Month: April 2007

‘FOR OUR RELIGION’

7DAYS, United Arab Emirates
April 20 2007

Police detained five more people yesterday in connection with an
attack on a Christian publishing house that killed three employees,
doubling the number of suspects in custody, a Turkish official said.

One group of suspects detained in the slayings at the Zirve publishing
house that distributes Bibles told investigators they carried out the
killings to protect Islam, a Turkish newspaper reported. The three
victims – a German and two Turkish citizens – were found with their
hands and legs bound and their throats slit.

The victims had bruises on their faces and cuts on their wrists
from where they had been tied up, but there was no sign that they
had been tortured, a morgue official said. The attack added to
concerns in Europe about whether this predominantly Muslim country
– which is bidding for European Union membership – can protect its
religious minorities. It also underlined concerns about rising Turkish
nationalism and hostility toward non-Muslims.

"We didn’t do this for ourselves, but for our religion," Hurriyet
newspaper quoted an unnamed suspect as saying. "Our religion is being
destroyed. Let this be a lesson to enemies of our religion."

Local media said the suspects, all students, were staying at a hostel
of an Islamic foundation. On Wednesday, police detained four youths,
aged 19-20, as well as a fifth who underwent surgery for head injuries
after he apparently tried to escape by jumping from a window in the
central city of Malatya. Five other suspects, detained on Thursday,
were of the same age as those taking into custody on the day of the
attack, Govenor Halil Ibrahim Dasoz said. It was not clear if they
had been at the scene of the attack. The five suspects detained on
Wednesday had each been carrying copies of a letter that read: "We
five are brothers. We are going to our deaths. We may not return,"
the state-run Anatolia news agency said. "Nothing can excuse such an
attack that comes at a time of great need for peace, brotherhood and
tolerance," outgoing President Ahmet Necdet Sezer said.

Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan described the attack as "savagery."

Presidential elections will be held next month, a contest that
highlights fears among Turkey’s secular establishment that a candidate
from Erdogan’s Islamic-rooted party, or even Erdogan himself, could
win the job and strengthen Islamic influence on the government. Last
weekend, hundreds of thousands of pro-secular protesters demonstrated
in the capital, Ankara. Erdogan has rejected the label of "Islamist,"
citing his commitment to the EU bid. A large Turkish flag hung from
one of the windows of the four-story students’ residence where five of
the suspects lived. The curtains were drawn and the door was locked. A
man came out of the building and told journalists to go away, saying
the students were stressed and needed to study.

The German and one of the Turkish victims were found dead, and
the third victim died in a hospital. The German man, identified as
46-year-old Tilman Ekkehart Geske, had been living in Malatya since
2003. His family wanted to bury him in Malatya.

It was the latest in a string of attacks on Turkey’s Christian
community _ which comprises less than 1 percent of the 70-million
population.

In February 2006, a Turkish teenager shot a Catholic priest dead as
he prayed in his church, and two other Catholic priests were attacked
later that year. A November visit by Pope Benedict XVI was greeted by
several peaceful protests. Earlier this year, a suspected nationalist
killed Armenian Christian editor Hrant Dink. Authorities had vowed
to deal with extremist attacks after Dink’s murder, but Wednesday’s
assault showed the violence was not slowing down. "The killing is a
result of provocations in Turkey against minorities," said Orhan Kemal
Cengiz, a lawyer for one of the victims, Necati Aydin. C engiz said
he defended Aydin seven years ago, when he was arrested for selling
Bibles and accused of insulting Islam. Aydin spent a month in police
custody and took his case to the European Court of Human Rights.

The Vatican’s envoy to Turkey, Monsignor Antonio Lucibello,
told Italian daily Il Messaggero that he thought the attack was a
"sporadic event." "We will keep up our work the way we always have,
with confidence in the authorities and in the society. We are not
afraid, I’m not afraid," he said. Italian Premier Romano Prodi,
speaking from South Korea during a state visit, told the ANSA news
agency that while the attack "certainly does not help" Turkey’s EU bid,
"tragedies like this should not influence" the decision as there are
"political guidelines that are looking at long-term prospects."

