Author: Emil Lazarian

Armenian National Committee of Canada
130 Albert St., Suite 1007
Ottawa, ON
KIP 5G4
Tel. (613) 235-2622 Fax (613) 238-2622
E-mail:[email protected]
Fo r Immediate Release
October 17, 2006
Foreign Affairs Minister of the Republic of Armenia Visits Canada
Ottawa-Vartan Oskanian, Foreign Affairs Minister of the Republic of
Armenia, will make an official visit to Ottawa on October 18 and meet with
Canada’s Minister of Foreign Affairs, the Hon. Peter MacKay to discuss
Canada-Armenia bilateral relations.
To honour His Excellency Vartan Oskanian, Gary Goodyear, (MP – Cambridge)
and Chairman of Canada-Armenia Parliamentary Friendship Group, in
cooperation with the Embassy of the Republic of Armenia in Ottawa, and the
Armenian National Committee of Canada (ANCC), will host a luncheon/meeting
for the House of Commons and Senate of Canada members.
More than 75 joint economic ventures already exist between the two
countries. Many Canadian companies now operate in Armenia. Recently, Dundee
Precious Metals Inc. acquired 80% of an Armenian mining company for US$22
million.
The 125-year-old Canadian Armenian Community is a vibrant and growing
community with significant presence in all major cities across Canada. Over
2,500 Canadians visit Armenia a year-on business or for pleasure. This
number is expected to rise sharply in the next few years.
Participating in peace-keeping activities are among the priorities of the
Republic of Armenia which presently is involved in peace-keeping missions
in Kosovo and in Iraq. The government of Armenia is also anxious to learn
from the Canadian experience in these fields.
According to international organizations, Armenia is one of the most
progressive countries of the former Soviet Union in introducing, economic
liberalization, political freedom, freedom of speech and of press freedom.
Enhancement of relations between Canada and Armenia will benefit both
countries.
His Excellency Vartan Oskanian itinerary:
October 17, 2006 Arrival in Ottawa
October 18, 12:00 -2:00 pm: Luncheon/meeting, Room 601 of the Parliamentary
Restaurant, Centre Block.
October 18, 5:00 pm Meeting the Hon. Peter MacKay
#
For media inquiries please contact:
Kelly Williams, Gary Goodyear- MP Office. Tel. (613) 996-1307
Aris Babikian, ANCC Office. Tel. (613) 235-2622
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

October 18, 2006
Press Release
Western Prelacy of the Armenian Apostolic Church of America
H.E. Archbishop Moushegh Mardirossian, Prelate
6252 Honolulu Avenue
La Crescenta, CA 91214
Tel: (818) 248-7737
Fax: (818) 248-7745
E-mail: [email protected]
Website:
WESTERN PRELACY ANNOUNCES BOARD OF REGENTS APPOINTMENTS
His Eminence Arch. Moushegh Mardirossian, Prelate, and the Executive
Council of the Western Prelacy are pleased to announce the new
appointment of members to the Board of Regents of Prelacy Schools.
The newly appointed Board of Regents consists of the following members:
Dr. Armine Hacopian
Mrs. Sossi Hovsepian
Mrs. Marisa Sarian
Mr. Avo Kechichian
Dr. Vartkes Tomassian
Mr. Chris Keosian
Mr. Ara Bedrosian
Mr. George Chorbajian
Mr. Mark Guedikian.
On Monday, October 16, at the presence of Dr. Hagop Der Megerdichian,
Vice-Chair of the Executive Council and Representative to the Board
of Regents, the new Board convened its first meeting, during which
the election of the divan took place. The new divan is as follows:
Mr. Avo Kechichian Chairman
Dr. Armine Hacopian Secretary
Mr. Mark Guedikian Treasurer
The Prelate and Executive Council congratulate the new members of
the Board of Regents and divan, wishing them success in their daily
endeavors as they guide the new generation of Armenian students.
SECRETARIAT, WESTERN PRELACY
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

RUSSIA TIGHTENS CONTROL OVER THE ARMENIAN ENERGY SECTOR
Emil Danielyan
EurasiaNet, NY
Oct 17 2006
After more than a year of negotiations, Russia has completed the
acquisition of Armenia’s power distribution network, tightening its
grip on the Armenian energy sector. The Armenian government says
the $73-million takeover will breathe new life into the Electricity
Networks of Armenia (ENA). But government critics have denounced it
as a further blow to the country’s energy security.
The shares in ENA were formally transferred to an offshore-registered
subsidiary of RAO Unified Energy Systems (UES), Russia’s
state-controlled power utility, at a September 26 ceremony in Yerevan,
attended by senior Armenian officials and UES executives.
The deal was formalized one year after the government in Yerevan
announced and approved the Russians’ decision to buy ENA from Midland
Resources Holding, a British-registered firm that privatized the
once loss-making network in 2002. [For background see the Eurasia
Insight archive].
The Russian takeover of the Armenian power grid was first made public
in June 2005, presented as a long-term “management contract” signed
by UES and Midland. The World Bank and other Western donors questioned
the legality of that deal, arguing that it was cut without the approval
of Armenian regulatory authorities. But the donors acquiesced when UES
and Midland decided afterwards to sign a formal acquisition agreement
and follow relevant legal procedures.
It remains unclear why UES has taken so long to complete the
purchase. Unconfirmed reports in the Armenian press suggested that the
Russian energy giant, which has aggressively expanded its operations
in former Soviet republics, had second thoughts about buying ENA after
examining its books and discovering serious financial irregularities.
Officials in Yerevan maintain the deal strengthens the local energy
sector by injecting badly needed capital investments in ENA. Andrei
Rapoport, the UES vice-chairman, announced during the share transfer
ceremony that the Russian company will invest $20 million in ENA over
the next 12 months.
Critics, however, claim that Armenia’s energy dependence on Russia
has reached a critical level, posing a serious threat to the
Caucasus state’s sovereignty. According to Eduard Aghajanov, an
economist critical of the government, ENA’s sale all but completed
the country’s “energy colonization” by Moscow. “It is inadmissible
to give everything to one state, especially in the area of energy,”
he told EurasiaNet. “Russia is now in a position to impose its will
on us in both the economic and political spheres at any moment. We
are tying a noose around our neck.”
UES already owns a cascade of Armenian hydroelectric plants and
manages the finances of the nuclear power station at Metsamor.
Another state-run Russian energy giant, Gazprom, controls Armenia’s
largest thermal power plant, and is currently its sole supplier of
natural gas. Russian gas is used for generating nearly 40 percent
of the country’s electricity, with another 40 percent coming from
Metsamor.
ENA’s sale was preceded by an equally controversial Russian-Armenian
energy agreement that was announced last April following Gazprom’s
decision to double the price of its gas for all three South Caucasus
states. Under the terms of that deal, Gazprom paid $250 million to
take control of another incomplete thermal plant located in the town
of Hrazdan in central Armenia. Most of the payment, $188 million,
is to be made in the form of free-of-charge supplies of Russian gas.
This means that the overall price of Russian fuel for Armenia will
remain virtually unchanged until the end of 2008.
Defending the April deal, Armenian leaders argued that it also commits
the Russians to spending at least $150 million on completing the
Hrazdan facility in the next few years. “This agreement will only
reinforce our energy security,” Prime Minister Andranik Markarian
said at the time.
The head of the World Bank office in Yerevan, Roger Robinson, likewise
described the gas settlement as “very beneficial” for Armenia. Robinson
made the point that there is “nothing fundamentally wrong” with Russian
ownership of Armenian energy facilities. “The important thing is to
have a very strong regulator that sets the rules and monitors the
rules for the delivery of public utility services,” he said.
Gazprom initially confirmed, but then denied reports that the deal
will also give it ownership of an incomplete Armenian pipeline,
which is scheduled to start pumping gas from neighboring Iran early
next year. The Armenian government also denied this. Still, Russia’s
Prime-Tass news agency quoted Gazprom Deputy Chairman Aleksandr
Ryazanov as saying on June 30 that the Russian monopoly is keen
to control the pipeline, which was originally intended to reduce
Armenia’s dependence on Russian energy resources.
Moscow has already reportedly forced Yerevan to make sure that the
pipeline’s diameter is not large enough to allow Iran to re-export
its gas to Georgia and possibly Eastern Europe. “We trampled on
our national interests in favor of Russia just because it [Moscow]
does not want to face any competition in the European gas market,”
complained Aghajanov.
There have been indications, though, that Yerevan and Tehran are
considering building a second pipeline that would serve to deliver
Iranian gas to third countries. “Naturally, when Iranian gas starts
flowing into Armenia, perhaps it will be exported to other countries
as well,” the speaker of Iran’s parliament, Gholamali Haddad-Adel,
told reporters during a recent visit to Armenia.
Despite the potential for securing alternative gas supplies, President
Robert Kocharian’s administration seems increasingly convinced that
Armenia’s long-term energy security hinges on the construction of
a new nuclear power plant in place of Metsamor’s aging Soviet-era
reactor. The reactor is expected to be shut down by 2016. Earlier
this year, the Armenian parliament allowed the government to start
searching for foreign private investors. The estimated construction
cost of a new nuclear power plant is at least $1 billion.
The United States has already made it clear that it is less than
enthusiastic about the idea. Tom Adams, a senior State Department
official coordinating US aid to ex-Soviet states, argued during a May
visit to Yerevan that Armenia’s location in a seismically active zone
prone to powerful earthquakes should be taken into consideration. “I
think our view right now is that there are probably better alternatives
to a second nuclear plant,” Adams said without elaborating.
Editor’s Note: Emil Danielyan is a Yerevan-based journalist and
political analyst.

ERDEM: UN AND NATO PEACEKEEPING FORCES CAN BE PLACED IN THE CONFLICT ZONE AFTER THE PEACE TREATY BETWEEN AZERBAIJAN AND ARMENIA
Azeri Press Agency
Oct 17 2006
Vahid Erdem, head of delegation of NATO Parliament Assembly Future
Defense Planning Subcommittee held a press conference on the results
of his visit, APA reports.
Erdem said that the aim of his visit was to meet with the officials,
non-governmental organizations and mass media representatives and to
get acquainted with the current situation on the integration to NATO.
He will make a final report titled NATO’s role in South Caucasus on
the results of his visit.
“The report will be discussed in the meeting of the committee in
Canada under my leadership soon. Azerbaijani side has some offers to
the report and we will evaluate these offers,” he said.
Erdem said that Azerbaijan successfully cooperates with NATO and over
300 servicemen serve in peacekeeping forces in various areas. Showing
his attitude to the problem he said after the peace treaty between
Armenia and Azerbaijan the peacekeeping forces can be placed in
the territory.
“UN and NATO peacekeeping forces can be placed in the conflict
territory after the peace treaty between Azerbaijan and Armenia,”
he said.
Vahid Erdem also said that unlike Azerbaijan Armenia has unambiguously
attitude towards NATO.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

AZERBAIJAN DOES NOT INTEND TO SEEK EXPELLING FRANCE FROM OSCE MINSK GROUP
Regnum, Russia
Oct 17 2006
“I have not heard of any official announcements that Azerbaijan is
seeking expulsion of France from the OSCE Minsk Group co-chairs,”
Head of the Information and Press Department at the Azerbaijani Foreign
Ministry Tair Tagizade is quoted as saying to Day.az, while commenting
on calls for it after the lower house of France’s parliament passed
a law that envisages criminal punishment for denial of the Armenian
Genocide.
In this connection, he noted that “diplomats have to work with
reality of political facts.” “France’s foreign policy is formed les
by the parliament and more by the French foreign ministry. So, I do
not understand, on what proponents of expelling France from the MG
co-chairs ground,” Tair Tagizade said.
Commenting on a statement by the bloc of Azerbaijani parties “Our
Azerbaijan” on necessity to freeze all relations with the country,
impose an embargo on French goods, recall the ambassador from Paris
and so on, he noted that “any political force in the country has a
right to make these or other statements.” “In this case, aspiration
can be seen vividly to gain political profit grounding on any issues,
including those that are not supposed to be subject for speculations,”
the head of the information and press department said.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

HEROES OF THE VISA WAR
Olga Allenova
Kommersant, Russia
Oct 18 2006
Crowds Meet Deported Georgians in Tbilisi
A Russian Emergencies Ministry plane arrived in Tbilisi yesterday
carrying 150 Georgian citizens who were being deported from Russia.
They were given a hero’s welcome. That flight, which was supposed to
have brought to Tbilisi a Georgian citizen named Tengiz Togonidze who
died in Moscow on the way to the airport, delivered a crushing blow
to the remnants of Russia’s authority in the region. Kommersant’s
special correspondent Olga Allenova has the details.
That day, the Tbilisi airport was particularly crowded: besides
the usual crowds accompanying and meeting travelers, there were also
journalists and representatives of the Russian embassy and the Georgian
authorities. Even several additional fast food restaurants had opened
in the departure hall. The Emergencies Ministry (MChS) flight, which
was expected at 16:00, was delayed until 18:00: a Georgian citizen
named Tengiz Togonidze, who was supposed to be on the flight, died on
Moscow on the road to Domodedovo airport. As soon as the news reached
Georgia, it was clear that a turning point had been reached in the
cold war between Moscow and Tbilisi. The two sides will have to come
to an agreement now or never. Judging by the scene in the airport,
those in Georgia have cast their vote in favor of the latter.
The approximately one hundred Russian citizens who were preparing
to leave Georgia on the same MChS plane were reluctant to speak with
journalists. Only one woman responded, when asked why she was leaving,
“since it’s possible, I’m going.” Airport workers said that those who
are leaving are mainly Armenians and some Georgians who have succeeded
in obtaining Russian citizenship. “Why are they leaving?” parroted a
security services official at the airport, his voice heavy with irony
– “because it’s free!” A little while later, the same man explained
with dignity to journalists that President Saakashvili has forbidden
cargo planes from the Russian MChS to fly into Georgia so that Russia
has been forced to send an Il-62 passenger plane instead of stuffing
people into cargo planes like cattle. Valery Vasiliev, the Russian
consul in Georgia, told me that this will probably be the last plane
that will take Russian citizens out of Georgia: all of those who wanted
to leave Georgia, around 500 people, have already left. In reply to
the question of how it came about that a person being deported by
Russia died on the road to the airport, the consul answered, “it is
a very sad event, there will be an investigation,” but said nothing
more concrete. That was provided by Georgian ombudsman Sozar Subari:
“It is run-of-the-mill fascism,” he said. “It’s Nazism. I approached
the Russian ombudsman with a request that he intervene in this outrage,
if in Russian some kind of positive forces still exist. Out of the
150 people deported today, more than half have normal documents and
the right to live in Russia!”
When the people from the MChS plane cleared passport control and
began to trickle into the arrival hall, they were surrounded by a
wall of journalists so solid that it was difficult to push through
it. Those who arrived did not want to comment. Someone shielded his
face with his hands, and another covered his head with his coat as he
pushed through the throng. The men, frowning, haphazardly attired and
with unshaven cheeks, were irritated and embittered, and the women
were distraught. One of them, who was carrying a child in her arms,
stopped as a microphone was thrust at her. “Why did they arrest you?”
she was asked. “My visa was not in order,” said the woman. “What will
you do now?” “I don’t know! I have no idea what to do!” The following
dialogue was had with another man:
“How long did they hold you in the isolation unit?”
“Ten days.”
“Ten days?!! How did they treat you?”
“Badly.”
“Why did they arrest you?”
“Because I’m a Georgian.”
Many explained their arrest in similar terms. Someone said something
in Georgian about Russian Nazism; someone showed his passport, which
had a Russian visa, and said that they had no right to kick him out.
Someone mentioned a week of incarceration in an isolation unit,
where it was even forbidden to wash. Someone simply broke down in
tears of humiliation.
I glanced at the ombudsman, Mr. Subari, whose eyes were aflame. I
think he was feeling these people’s humiliation as keenly as they
themselves were. And I felt burning shame for my country.
A young woman from the Georgian Education Ministry stopped children
and teenagers and pressed into their hands a booklet that had “Welcome
Home!” written across it. On the other side of the booklet, a notice
from the Education Ministry explained that all schoolchildren who had
been forced to leave Russia would now be attending Georgian schools
and that they should call such-and-such a number so that they would be
accepted into school. The children hid the booklets in their pockets,
and their mothers cried.
The Russian Federal Migration Service stated that day that all of
the deportees had overstayed their visas or did not have visas at all.
The service also said that the Russian budget allocates about 27,000
rubles for the deportation of a migrant, which includes expenditures
for tickets, detention in a special holding area, medicine, and food.
But in the case of the deported Georgians, the budget was economized
by half: the deportation of a single Georgian was managed by the
government for only 13,000 rubles. Maybe that’s why Tengiz Togonidze,
an asthmatic, died when he wasn’t given medication in time.
In Georgia yesterday thousands of people saw on their television
screens their compatriots and their visas, both overstayed and valid.
Thousands of people heard the story of Tengiz Togonidze. Thousands of
people in Georgia asked each other for the third time – this was the
third MChS plane from Russia – why it was necessary to so thoroughly
humiliate the Georgians, who were once desired guests in Russia. I
am certain that these people will never forget what they have seen.
“Russia shown has its face once again,” Georgian Minister for Refugees
Georgy Kheviashvili told me. “Russia has shown that it is impossible
to live with it in peace. Russia has done everything to push Georgia
as far away as possible. Well, thanks for the gift. I don’t doubt
that we will be able to use what has happened in our own interests.”
I also have no doubt.
_Georgians_Tbilisi/
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

EXTREMISTS MANAGE TO KEEP EACH OTHER HAPPY
By Gwynne Dyer
Hamilton Spectator, Canada
Oct 18 2006
Words matter. The Holocaust of the Jews in the Second World War
was genocide. The mass deportation of Chechens from their Caucasian
homeland in the same war was a crime but not genocide, though half of
them died, because Moscow’s aim was to keep them from collaborating
with German troops, not to exterminate them. Which brings us to the
Armenians and the Turks.
On Oct. 12, France passed a law declaring that anyone who denies that
the mass murder of Armenians in Turkey in 1915-17 was genocide will
face a year in prison. But the French foreign ministry called the law
“unnecessary and untimely” and President Jacques Chirac called Turkish
Prime Minister Recep Tayyib Erdogan to apologize.
Why would the conservative majority in the French parliament
deliberately set out to annoy the Turks, knowing the law will
eventually be vetoed by the president? Because they hope to provoke
a nationalist backlash in Turkey that will further damage its already
difficult relationship with the European Union.
French public opinion is already in a xenophobic mood over the last
expansion of the EU, with folk tales of “Polish plumbers” working for
peanuts and stealing the jobs of honest French workers causing outrage,
especially among right-wing voters who never much liked foreigners
anyway. The prospect of 80 million Muslim Turks joining the EU, even
if it is at least 10 years away, is enough to make their blood boil.
So a row with Turkey should attract votes to the right’s presidential
candidate in next May’s election. That’s likely to be none other
than current Prime Minister Nicolas Sarkozy who said last month that
Turkey should never be allowed to join the EU: “We have to say who
is European and who isn’t. It’s no longer possible to leave this
question open.” The new law is not really about Armenians or Turks.
It’s about the French election.
Meanwhile, in Turkey, anti-EU nationalists have their own game. As
Turkey was busy amending its penal code to conform to EU standards in
the past few years, hard line lawyers and bureaucrats smuggled in a
new law, Article 301, that provides severe penalties for “insulting
Turkishness.”
In practice, that mainly means trying to ban public discussion of the
Armenian massacres. Some 70 prosecutions have already been brought
by the ultra-right-wing Union of Lawyers against Turkish authors,
journalists and other public figures.
For several generations Turkey flatly denied any guilt for the Armenian
massacres, insisting they didn’t happen and if they did, it was the
Armenians’ own fault for rebelling against Turkey in wartime.
Latterly, Turkish intellectuals have been saying that a million or
more Armenians did die in the mass deportations and that Turkey needs
to admit its guilt and apologize, though most still refuse to call
it genocide as that would put it in the same category as the Holocaust.
The prosecutions for “insulting Turkishness” — even against Turkey’s
greatest living novelist, Nobel Prize winner Orhan Pamuk — are
not just attempts to stifle this dialogue among Turks, or between
Turks and Armenians. The ultra-nationalists also want to derail the
negotiations for EU membership by painting Turkey as an authoritarian
and intolerant state that does not belong in Europe. They are, in
effect, Sarkozy’s objective allies.
But Prime Minister Erdogan will probably repeal Article 301 once next
year’s elections are past. France’s law, which requires people not to
deny the Armenian massacres, the talks that 301 bans, will probably be
vetoed by Chirac. And Turkey’s best-known Armenian journalist, Hrant
Dink, who has already been prosecuted several times under 301, has
just announced he’ll go to France “to protest against this madness and
violate the law … and I will commit the crime to be prosecuted there,
so that these two irrational mentalities can race to put me into jail.”
Gwynne Dyer is a London-based independent journalist whose articles
are published in 45 countries.
p/cs/ContentServer?pagename=hamilton/Layout/Articl e_Type1&c=Article&cid=1161121814335&ca ll_pageid=1020420665036&col=1112188062581
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

FRENCH NATIONAL ASSEMBLY MAKES DENIAL OF THE ARMENIAN GENOCIDE A PUNISHABLE OFFENCE
By Peter Schwarz
World Socialist Web Site, MI
Oct 18 2006
The decision by the French National Assembly to make denial of the
genocide of Armenians in 1915 a punishable offence is a reactionary
provocation.
The prohibition primarily serves domestic purposes. In line with the
ongoing campaign against Islam, this latest ban uses religious and
ethnic issues to divert attention from increasing social tensions.
The new bill does absolutely nothing to help explain one of the
darkest chapters in the history of the last century. Quite the
contrary, the intrusion by criminal law into historical debate is
an attack on free speech and actually obstructs the clarification of
historical questions.
The law, which was passed by the National Assembly last Thursday by
106 votes to 19, threatens those who deny the genocide of Armenians
during the Ottoman empire with one year in prison and a fine of 45,000
euros. The new law supplements a law unanimously passed by the National
Assembly in 2001, which officially recognised the genocide conducted
against the Armenians.
The new law was introduced by the main opposition party, the Socialist
Party. Forty Socialist deputies voted in favour of the bill with two
voting against. The law was also supported by the French Stalinist
Communist Party (PCF).
The Gaullist government rejected the law on the basis of foreign
policy considerations. But the governing UMP (Union for a Popular
Movement) cleared the way for the law by freeing its deputies from
party discipline and recommending non-participation at the vote. In
the event, 49 UMP deputies, led by former minister Patrick Devedjian,
who is of Armenian origin, voted for the new bill with 17 voting
against. The vast majority of the Assembly’s 577 deputies did not
attend the vote.
In order to become law the bill has to be agreed by the second
chamber, the Senate. It is up to the government to decide if and when
it introduces the bill into the Senate and it may well be the case
that this will never happen. Nevertheless, the vote by the National
Assembly has already had significant consequences.
Reaction has been particularly pronounced in Turkey, which has its own
law making the opposite claim, i.e., affirmation of the genocide of
1915, a punishable offence. The extreme-right Nationalist Movement
Party (MHP) had organized demonstrations against the French bill
even before the vote was taken. Other organizations have called for
a boycott on French goods and the Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan has
threatened to retaliate with economic sanctions, including calling
off a planned French-Turkish armaments deal, and a ban on French bids
to construct a nuclear power plant.
Significantly opposition movements and representatives of the Armenian
community in Turkey have also condemned the French law. They fear
that it plays into the hands of right-wing, nationalist forces and
could provoke repressive measures against the Armenian people.
They are also opposed to the fact that France wants to enforce
recognition of the Armenian genocide with the same measures Turkey
is utilising denying it-i.e., penal law.
“How can we in future argue against laws that forbid us to talk about
a genocide if France, for its part, now does the same thing? That
is completely irrational,” commentated Hrant Dink, publisher of
the Armenian Turkish weekly Argos. Dink, who was condemned to six
months in prison on probation last year over the Armenian question,
and currently faces renewed repression over the issue, has even
threatened to go to France and, contrary to his own opinion, deny
the genocide in defiance of the new law.
Another Armenian journalist, Etyen Mahcupyan, from the daily paper
Zaman, sees a danger that the tenuous discussion begun in Turkey
over the Armenia question could be jeopardised by the French law. For
the first time ever a congress has been held in Istanbul to publicly
discuss the Armenian question. Mahcupyan warned: “The action of the
French parliament brings the Turkish population nearer to the state,
which can then manipulate them more easily.”
Prominent historians in France have also expressed their vehement
opposition to the law. In a statement entitled “Freedom for history”
they condemned the law as an attack on the “freedom of expression.”
The law served to reduce “teachers once more to the status of
hostages.”
The French government and the European Commission have expressed
objections to the law because they fear a deterioration of relations
with Turkey. There is much at stake for French businesses. Should
Erdogan stick to his threat then orders of up to 14 billion euros
are at risk. Additional losses could be recorded by the French
supermarket chain Carrefour, which has a substantial share of the
market in Turkey, as well as the auto concern Renault, which has a
big factory near Istanbul.
Nevertheless, all this has not prevented the National Assembly from
passing a law that punishes undesirable opinions on an event which
took place 90 years ago and in which France played no substantial role.
The only other similar law in France is one which forbids any denial of
the Holocaust, in which the French Vichy regime did play an important
role. Other crimes with much more immediate relevance-such as the
torture and massacres carried out by French colonialism in Algeria
and Indochina-are not subject to legal sanction and are occasionally
officially denied.
Just last winter, when the government sought to pass a law emphasising
the “positive role” of French colonial policy in school textbooks,
the Socialist Party argued that parliament had no right to issue
laws dealing with history and that politicians could not determine
historical issues. Now they have thrown this principle overboard and
are doing the same themselves.
Why this law?
The principal aim of the new law is to garner electoral support. Both
Segol ène Royal and Nicolas Sarkozy, the probable candidates of the
Socialist Party and the UMP for the presidential elections next year,
have declared their support for the new law. Both candidates are
seeking to win support from the approximately half million Armenians
living in France, the majority of whom back the law.
However there is more at stake than the Armenian electorate. The new
law is also aimed against Turkey’s plans to join the European Union.
President Chirac led the way in this respect 10 days ago when, during
an official trip to the Armenian capital of Yerevan, he declared
that Turkey must recognize the genocide of the Armenians before being
accepted into the European Union-a condition that the European Union
does not require.
Right-wing politicians throughout Europe have used agitation against
Turkish membership in the European Union as a means of mobilising
backward layers of the electorate. In a similar manner to the current
campaign being waged against immigrants and Muslims this question is
being exploited to encourage xenophobia and divert social fears and
tension away from the ruling elite. While Conservative politicians
generally argue for the “defence of the Christian civilisation,”
French socialists are using the Armenian question for the same purpose.
The fact that the French Socialist Party has undertaken such an
initiative with the active support of the Communist Party speaks
volumes over the extent of the decline of these organizations. Unable
to provide any sort of answer to the growing social crisis, they are
both playing the card of xenophobia.
The officer’s daughter Segol ène Royal, who has been systematically
groomed by the media as the Socialist presidential candidate, has
sought on a number of occasions to outflank her UMP rival Nicolas
Sarkozy on the right-for example with her appeal to entrust the army
with the education of rebellious young people. She has now gone even
further with her advocacy of the Armenian law.
As usual the Communist Party is seeking to shout even louder.
Communist deputy Frederic Dutoit praised the new law before the
National Assembly as an “immense progress for the Armenian cause
and for humanity as a whole.” He then threatened, “It is a first
step, others must follow.” The newspaper La Marseillaise, which has
close links to the PCF, celebrated the “prohibition of denial” as an
“expression of respect for universal values.” In the world of the
French Stalinists censorship remains the highest form of freedom!
Following a series of strike movements and revolts in recent years
directed at both Gaullist and Socialist Party-led governments, the
Socialist and Communist parties are prepared to go to any lengths to
prevent a further intensification of social protest.
–Boundary_(ID_FIVFUo4sSOuQWAJNfCjviw)–
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

CENSORING IDEAS
By Jeff Jacoby, Globe Columnist
Boston Globe, MA
Oct 18 2006
DID THE Ottoman Turks commit genocide against the Armenians in 1915?
Careful — in some places you can be arrested if you give the wrong
answer to that question. Under Article 305 of the Turkish Penal Code,
for example, those who promote “recognition of the Armenian genocide”
are subject to prosecution, while Article 301 makes the denigration of
“Turkishness” a crime punishable by up to three years in prison. The
Turkish novelist Orhan Pamuk , winner of the 2006 Nobel Prize for
L iterature , is among those who have been charged under Article
301. His offense was to tell a Swiss interviewer that “30,000 Kurds
and a million Armenians were killed in these lands, and nobody but
me dares to talk about it.”
Yet if acknowledging the Armenian genocide is a crime in Turkey,
gainsaying it could soon be a crime in France. Last week the French
National Assembly voted to approve a bill under which anyone denying
the 1915 genocide could be sentenced to a year’s imprisonment and
a 45,000-euro ($56,000) fine. That matches the penalty under French
law for denying the Nazi Holocaust .
The French legislation is meant to uphold the truth — the Armenian
genocide, like the Holocaust, is a fact of history — while the point
of the Turkish law is to debase it. Both, however, are intolerable
assaults on liberty. Beliefs should not be criminalized, no matter
how repugnant or absurd. As I wrote when David Irving was convicted
of Holocaust denial in Austria earlier this year, free societies do
not throw people in prison for giving offensive speeches or spouting
historical lies.
We Americans should know this better than anyone. The right to speak
one’s mind is supposed to be a core article of our civic faith. Yet
the would-be censors are busy here, too.
THE ‘SHUT UP’ FACTOR: How serious a problem is censorship today? Are
would-be censors smothering debate?
At Columbia University two weeks ago, a forum on immigration was to
feature a speech by Jim Gilchrist of the Minutemen, a group that
monitors the US-Mexico border for illegal immigrants. But moments
after Gilchrist began speaking, protesters led by members of the
International Socialist Organization stormed the stage, overturning
tables, unfurling banners, and yelling insults. After 15 minutes of
pandemonium, campus police shut down the program .
In Seattle, two teachers are suing the affluent Lakeside prep school
for illegal racial discrimination and the creation of a hostile
work environment. “Among the plaintiffs’ complaints,” reports the
Seattle Post-Intelligencer, “was Lakeside’s invitation to conservative
commentator Dinesh D’Souza to speak as part of a distinguished lecture
series.” But D’Souza, a fellow at Stanford’s Hoover Institution and
a veteran of the Reagan White House, never gave the lecture: Faculty
members opposed to his views howled when he was invited, and the
school’s headmaster, bowing to the censors, rescinded the invitation.
Asked about the campaign against him, D’Souza had said: “I am coming
to speak on one day. If they think what I am saying is so awful, they
have the rest of the year to refute it.” But that isn’t enough for
the enemies of free speech. They insist not only that speakers with
politically incorrect opinions be shunned, but that anyone offering
them a platform be punished as well.
Then there is “Grist,” an environmental webzine whose staff writer
David Roberts recently proposed that global warming skeptics be put
on trial like Nazi war criminals.
“When we’ve finally gotten serious about global warming . . . we
should have war crimes trials for these bastards — some sort of
climate Nuremberg,” Roberts wrote. Negative publicity led him to
recant, but he is far from the only one invoking the Holocaust as a
way to silence global warming heretics.
Environmental writer Mark Lynas, for example, puts dissent on
climate change “in a similar moral category to Holocaust denial —
except that this time the Holocaust is yet to come, and we still have
time to avoid it. Those who try to ensure we don’t will one day have
to answer for their crimes.” This totalitarian view is taking root
everywhere, making skepticism on climate change taboo and subjecting
anyone reckless enough to question the global-warming dogma to mockery
and demonization. Former vice president Al Gore lumps “global warming
deniers,” some of whom are eminent scientists, with the “15 percent of
the population (who) believe the moon landing was actually staged in a
movie lot in Arizona” and those who “still believe the earth is flat.”
The silencers are at work in the marketplace of ideas, using hook
or crook to smother opinions they dislike. The lust to censor is as
powerful as ever. If only liberty’s defenders were equally vigilant.
Jeff Jacoby’s e-mail address is [email protected].
e/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2006/10/18/censo ring_ideas/
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

OFFICIAL INFORMATION
Azat Artsakh, Republic of Nagorno Karabakh
Oct 17 2006
On October 12 NKR President Arkady Ghukassian met with Envoy Andrzej
Kasprzyk, the personal representative of the OSCE CiO. They discussed
the findings of the recent monitoring of the special OSCE mission in
the territories on both sides of the Karabakh-Azerbaijani front line
and the regions which suffered from fires. They also discussed the
plan monitoring near the village of Gyulistan, the region of Shahumian,
NKR on October13.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress