Author: Antonian Lara

Agence France Presse
9 mai 2006 mardi
Génocide arménien: députés PS assaillis de courriels contre la nouvelle loi
Le député socialiste Bruno Le Roux, secrétaire national aux
élections, a indiqué mardi recevoir, comme ses collègues
parlementaires, de nombreux courriels le mettant en garde contre
l’adoption d’une loi visant à sanctionner la négation du génocide
arménien de 1915.
Il a précisé, dans un entretien à l’AFP, que ces messages disaient
tous la même chose, à savoir qu’il ne faut pas légiférer sur cette
question. “On a commencé à être bombardés de messages vendredi et
samedi. Je ne les ouvre même plus”, a-t-il dit, en estimant que
c’était du “domaine anecdotique”.
Le groupe socialiste à l’Assemblée nationale a déposé fin avril une
proposition de loi visant à sanctionner pénalement la négation du
génocide arménien et qui sera discutée le 18 mai.
Bruno Le Roux, député de Seine-Saint-Denis, a indiqué que lors du
vote de la loi reconnaissant le génocide arménien des mises en garde
de ce genre avaient déjà été reçues.
La proposition de loi socialiste vise à compléter le texte de janvier
2001 par laquelle l’Etat français reconnaît le génocide arménien de
1915.
L’élu socialiste a estimé que “les groupes extrémistes qui veulent à
tout prix qu’on ne légifère pas là-dessus ne rendent pas service à la
Turquie”. Lui-même est “plutôt favorable à l’intégration de la
Turquie dans l’Union européenne”.
Plusieurs historiens de renom se sont récemment déclarés
“profondément choqués” par la proposition de loi du groupe
socialiste.

The End of Genocide
Monthly Review, VA
May 08, 06
by Michael Steinberg
In an age dominated by brute force and overwhelming military power — in
other words, any age at all — it is hard to remember that the simplest addition
to our vocabulary can change the world. This was what Raphael Lemkin
accomplished in 1944, when in a study on the Nazi occupation of Europe he coined
the word “genocide.”
Just four years later, the concept entered international law in _the
Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide_
() , passed by the General Assembly of the
United Nations on December 9, 1948. That Convention gives the following
definition:
[G]enocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy,
in whole or in part, a national, ethnical [sic], 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 (Article 2).
This makes “genocide” a peculiar type of crime. It is what lawyers call a
mens rea offense, one which encompasses a wide range of conduct whenever it is
done with a specific intention. Mass killing is what genocide calls to
mind, of course, but the prohibited acts include mass maiming, reducing the
living standards of people below the level needed to maintain the population,
forced sterilization and probably forced contraception, and the mandatory
surrender of parental rights.
Lawyers could go further. They know that “calculated” is a legal term of
art which refers to an objective standard of conduct. An act is calculated to
bring about a result if a reasonable person would know that the result was
likely to follow. Throwing someone overboard in the middle of Lake Superior is
calculated to kill the victim even if the person doing the throwing intends
nothing more than a harmless prank.
Put this way, there are a great many countries which have committed genocide.
Was apartheid not the imposition of serious mental harm on Black South
Africans, even those who never got in trouble with the police or the army? Didn’t
_Canada_ ( nts.html) take
First Nations children from their parents well into the twentieth century? How
about the 500,000 Iraqi children whose deaths due to _sanctions_
( ) was considered a price worth paying
by that gentle liberal _Madeleine Albright_
() ? And might not neoliberal “shock treatment” qualify under subhead
(c), considering that living standards in the former Soviet Union were brought
so low as a result that _the population declined dramatically_
() ?
These are all highly debatable questions, of course, and I don’t plan to
debate them. They’re offered only to show that the specific definition of
genocide to which the world community adheres makes sense only within the context
of its birth. Genocide, as a crime, is a generalized description of Nazi
race policy. Each of the subheads was derived from a specific practice: (a)
from the death camps, (b) slave labor, (c) confinement in ghettos, (d) the
forced sterilization program, and (e) a little-known but real program to “rescue”
Aryan children from less suitable parents.
That’s not all. Lemkin (or the UN) did more than allow the Nazis to define
the physical acts constituting genocide. In a way which is proving far more
troubling, they also let the Nazi paradigm define the other part of the
offense, the intent or mental state required. The new crime was limited to acts
intended to harm not specific, concrete human beings but “a national, ethnical
[sic], racial or religious group, as such.” It is a crime which combines
violence with categorization. Given the breadth of the definition, in fact, it
is the categorization itself which stands at the heart of the offense.
Genocide is thus a crime of the imagination. It is harm with the belief
that every individual act of violence is a step towards the elimination of a
group. But this raises a question. Why does this intent convert murder into
something worse than murder?
The question is most horrifyingly pressing in contemporary Africa. The
victims in Darfur are described as Africans and the perpetrators as Arabs.
Genetically these two “groups” are identical, and there are reasons to believe that
the underlying conflict is one between farmers and pastoralists, but that is
irrelevant; what counts is the construction of group identity which allows
the killing and the burning of villages to be seen as the destruction of one
group by another. It is a murderous and largely — though not entirely —
one-sided struggle, and it has produced hundreds of thousands of victims. The
heart-wrenching TV footage and the finger-pointing editorials may all be
merited. Yet while the “genocide” label makes Darfur the object of humanitarian
concern — or at least the simulacrum of concern, aid budgets still not being
increased — _the far vaster, longer, more horrendous slaughter in the Congo_
( main657774.shtml) goes on
with hardly a mention even on the inner pages of our newspapers of record. To
what point is one classified as genocide and the other as a mere civil war?
Is blood redder in Darfur?
Nor does the elimination of every sort of group fall within the definition of
genocide. In 1965 and 1966, for example, hundreds of thousands — _perhaps
more than a million_ () — people were
murdered in _Indonesia_ () ,
mostly because of their real or rumored membership in the Communist Party.
Entire villages were wiped out. It was a slaughter that in its scope, its low-tech
brutality, and the resigned acquiescence of most of its victims seems an
eerie presage of Rwanda. But it was not genocide, because political groups are
not entitled to the protection of the convention. (Neither was _Stalin’s
liquidation of the kulaks_ () ,
because “social class” doesn’t make the list either.) To hack a Communist to
pieces with a machete is only murder; to hack a Tutsi to death in the same way
is something else
And the mens rea of genocide is also a delusion, a delusion which seems to
have the power of contagion. Its almost inevitable failure is not due to the
technical difficulty of killing large numbers of people. It is the group
itself which slips away. Individuals may or may not escape; but the boundaries
of the category are certain to blur. The problem with the concept of
genocide is that, like the crime itself, it insists that things are otherwise.
Categories are always artificial, provisional, inaccurate, misleading. You
can group people any way you wish, but nothing will assure you that every
person so categorized will act the same as any other or that those uncategorized
will not turn out to be fifth columnists. The unitary organism that the
Nazis called “World Jewry” never existed. This was part of the insanity of the
theory. It insisted that a merchant banker from Hamburg, a Talmudist from
Vilna, and a dock worker from Salonika were identical for all important
purposes. And it was part of the special horror of the Holocaust that everything
about its victims but the bare datum of their Jewishness was obliterated before
the actual living Jews, personal lives and family histories stripped away
with their clothing, were obliterated themselves.
This is the other problem with the concept of genocide. The Nazi world view
was fundamentally racist, and the essentialism built into that world view is
impossible to remove from its afterlife in the newly-minted crime of
genocide. It has merely been reversed. To the Nazis the SS were heroes and the
Jews sub-human vermin. In today’s discourse the killers are killers, which is
usually fair enough; but the victims are granted a kind of plenary indulgence
and appear to us as helpless innocents. One can kill in self-defense and
wars are routinely fought between equally guilty parties. Only in situations of
genocide are good and evil so clearly drawn.
That moral clarity — to use a Bushism that seems to have fallen from favor
— is genocide’s public relations strength, but it is the concept’s undoing as
a tool of analysis. The price for that clarity is the same obliteration of
personal, family, and social history perpetrated by the Nazis. The victims
have no identity but their group membership.
For example, suggest some human sympathy towards _a Serb household in Kosovo_
( tm) , and you’re treated as
if you were Slobodan Milosevic himself. It is all but impossible to discuss
the possibility that _the 1994 plane crash which killed the then-president of
Rwanda_ ( m) and served as
the excuse for the slaughter there was the work of _Paul Kagame’s Tutsi
rebels_ ( m) — though some
students of the events believe that this was the case. It is just as difficult to
point to _the Rwandan army’s later incursions into the Congo_
( ry.cfm?story_id=3446358) _and its hold on
some of the area’s mines_
( idx.htm) . Having been victims of genocide, the sins of Kosovars and Tutsis both
past and present are washed as white as snow. The same is true of rebels in
Darfur after the savage repression licensed by the Sudanese government; only
now, and only in a few places, does one hear that not all of the atrocities
were the work of the Janjaweed.
We do not need a concept that simplifies political struggles beyond
recognition or gives preferential attention to those calamities where leaders of one
side happen to claim that their enemy is a specific ethnic, racial or
religious group. Lemkin and the UN were not to blame; none of this was likely to
have been foreseen in 1948. The notion of genocide emerged from an
understandable sense that Nazi crimes were somehow unlike the crimes of the past and
must never be repeated. But it remains too closely tied to those crimes, and to
a particular explanation of them, to be of any use in today’s world. There
is no such thing as genocide. There are cruelty, oppression, murder, and
torture. Those are real, and they need to be stopped. Genocide is imaginary.
It is time we did away with it.
_Michael Steinberg_ () is the author
of _The Fiction of a Thinkable World: Body, Meaning, and the Culture of
Capitalism_ () published this year by
Monthly Review Press and essays in professional journals in history, music, and
law. He is a member of the literature collective _Cat’s out of the Bag._
() He and his wife _Loret_
( einberg-1.html) , _a photographer and professor of
documentary photography_ () , live in
Rochester, New York, under the supervision of two domestic medium-hair cats.
()
(javascript:HaloScanTB(‘steinberg080506’);) ()
() ()

FRAGMENTS OF CRASHED PLANE SEARCHED FOR IN RADIUS OF 60 KM
PanARMENIAN.Net
06.05.2006 13:32 GMT+04:00
/PanARMENIAN.Net/ The fragments of A-320 plane, which fell into the
sea not far from Sochi, are searched for along the coastline from the
border of Abkhazia to Golovinka village of Krasnodar Territory. Thus,
the search zone makes some 60 km. Specialists believe the fragments
could not be taken farther.
The sea bottom is examined by means of the sonar of Captain
Beklemischev research ship and Kalmar deep-water device. Russian
and Armenian specialists, as well as those of A-320 producer Airbus
Industrie Consortium work at the location. The flight recorders are
not found yet. The Ministry of Extraordinary Situations specified that
there is no equipment at the place, by means of which these could be
lifted if found.
The Russian party earlier expressed readiness to address foreigners
for lifting the flight recorders, if corresponding means are not
available in the country, reports RIA Novosti.

RESCUE AND SEARCH WORKS IN SOCHI CONTINUE
ArmRadio.am
06.05.2006 12:00
In the morning the search works in Sochi were resumed. With the help
of the ” Calmar” system, supplied with camera and control system,
it may be possible to extract the black boxes from the bottom of
the sea. Specialists consider, however, that these may have been
already putrefied. The search works are controlled by RF Minister
of Transport Igor Levitin. Yesterday the latter left Sochi for
Moscow. RF Minister of Emergency Situations is currently at the site
of the disaster. According to him, 53 corpses have been extracted,
42 of which have been identified.
The identification of bodies continues. It needs to be noted that
this night “Yak-40” plane of the Ministry of Emergency Situations
transported eight more corpses to Yerevan. Two Armavia planes
transported 148 relatives of the victims.
“The rescuers know the exact location of the black boxes,” RF Minister
of Emergency Situations Sergey Shoygu said yesterday. At the same
time he noted that additional facilities are needed to extract these.

ARTUR BAGHDASARIAN: “WE’LL CONTINUE STRUGGLING FOR ESTABLISHMENT OF EUROPEAN VALUES IN ARMENIA”
Noyan Tapan
Armenians Today
May 05 2006
YEREVAN, MAY 5, NOYAN TAPAN – ARMENIANS TODAY. “We observe the five
years of Armenia’s membership to the Council of Europe as years of
stable progress,” Armenian National Assembly Speaker Artur Baghdasarian
stated at the May 5 conference “Armenia and the Council of Europe:
Five Years of Membership.”
According to him, during this period of time, Armenia has actively
been engaged in implementation of the obligations undertaken in
front of the Council of Europe: “We’ll continue our activity and
will go on struggling for establishment of the European values in
Armenia.” According to Armen Rustamian, the Chairman of the Parliament
Standing Committee on Foreign Relations, a member of the Armenian
delegation to the CE Parliamentary Assembly, it is quiet obvious that
without the close cooperation with the Council of Europe, Armenia would
be few steps behind in its democratic development that it is today. He
mentioned that more and more people in Armenia realize necessity of
holding democratic reforms and see Armenia’s place in the European
peoples’ family. At the same time, Armen Rustamian pointed out not
high speeds of implementation of reforms, what, according to him,
will push development of democracy behind. “The main task is the way
to the European values and raising speeds of reforms during it,”
Armen Rustamian stated. According to him, within the framework of
its further membership to the Council of Europe, Armenia must pay its
attention to issues of raising efficiency in the system of management,
to the active anti-corruption struggle and etc.

ARMENIA PREPARING FOR THE VISIT OF THE EUROPEAN COMMISSION
Lragir.am
5 May 06
After the demolition of the medieval Armenian khachkars in Old Djolfa,
on an initiative of the Armenian party a group of representatives of
European organizations will be visiting the region this summer to find
out how many monuments there are in Armenia, Georgia and Azerbaijan
and their origin. On the eve of this “audit” the government of Armenia
decided May 4 to allocate 2 million 308 thousand drams for locating,
mapping and photographing the Azerbaijani graves and historical,
cultural monuments in Armenia and Artsakh. Under a decision made on the
same day 72 million 862.5 thousand drams was allocated to the Ministry
of Foreign Affairs to prepare and hold the third Armenia-Diaspora
Conference in Yerevan in September 2006.

ARMENIAN JOURNALIST ORGANIZATIONS MARK WORLD DAY OF PRESS FREEDOM
Noyan Tapan
May 04 2006
YEREVAN, MAY 4, NOYAN TAPAN. At the beginning of the press conference
convened at the Armenian Journalists’ Union on the occasion of the
World Day of Press Freedom those present stood in silence in memory of
the victims of the crashed A-320 plane of Armavia airline. Touching
upon the event of the day, Union Chairwoman Astghik Gevorgian
said that freedom of speech is one of the greatest achievement of
RA independence. According to Yerevan Press Club Chairman Boris
Navasardian, May 3 in the whole world is considered not so much a
holiday as an occasion to raise issues connected with freedom of
press and speech. In particular, UNESCO that has announced May 3
as the World Day of Press Freedom put forward the role of press in
poverty reduction as the main problem.
And the World Association of Newspapers as the main problem mentioned
protection of the journalists who are in prisons. According to
B.Navasardian, only in 2005, 500 journalists were imprisoned. The
Yerevan Press Club, the Armenian Journalists’ Union, the Internews
NGO and the Committee on Protection of Freedom of Speech made a
statement, in which they raised a number of problems of the Armenian
media. The legislative reforms in the sphere of mass media, raising
of the role of press in fighting corruption, in struggle against
violation of citizens’ rights, assistance to free and transparent
political disputes and unbiassed coverage are among them. The first
prize-winner of the prize set by the above-mentioned organizations in
connection with the World Day of Press Freedom became editor of the
“Aravot” newspaper Aram Abrahamian.

GERMAN PRESIDENT AND CHANCELLOR SEND TELEGRAMS OF CONDOLENCE TO RA PRESIDENT
Noyan Tapan
Armenians Today
May 04 2006
YEREVAN, MAY 4, NOYAN TAPAN – ARMENIANS TODAY. On May 3, German
President Ho rst Kohler and German Chancellor Angela Merkel sent
telegrams of condolence to RA President Robert Kocharian in connection
with the accident of Armavia airline’s Yerevan-Sochi A-320 plane. “We
ask to present our condolences to the relatives of the victims and
to the mourning people, we are with them mentally on these days” the
German President’s telegram provided to Noyan Tapan from the Embassy
of Germany in Armenia read. The telegram of the German Chancellor,
in particular, read: “I would like to extend my deep condolences to
you on behalf of the Federal government. Please, convey our sincere
condolences to the families and relatives of the victims”. German
Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier also sent a telegram of
condolence to RA Foreign Minister Vartan Oskanian.

INSURANCE COMPANY TO PAY $20 THOUSAND TO FAMILIES OF AIR CRASH VICTIMS
PanARMENIAN.Net
04.05.2006 23:18 GMT+04:00
/PanARMENIAN.Net/ MIKA Ltd. President and owner of Armavia company
Mikhail Baghdasarov confirmed insurance will be paid to families of
the victims of A-320 plane crash. “The air company annually paid
several million dollars of insurance and now it will pay some $20
thousand to relatives of the air crash victims.”
Mikhail Baghdasarov noted the crashed plane had no problems and enough
fuel. He called to wait for the conclusion of French specialists and
independent experts. In Baghdasarov’s words, the air catastrophe
inflicted rather large financial and moral damage to the company,
reports the Public TV Company of Armenia.

ARMENOUHIE NAZIKIAN, 96, BENEFACTRESS FOR ARMENIAN CAUSES
Pasadena Independent, CA
Arcadia Weekly, CA
May 4 2006
Aram and Armenouhie Nazikian’s memory lives on setting an example
for others to follow. God bless their souls.
In 1985, Mrs. Armenouhie Nazikian read an article in the newspaper
about the difficulties the newly formed Western Region of the Armenian
Relief Society (ARS WR) was having regarding funding for an ARS WR
headquarters. This was the first of several serendipitous moments in
the life of Armenouhie Nazikian.
She had just lost her husband Aram and wanted to do something special
in his name. The rest is history. Her call to the Regional Executive
led to a contribution of $50,000. This generous donation became the
down payment of the ARS Aram and Armenouhie Nazikian Home. The ARS WR
celebrated the opening of the Center on December 4, 1988. Four days
later, the world was shocked by the Armenian Earthquake. The Home
became the center for donations and relief efforts from the Western
United States.
The ARS-WR was saddened that this kind unassuming woman recently was
laid to rest at Rose Hills. Members from the ARS-WR attended the
modest funeral where her nephew, Robert Sarkis Lion presented the
ARS-WR with a large framed wedding picture of Aram and Armenouhie
Nazikian. Nazikian was born April 18, 1910, in Sebastia (Sivas),
one of the Armenian provinces in the Ottoman Empire, to Azniv and
Hagop Samuelian. After surviving the genocide, she married Aram
Nazikian and lived in South America, New York, San Diego and finally
settled in Montebello, California. Her last years were spent at the
Ararat Home. Armenouhie Nazikian is survived by her nephew, Robert
Sarkis Lion (Aslan) and his wife, Maria; her grandnephew, Charlie and
grandniece, Michelle Poladian; who just gave birth to Jasmine Liona
Poladian. Coincidentally, Armenouhie was born in 1910, the year ARS
was born and she was buried on what would have been her 96th birthday,
which was also the date for the burial of her husband, Aram.