German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Christian Democrat Party _ which
opposes Turkey’s bid to join the EU _ said the attacks showed the
country’s shortcomings in protecting religious freedoms. Turkey which
opened EU membership negotiations in 2005 is under intense pressure to
improve human rights and to expand religious freedoms and free speech.

EU MAKES IT AGAINST LAW TO CONDONE GENOCIDEDAVID CHARTER IN LUXEMBOURG

Times Online, UK
April 20 2007

Condoning or "grossly trivialising" genocide will become a crime
punishable by up to three years in prison across Europe, although
justice ministers failed to agree a specific ban on denying the
Holocaust yesterday.

Germany used its presidency of the EU to push through the first
Europe-wide race-hate laws, regarded by Berlin as an historic
obligation in the 50th anniversary year of the union created to
preserve peace and prosperity after the Second World War.

Under pressure from nations worried about freedom of speech, led by
Britain, Germany scaled back ambitions to replicate its strict laws
of Holocaust denial and dropped plans to outlaw the display of Nazi
symbols at an EU level.

All 27 EU nations will be obliged to criminalise "publicly
condoning, denying or grossly trivialising crimes of genocide, crimes
against humanity and war crimes" but the test for prosecution was
set deliberately high to secure agreement in Luxembourg. Cases will
succeed only where "the conduct is carried out in a manner likely to
incite violence or hatred".

The definition of genocide will be that set at the Nuremberg trials
and by the International Criminal Court, meaning that it will include
Nazi crimes and those in Rwanda and Yugoslavia but not the Armenian
genocide – a definition disputed by Turkey.

Poland, Slovenia and the Baltic states lobbied hard for – but failed
to win – the inclusion of a crime of denying, condoning or trivialising
atrocities committed in the name of Joseph Stalin in the new law.

They did, however, secure a pledge that the European Commission would
prepare a Green Paper on 20th-century genocidal crimes and carry out
a review within two years on whether denying these should come under
the scope of the race-hate law.

This led to accusations that the EU was trying to rewrite history.

Graham Watson, MEP, leader of the Liberal group in the European
Parliament, said: "The EU has no business legislating on history. We
should leave that to historians and individual member states.

"Attempts to harmonise EU laws on hate crimes are both illiberal and
nonsensical. [This] risks opening the floodgates on a plethora of
historical controversies . . . whose inclusion could pose a grave
threat to freedom of speech."

Franco Frattini, the European Justice Commissioner, said: "We have
proposed public hearings and I propose to involve all stakeholders,
including historians. The final result should be to improve public
awareness, especially for younger people and students. We do not
want to rewrite history. History is history." The EU-wide crime of
inciting violence or hatred against a person’s race, colour, religion,
descent or national or ethnic origin agreed yesterday will result in
conviction only where there is "intentional conduct".

Officials said there would be no change in British law, where there
are already penalties of up to seven years for inciting racial hatred
under the Religious and Racial Hatred Act of 2006, which was used as
a model for the final EU text.

Britain also pushed successfully to ensure that religious attacks
would be covered only if they were of a racist or xenophobic nature,
so that criticism of Islam or other faiths would not automatically
fall under the new measures.

ARMENIAN GENOCIDE: A LESSON TO BE LEARNED
By Geghard Arakelian

Valley Sun, CA
April 19 2007

Guest Column:

Every year some light is shed on the atrocities that took place from
1915 to 1917 in Armenia; what follows is community support, genocidal
awareness and bigotry.

To start off, the Armenian Genocide was executed by what was known
as the Young Turk Government. This government viewed the Armenian
population that lived in the Ottoman Empire as second class citizens.

Through deceit and with extreme prejudice death squads were sent out
to round up Armenians and murder them mercilessly. It is estimated
that more than one million Armenian men, women and children died due
to this process.

Expansionism and ethnocentrism are two of the most cited reasons
these actions were carried out by the Turks.

Unfortunately there are people who grow tiresome and even irate by the
coming and going of the protests and information offered on either
TV or in the schools of the Glendale Unified School District every
April 24, the date in 1915 when the attrocities began.

But why should anyone feel annoyed or angered when it comes to
remembering those who died unreasonable and unjust deaths so long
ago? The answer is actually very simple: there are bigots among us.

When I was attending Crescenta Valley High School an acquaintance of
mine at school explained to me that he was upset about the observance
of April 24. When asked why, he said all Armenians deserved to die
because there is no proof of what the Turks did and that Armenians
are normally liars.

Two years later a math teacher turned off the classroom TV as soon
as a slideshow of the genocide was played following the televised
bulletin. He claimed that every year the same information was,
"shoved down his throat" and that remembrance needs to be given to
countries that have experienced greater mass exterminations. A few
classmates even backed him.

The Armenian Genocide should be remembered as much as possible. Those
who believe that the Turkish government should take responsibility
for the crimes of the past have no intentions of taking spotlights
off people of other ethnic backgrounds.

Mass killings aren’t like "American Idol," they’re definitely not
popularity contests and the killings are not tallied from cell
phone texts.

Those skeptical about what happened tend to argue that Armenians
weren’t the only ones that were at one point dealt a brutal hand.

After all, there are the causalities of all the wars in history and
every country on this planet has lived through some dark days.

But one cannot take the Armenian Genocide and throw into a general
pile of genocides without a label. The genocide of 1915 was an evil
crime against man and not simply against Armenians.

But the cultural and ethnic tag of any massacre can tell us where,
when, how and why it happened.

Imagine if people professed that the Holocaust should not be recognized
– that all Jews should shut their mouths because people are force
fed the same information and have seen Schindler’s List a dozen
times. What then? Do we go about forgetting why Hitler provoked a
war of aggression?

No one is asking people to stop their day for what happened in 1915,
those who are raising awareness are only asking that people take a
small fraction of effort to remember what happened so that it may
never happen again.

Hitler once asked, "Who after all will remember the Armenian
Genocide?" I’ve answered this question many times before and in the
same fashion: certainly not those who don’t want it remembered.

This April 24 egos, prejudice and apathy have to be put aside. Don’t
think of it as a day that Armenians want to start a ruckus. Think of
it as a day to remember those who died and the reasons for why they
were killed.

Why should people learn how the wrong came about? Simple intuition
leads me to believe it will teach people how to prevent the same
wrong from happening again.

If the reader is still uncertain of all the above then answer this
question: If you and your family were about to be brutally murdered for
an unjust reason, wouldn’t you want your last cries to be remembered
for generations on end?

MORE HELP NEEDED IN AFRICA, ARMENIA
By Dianna L. Cagle
BR Editorial Assistant

Raleigh Biblical Recorder, NC
April 20 2007

CHARLOTTE – Africa and Armenia ministries flourish because of North
Carolina help, said key leaders March 31.

"You all are doing so many great things," said Asatur Nahapetyan,
general secretary to the Baptist Convention in Armenia. "Because of
your help, we became the biggest evangelical organization in Armenia."

A mission action conference during the 2007 North Carolina Baptist
Missions Conference and Baptist Men’s Convention highlighted North
Carolina’s work with Africa and Armenia.

The conference at Hickory Grove Baptist Church in Charlotte focused
on a theme of service. "Serve one another in love," the title of the
two-day conference March 30-31, came from Galatians 5:13.

Nahapetyan, along with Terry Rae, who serves as director for Africa
for Christ, encouraged participants to pray about going to their
respective regions. A couple of churches who had committed to projects
this summer in Armenia have backed out. Right now, only one association
is scheduled to make a trip.

Both Rae and Nahapetyan said partnerships with N.C. Baptists have
helped Baptist membership double in size, but also say support is
still needed to help with continued growth, training, evangelism, etc.

Rae created Africa for Christ to help plant churches in Africa. When
the organization started in 1990, they had no funds. Rae said he
approached six churches to supply one-sixth of a pastor’s salary for
four years. The first church planted grew quickly and has a building
completed by N.C. Baptists, Rae said.

Since the economy is different in each country, prices vary on what
is needed to support a church planter. North Carolina churches and
associations are currently supporting seven or eight church planters,
of the 72 serving in nine countries in Africa. Rae said $90 a month
supports a church planter in Ethiopia; $100 in Mozambique; $120
in Zambia; and $150 in Ghana and Malawi. South Africa is the most
expensive, costing more than $400 a month.

The first year is fully funded by Africa for Christ. Each year after
that, Rae said, supports drops by 25 percent, and the congregation
is expected to take up the slack. Most Africans do not handle money,
but barter for everything, Rae said.

"We don’t have to work hard to reach people for the gospel," Rae
said. "People are hungry. People have no security. The only security
they find is the Lord Jesus Christ."

Rae said 870 churches have been planted in the 17 years since Africa
for Christ began. The organization has seen only an eight percent
failure rate.

Some church planters are so dedicated to reaching the people that
they move to the fields for about six weeks a year. The people have
to protect their crops from monkeys and elephants, so the church
planter sleeps in the field too, leading Bible studies and witnessing
to the people.

For Armenia, Nahapetyan said that when North Carolina Baptists
began to help in 2003, 65 churches consisted of 2,000 members. But
membership has doubled to more than 4,000, and the number of churches
has increased to 135.

Jim Burchette, former president of North Carolina Baptist Men (NCBM),
said Armenia is in need of volunteers. One of the teams that had
committed to go has backed out.

"We have committed to those projects," Burchette said and urged people
to pray about going.

Nahapetyan credited N.C. Baptists with increasing the supply of
pastors and church planters in his country.

A three-story dormitory for the Theological Seminary of Armenia
was built with the help of N.C. Baptists, allowing 150 students to
complete theological degrees.

"We believe very strongly that not only do we need you but also you
need us," Nahapetyan said. "This partnership was and is for His glory."

In 2006, more than 80 volunteers were sent to work in Armenia holding
eye clinics, doing construction, helping with Vacation Bible Schools,
etc.

According to Nahapetyan, a Soviet encyclopedia said the Christian
sect was not considered a good denomination. But in 1991, when Armenia
declared her independence, previously held notions began to change.

"You changed our attitude in our society," said Nahapetyan. Because of
Baptist work in the country with medical missions and other ministries,
the reputation of Christians has changed.

"You will be very welcome," he said.

Currently, both Africa and Armenia need help in construction. A
dormitory is being built in Kenya to house students in a theological
school. In Armenia, churches are being erected as well as space for
Bible studies.

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

TEN ARRESTED OVER MURDERS AT CHRISTIAN PUBLISHING HOUSE IN TURKEY

Deutsche Presse-Agentur, Germany
April 19, 2007 Thursday 8:37 AM EST

DPA x Turkey Crime Media Ten arrested over murders at Christian
publishing house in Turkey Ankara Ten people have been arrested in
connection with the stabbing murders on Wednesday of three people at
a Christian publishing house in the Turkish town of Malatya.

Around five attackers raided the third floor office of Zirve Publishing
House on Wednesday afternoon binding the three victims, a German and
two Turks, by hand and foot and slashing their throats.

Two of the victims were declared dead at the scene, the third died
in hospital.

The three dead were named as Necati Aydin, 35, Ugur Yuksel, 32, and
German national Tilmann Geske, 43. Yuksel’s body was handed over to
relatives Wednesday night and was buried in his home town of Elazig
on Thursday.

A fourth man was being treated in a local hospital for injuries
sustained after either jumping out of a window or being thrown out.

Maltaya Governor Halil Ibrahim Dasoz told reporters on Thursday that
a large-scale police operation was underway but refused to speculate
whether the 10 arrested were members of any organized group.

Dasoz also refused to comment on speculation that the person who
fell from the window may in fact have been one of the attackers,
saying police had not had a chance to interview the man because he
was still receiving treatment in hospital. Dasoz said the 10 people
in custody had been arrested at various places around the city.

The stabbings are the latest in a string of attacks on Christians in
Turkey. In February 2006 a teenager shot dead an Italian priest in

the Black Sea city of Trabzon and earlier this year Turkish
nationalists killed the Turkish Armenian journalist Hrant Dink.

Isa Karatas, the speaker for the Union of Turkish Churches who knew
one of the victims, Necati Aydin, said it was very clear they were
killed for their beliefs.

"Of course they had been receiving threats," Karatas told the Turkish
Daily News. "Is it possible to evangelize in Turkey and not get
threatened? Their only guilt was believing in Jesus and being open
about it. They died for their faith."

EU SAYS NEW ANTI-RACISM RULES ARE "POLITICAL SIGNAL"

Deutsche Presse-Agentur, Germany
April 19, 2007 Thursday 4:38 PM EST

DPA POLITICS EU Justice Extremism 3RD ROUNDUP: EU says new anti-racism
rules are "political signal" Luxembourg The European Union on Thursday
agreed new rules to criminalize racism and xenophobia in the bloc,
but said that the long-debated measures were mainly of symbolic nature.

"Racism and xenophobia can only be combatted effectively inside
society," German Justice Minister Brigitte Zypries told reporters
after a meeting with her counterparts in Luxembourg.

"Criminal measures can only be supplementary, they can never be
sufficient in combatting racism and xenophobia in itself," said
Zypries whose country currently holds the rotating EU presidency.

Zypries said that the agreed piece of EU legislation, which is not
legally binding for the bloc’s members, was an "important political
signal" for the 27-nation union.

Under the new rules, EU countries would set jail terms of at least
one to three years for "publicly inciting to violence or hatred …

directed against a group of persons or a member of such a group
defined by reference to race, colour, religion, descent or national
or ethnic origin."

However, the legislation does not set any minimum fines. It also leaves
up to national courts to define what exactly constitutes incitement
to violence or hatred.

There will also be no Europe-wide ban on the use of Nazi symbols.

Frattini said that the new rules would fully respect the freedom
of expression.

"We are punishing concrete action, not any ideas, we are punishing
incitement to hatred in a concrete way or encouraging other people
to take concrete (xenophobic) action," Frattini said.

He also said that the European Commission would try to raise awareness
for the Stalinist atrocities by organizing public debates "on the
horrible crimes of the last century, … Nazi crimes, Stalinist
crimes."

However, the events still needed parliamentary approval in seven
EU countries.

The EU’s anti-racism rules – debated since 2001 – seemed at risk
after Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia had demanded making illegal
the condoning, denial or trivialization of crimes against humanity
committed under the Soviet regime led by Joseph Stalin.

Other EU states were opposed to the Baltic demands, arguing that they
did not legally recognize crimes committed under the Stalinist regime
or define major Stalin atrocities as genocide.

Zypries said the EU did not intend to decide on history but wanted
to create public awareness for crimes against humanity.

Germany views a common EU law on combatting racism and xenophobia as
a moral obligation.

The new rules which would also make denying the Holocaust – the mass
killing of Jews by Nazis and Nazi supporters – a crime in the EU

if the statement incites to violence or hatred, do not cover denying
the massacre of Armenians in World War I.

Turkey denies that the killing of up to one million Armenians
constituted genocide, putting their deaths down to ethnic strife,
disease and famine, and has prosecuted historians and journalists
for calling it genocide.

Under the rules, the denial of crimes of genocide, crimes against
humanity and war crimes will be punishable in the EU if these crimes
have been defined by international courts and if the statement incites
to hatred or violence.

Laws against denying the Holocaust already exist in Austria, Belgium,
France, Germany and Spain.

European racism watchdogs have said that the agreed text is "weak,"
adding that EU efforts were "without any substantial intent to provide
strengthened protections for those who experience racist crime and
violence in Europe."

KOCHARIAN DISAGREES WITH THE UNITED STATES: AMERICAN EXPERT SAYS THERE WON’T BE A COLOR REVOLUTION IN ARMENIA
by Yuri Simonian
Translated by Elena Leonova

Source: Nezavisimaya Gazeta, No. 81, April 19, 2007, p. 6
Agency WPS
What the Papers Say Part A (Russia)
April 20, 2007 Friday

An update on the political situation in Armenia; Armenian President
Robert Kocharian has completed a three-day official visit to Egypt.

The visit included a joint business forum, where the two sides signed
a free trade agreeement and some banking sector agreements. Kocharian
expressed strong disagreement with US policy in the Middle East.

Armenian President Robert Kocharian has completed a three-day official
visit to Egypt, where he met with President Hosni Mubarak, Prime
Minister Ahmed Nazif, parliamentary speaker Fath Surur, and Amr Musa,
secretary-general of the League of Arab States. The visit included
a joint business forum, where the two sides signed a free trade
agreeement and some banking sector agreements; Kocharian described
this as highly significant. "The level of Armenian-Egyptian economic
relations should correspond to the high level of bilateral political
cooperation," said Kocharian, adding a diplomatic remark to the
effect that the economies of Armenia and Egypt are complementary,
not obstacles to each other.

Kocharian made some clearer statements at his meeting with League
of Arab States envoys in Cairo. Firstly, he emphasized that Armenia
always supports the position of Arab states in all international
organizations. Secondly, he expressed strong disagreement with US
policy in the Middle East: "The Iraq problem should be resolved
by gradually reducing the foreign military presence, establishing
dialogue between ethnic groups within Iraq, and involving interested
countries in a peace regulation process." Kocharian said that the
war had also had an adverse impact on the Armenian community in Iraq.

According to Kocharian, the situation shows that the West’s hopes
have not been justified, and that simple solutions should not have
been applied to a country as complex as Iraq. Kocharian emphasized
that Armenia has not participated in military operations against
Baghdad, and its current mission in Iraq is humanitarian, consisting
of teachers and drivers.

Before leaving for Belgrade to take part in Nagorno-Karabakh
negotiations, Foreign Minister Vardan Oskanian described Kocharian’s
visit to Egypt as extremely important in both political and economic
terms: "Armenia is one of the few countries in the non-Arab world
which has signed a memorandum of understanding with the League of
Arab States."

Kocharian’s statements are unlikely to please Washington, which seems
to be at a loss regarding what to do about the expanding cracks
in relations with Yerevan. On the one hand, Armenia is annoyingly
recalcitrant on relations with Azerbaijan and Turkey; on the other,
there’s a powerful Armenian lobby group in America. Thus far, the
United States has chosen to use mild economic pressure and insistent
advice about ensuring that the May 12 election is democratic, along
with a veiled warning about cutting humanitarian aid.

Daniel Fried, Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian
Affairs, spoke out strongly last week. Radio Liberty reports that
at a press roundtable with foreign journalists in Washington, Fried
said: "We want to see an improvement in the Armenian parliamentary
elections. That is important. We don’t expect perfection. We don’t
expect to go from deeply flawed to perfect, but we do expect to see
substantial forward progress. That is important." He went on to say:
"Armenia, given the strength of the Armenian Diaspora and given
Armenia’s links to the West, frankly, you ought to be way ahead of
Georgia. But I ask you, are you in terms of democratic reforms?

Armenia should be doing better. It should be a leader. It should be
a prospering country."

The Yerevan government has been sensitive to hints from the United
States about the upcoming election; it is well aware that the color
revolutions in neighboring Georgia and Ukraine started straight
after elections. Richard Kirakosian, an American expert attending
a conference on elections in Yerevan, says that Washington will not
export democracy to Armenia, since it expects development there to be
stable. Kirakosian says: "Armenia has chosen evolutionary rather than
revolutionary processes, and the parliamentary election in May will
be an important democracy test. The US State Department has changed
its policy – it does not expect a perfect election, but it does expect
Armenia to progress and develo on the path of democratization.

In contrast to Ukraine or Kyrgyzstan, Arminia has proposed a good
version of stability, based on institutional development."

TURKEY PROBES SUSPECTED BACKERS BEHIND CHRISTIAN MURDERS

Agence France Presse — English
April 20, 2007 Friday 3:55 PM GMT

MALATYA, Turkey, April 20 2007

Turkish police investigated on Friday whether the assailants behind
the murders of three people at a Christian publishing house in eastern
Turkey had acted on their own.

Prosecutors in charge of the case were looking into whether there was
an illegal organization or a suspected mastermind behind the attack,
the Anatolia news agency reported.

Newspapers said the killers were believed to be members of a cell of
nationalist-Islamist fanatics recently set up in Malatya and similar
to one based in the northern city of Trabzon blamed for the murder
of Turkish-Armenian journalist Hrant Dink in January in Istanbul.

The press linked the massacre to other recent attacks against
minorities in Turkey, including the Dink assasination and the murder
last year in Trabzon of Italian Catholic priest Andrea Santoro.

Meanwhile the number of suspects detained over the killings rose
to 11 when police picked up a 19-year-old man in Istanbul, about
1,100 kilometers (680 miles) west of Malatya, a source close to the
investigation said.

The remaining suspects are also young men aged 19 and 20.

The brutality of the Malatya attack shocked the nation as Dr. Murat
Ugras, a spokesman for the Turgut Ozal Medical center, told the daily
Hurriyet how hospital surgeons strived without success to save Ugur
Yuksel, one of the three victims of the massacre.

"He had scores of knife cuts on his thighs, his testicles, his rectum
and his back," Ugras said. "His fingers were sliced to the bone.

"It is obvious that these wounds had been inflicted to torture him,"
he said.

The two others who were killed, Necati Aydin, pastor of Malatya’s tiny
Protestant community, and German Tilmann Geske, a Malatya resident
with his wife and three children since 2003, were also tortured,
press reports said.

The abuse lasted for three hours as the five men detained at the crime
scene interrogated the three on their missionary activities, they said.

"We tied their hands and feet and later gagged them," the mass daily
Sabah quoted one of the suspects as telling police.

"Emre slit their throats," said the youth, who was not named, referring
to Emre Gunaydin, the alleged leader of the gang, who is at the same
hospital in serious condition after jumping out of the publishers’
third floor office in a bid to flee police.

Gunaydin, 19, had reportedly made several visits beforehand to the
publishing house to gain the confidence of the people working there,
newspapers said.

The daily Radikal said the German was the first to die and the two
Turks were slaughtered only when police arrived at the door after
receiving a call from a member of the Protestant community who grew
suspicious when he found the office door locked.

The Catholic and Greek Orthodox Churches strongly condemned Wednesday’s
massacre.

"I think all Turkish people have condemned this mad act, the work of a
fanatical minority," Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, the pope’s right-hand
man and the Vatican’s secretary of state, was cited by the I-Media
agency as saying.

The Holy Synod of the Greek Orthodox Chuch also condemned the murders
as a "violation of religious freedoms".

Proselityzing is not banned in Muslim, secular Turkey, but is generally
viewed with suspicion.

The killings were strongly condemned by the international community,
prompting Germany, which holds the rotating presidency of the European
Union Turkey is seeking to join, to call on Ankara to take greater
measures to protect religious freedoms.

CHURCH LEADERS CONDEMN CHRISTIAN MURDERS IN TURKEY

Agence France Presse — English
April 20, 2007 Friday

The Catholic and Greek Orthodox churches on Friday condemned the
murders of three Christian evangelists in Turkey this week, calling
them a "mad act" and "a violation of religious freedoms".

"I think all Turkish people have condemned this mad act, the work of a
fanatical minority," Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, the pope’s right-hand
man and the Vatican’s secretary of state, was cited by the I-Media
agency as saying.

Bertone referred to the victims as "martyrs" but added that "we must
not ruin the results of the pope’s visit to Turkey (in December),
which led to a connection and an effort to understand Christianity
on the part of the majority of the Turkish population".

Meanwhile, a statement from the Holy Synod of the Greek Orthodox Chuch
on Friday condemned the murders as a "violation of religious freedoms".

It expressed hope that Turkish leaders’ remarks following the attacks
"would lead to guarantees for religious freedom in Turkey, a necessary
condition for the country’s democratisation and its entrance into
Europe".

The Greek Orthodox church is opposed to Turkey’s membership of the
European Union.

The synod also expressed its "anguish over the possible religious
and political motives" of the killings, noting that they followed
last year’s murder of a Catholic priest and January’s killing of a
Armenian journalist.

The three people killed in the eastern Turkish town of Malatya were
members of an evangelist Protestant community. According to several
accounts, they were tortured and interrogated about their missionary
activities before they died.

Ten murder suspects were questioned by police on Friday.
From: Baghdasarian

STEVEN B. DEROUNIAN, 89, JUDGE AND NASSAU EX-CONGRESSMAN
By Wolfgang Saxon

The New York Times
April 20, 2007 Friday
Late Edition – Final

Former Representative Steven B. Derounian, who represented Nassau
County in Congress from 1953 to 1965 and was later a judge, died on
Tuesday in Austin, Tex. He was 89 and moved to Austin, in his wife’s
home state, from Garden City in 1981.

His nephew, Paul D. Derounian of Manhattan, announced the death.

Mr. Derounian won national attention as a champion of personal and
public integrity when he sat on a 1950s subcommittee investigating quiz
show scandals and payola on the public airwaves. While in Congress,
he was an outspoken member of the House Ways and Means Committee,
among others.

Steven Boghos Derounian was born in Sofia, Bulgaria, to Armenian
parents who had fled persecution at the fall of the Ottoman Empire.

His family settled in Mineola, N.Y.

He worked his way through New York University, graduating in 1938,
and Fordham University Law School, graduating in 1942. There he was
editor of the Fordham Law Review. Four months after being admitted to
the bar he entered Officer Candidate School. He served in an infantry
division in Europe and was discharged in 1946 as a captain with a
Purple Heart and the Bronze Star with oak leaf cluster.

As a young lawyer, he was elected to the town board of North Hempstead
in 1948. He won election to the United States House of Representatives
in 1952 from what was then the Second Congressional District on the
North Shore of Long Island.

Easily re-elected for five more terms, Mr. Derounian, a Goldwater
Republican from a Rockefeller state, suffered a narrow defeat when
the Republicans lost Nassau County in the landslide victory of Lyndon
B. Johnson over Barry Goldwater in the 1964 presidential election.

His district was carried by Lester L. Wolff, a Democrat.

Mr. Derounian tried again in 1966, when he turned back a Republican
primary challenge from William B. Casey, who later became better known
as director of intelligence and head of the Central Intelligence Agency
in the 1980s. But in November 1966 he once again lost to Mr. Wolff,
the Democratic incumbent.

Mr. Derounian practiced law again, becoming a name partner in a
New York firm. In 1968 he was elected to the New York State Supreme
Court on Long Island; he retired from the bench in 1981. After moving
to Austin, he was of counsel to a firm there and taught law at the
University of Texas at Austin for several more years.

Mr. Derounian is survived by his wife of 60 years, Emily Ann Kennard
Derounian; two daughters, Ann Banks of Lexington, Ky., and Eleanor
Derounian of Austin; and a granddaughter.

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress