor chemicals to Iraq. The Kim Al-Khaleej firm,
located in Singapore and affiliated to United Arab Emirates, supplied
more than 4,500 tons of VX, sarin, and mustard gas precursors and
production equipment to Iraq".

Figures

-During the Anfal campaign, the Iraqi government destroyed about
4,500 villages in Iraqi Kurdistan -The Iraqi government executed
approximately 182,000 men, women, and children -1,754 schools
destroyed -2,450 mosques destroyed -27 churches destroyed -270
hospitals destroyed -around 75% of villages wiped out -The Kurdish
town of Qaladize of over 70,000 populations was totally destroyed.

– Parts of major Kurdish cities were demolished in 1991 as the start
of another or final phase of the annihilation of Kurds.

"The campaigns of 1987-1989 were not out of the blue, they were rather
deeply rooted in the history of the Iraqi Kurds. Since the earliest
days of the establishment of Iraq. when Kurds were coerced into an
involuntary union with the newly established Iraq and were denied
their rights. They faced that with a chain of revolutions.

However, the situation became worse when Ba’ath took power and started
a systematic plan to annihilate the Kurds who Saddam saw them as an
obstacle on his path of pan-Arab nationalism.

However, with the granting of emergency powers to al-Majid in March
1987, the intermittent counterinsurgency against the Kurds became a
campaign of destruction. As Raul Hilberg observes in his monumental
history of the Holocausts" Hilberg’s Paradigm

Raul Hilberg (born June 2, 1926) is one of the best-known and most
distinguished of genocide historians. His three-volume, 1,273-page
"The Destruction of the European Jews" regarded as the seminal study
of the Nazi Final Solution "A destruction process has an inherent
pattern. There is only one way in which a scattered group can
effectively be destroyed. Three steps are organic in the operation:

Definition –> Concentration (or seizure) –> Annihilation

"This is the invariant structure of the basic process, for no group
can be killed without a concentration or seizure of the victims,
and no victims can be segregated before the perpetrator knows who
belongs to the group.

To pursue Hilberg’s paradigm a little further, once the concentration
and seizure was complete, the annihilation could begin. The target
group had already been defined with care. Now came the definition
of the second, concentric circle within the group: those who were
actually to be killed."Beginning with a presidential order of October
15, 1987–two days before the census–that "the names of persons
who are to be subjected to a general/blanket judgment must not be
listed collectively. Rather, refer to them or treat them in your
correspondence on an individual basis." The effects of this order
are reflected in the lists that the Army and Amn compiled of Kurds
arrested during Anfal, which note each person’s name, sex, age, place
of residence and place of capture"."The Kurdish genocide of 1987-1989,
with the Anfal campaign as its centerpiece, fits Hilberg’s paradigm
to perfection" as Dr. Khalid Salih deems it.

The Halabja Attack

Almost all current accounts of the incident regard Iraq as the party
responsible for the gas attack, which occurred during the Iran-Iraq
War.

The war between Iran and Iraq was in its eighth year when, on March 16
and 17, 1988, Iraq dropped poison gas on the Kurdish city of Halabja.

"The poison gas attack on the Iraqi town of Halabja was the
largest-scale chemical weapons (CW) attack against a civilian
population in modern times.

It began early in the evening of March 16, when a group of eight
aircraft began dropping chemical bombs, and the chemical bombardment
continued all night. The Halabja attack involved multiple chemical
agents, including mustard gas, and the nerve agents sarin, tabun
and VX. Some sources have also pointed to the blood agent hydrogen
cyanide" The massacre at Halabja did not raise protests by the
international community in March 1988. At the time, it was admitted
that the civilians had been killed "collaterally" due to an error in
handling the combat gas.

Two years later, when the Iran-Iraq War was finished and the Western
powers stopped supporting Saddam Hussein, the massacre of Halabja
was attributed to the Iraqi government.

After 1991 uprising in Iraqi Kurdistan, as Kurdish people were
liberating their cities they discovered hundreds of tons of documents
enough to indict every single Iraqi official who was involved. These
documents were transferred to the United States. All the elements
of the definition of Genocide under international law individually
and collectively do apply to the Kurdish case. For example,
killing members of the group, the attack carried all the element of
every type of Genocide: ideological, retributive, developmental,
and despotic. Simply, because the regime was trying to achieve
an ideal social structure in which all Iraqis are alike and hold
the same beliefs based on pan-Arabism. Their ideology based on pan
Arab nationalism mixed with the principles of socialism led them to
believe that Kurds as a different ethnic group are the major obstacle
in their way to implement their policies and achieve their goals.

Therefore, they have to be eliminated or at least neutralized or
marginalized.

Although Iraq is one of the signatory of the Genocide Convention
since January 20, 1959 the Iraqi regime was never charged for any
crimes committed against Kurdish people. It was the Ba’ath’s mentality
translated into state policy to annihilate Kurdish people since the
very beginning.

They have never given up on that. After the collapse of the Kurdish
revolution in the spring of the 1975 as the result of the Algiers
‘s Agreement, Hundreds of thousands of Kurds left Iraq to Iran and
other counties while the rest surrendered to the government. They were
deported to southern Iraqi desert. The majority of them perished or
were shot in unmarked mass graves. Arabization has been an official
policy of this government. Many Kurdish cities and towns such as
Kirkuk, Mendaly, Khanaqin, Shingar and Atrush has been systematically
evacuated of their Kurdish population and replaced with Arab tribes.

In 1980 the government arrested hundreds of thousands of the Faily
Kurds who were dwelling Baghdad and actually running the economy of
the capital city. They were rounded up, after confiscating all their
properties except the cloth on their back. They were split into two
groups. One group just disappeared without any traces. While the other
was deported to Iran. Nevertheless, the government was persistent on
pursuing its deadly policies towards the Kurds. In 1983 they rounded
up over 8 thousand male members of the Barzani tribe, and nobody ever
heard anything about their unfortunate fate. The rest of the women,
elderly male, and children were put in a concentration camp similar
to those used in Europe by the Nazi for Jews during the WW11.

However, the worst was still lurking ahead. In 1988 the government
attacked the Kurdish town of Halabja with chemical and possibly
biological weapons killing indiscriminately over 5000 people, mostly
women and children. This was the first time these weapons of mass
destruction has been used since the WW1.As a result and after showing
the demonic crime on the TV screens all over the world. It was decided
in a conference in Paris to reprimand the Iraqi regime while refusing
the Kurdish representatives, here, the real victims of the crime of
the century, to even attend the conference. This savage attack was
followed by the infamous al- ANFAL Campaign led by defense minister
Ali Hassan Al Majid, Known in Kurdistan as Ali the Chemical, who is
the dictator Saddam Hussein’s cousin. During this barbarous campaign
the entire southern Kurdistan was turned into a military zone. The
Iraqi army, whose only experience was the killing of Kurdish people,
was authorized to shoot and kill anything alive and moving. Over a
quarter of a million of Kurdish people were eliminated.

Many were taken to the Iraqi desert in the south and buried alive
in unidentified mass graves, according to very few eye witnesses who
survived by a miracle.

Human Watch report on al-Anfal Campaign The fact that al-Anfal was, by
the narrowest definition, a counterinsurgency as dictator Saddam and
defense team are trying to portray it, does nothing to diminish the
fact that it was also an act of genocide. There is nothing mutually
exclusive about counterinsurgency and genocide. Indeed, one may be
the instrument used to consummate the other.

Article I of the Genocide Convention affirms that "genocide, whether
committed in time of peace or in time of war, is a crime under
international law." Summarily executing noncombatant or captured
members of an ethnical-national group as such is not a legitimate
wartime or counterinsurgency measure, regardless of the nature of the
conflict In addition to this argument of principle, many features of
Anfal far transcend the realm of counterinsurgency. These include,
first of all, the simple facts of what happened after the military
goals of the operation had been accomplished:

The mass murder and disappearance of many tens of thousands of
non-combatants–50,000 by the most conservative estimate, and possibly
twice that number; · The use of chemical weapons against non-combatants
in dozens of locations, killing thousands and terrifying many more
into abandoning their homes; · The near-total destruction of family and
community assets and infrastructure, including the entire agricultural
mainstay of the rural Kurdish economy; · The literal abandonment,
in punishing conditions, of thousands of women, children and elderly
people, resulting in the deaths of many hundreds.

Those who survived did so largely due to the clandestine help of
nearby Kurdish townspeople.

"Finally, there is the question of intent, which goes to the heart
of the notion of genocide. Documentary materials captured from the
Iraqi intelligence agencies demonstrate with great clarity that the
mass killings, disappearances and forced relocations associated with
Anfal and the other anti-Kurdish campaigns of 1987-1989 were planned
in coherent fashion. While power over these campaigns was highly
centralized, their success depended on the orchestration of the
efforts of a large number of agencies and institutions at the local,
regional and national level, from the Office of the Presidency of
the Republic on down to the lowliest jahsh".

By April 23, 1989, the Ba’ath Party felt that it had accomplished its
goals, for on that date it revoked the special powers that had been
granted to Ali Hassan al-Majid two years earlier. At a ceremony to
greet his successor, the supreme commander of Anfal made it clear that
"the exceptional situation is over."

To use the language of the Genocide Convention, the regime’s aim had
been to destroy the group (Iraqi Kurds) in part, and it had done so,
mission was accomplished as they proclaimed it. Intent and act had
been combined, resulting in the consummated crime of genocide against
Kurdish people. The survivors, the families of the victims, the entire
Kurdish people, those who have suffered from Saddam’s successive
belligerence and aggression, every decent human being and the whole
civilized world is waiting for this court to get the justice done.

–Boundary_(ID_/8XksnYhj+jkUF8pYaJwiA)–

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

JACQUES CHIRAC: CO-CHAIRS’ PROPOSALS ARE QUITE BALANCED AND FAIR

Azeri Press Agency
Sept 28 2006

"The proposals offered by the co-chairs of the OSCE Minsk Group for
the settlement of the Nagorno Garabagh conflict is quite balanced
and fair," said France’s President Jacques Chirac while commenting on
current situation in the settlement of the Nagorno Garabagh conflict
between Armenia and Azerbaijan.

APA reports President Chirac stated that Azerbaijani and Armenian
Presidents should demonstrate political will for the solution of the
conflict.

ARMENIAN FM DOES NOT EXCLUDE POSSIBILITIES OF CONTINUING TALKS WITH AZERBAIJAN

TREND Azerbaijan
Sept 28 2006

The Armenian Foreign Minister Vardan Oskanyan does not exclude the
possibilities of continuing negotiations with Azerbaijan in the near
future, Trend reports quoting ARKA.

In his interview with "Freedom" Radio Station in New York, Oskanyan
stressed that the separate meetings with the Co-chairs of OSCE Minsk
Group regarding Nagorno-Karabakh conflict will always be held.

"Additionally, I do not exclude the visit of Co-chairs to the region,"
he emphasized, adding that after they make an appropriate decision as
a result of the 61st Session of the U.N. Assembly General, Armenia
intends to get into contact with the mediators and define future
steps to be taken.

According to Oskanyan, the renewal of direct negotiations between
Azerbaijan and Armenia with ministers and presidents is possible
and desirable for all. "However, at present this issue is still not
defined as yet," he underlined.

Presently the Armenian Foreign Minister is in New York to participate
at the 61st Session of the U.N. Assembly General.

FRENCH PRESIDENT REGARDS STATEMENTS BY OSCE MG CO-CHAIRS FAIR & WISE

TREND< Azerbaijan
Sept 28 2006

French President Jacques Chirac described the statements by the
OSCE Minsk group co-chairs on the resolution of the Nagorno-Karabakh
conflict as fair, balanced and wise, Trend reports citing Mediamax
Agency.

On 29 September Jacques Chirac will pay an official visit to Armenia.

"I am personally involved in the conflict resolution, as I know the
sufferings that it has experienced," the French President said.

Chirac said that the parties, Paris, Key West and Ramboulette, were
close to signing the peace agreement.

"I informed the Presidents of Armenia and Azerbaijan that the proposals
by the OSCE Minsk Group Co-chairs seem to be fair, balanced and wise. I
would like Yerevan and Baku to demonstrate the courage required for
the achievement of peace," the President stated.

Chirac said that at present the G8 countries and the international
community are prepared to act as guarantee for the peace agreement.

TURKISH FM ASSESSED EU REPORT SATISFACTORILY
Author: A.Aleskerov

TREND Information, Azerbaijan
Sept 28 2006

The Turkish Foreign Ministry has satisfactorily assessed the report
confirmed by the European Parliament regarding the co-operation of
this Country with the European Community from the point of view of
"support of expectations in the process of co-operation with the
European Union".

It was important to exclude a section of formulations from the
report which could causes dissatisfaction and the possibility of
further harming relations between Turkey and the European Union,
Trend Special Correspondent in Ankara reports.

According to the local commentators, the satisfactory assessment of
Ankara towards the document is first linked with the exclusion of
the clause on recognition of "Armenian genocide".

During the consideration of the report project by the European
Parliament, the clause on the necessity of Ankara’s recognizing the
"Armenian genocide" was excluded from the document.

‘ARMENIAN GENOCIDE’ HINDERS TURKISH-DUTCH CANDIDATES
By Emre Demir, Basri Doðan, Strasbourg, Amsterdam

Zaman Online, Turkey
Sept 28 2006

As the European Union presses Ankara for a revision of Article 301
of the Turkish Penal Code that limits free speech, Turks are facing
their own difficulties in the Netherlands.

Three Turkish-origin candidates were removed from their party lists in
the Netherlands for the Nov. 22 early parliamentary elections on the
pretext that they did not acknowledge the purported Armenian genocide.

Removing the Turkish-origin candidates from party lists was a result of
efforts of the Armenian lobby in the Netherlands, and the move provoked
angry responses from Turkish-origin citizens and Turks in the country.

The Christian Democrat Party received a letter last week from the
Armenian lobby that said there was a strong connection between the
ideas of the Turkish candidates and the policies of Turkish officials
in Ankara.

The three Turkish candidates were expected to win seats in the
parliament, but they were removed from their party lists because
they did not want to acknowledge that there was an Armenian genocide,
reporters said.

Leaders of the Turkish society in the Netherlands categorized the
decision to remove the three Turkish candidates from the election as
"’a shame" and "racist."

"Some of the young Turks wanting to be involved in politics here
faced a choice between politics and acknowledgment of the Armenian
genocide. This means that the notions of democracy and freedom
of thought are applicable only to the kind of people who are born
European; in other words, this is without doubt a double standard
and discrimination. What’s more, this is racism," said Kasim Akdemir,
chairman of the Turkish Islamic Cultural Association Federation.

Officials from the parties that removed the Turkish candidates from
their candidate lists argue that the Dutch government officially
acknowledges the purported Armenian genocide, an argument based on
a recommendation that the Christian Union Party offered on Dec 21,
2004 for parliamentary discussions, and which also received complete
approval from other political parties.

Removal of the three Turkish candidates drew attention to other
Turkish-origin candidates.

The Social Democrat Labor Party has Nebahat Albayrak placed second
on its list, along with three more candidates on the list.

These three other candidates are Keklik Yucel, placed 48th, Ali Sarac,
placed 61st, and Huri Sahin, placed 76th.

Coskun Coruz is another Turkish candidate that the Christian Democrat
Party put on its list, placed 19th.

Derya Bulduk, a Belgian politician of Turkish origin, had to bow to
pressure from her own party when she "denied" the existence of the
Armenian genocide.

"This Incident Violates Freedom of Speech"

Some members from the European Parliament (EP) characterized the
removal of the three Turkish candidates as a violation of the freedom
of expression.

Vural Oger, a Turkish member of the EP, sharply condemned the decision
to stop the three Turks from running for elections. Joost Lagendijk,
chair of the Joint Parliamentary Committee with Turkey, expressed
unease with the kind of things happening in the Netherlands and further
said that denial of the right to run for elections because of different
ideas was a clear infringement of the freedom of expression.

Cem Ozdemir, another EP member, found neither the Turkish nor the
European approaches correct to the matter at hand and defied the
argument that prohibitions would not work.

News of the three Turkish candidates excluded from their party lists
came when the EP voted on a report regarding Turkey.

The EP has a report on Turkey that sharply criticizes the Turkish
government for allowing the freedom of expression to be violated by
keeping Article 301 in its Penal Code.

"Did the Netherlands account for what it did in Indonesia, Italy
in Libya, France in Algeria, and Spain in South America? Why is
it only Turkey that is pressed to account for what it did in the
past?" asked Oger.

Shocked, Lagendijk said that he had his own system of thinking about
this issue that neither went with Turkey nor Armenia, and backed up
Erdogan’s recommendation to set up a joint commission.

–Boundary_(ID_zEewRk5ySu9qEBQ97T9uLg )–

EU PARLIAMENT WITHDREW PARAGRAPH RELATING TURKEY`S ACKNOWLEDGEMENT OF ARMENIAN GENOCIDE – PRE-CONDITION FOR TURKEY TO JOIN EU

TREND, Azerbaijan
Sept 28 2006

Yesterday, EU Parliament adopted a report on Turkey. Notably a
paragraph of Turkey`s acknowledgement of the Armenian Genocide of
1915 had been a pre-condition for Turkey to join EU, Trend reports
referring to REGNUM.

Instead of that, the report being adopted by the EU Parliament includes
a call to Turkey to acknowledge the Armenian Genocide.

"The Parliament again confirms its call to Turkey to acknowledge the
Armenian Genocide like its previous resolutions did". At the same
time, the resolution adopted in September 2005 said that Turkey`s
acknowledgement of the genocide is a pre-condition for the Country
to join the EU. "The EU Parliament urges Turkey to acknowledge the
Armenian Genocide, and considers that as a pre-condition for Turkey’s
membership into the EU".

At the same time, speaking in the name of the EU Executive Body
yesterday, Luis Michelle, EU Commission Commissar, told members
of the EU Parliament that the Genocide acknowledgement issue as a
pre-condition for Turkey to join the EU will become "changing the
rules during play".

The report adopted yesterday is not of an obligatory nature.

However, it is very critical, and blames Turkey in its non-compliance
with the promise the Country gave the EU. "The EU Parliament expresses
its shame that the process of reforms has slowed", the report tells. EU
Parliament stresses that 11 months after the beginning of the process
on Turkey`s membership into the EU, "unsatisfactory progress" on the
freedom of word, religious, and national minorities, women`s right
has been fixed, Radio Free Europe/Liberty reports.

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress