Month: April 2007

BBSNews, NC
April 28 2007

Azerbaijani Government Intensifies Media Crackdown Through ‘Criminal
Libel’ Charges

Azerbaijan: Opposition Editor Sentenced to Prison

HRW via BBSNews – New York, April 28, 2007 — The conviction of
Eynulla Fatullayev, the editor of Azerbaijan’s largest independent
newspaper, for "criminal libel" and "insult," underscores
deteriorating press freedoms in that country, Human Rights Watch said
today.

Map of Azerbaijan, 2005.

Photo Credit: The University of Texas at Austin.

For the map shown above in it’s full size, see "Map of Azerbaijan,
2005.

More maps are available in BBSNews Maps.

On April 20, Yasamal District Court in Baku convicted Fatullayev, the
outspoken editor-in-chief of the independent Realni Azerbaijan and
Gundelik Azerbaijan newspapers, for having committed "criminal libel"
and "insult." The charges were based on an internet posting that the
prosecution attributed to him, which blamed Azerbaijanis for a 1992
massacre in Nagorno-Karabakh. Fatullayev denied writing the posting,
but was sentenced to 30 months in prison.

The same day, unknown assailants attacked one of Fatullayev’s
colleagues at Realni Azerbaijan, Uzeyir Jafarov, who sustained
serious injuries. Fatullayev is the fifth journalist to be imprisoned
in Azerbaijan in the last 10 months.

"Fatullayev’s prosecution was politically motivated, and he should be
immediately released from custody," said Holly Cartner, Europe and
Central Asia director at Human Rights Watch. "The steady rise of
politically motivated defamation charges and violent attacks against
critical journalists is clearly aimed at silencing critical voices in
Azerbaijan."

In its letter to Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliev on February 9,
Human Rights Watch documented numerous cases of violence and criminal
defamation charges against journalists in Azerbaijan, including
Fatullayev. Human Rights Watch urged the president to take steps to
end impunity for such violence, and ensure that Azerbaijan complies
with its international obligations on freedom of expression and the
press.

Fatullayev’s conviction comes just two weeks after the same court
fined him 10,000 Azeri manats (about US$12,000) for the same offense
in a civil claim brought by Tatiana Chaladze, head of the Azeri
Center for Protection of Refugees and Displaced Persons. Chaladze
also initiated the criminal libel and insult charges against
Fatullayev.

The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe has called
for Azerbaijan to abolish the offense of criminal libel. Human Rights
Watch echoed this call in February in its letter to President Aliev.

Fatullayev’s conviction was based on a statement attributed to him
that was posted to the website Azeritricolor. The statement blamed
Azerbaijanis for the 1992 massacre in the village of Khojali in
Nagorno- Karabakh. Chaladze alleged that the statement defamed the
village’s residents.

According to Azerbaijani official statistics, more than 600 people
were killed on February 25, 1992, when ethnic Armenian forces stormed
the predominantly Azeri town of Khojali. Fatullayev denies making the
remark and maintains that it was a set-up intended to put him behind
bars. The remark was apparently linked to an article Fatullayev had
published in 2005, "Karabakh Diary," in which he expressed the view
that Armenian forces maintained a civilian corridor for Azeri
villagers to flee Khojali.

Fatullayev wrote the 2005 article while working as an investigative
journalist for the newspaper Monitor, where he worked until the
murder of his close friend, Monitor editor Elmar Huseynov, in March
2005. Huseynov’s murder remains unsolved. Fatullayev’s Realni
Azerbaijan newspaper is the successor to Monitor, which closed after
Huseynov’s murder.

Fatullayev’s lawyer told Human Rights Watch that, although his
client’s conviction was partially based on statements made in the
2005 article about the Khojali massacre, the article itself was not
included in the evidence against him. Fatullayev plans to appeal his
conviction.

"As a member of the UN’s Human Rights Council, Azerbaijan should be
exemplary in its protection of fundamental human rights like freedom
of expression," said Cartner. "Instead, the authorities have launched
a series of politically motivated flawed trials against critical
journalists, fueling an atmosphere of fear and hostility for the
independent and opposition media."

Just hours after Fatullayev’s conviction on April 20, unknown
assailants brutally beat Fatullayev’s colleague, Realni Azerbaijan
journalist Uzeyir Jafarov. Jafarov told Human Rights Watch that as he
left the Realni Azerbaijan office around 11:45 p.m., two people
attacked him from behind and hit him several times on the head. The
assailants fled only after Jafarov’s colleagues responded to his
calls for help. Jafarov was hospitalized for head trauma and remains
in the hospital. He claimed to have seen one of the assailants in the
court room at Fatullayev’s hearing earlier in the day.

"Attacks on journalists and the lack of accountability for these
crimes are crushing freedom of the press and expression in
Azerbaijan," said Cartner. "If this crackdown on the media continues,
it will be nearly impossible for Azerbaijan to hold free and fair
presidential elections next year."

Background

Eynulla Fatullayev is known for his frequent criticism of Azeri
officials and for exposing instances of government corruption.

Pressure on Fatullayev to stop his journalism had been building for
over a year. Fatullayev was forced to suspend publication of his
newspapers on October 1, after his father was kidnapped. The
kidnappers threatened to kill both Fatullayev and his father if he
continued publishing the newspapers. The editor had to stop
publication of the paper in exchange for his father’s release.

Fatullayev renewed publishing only two months later, but acknowledged
that he did so at his own peril, since the kidnappers remained at
large.

In March, after publishing an article accusing the Azeri authorities
of obstructing the investigation into the murder of Monitor editor
Elmar Huseinov, Fatullayev reported death threats against him and his
family. The Azeri authorities refused to investigate these claims or
offer to protect Fatullayev.

Soon after the statement attributed to Fatullayev about the Khojali
massacre began to circulate on the internet in February, protestors
organized several rallies in front of the Realni Azerbaijan office
and threw eggs and stones at the office windows. Police did nothing
to stop the protestors.

In recent months, high-ranking state officials have initiated
criminal defamation charges against Fatullayev. In September,
Fatullayev was handed a two-year suspended sentence and forced to pay
damages in a criminal libel case brought by Interior Minister Ramil
Usubov. Usubov has brought similar charges against numerous other
independent journalists and newspapers.

The conviction of Fatullayev comes amid the Azerbaijani government’s
growing hostility toward independent and opposition media, which
raises serious concerns about the future of independent media and the
security of journalists in the country. Violence and the threat of
violence against journalists have become frequent in Azerbaijan, and
often such crimes are committed with impunity. A dramatic increase in
defamation charges brought against journalists by state officials has
further contributed to the deteriorating environment for freedom of
expression.

PlaybillArts, NY
April 28 2007

Q & A: Violinist Sergey Khachatryan

28 Apr 2007

The remarkable 22-year-old violinist, set to make his New York
recital debut on April 30 at Zankel Hall, talks about his connection
to the music of Shostakovich and Khachaturian and his love of fast
cars.

Following his recent debut with the New York Philharmonic and a
return engagement with the Cleveland Orchestra, the young Armenian
violinist Sergey Khachatryan returns to the Big Apple at the end of
April to make his New York recital debut. Joined by his frequent
recital partner (and sister) Lusine Khachatryan, Sergey will play two
personal favorites, sonatas for violin and piano by Cesar Franck and
Dmitri Shostakovich. The recital, on Monday, April 30 at Carnegie
Hall’s Zankel Hall, will also feature a touchstone work, the Chaconne
in D minor from Bach’s Partita No. 2 for unaccompanied violin. The
Khachatryan siblings have plans to record the Franck and Shostakovich
Sonatas later this season, for future release on the Naïve label.

Sergey Khachatryan

photo by Philippe Gontier/Naïve

Khachatryan made his American recital debut in September 2003, and a
critic for The Kansas City Star called it "some of the most beautiful
violin playing I’ve heard in a very long time." The review went on to
say, "From the first notes of Beethoven’s ‘Spring’ Sonata for violin
and piano … Khachatryan had us listening on the edges of our seats
… [He] plays with the suavity of a snake charmer. Yet there’s
nothing slick about him." The New York Times was enthusiastic about
his recent Philharmonic debut, for which he played the Sibelius
Concerto: "He is trim and boyish, but he plays with assurance, depth,
and a flexible, strikingly beautiful tone … technique to spare and
a feeling for the music’s passions."

A 2004 recital by the Khachatryan siblings in Edinburgh prompted this
response in The Scotsman: "The two frequently perform together, and
have a perfect awareness of the balance between their two
instruments, subtly enhancing each other’s performance."

Just after the April 30 recital, the 22-year-old Sergey heads north
for another important debut, playing Shostakovich Violin Concerto No.

1 with the Boston Symphony Orchestra under the direction of Bernard
Haitink (May 3-5).

Looking further ahead, Khachatryan will play Beethoven’s Violin
Concerto with the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra under Riccardo Chailly
(May 31-June 2) and with the same orchestra on tour in Paris (June
11) and at the BBC Proms in London (September 5). He performs the
Shostakovich Concerto No. 1 with Valery Gergiev and the Mariinsky
Orchestra at the Mikkeli Festival in Finland (July 1) and returns to
the U.S. later this summer, for performances of Prokofiev’s Violin
Concerto No. 2 with the Los Angeles Philharmonic at the Hollywood
Bowl.

In the interview below, Sergey Khachatryan discusses, among other
things, his deep connection with Shostakovich’s music and his love of
fast cars.

You just had an important debut here with the New York Philharmonic
and you’ll be back in April for your New York recital debut. How are
you enjoying your time in New York City?

Sergey Khachatryan: My debut with the New York Philharmonic in
February was only my second time in New York City. The last time was
in the summer when I had my Mostly Mozart debut. Of course it’s a
great city! Maybe not the best city for me to live in, but for a
visitor really a crazy city! It never sleeps – there’s so much
happening here. I’ve been staying with friends, which is what I
prefer to do when I travel, as it’s a lot more fun than staying at
hotels. While I was in town this time I went to the Blue Note to hear
some Brazilian jazz and it was lots of fun. Having a busy nightlife
is tough when you have concerts to perform. I don’t do much else on
days that I give concerts.

You’re increasingly appearing in concert halls across the U.S., but
have you already played in South America? There’s definitely a lot of
exciting classical music activity going on down there.

Actually, I’ve played in Ecuador twice and also in Brazil. I stayed
at the Copacabana Hotel on the famous beach in Rio. Unfortunately the
weather wasn’t so great – lots of rain – but still, we went twice to
swim (I was with my father). There were great waves and we were
enjoying doing some body surfing!

Tell us about your upcoming program at Carnegie Hall. How did you
select this particular repertoire?

The first thing I can say is that two of these works – the Bach
Chaconne and the Franck Sonata – have been among my favorites works
since I was born. I love Bach, especially the solo Sonatas and
Partitas. He’s a composer who stays with you no matter how much you
change as a person. His music is really sacred, and when you play
Bach it really cleans your soul and makes you feel more pure. I feel
this personally when I play his music, especially the Chaconne. I
think it makes a wonderful beginning for a recital.

Overall, it’s a program built on contrasts, between Bach and his
Baroque aspects and the Romantic elements in Franck’s work. My sister
and I have played the Franck Sonata frequently and it’s one of his
most wonderful pieces. It was written at the time of Romanticism in
music, but there are hints of impressionism in it too.

And the Shostakovich Sonata?

Well, Shostakovich is my favorite composer in general. Lusine and I
discovered the sonata together last season – we didn’t know it
before. Each time we’ve played it my opinion of it has grown. The
performance at Carnegie will be only the fourth time we’ve played it,
but still, we already feel very deeply connected to this music. We
feel like we’ve been playing it for many years!

What is it about Shostakovich that you connect with so deeply?

When I was playing in the finals of the Queen Elizabeth Competition I
chose to play Shostakovich’s First Concerto. During rehearsal there
was a man in the hall, and he came to me afterwards and said to me,
"Do you know why he feels so near to your heart?" I said no. He said
it has something to do with my country – with Armenia’s tragic
history, especially the massacre in 1915. It remains in our genes.

Shostakovich’s music has tragedy in its soul. It’s the tragedy of
humanity that keeps me near to him. And dramatic music is nearer to
my soul.

Shostakovich is also on the program for your Boston Symphony
Orchestra debut in May.

Yes, it’s my first time playing with the orchestra as well as the
first time I’ve worked with Bernard Haitink and I’ll be doing the
First Concerto. We hadn’t met before but he apparently listened to a
live broadcast of me playing Shostakovich – actually, a TV broadcast
from the Proms last year – and he immediately requested me to play!

And you’ll be in Los Angeles for the first time this summer.

Yes, I’ll be playing with the Los Angeles Philharmonic at the
Hollywood Bowl this summer. We have some great friends there and I’m
looking forward to it. Although an outdoor performance where people
are having a picnic before the concert isn’t necessarily the best
environment to listen deeply to classical music, it’s good for people
of a younger generation to feel more comfortable about coming.

Some people were surprised by the pairing on your debut release for
Naïve. The Sibelius Concerto is such a warhorse, whereas the
Khachaturian Concerto is more of a rarity. Were you using the
attention that the Sibelius often receives to shed some light on a
composer from your home country?

Well, Khachaturian is really my composer. As an Armenian he is very
near to me and in my blood. I feel so free because I understand the
emotion, and that emotion has to be right to really connect with his
work. There are specific details from Armenian folk music in his
works that are hard for a non-Armenian to understand. This is music
that I feel deeply and that I really adore – especially the second
movement.

How do you feel about playing contemporary music?

I’ve not played much contemporary music yet, but this fall I will
play the first piece written for me. It’s by Arthur Aharonyan, who
lives in Paris and recently won a big composing competition. He’s a
very interesting composer and I’ll play his new concerto in November
in Nice.

How will he approach the writing of this piece? Will you be
collaborating with him from the outset?

Yes, we’ll be working closely on the piece. He showed me some of the
details already and I’ve freed up time in October to prepare it. I’ll
never be able to work with Shostakovich, but it’s great to have this
opportunity to work with a living composer. To have the composer’s
thoughts and ideas there to help guide you is a wonderful thing.

Perhaps I’ll even record the piece.

After the opening night of your recent performances with the New York
Philharmonic there were many young girls in the green room afterwards
asking for an autograph – and even a hug or a kiss. Does this happen
all the time at your concerts?

Well, there are unfortunately not enough young people at many of my
concerts, but some of the young ones who are there often come back to
say hi afterwards. Thankfully, in Armenia there’s a lot of interest
in classical music from the younger generation, and I go to the
capital every year to play. It’s important for me, and it’s my duty
to go to my country to share with them some of the success I’ve
achieved – to give part of it back to them. Whenever I’m playing it’s
a special occasion. The young people make up 50% of the hall and many
are musicians from the conservatory. They are even starting to make
shows especially for young people. I think concerts at the university
are very important. Curious students definitely might have an
interest in classical music that we can connect with. For me it’s
easier because I’m young: since I have more direct contact with them
they feel more connected than if they see someone from an older
generation.

What do you do when you’re not making music?

Cars are my hobby – my second life actually! I’ll tell you something
about myself: I’m really two persons! The first is in the music, my
"real" self. The other part is really a "normal" person. And this is
the part that really loves cars. I tune them myself, and car tuning –
as well as designing – is my big hobby. I have two cars and I’ve
designed the spoilers for them! My new car is an A-4 Audi, with a
V8/4.3 liter engine. It’s fast.

99.html

–Boundary_(ID_DooPsHTyL2Zwbu5ygm9UsQ)–

Journalists’ rights worsen in Azerbaijan, says HRW

Daily Times, Pakistan
April 28 2007

WASHINGTON: Press freedom is deteriorating in Azerbaijan with five
journalists jailed in the past 10 months, Human Rights Watch warned,
citing a new case of an editor jailed for libel and "insult."

"The steady rise of politically motivated defamation charges and
violent attacks against critical journalists is clearly aimed
at silencing critical voices in Azerbaijan," said Holly Cartner,
the group’s director for Europe and Central Asia, in a statement
Thursday. A court in Baku on April 20 jailed Eynulla Fatullayev,
editor of the independent newspapers Realni Azerbaijan and Gundelik
Azerbaijan, for "criminal libel" and "insult," the New York-based group
(HRW) said.

Fatullayev denied the charges, which were based on an Internet
posting in which he was alleged to have blamed Azerbaijanis for a
1992 massacre in a village in Nagorno-Karabakh, a region disputed
by Armenia and Azerbaijan. The two countries fought a war over the
territory in the early 1990s that claimed an estimated 35,000 lives
and caused about a million people on both sides to flee their homes.

The person bringing the charges "alleged that the statement defamed
the village’s residents." "Fatullayev’s prosecution was politically
motivated, and he should be immediately released from custody," Cartner
said. The journalist is known for his criticism of Azeri officials and
for exposing government corruption. Fatullayev is the fifth journalist
to be imprisoned in Azerbaijan in the last 10 months, HRW said.

Ankara slams Canadian PM for ‘genocide’ expression

Today’s Zaman, Turkey
April 28 2007

The Turkish capital expressed regret over a recent statement by
Canada’s Prime Minister Stephen Harper — in which he referred to
the World War I era killings of Anatolian Armenians as "genocide" —
describing Harper’s remark as "unacceptable, unjust and incompatible"
with Turkey’s and Canada’s relations "as friends and allies."

The Foreign Ministry in a written statement released late on Thursday
reiterated Turkey’s firm stance, sticking to its earlier call to
Yerevan for the establishment of a joint commission of Turkish and
Armenian historians and experts to study Armenian allegations of
genocide, noting that such commission would be open to all concerned
and competent historians regardless of their nationality. "We regret
Prime Minister Harper’s statement, which will contribute neither
to the promotion of Turkish-Canadian relations, nor to a possible
rapprochement between Turkey and Armenia. We believe that Mr. Harper
continues to be misled, and suggest that he encourages competent
Canadian historians into studying the events of 1915 on a proper
basis," the ministry said.

In a statement released for April 24, which Armenians claim marks
the anniversary of the beginning of a systematic genocide campaign at
the hands of the late Ottoman Empire, Harper was quoted as saying by
Armenian media: "Today we recall the horrible losses of 1915 in the
Ottoman Empire, particularly the terrible tragedy of the Armenian
nation. Last year I reminded all Canadians that both Houses of
Parliament have adopted resolutions recognizing the first genocide
of the 20th century."

28.04.2007

Today’s Zaman Ankara

UCLA Library Receives National Endowment for the Humanities Grant for
Near Eastern Manuscript Project

UC Los Angeles, CA
April 28 2007

The National Endowment for the Humanities has awarded the UCLA Library
a grant for a project to catalog, digitize and provide online access
to the Caro Minasian Collection of Near Eastern manuscripts.

The collection forms a rich repository of Islamic learning and contains
more than 1,500 manuscripts in Arabic and Persian dating from the 14th
to the 19th centuries on astronomy, government, history, language and
grammar, law, literature, philosophy, religious practice, and science.

The grant, in the amount of $346,117, was awarded as part of the NEH
Preservation and Access program, which supports efforts to preserve
and provide intellectual access to humanities collections. These
collections may include books, journals, newspapers, manuscript and
archival materials, maps, still and moving images, sound recordings,
and objects of art and material culture.

"We are honored that the National Endowment for the Humanities
has chosen to fund this important project," said UCLA University
Librarian Gary E. Strong. "The materials in the Minasian Collection
are extraordinary for their intellectual content and their importance
to scholarly research, and this project also supports our efforts,
in partnership with an international group of institutions, to provide
coordinated access to Near Eastern manuscript collections worldwide."

"The Minasian Collection is one of the most important collections of
Arabic and Persian manuscripts of its kind, certainly in the U.S.,
if not internationally," said Hossein Ziai, UCLA director of Iranian
studies and professor of Iranian and Islamic studies. "Much of the
content of its manuscripts has never been systematically studied;
thus, access to such a unique collection will undoubtedly lead to
groundbreaking scholarship."

The project has four components, the first of which will involve
creating metadata records for all works in the collection. These
records will form the basis for traditional catalog records and
archival finding aids; more importantly, they will facilitate the
sharing of data and image files and will allow for annotation,
transcription and other scholarly activities.

The second component will entail digitizing more than 300 of the most
significant manuscripts in the collection. Totaling some 55,000 pages,
these digitized manuscripts, together with those in the collection
that had been digitized previously, will create a collection of 470
digitized manuscripts, totaling approximately 92,000 pages. This
digital collection will support preservation of and access to these
rare manuscripts and will also serve as a model for future digitization
projects.

The project’s third component will be to create a search-and-retrieval
system that supports discovery, display and navigation by users in
English, as well as Arabic and Persian, the principal vernacular
languages represented in the collection. Future plans include
development of a virtual research environment in which scholars can
manipulate, annotate, transcribe and share manuscripts and information
about the manuscripts in non-Roman scripts and which also would allow
these scholarly activities to be captured, preserved and made available
for ongoing exchange.

For the final component, project managers will meet with scholars,
archivists and librarians from other institutions with major Near
Eastern manuscript collections to plan a service to provide access
to Near Eastern manuscript collections worldwide.

About the UCLA Library and the Minasian Collection

Ranked among the top 10 research libraries in the U.S., the UCLA
Library system is a campuswide network of libraries serving programs
of study and research in many fields. Its collections encompass
more than eight million volumes, as well as archives, audiovisual
materials, corporate reports, government publications, microforms,
technical reports and other scholarly resources. Nearly 80,000 serial
titles are received regularly. The Library also provides access to a
growing collection of digital resources, including reference works,
electronic journals and other full-text titles and images.

The Minasian Collection is housed in the Charles E. Young Research
Library Department of Special Collections, recognized as one of the
country’s top collections of primary resources in the humanities and
social sciences. Its holdings encompass rare books and pamphlets from
the 15th through the 20th centuries; extensive manuscript holdings;
drawings, including original architectural drawings; early maps and
atlases; and photographs, prints and paintings. Collections also
contain artifacts, audiotape and videotape recordings, oral history
transcripts, phonograph records, postcards, and posters.

The Minasian Collection was created by Caro Minasian, an Armenian
physician from Isfahân, Iran, who began collecting in 1935. His
collection reflects the interests of the middle-class, educated
inhabitants of Isfahân, whose families at the time he collected these
works had preserved them as texts that represented the scholastic
milieu of the post-classical period.

Acquired by UCLA in 1968, the Minasian Collection includes manuscript
materials in Arabic, Persian, Armenian, Ottoman Turkish and Urdu. The
Arabic and Persian manuscripts, which this project focuses on,
represent approximately two-thirds of the collection. A separate
project to promote access to the Turkish collection is underway,
and the Library hopes to launch similar projects focusing on the
Armenian and other materials.

About the National Endowment for the Humanities

Created in 1965 as an independent federal agency, the National
Endowment for the Humanities supports learning in history, literature,
philosophy and other areas of the humanities. NEH grants enrich
classroom learning, create and preserve knowledge, and bring ideas
to life through public television, radio, new technologies, museum
exhibitions and programs in libraries and other community places.

-UCLA-

.asp?RelNum=7894

–Boundary_(ID_aVJssNWvm0NY3/sE7 1fM0Q)–

Inside Iran today
By Praful Bidwai

The News – International, Pakistan
April 28 2007

The writer, a former newspaper editor, is a researcher and peace and
human-rights activist based in Delhi

The Iranian Artists’ Forum is the kind of institution any country
would be proud of — a lively, pulsating place, with auditoria,
seminar rooms and exhibition halls, at which exciting events in
Iran’s flourishing art world happen. It’s similar to Lahore’s Alhamra
complex, only more liberal, multicultural and plural. The Artists’
Forum exudes freedom and creativity. Not many developing countries
have a comparable arts complex.

The Forum is a redesigned military barracks located right next door
to the long-closed down United States embassy. Hundreds of young
people ‘hang out’ at the place. Its ground-floor coffee shop is fully
vegetarian and serves ‘chapatti bread’, besides sandwiches, pizzas,
soft drinks and teas (including ayurvedic tea). Why, it even offers
its own versions of thalis: "Gita Set" and "Lotus Set".

It’s tragic, therefore, that the Forum is becoming a target of
censorship. Last week, it hosted the release of a special issue of a
remarkable magazine "International Gallerie", published from Mumbai,
devoted to Iran’s contemporary culture. But its management turned
down requests to hold a vocal music performance as part of the event.
It also disallowed the display of some posters based on the issue.

"It’s not that the Forum management favours censorship", said an art
critic, who insisted on anonymity. (Nobody wants to be quoted in
Iran for fear of harassment). "But it’s being closely watched. If
the management is to keep the institution running, it must not
say anything critical of the regime – or risk closure. It ends up
practising self-censorship."

Opponents of self-censorship were offered an object lesson last week.
The authorities closed down the cheerful "Cafe 78", located in Aban
Street. "Cafe 78" was the favourite haunt of radical students, both
female and male, who would chat animatedly about avant-garde art,
music, culture, Che Guevara, politics, whatever… As the conversation
progressed, and modern Iranian music blared, veils would recede by
inches (all women must wear headscarves in public), and romantic
words would be discreetly exchanged.

"Cafe 78"’s closure, like the Forum’s self-censorship, is part of
a new drive by Iran’s authorities to regiment individual conduct.
There’s a nationwide campaign against the wearing of tight clothes
and skimpy headscarves by women. This is customary at the beginning
of summer, when hemlines become shorter. Yet, the drive has generated
great fear because it follows countless other repressive measures.
These include detention of dozens of feminists for collecting one
million signatures demanding changes in the constitution in favour
of gender equality. Schoolteachers have been arrested for agitating
for higher pay.

Even worse have been the purges of secular teachers from the
universities and closure of more than 110 pro-reform periodicals over
six years. The repression isn’t a response to a particular threat.
"It’s part of a ‘regime maintenance’ strategy ," says a political
scientist. "Iran’s hardliners don’t want people, especially
the youth, to feel free. They know that young Iranians loathe
regimentation. They take recourse to the constitution’s ‘Islamic’
values and vilayat-e-faqih (Guardianship of the Islamic Jurists)
to enforce discipline."

True, this discipline isn’t extreme. Iran is no "Taliban Lite" – a
Saudi Arabia or Afghanistan. Iran is sufism’s homeland. Its Islam is
more about ritual than rigid doctrine. Iranians interact closely with
the west through their million-plus expatriates, the Internet, and
consumption of mass culture, including Hollywood, jeans and fast food.

The mismatch between "regime maintenance" and popular aspirations to
freedom produces duality, even hypocrisy. Public debate is banned on
"sensitive" subjects, including nuclear issues. But people discuss
these in classrooms, buses, taxis, homes, and cafes. Women "jump"
communications barriers ingeniously – through dummy websites and
blogs. (Iran has the world’s third highest number of blogs.)

Officially, liquor is a strict no-no. But it flows like water in
Iran’s living rooms. The Armenian minority is allowed to make wine,
beer and spirits. Specially established distilleries in neighbouring
countries cater to Iran’s thirst for alcohol. Iran is one of the few
West Asian countries which holds relatively free and fair elections.
But Iran’s democracy is deeply flawed, with little freedom of political
association. Parties are registered only if they conform to Islamic
tenets. Freedom in this deeply paradoxical society has had periodic
ups and downs. Today, it’s on a downward trajectory.

Three factors will influence Iran’s short-term evolution: President
Mahmoud Ahmedinejad’s growing unpopularity; the ability of reformists
to counter the government’s use of the current slogan, "Islam and the
nation"; and Iran’s confrontation with the west, in particular, the
US. Ahmedinejad recently suffered several setbacks, including defeat
of his nominees in local elections. His populist handouts have blown
up the special fund financed by Iran’s oil sales, estimated at $40
billion. He’s increasingly seen as a politician given to intemperate
statements. He’s not fully trusted by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali
Khamenei.

If he’s reined in by the Establishment – as happened during the recent
British sailors’ detention and release – that will strengthen the
reformists. Reformists, including former presidents Mohammed Khatami
and Ali Akbar Hashmi Rafsanjani, could still exercise a restraining
influence. The reformists’ success will critically depend on preventing
nationalism from being used as a self-legitimising platform by the
hardliners. Britain’s recent adventurism on the sailors issue played
straight into their hands. They drummed up national pride and won a
public relations victory. Britain had to open clandestine talks with
Tehran and make a deal.

Much will also depend on how the west deals with Iran’s nuclear
programme. The US is implacably hostile towards Iran, which it wrongly
sees as an "Axis of Evil" state supporting terrorism. In fact, Iran
is anti-Al Qaeda and has behaved with restraint in Shia-majority Iraq
despite its considerable influence there. Iran feels humiliated at
the sanctions imposed on it for running a nuclear programme which is
legitimate – despite relatively minor infractions of International
Atomic Energy Agency rules.

The more Iran is cornered over its nuclear activities, the more
it’ll be tempted to be defiant – and made boastful claims about its
uranium enrichment prowess. Iran is many years away from enriching
enough uranium for a bomb. Its facilities for uranium conversion into
hexafluoride (Natanz) and its centrifuge plant (Isfahan) are under
IAEA safeguard and cannot be used for weapons purposes. Contrary
to the claim that it has installed 3,000 centrifuges, the IAEA says
it has about 1,300 primitive machines. It’s unlikely that Iran has
stabilised these delicate centrifuges, which rotate at extremely high
speeds like 1,000 revolutions per second. (Even India has had serious
difficulties in stabilising centrifuges.)

More important, the Natanz facility produces gas which is probably
too impure to lead to enrichment. IAEA director-general Mohammed
ElBaradei discounts Iran’s claim to "industrial-scale" enrichment and
says "Iran is still at the beginning stages". This offers the US, UK,
France and Germany an opportunity to negotiate nuclear restraint with
Iran while not denying its right to enrichment for peaceful purposes.
Iran is willing to talk -without suspending enrichment. A way out
is possible. But the US must muster the will to explore it while
abandoning ill-conceived plans to attack Iran.

Much of what happens to and in Iran will depend on the US – just as
in 1953, when it toppled Iran’s first elected leader, and in 1979,
when it courted the Revolution’s hostility by backing the Shah.

Coloroso speaks on genocide
By Graeme Morton, Calgary Herald

The Calgary Herald (Alberta)
April 28, 2007 Saturday
Final Edition

Noted author Barbara Coloroso will talk Monday at the Calgary Jewish
Community Centre, 1607 90th Ave. S.W.

The Colorado-based Coloroso will be speaking on her latest book,
Extraordinary Evil: A Brief History of Genocide.

While the topic seems a sizable leap from her previous work on
parenting issues and schoolyard bullying, the former Catholic nun
and educator begs to differ.

"It’s a short walk from contempt for another human person to a hate
crime and eventually to an ideology of hate in a government that
allows us to separate other humans from our moral concern," she said.

Coloroso has worked with orphans in Rwanda from the 1994 genocide
that killed an estimated 800,000. Her book also looks at the Holocaust
as well as the mass killings of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire from
1915 to 1917.

"This was a difficult book to write. But if we can’t begin to look at
how we treat one another, it will happen again and again and again,"
she said.

Coloroso says religion has played a role in every genocide.

"Religion can be a vessel or a tomb," she says. "It can be a tool for
us to keep looking at one another as an ‘I’ and a ‘thou’ or a ‘we.’
As long as we look at each other as sacred human beings, it’s hard
for me to hurt you. But once I make you an ‘it,’ I can do anything
to you and not feel any shame or compassion."

The event is at 7 p.m. with tickets $15 in advance or $20 at the door,
space permitting. Call 253-8600 for information.

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

The Globe and Mail (Canada)
April 28, 2007 Saturday

‘Democra-tators’ aim at journalists;
Western war reporters hog the glory, but, as Marina Jimenez writes,
local watchdogs face the greatest risk

by Marina Jimenez

Saleem Samad, a genial refugee from Bangladesh, spends his days
nabbing shoplifters and shushing disorderly customers as a security
guard at a Chapters bookstore. But before he arrived in Toronto four
years ago Mr. Samad, 55, was leading a very different kind of life.

A prominent journalist, Mr. Samad was forced to spend 55 days in a
Dhaka prison, simply for having the audacity to criticize his own
government.

The annual World Press Freedom Day, to be marked this Thursday,
honours journalists who brave death or jail in pursuit of the truth.

Yet, all too often, the headlines focus on international stars such as
Daniel Pearl, the Wall Street Journal reporter kidnapped and killed by
extremists in Pakistan. In fact, far more tortured or slain journalists
are not war correspondents but locals such as Mr. Samad, attacked at
home or in their newsrooms, often by agents of their own governments.

Often those governments are, like that of Bangladesh, nominally
democratic, even members of the Commonwealth. But they are led by
what Joel Simon of New York’s Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ)
calls "democra-tators," elected leaders with authoritarian streaks
such as Vladimir Putin in Russia and Hugo Chavez in Venezuela.

These leaders have a deep mistrust for the institutions that limit
their power, such as the judiciary and the press. Three journalists
were killed in Russia last year, including Anna Politkovskaya,
a Chechnya expert, last October.

In the case of Mr. Samad, he was behind bars from late November of
2002 until mid-January in 2003, and endured torture at the hands
of military intelligence officers. When he asked his jailors what
crime he had committed, they said he had smeared Bangladesh’s good
reputation with his exposes on Islamic terrorism, published locally
and internationally, including in Time.

"They didn’t like my writings on how the Bengali government was
harbouring terrorists and jihadists," he says. "They wanted to know
why I was trying to undermine a democratic government. They were
trying to silence me."

Mr. Samad was lucky. He was released and in 2004 fled Bangladesh for
a new life in Canada. Others are not so fortunate.

According to a report released last month by the Paris-based
International News Safety Institute (INSI), the number of journalists
killed on the job has escalated dramatically in recent years. In the
past decade, more than a thousand media members have been slain, and
in nine out of 10 cases, the perpetrators have never been prosecuted.

Reporters Without Borders tabulated the deaths of 81 journalists and
32 media assistants (drivers, translators, security and fixers) last
year alone. It is the highest toll since 1994, when 103 died, half of
them in the Rwandan genocide. An additional 1,400 attacks or threats
were carried out against journalists – many of them during election
campaigns in Latin America, Africa and Eastern Europe. Another record.

That is why the focus for this year’s World Press Freedom Day is
impunity, and the need to bring to justice those who target and
kill journalists.

"With the collapse of the Soviet Union in the 1990s and the return to
democracy in Latin America, we saw an explosion of press freedom,"
notes Mr. Simon of the CPJ. "But, in this decade, there have been
some losses."

Among them is Hrant Dink, editor of Turkey’s only Armenian-language
magazine and a well-known critic of the Turkish government’s treatment
of Armenians. He was shot in the street as he left his office on
Jan. 19 of this year.

"In many countries, murder has become the easiest, cheapest and most
effective way of silencing troublesome reporting and the more the
killers get away with it, the more the spiral of death is forced
upwards," INSI director Rodney Pinder said last month.

Not surprisingly, Iraq is the most dangerous place to report from.

The United Nations has become so concerned about the deliberate
targeting of journalists that the Security Council even passed a
special resolution on Dec. 23, 2006, condemning such attacks and
reiterating the right of war correspondents to be treated as prisoners
of war and accorded the rights of civilians under the Third Geneva
Convention.

Many journalists, though, are killed not in war zones, but covering
local politics or crime in countries such as Mexico, Russia, Iran
and India. Marlene Garcia-Esperat lost her life for her articles
documenting embezzlement and corruption in the local government in
Tacurong, the Philippines. She was shot and killed in front of her
two children on Easter weekend in 2005. Her bodyguards were off-duty.

Since most of these homicides are never resolved, the sense of
impunity only encourages more killings, advocates say. There is
also surprisingly little public sympathy for these cases, as though
journalists somehow deserve to die for writing about the drug trade,
or for criticizing an official state religion.

"There is a sense of complacency when a journalist and their family
are killed or are under attack. The public finds it easier to support
police officers or firefighters who die in the line of duty," notes
Anne Game, executive director of the Toronto-based Canadian Journalists
for Free Expression (CJFE). "But it’s so important to try to protect
journalists because they’re really on the front line.

Their freedom to speak enables others to."

Ross Howard, a journalism instructor at Vancouver’s Langara College
and president of Media and Democracy, a non-profit Canadian group,
has crisscrossed the globe training journalists in the developing
world – only to see them targeted as they become less partisan and
more professional.

"There is a tragic irony in post-conflict states in emerging
democracies that the better the journalist gets, the more dangerous
it becomes for him [or] her," he said.

"In countries such as Iran, Cuba or Pakistan, you cannot criticize
the supreme leader, question the country’s policies or even the
economic corruption among the power-holders," notes Maryam Aghvami,
an Iranian journalist who is now living in Toronto, where she heads
the 70-member Journalists in Exile.

"If you are brave enough to do so, you are accused of acting against
the country’s national security, spreading lies and spying for
Western powers."

Another key difference today is the erosion of the neutral-observer
status that journalists used to enjoy. Radical or revolutionary groups
no longer view journalists as conduits of information, but as lucrative
kidnapping targets.

Local columnists such as Saleem Samad are seen as "enemies of the
state," and international correspondents as representatives of their
own governments.

While there is no meaningful global data comparing journalists
killed on the job with, for example, firefighters, Julie Payne,
CJFE’s manager, says the consequences are more profound. The killing
of a journalist undermines one of the primary means of holding people
accountable – and serves to silence others.

That is why advocacy organizations have begun funding legal cases
overseas. CJFE, the CPJ and a number of other groups helped fund the
case against Ms. Marlene Garcia-Esperat’s killers. Three hit men were
finally convicted and received life sentences in October, 2006, in Cebu
– though the true power-holding authors of her death remain at large.

CJFE also manages the International Freedom of Expression Exchange
(IFEX), which issues daily alerts of threats and violations to
journalists all over the world.

As for Mr. Samad, he, his wife and adult son were all granted asylum
here. Today, in addition to working security at the local bookstore,
he edits Durdesh.net, a news portal for the South Asian diaspora.

He also looks forward to a term this fall as a visiting scholar at
the University of California at Berkeley’s School of Journalism.

Mr. Samad remains thankful to have escaped with his life. After
he was released from prison, his house was put under surveillance,
his phone lines tapped and his wife continually harassed.

"I kept a small bag ready, sure they would come back and arrest
me," he recalls. "I was mentally prepared to pay with my life for
my profession."

Marina Jimenez is a senior feature writer with The Globe and Mail.

*****

Reporters’ danger zones

According to a Committee to Protect Journalists study (which
uses conservative methodology, defining journalists narrowly),
580 journalists were killed from January, 1992, to August, 2006,
from dozens of countries, including:

Iraq: 79

Algeria: 60

Russia: 42

Colombia: 37

India: 22

Bosnia: 19

Turkey: 18

In three-quarters of these cases, the journalists were murdered and,
in one-quarter of those cases, are suspected to have died at the hands
of government or military officials. About 85 per cent of journalists’
killers faced neither investigation nor prosecution for their crimes.

Iraq

Since fighting began in 2003, 139 journalists have been killed – more
than twice the number (63) who died on the job during the Vietnam War
(1955-1975). But most of those killed in Iraq are locals, hired to
work with their visiting international counterparts, but often lacking
their connections, security detail and clout.

Afghanistan

The Taliban kidnapped an Italian journalist on March 5, along with
his Afghan driver and translator. The Italian was released two weeks
later, after a controversial swap for Taliban prisoners negotiated
by the Italian government. The Afghan driver and interpreter were
beheaded. Marina Jimenez

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

Turkish MP says US president’s speech on Armenians meant to please lobbyists

Anatolia News Agency, Turkey
April 27 2007

Ankara, 27 April: "We would have hoped that the Armenians remember
24 April as a date to reflect on their ancestors’ armed revolts and
the ugly strategic errors they made, rather than remember it with
pre-conceived notions and fanatical allegations," said Egemen Bagis,
Justice and Development Party (AKP) deputy from Istanbul and chairman
of the Turkish-US Interparliamentary Friendship Group, on Friday
[27 April].

Referring to US President George Bush’s statements made on 24 April
2007, Bagis told that Bush’s speech was written to appeal to voters.

"Bush’s speech was written to please lobbies and pressure groups."

Fortunately, Bush did not use the term "genocide" in his speech that
could have been a major mistake, noted Bagis.

Bush talked about "survivors who fled their homelands as a result of
force being applied on them", stated Bagis.

"We believe that the USA would not start discussions on whose homeland
Anatolia is. If a discussion on the homelands starts, then the Turks
living in Anatolia would have the right to have a say on their place
of origin. It is our sincere hope that the borders in the region will
remain as borders of peace and friendship," underlined Bagis.

Turkish historian says Western imperialism behind Armenian problem

Anatolia News Agency, Turkey
April 27 2007

Trabzon, 27 April: "Aspirations to found a greater Israel and the
terrorist organization PKK [Kurdistan Workers’ Party] lie beneath
the Armenian problem," Turkish History Society (TTK) chairman, Prof
Dr Yusuf Halacoglu, told at a panel discussion on the Armenian issue
in the Black-Sea city of Trabzon.

Halacoglu stated that the Armenian problem emerged in late 15th century
and the "Western imperialism played on the Armenians to conquer the
Ottoman territories".

"During the 20th century struggle, they used Armenians just as they
did for Bulgarians and Greeks before," Halacoglu said.

Halacoglu also rejected allegations that 1.5 million Armenians were
killed at the hands of Ottomans.

"If these people were killed, then where were they buried," he asked.

"There need to be at least 5,000 mass graves, which do not exist."