Author: Emil Lazarian

CHIRAC CHIDES TURKEY
Los Angeles Daily News, CA
Associated Press
Oct 1 2006
Time to admit mass killings
YEREVAN, Armenia (AP) French President Jacques Chirac urged Turkey on
Saturday to acknowledge the mass killings of Armenians in the early
20th century as genocide.
Armenians say that as many as 1.5 million of their ancestors were
killed in 1915-1923 in an organized campaign to force them out of
eastern Turkey and have pushed for recognition around the world of
the killings as genocide.
Turkey acknowledges that large numbers of Armenians died but says
the overall figure is inflated and that the deaths occurred in the
civil unrest during the collapse of the Ottoman Empire. But Ankara
is facing increasing pressure to fully acknowledge the killings,
particularly as it seeks membership in the European Union.
“Should Turkey recognize the genocide of Armenia to join the European
Union?” Chirac asked, echoing a question posed by a reporter at a
joint news conference with Armenian President Robert Kocharian.
“Honestly, I believe so. Each country grows by acknowledging its
dramas and errors of the past.”
Chirac’s comments went further than in the past, using the word
genocide directly for the first time. In 2004, Chirac said Turkey
should recognize the killings and make “an effort at memory” to join
the EU. France’s parliament has officially recognized the killings
as genocide.
Chirac has personally supported Turkey’s entry into the 25-nation EU,
though many French have grave misgivings, fearing an influx of cheap
labor and questioning Turkey’s human rights record.
Earlier Saturday, Chirac and his wife, Bernadette, laid a wreath at
the Memorial to the Victims of the 1915 Armenian Genocide in Ottoman
Turkey and visited the Genocide Museum and Institute. Chirac wrote
a single world in the guestbook: “Remember.”
Chirac was paying the first visit by a French president to the former
Soviet republic of Armenia since in gained independence. France has
some 400,000 citizens of Armenian origin, and plans several events
in the coming year linked to Armenian culture and history.
“Can one say that Germany, which has deeply acknowledged the Holocaust,
has as a result lost credit? It has grown,” Chirac said, urging Turkey
to take inspiration from that and other examples.
Kocharian thanked France for giving “the force of law” to recognition
of the killings as genocide.
Chirac and Kocharian then participated in the opening ceremony for
French Republic Square in the center of Yerevan and attended a concert
by Charles Aznavour, a famous French singer of Armenian origin.

THE LAST REFUGE OF THE OUTRAGEOUS
The Australian, Australia
Sept 29 2006
Government attempts to legislate virtue are like a noose around the
necks of fiction writers. Lionel Shriver is appalled and claims the
right for her characters to offend
September 30, 2006
SO tired is political correctness, both the phrase and the
concept, that it’s now politically correct to despair of political
correctness. But however shop-worn, this nuisance isn’t going away.
Especially in an era of super-sensitivity about relations between
Christians and Muslims, it’s getting worse.
Thus, fiction may be the last refuge of the outrageous, the last
redoubt of Orwell’s thought crime. Moreover, even the freedom to be
outrageous in fiction is under threat.
Were political correctness merely a matter of social conventions,
what we swallow for being unacceptable at parties, it would be
odious enough. Yet governments in Western countries such as the US
and Britain increasingly legislate virtue, telling us not only what
we may do but also what we may feel, and even what we may believe.
Implicitly, they’re also telling us what we maywrite.
The evolution of the special category of hate crimes, for example,
might seem progressive. How laudable, that we should levy additional
penalties — often many more years in prison — for committing
crimes for what are now regarded as particularly unvirtuous reasons:
antipathy towards blacks, or Mexicans, or homosexuals. Presumably it
is far worse to murder someone for being gay than because you want his
wallet, or you dislike him personally, or you just don’t like his face.
Yet in selecting out for legal demonisation one set of unpleasant
motivations, what is criminalised is the hatred itself: an imputed
interior state, an emotion, an attitude, a disposition. Hate crime
is thought crime.
Equally disturbing, this past year Tony Blair’s Government tried to
pass a bill (later mercifully watered down in the House of Commons)
that would add incitement to religious hatred — punishable by seven
years in prison — to the equally dubious legislation already on
the British books banning incitement to racial hatred. Laws that
prohibit incitement to illegal action, such as murder or arson, seem
defensible enough. But these statutes criminalise incitement to the
state of hatred itself.
If we’re classifying hatred as a crime, what’s the limit? Aren’t
there various other emotions that are disagreeable, and that we might
eliminate to make the world a better place? How about criminalising
envy, greed or bile?
More to the point, wouldn’t laws against incitement to racial or
religious hatred apply to fiction? Could I be hauled into court
because I crafted a character who harboured distasteful racial or
religious views but who was portrayed as insufficiently villainous,
or even as beguiling? With these incitement laws, would my characters
not be permitted to use racist epithets in dialogue, or to express
contempt for Islam or Scientology?
I wish these questions were specious. But two recent set-tos in
Britain, where I live, suggest the noose is getting tighter around
people who make up things.
Passage of that law against incitement to religious hatred might have
given the goons who shut down a theatrical production of a Sikh play
called Behzti in Birmingham two years ago a legal leg to stand on.
On December 18, 2004, 1000 enraged Sikhs stormed the Birmingham
Repertory Theatre, throwing eggs, smashing windows, injuring three
police officers and attempting to climb on to the stage. The
mob successfully halted the production after it had played for
20 minutes. Behzti, Punjabi for dishonour, had enraged the crowd
because it set a rape in a Sikh temple. Playwright Gurpreet Kaur
Bhatti, herself a British-born Sikh, had resisted local pressure to
re-situate the rape scene in a religiously neutral setting such as
a community centre.
Reluctantly, the Birmingham Rep cancelled the run, for neither the
theatre nor the police could guarantee the safety of audience and
staff. Determined to defend free speech, a second Birmingham company
volunteered to stage the play, only to withdraw the offer at the
request of the playwright, who went into hiding after receiving
death threats.
Even more unsettling than the triumph of yahooism was the rhetoric
surrounding this event. The spokesman for the Roman Catholic Bishop of
Birmingham applauded the cancellation of Behzti, claiming that “with
freedom of speech and artistic license must come responsibility”. But
the now-familiar “with rights come responsibilities” line simply
promotes self-censorship. With rights come responsibilities decodes as:
“It’s all very well to hold rights in theory, so long as you don’t
choose to exercise them.” Making this case all the more extraordinary,
the playwright wasn’t allowed to criticise her own religion.
The views of Harmander Singh, spokesman for a Sikh advocacy group,
were echoed by numerous British commentators at the time: “We are
not against freedom of speech, but there’s no right tooffend.”
Oh, but indeed there is.
This is becoming, dangerously, a shibboleth of our time: there’s
no right to offend. More recently, with the publication of the
notorious Danish cartoons depicting Mohammed, both irate Muslims
and many Western talking heads touted the same dubious dictum that
we have no right to offend, as if it were self-evidently true. Hence
mainstream British and American newspapers refused to publish those
images, despite their centrality to a headline news story.
As a fiction writer, I took this craven capitulation to mob threats
personally. Would those riots have been any less violent, or any less
effective at frightening the Western press into suppressing them,
had those cartoons been short stories about Mohammed instead? Are
we not well on our way to submitting that artists of any sort —
caricaturists, film-makers, or fiction writers — have no right
to offend?
Freedom of speech that does not embrace the right to offend is a
farce. The stipulation that you may say whatever you like so long as
you don’t hurt anyone’s feelings canonises the milquetoast homily:
“If you can’t say anything nice, don’t say anything at all.” Since
rare is the sentiment that doesn’t outrage somebody, rest assured
that if we enshrine this prissy fortune-cookie aphorism into law,
none of us will say anything at all.
We hear a lot about tolerance these days but the concept of tolerance
seems to have warped. We forget that in the olden days we tolerated
through gritted teeth; we tolerated what we could barely stand. It’s
now becoming accepted social cant that to tolerate is ipso facto to
accord respect. Indeed, respect is gradually achieving the status of
one more hallowed human right.
I’m sorry, but I’m under no obligation to respect you, or anything
you believe. Respect is earned. It is not an entitlement. Since I
find evolution credible and well supported by material evidence,
I have every reason to regard creationists as delusional crackpots,
which would make my at once respecting their beliefs patently absurd.
Similarly, in books and articles, I am under no obligation to accord
respect to any group, to any ethnicity, community, nation, or religion
that hasn’t, in my view, earned it.
***
ALTHOUGH less violent than the Behzti riots, a more recent incident
in Britain raises similar concerns and, for me as a novelist, strikes
closer to home.
Monica Ali’s best-selling novel Brick Lane takes place in a Bangladeshi
community in London’s East End. Ali is half Bangladeshi, not that
this should matter.
Ruby Films was to have begun shooting the movie of her acclaimed novel
this past July in the eponymous neighbourhood where the novel isset.
Yet irate Bangladeshi locals organised a group called (believe it or
not) The Campaign Against Monica Ali’s Film Brick Lane, a painfully
literal nomenclature betraying that these folks were not creative
geniuses themselves. The group rallied hundreds of people to protest
against the filming and threatened to stage a public book-burning of
the novel. As with the Behzti riots, the hoo-ha was successful. Ruby
Films decided to shoot the movie somewhere else.
The problem? Ali’s Bangladeshi characters were not “representative”
of East End Bangladeshis, if only because the novel includes an
adulterous relationship. (Ostensibly they don’t have adultery in
the real Brick Lane, in which case it ain’t only creationists who
are delusional.) The protesters also complained that Ali promoted
stereotypes, although surely you can’t have it both ways. Is a
perfectly representative character not, inevitably, a stereotype?
What most dumbfounded me was the group’s indignation that some of
Ali’s characters — her characters, not the author herself — were
“racist and insulting”. These offending characters call Sylhetis
— 95 per cent of Britain’s Bangladeshi community — “dirty little
monkeys” who are “under-educated, illiterate and closed-minded”. Thus
my concern that pretty soon people may be telling me what my characters
can and cannot say is not groundless. (Alas, this very month Turkish
novelist Elif Shafak was on trial for insulting Turkishness because
her characters utter disparaging remarks about Turks and dare to
mention the Armenian genocide.)
The rhetoric surrounding the Brick Lane protest was familiar from
Behzti. Said the campaign’s leader: “We are protecting our community’s
dignity and respect.” Ali’s novel was “a violation of the human rights
of the community”. The chairman of the Brick Lane Business Association
begrudgingly praised Ali — “She is definitely a good writer” — before
chiding that “she didn’t use her skill to benefit the community”.
I’m reminded of a letter I received recently from an Armenian
in America who grilled me on why exactly I had chosen to make
my protagonist in We Need to Talk About Kevin Armenian. And if I
insisted on making a character Armenian, why, he asked, must she be
so unappealing? I was given to believe (a) I had to justify borrowing
this man’s ethnicity for my novel, and perhaps I should have asked his
personal permission beforehand, and (b) if I insisted on borrowing his
ethnic identity without asking, I was obliged to make that character
charming as could be.
Are we not prospectively getting into a territory where a fiction
writer is obliged to consult whatever community a novel’s characters
hail from? Must a fiction writer start conducting focus groups to
ensure that nothing about the characters offends, to ensure that they
are perfectly representative, and that their portrayal accords the
ethnicity or religion in question with respect? Are we so concerned
with this new version of tolerance that characters in novels may not
say anything nasty about groups of people, even in dialogue? Do we
want novelists always to use their skills to “benefit thecommunity”?
And let me ask you this: If even novelists have to massage their texts
to guarantee that no line, no plot development and no characterisation
steps on anyone’s toes, do you really want to read these books?
I’ve written about a variety of subject matter, but the single thread
running through most of my work may be this: my characters don’t
follow the rules. The quasi-antihero in my fourth novel, Game Control,
is a cynical misanthrope named Calvin Piper, a disaffected demographer
convinced that population growth threatens our species with extinction.
Calvin plans to save the human race — rather an odd impulse for a
misanthrope, an irony the reader is not meant to miss — by murdering
two billion people overnight. A political inconvenience, most of
these haplessly superfluous folks whom Calvin would cull are poor
people from the Third World.
Game Control is usually interpreted as satire, but its intent is not
entirely tongue-in-cheek. The novel encourages us, as Calvin urges
his do-gooder girlfriend, to “think abominations”.
I’ve written more than one novel in which characters think
abominations. Double Fault is about the marriage of two professional
tennis players. Driven to distinguish herself in the sport from
childhood, Willy plummets in the rankings just as her husband soars.
She can’t bear it. We like to think of spouses as on the same side
but our friend Willy starts to perceive her husband as the enemy.
So this is a novel about a wife who does not wish her own husband well,
who when watching him play a tennis match cheers for his opponent. It’s
a novel about jealousy, about a woman who does not follow the rules of
marriage: it’s about thought crime. Most infamously, of course, my main
character in Kevin, the mother of a Columbine-style killer, also fails
to follow the emotional rules. Eva Khatchadourian is not overjoyed by
motherhood and cannot love her own son. She experiences pregnancy as an
infestation. She gives birth and feels only a horrifying blankness. She
imputes all manner of wickedness to her son, even as an infant. She
interprets what could be a toddler’s innocent prankishness as malign
destruction. She seems to defend her one act of real physical abuse
as “finally communicating”, in a passage that has sometimes been
interpreted as an authorial justification of domestic violence.
What has most flummoxed me about Kevin post-publication is the way
a bossy, moralistic subset of its audience has insisted on applying
nonfiction standards to fictional characters. Eva should have attended
more PTA meetings. Eva should have taken her six-year-old to see a
therapist whether or not this is something that, within the internal
world of the novel, this character would do. Any day now I expect a
booming knock on the door: “Lady! We’re here to arrest your narrator!”
The more constrained we are in nonfiction, and the more emotionally
and intellectually prescriptive we are with one another in real
life, the more vital it is that we have some vehicle free of these
constraints. At its best, literature expresses the unconscious,
the unfiltered, the contradictory, the irrational, and yes, even
theunacceptable.
Thus I have finally come to understand that if I am ever to come
to grips with immigration — an issue with which I am unhealthily
obsessed — I will have to write a novel about it. Every time I’ve
poked my head above the parapet on this matter in newspapers, it
has been chopped off. Immigration stirs many feelings that offend,
and The Guardian would never allow these no-nos into the columns I
write for it. In a novel, I could stuff outrageous sentiments into
the mouths of characters, thus employing what I call the “It’s not me,
it’s my imaginary friend” gambit.
Until some new self-righteous law stops me, I will continue to
write characters who don’t follow the rules. My characters are not
necessarily representative of the communities in which they live, and
I will not hesitate to make them Armenian or Catholic or Pakistani,
even if they’re not portrayed as perfectly emblematic of Armenians,
Catholics or Pakistanis as a whole.
My characters are full of prejudices. My characters may not like
Chinese people. My characters may believe that homosexuality is
unnatural. My characters may slander Islam, or belief in crystals,
or my father’s Presbyterianism. My characters murder schoolchildren,
plot to massacre two billion people overnight and hit their husbands
over the head. My characters are obnoxious, spiteful, seething,
difficult, resentful and inconsistent; and no, my characters will
not always take their six-year-old kids to therapists to get help. My
characters think abominations. In other words, my characters are the
closest approximations I can contrive of real people.
This essay is based on Lionel Shriver’s opening address to the Brisbane
Writers Festival. Her novel The Post-Birthday World will be published
early next year.

AMERICA’S GAME?
By Steve Hanlon
[email protected]
nwitimes.com, IN
Sept 29 2006
International players are making an impact on Region football
This story ran on nwitimes.com on Friday, September 29, 2006 12:45
AM CDT
Mark Hoffman arrived at Butler in 1968. The Andrean lineman was a
walking poster for American football: big, strong and tough.
He was fingering through a second-hand textbook at the Indianapolis
school when he noticed a shocking name, Garo Yepremian. The Armenian
was born in Cyprus, before a 15-year career in the NFL, plus three
Super Bowls.
“He’d been at Butler,” said Hoffman, the head coach at Valparaiso.
“Someone wrote an article about this kid kicking 50-yard field goals
and he was gone.”
Yepremian was one of the first international players in the NFL,
before his famous line “I keek a touchdown” was said on Johnny Carson.
Today, the international player isn’t such a comedy routine. This
past summer there were a record 109 foreign-born players in NFL camps.
“It’s global now,” said Hoffman, who’s had several foreign-born
players on his roster through the years.
[rest of article omitted]
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

ARMENIAN TECHNICAL SECURITY CENTER TO INVESTIGATE CAUSES OF EXPLOSION AT “NAIRIT” PLANT
Arka News Agency, Armenia
Sept 28 2006
YEREVAN, September 28. /ARKA/. The RA National Center of Technical
Security is to investigate the causes of the explosion at the Yerevan
“Nairit” plant last Saturday. The press service of the RA Prosecutor
General’s Office reports that criminal proceedings have been initiated.
The RA Prosecutor General issued a decree remitting the case to the
Yerevan Prosecutor’s Office.
Earlier the case was in charge of the Prosecutor’s Office of Yerevan’s
Shengavit community.
The RA Rescue Service reports that the explosion caused a chemical
leakage, which caused water-supply problems in the Shengavit community.
Four citizens received burns and other bodily injuries.
Specialists of the Chemical-Biological Laboratory, RA Rescue Service,
took water and air samples.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

AMNESTY CALLS ON GOVT TO ABOLISH ARTICLE 301
The New Anatolian
Sept 28 2006
Stressing its “dismay” at journalist Hrant Dink facing yet more charges
under Article 301, Amnesty International pressed yesterday for the
controversial law to be not just changed, but done away with entirely.
“Amnesty International is dismayed at today’s news that yet another
case has been opened against journalist Hrant Dink on charges of
‘denigrating Turkishness’ under Article 301 of the Turkish Penal Code”
(TCK), said an Amnesty International USA statement. “The organization
considers that this prosecution is part of an emerging pattern of
harassment against the journalist exercising his right to freedom of
expression — a right which Turkey, as a state party to the European
Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms
and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, has a
legal obligation to uphold.”
A new case was filed against Dink, a journalist and editor in chief
of Turkish-Armenian Agos weekly, on Monday on charges of denigrating
Turkish identity, by saying in an interview, “Of course, I call this
a genocide. Because the result itself identifies what it is and gives
it a name. You can see that a lot of people who have been living on
these lands for 4,000 years have disappeared.”
In its statement, Amnesty pointed to how this is the third time that
Dink alone has faced charges under 301, adding, “Amnesty International
is particularly concerned at this latest prosecution because it seems
to constitute a pattern of judicial harassment against the writer
for peacefully expressing his dissenting opinion.”
Maintaining that the group will consider Dink a prisoner of conscience
should he be found guilty, the group said that it considers the latest
prosecution to be particularly disappointing following the welcome
acquittal four days ago of another writer, novelist Elif Safak, on
charges under Article 301 relating to statements made by characters
in her novel “The Bastard of Istanbul.”
“The organization had seen this as a positive step for freedom
of expression in Turkey but fears this acquittal may prove to be
the exception rather than the rule and demonstrates yet again the
failure of certain members of the Turkish judiciary and prosecution
to internalize international law, as required by Article 90 of the
Turkish Constitution,” the group said. “The organization reiterates
its call for Article 301 to be abolished in its entirety, thereby
putting an end to arbitrary implementation of this ill-defined law.”
The group also said that the prosecution arises from a complaint lodged
by elements of civil society opposed to the abolition of Article 301,
who have repeatedly staged provocative and sometimes violent protests
at trials, calling on the Turkish authorities to take all the necessary
measures to protect defendants, their lawyers and supporters.
Journalists call on govt, opposition to abolish Article 301
The Progressive Journalists Association (CGD) also called for the
abolition of Article 301, saying that Safak’s recent acquittal doesn’t
solve the problems related to the controversial article.
CGD head Ahmet Abakay said yesterday, “The article in question
constitutes a threat to all writers and journalists,” adding that
the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) and the ruling
Justice and Development (AK) Party should compete over democracy,
not nationalism.
“I don’t agree with Dink’s statements which resulted in him being
prosecuted again,” Abakay said. “But I fully support his freedom
to express his ideas freely. I’m calling on both the CHP and the AK
Party to do away with this shameful article.”
In related news, a petition drive was launched on Tuesday to protest
the file cased against Dink and two other top staffers of Agos.
A call to support the campaign was made by musician Sanar Yurdatapan
and academic Taner Akcam.
The petition drive, called, “Hrant Dink Isn’t Alone,” quoted Dink’s
remarks which have resulted in the court case, and said, “I agree
with and sign this statement. I want to go on trial in this case.”
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

AL- ANFAL AND THE FINAL SOLUTION WERE TWO FACADES OF ONE COIN CALLED GENOCIDE
By Eamad Mazouri
Kurdish Media, UK
Sept 28 2006
Mass graves in Iraq
Archive photo
As, I was preparing to write this article, and to my delight, I read,
that soon in Denmark, there would be a seminar focusing mainly on
Al-Anfal, The Final Solution and the Armenian Massacre before and
during WWI. Seminar: al-Anfal, Holocaust and Armenian genocide
More than once, I have promoted the idea that Kurds should never
let the world fail to remember about the massacres they have been
subjected to in their more recent history. The main focused subject of
the Kurdish media must remains the Genocide committed against Kurdish
population, mostly civilians, including the use of weapon of mass
destruction, such as chemicals and biological by Saddam’s regime. Major
resources need to be put at the disposal of those efforts to remind
the world incessantly of these horrendous atrocities. Grand Monuments
should be erected and seminars and symposiums ought to be organized
to keep this painful memory constantly alive in the consciousness of
mankind forever.
This subject matter is gaining more momentum as the trial of deposed
dictator Saddam Hussein, his cousin Ali Hasan Al-Majid (known by
Kurds as Ali the Chemical) and the other 6 co-defendants has started.
Their charges range from war crimes to crimes against humanity and
Genocide.
Those who are following the trial have by now witnessed the gripping
testimonies of surviving Kurds. Horror stories and heart wrenching
tales of how Kurdish villages and towns were destroyed and demolished,
how people were exterminated and the rest rounded up, men, women and
children separated and mass transported like cattle to concentration
camps in various places build specifically for this purpose, and
some to the southern and western deserts left for certain death in
a very systematic method and operation dedicated to it most of the
state’s institutions and apparatus. Not to mention the mass graves,
those are being discovered on daily basis all over Iraq.
For those who have lived under the regime and are familiar with its
diabolic nature, it came as no surprise the insolent attitude of
the dictator and his co-culprits by not showing a slightest sign of
remorse towards the victims or the ordeal of those survived. On the
contrary, they have been defiant to the court and the suffering of
the victims. This psychotic behaviour should tell the court and the
whole world what these characters are about, what they have done and
what they are capable of doing if given another chance.
Twentieth century has been described as a bloody one. Many mass-
murders based on hatred were committed against certain groups of people
in order to annihilate that particular group. These include but are
not limited to Ottomans’ massacres against Armenians, the holocausts
against Jews, Genocide acts in Bosnia, Rwanda and finally in Kurdistan.
Once again, I emphasize that Kurds in general; their friends and
sympathizers, the civilized world and the entire humanity should never
let the world forget these horrible atrocities. No group of people has
to live in fear of being subjected once more to such a crime, ever
again. This task falls on the shoulders of every decent human being
to try to eliminate that awful possibility. However, I must point
out that although the world of post WWII and Holocausts thought for
once that no such crimes could or should be recurring again, it did,
and repeatedly in various countries, and in the latest the victims
were helpless Kurdish civilians; women, children, elderly and even
babies that their heartbreaking photos dominated TV screens all over
the world. Let us hope that the prosecution in Saddam’s ongoing trial
is skilled, competent, experienced, qualified and capable to prove
to the world that he is responsible for those crimes.
“Kurds rightfully have always referred to al- Anfal attacks as
Genocide.
In December 2005 a court in The Hague ruled that the killing of
thousands of Kurds in Iraq in the 1980s was an act of Genocide”.
One thing, history has taught humanity that perpetrators of Genocide
acts and Genocide usually do not use the term Genocide while referring
to their mass-murder, but find substitute terms such as final solution
as by the Nazi during WWII against Jews. In Iraq the Ba’ath regime
of dictator Saddam did not break out of the rule by using various
phrases and expressions such as Kurdish solution or al-Anfal as it
was officially called later on.
Just “like the Nazi Germany, the Ba’ath regime covered its actions
in euphemisms. Where Nazi officials spoke of “executive measures,”
“special actions” and “resettlement in the east,” Ba’athist bureaucrats
spoke of “collective measures,” “return to the national ranks” and
“resettlement in the south.” But beneath the euphemisms, Iraq’s
crimes against the Kurds amount to genocide, the “intent to destroy,
in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group,
as such.” Definition of Genocide
“L. Elizabeth Chamblee in her “POST-WAR IRAQ: PROSECUTING SADDAM
HUSSEIN” states that the multilateral treaty, the 1948 Convention
on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (Genocide
Convention), to which Iraq acceded on January 20, 1959, defined
genocide in Article II as:
Any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole
or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group, as such:
(a) Killing members of the group; (b) Causing serious bodily or mental
harm to members of the group (c) Deliberately inflicting on the group
conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction
in whole or in part; (d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births
within the group; (e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to
another group.
To convict Hussein of genocide he must have “committed” one or more
of the above forbidden acts against members of a protected group
with the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, that group. Hussein
did not have to perform the acts himself. Instead, under Article III
of the Genocide Convention, acts punishable under the treaty include
“Genocide; conspiracy to commit genocide; direct and public incitement
to commit genocide; attempt to commit Genocide; [and] complicity in
genocide.” Thus, if Hussein specifically ordered or even turned a
blind eye to any of these acts, his failure to act would constitute
genocide under the Genocide Convention. The International Court of
Justice, the ITCY and ITCR statutes, as well as the International
Criminal Court statute all follow the Convention’s definition and
its general elements”.
On the other hand, Encarta encyclopedia defines, Genocide as, a crime
of destroying or conspiring to destroy a group of people because of
their ethnic, national, racial, or religious identity.
The definition continues to emphasize that, the perpetrator is usually
a non-democratic country that views the targeted group of people as
a barrier or threat to maintaining power, fulfilling an ideology,
or achieving some other goal .The perpetrator see the victim as
inferiors, subhuman who don’t deserve to live. This approach is used
mostly to mentally prepare the ruling group and state institutions
and apparatus to carry out the dreadful policy.
In 1948 the General assembly of the UN passed an act called the
International Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime
of Genocide. It took effect in 1951, provided a legal definition
of genocide and established it as a crime under international
law. According to the Genocide Convention, any of the following actions
when committed with the intent to eliminate a particular national,
ethnic, racial, or religious group constitutes Genocide:
Killing members of the group, causing serious bodily or mental
harm to members of the group, deliberately inflicting on the group
conditions of life calculated to kill, imposing measures intended to
prevent births within the group, and forcibly transferring children
out of group.
In spite of these laws, the world was never serious about the
legal concept of Genocide Convention except when their interests
are intertwined with the application of the convention. In general,
the enforcement of the Genocide Convention has proven difficult. The
UN has not established an international office or system to enforce it.
Furthermore, victims do not have a permanent international criminal
court to which they can bring their complaints. In 1988 UN delegates
adopted a statute that would create a permanent international criminal
court to try individuals accused of genocide and other violations of
international criminal law. The court would have been established if
60 countries ratified the statute, and would have been headquartered
in The Hague, Netherlands. Regrettably, after George W.
Bush took office in the White House he refused to seek the
Congressional ratification of such a law.
Al-Anfal vis-?-vis The Final solution
Mass-killing, destruction of villages, deportation to forced
concentration camps is the first steps towards Genocide. In both
scenarios these acts stand salient and well documented. In fact,
in both instances victims were used as test subjects for chemical
and biological experiments.
Holocaust encyclopedia states that, the Nazis, under cover of the
war, developed the technology, bureaucracy, and psychology of hate
to efficiently murder millions of Jews. The details of the “Final
Solution”.
were worked out at the Wannsee Conference. All Jews in Germany and
the occupied countries were deported to sealed ghettos as a holding
area. Many were then shipped in cattle cars to labor camps where
they lived under brutally inhuman conditions. Hundreds of thousands
were sent directly to the gas chambers in death camps. As the Allies
advanced on the camps, death marches further depleted the ranks of
potential camp survivors.” All the steps taken by the Nazis were aimed
at removing the Jews from German society. As well as exterminating
Gypsies Polish and Ukrainians.
“After the beginning of World War II, anti-Jewish policy evolved
into a comprehensive plan to concentrate and eventually annihilate
European Jewry. What is clear is that the genocide of the Jews was
the culmination of a decade of Nazi policy, under the rule of Adolf
Hitler. The “Final Solution” was implemented in stages. In January
1942, the Nazis began the systematic deportation of Jews from all
over Europe to six extermination camps established in former Polish
territory — Chelmno, Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka, Auschwitz-Birkenau,
and Majdanek. Extermination camps were killing centers designed
to carry out genocide. Over three million Jews were gassed in
extermination. In its entirety consisted of gassing, shootings,
random acts of terror, disease, and starvation that accounted for
the deaths of about six million Jews — two-thirds of European Jewry”
How it was carried out, these were the preparations steps:
1. An entire state bureaucracy was mobilized solely for the purpose
of annihilating Jews.
2. German technological expertise was harnessed to make the mass
murder as efficient and low-cost as possible.
3. Special camps were created solely for the purpose of killing Jews
and other “undesirables.”
4. The conditions in these death camps and other concentration camps
were brutal, and designed purposely to make survival only temporary
Comparing al-Anfal Campaign to the above mentioned procedures,
it is easy to find the many similarities both campaigns share with
same objective of terminating people as a whole. From the documents
seized after the Kurdish uprising of 1991, and later on following
the liberation of Iraq there are testimonies to the fact that the
whole state bureaucracy was drummed up to accommodate this particular
objective; the extermination of Kurds in Iraq.
Official correspondents among various state institutions are
unambiguous, straight forward and very much indicting when it comes
to the intention and the partial implementation of Genocide.
L. Elizabeth Chamblee in her report continues on the Kurdish Genocide
by Saddam’s regime “The plight of the Kurds at the hands of Hussein’s
regime began well before the first Gulf War. Beginning in 1985,
Hussein’s plan to address “Kurdish affairs” formed a systematic
program of destruction for Kurdish villages through chemical
weapons and military force, subsequent relocation of the Kurds in
concentration camps, and summary executions upon arrival. In 1988,
Iraqi forces killed as many as 182,000 Kurds and destroyed at least
4,000 Kurdish villages”.
“Once it finished using chemical and conventional bombing, the army
and domestic militia dynamited and bulldozed Kurdish villages. The
Iraqi army destroyed at least 703 Kurdish villages in 1987 alone
After the armies razed the village of Serkand Khailani, officials
arrested most of the villagers and later subjected the leaders to
beatings with cables, suspensions from ceiling hooks, and electric
shocks to the earlobes. Some of those arrested were executed. Others
were sent to the collective camps. The Iraqi government painstakingly
videotaped and documented a number of these events Al -Anfal Campaign
against Kurds “Surat al-Anfal, a Verse on Jihad (“the Spoils of War”)
is the eighth chapter of the Qur’an, with 85 verses. It is a Madinan
sura, recorded after the Battle of Badr.The al-Anfal Campaign was
an anti-Kurdish campaign led by the Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussein
between 1986 and 1989 (during and just after the Iran-Iraq war). The
campaign takes its name from Surat Al-Anfal in the Qur’an, which
was used as a code name by the former Iraqi Baathist regime for a
series of military campaigns against the peshmerga rebels as well
as the mostly Kurdish civilian population of southern Kurdistan. The
campaign was headed by Ali Hasan al-Majid, a cousin of the Iraqi leader
Saddam Hussein. The al-Anfal campaign included the use of ground
offensives, aerial bombing, systematic destruction of settlements,
mass deportation, concentration camps, firing squads, and chemical
warfare, which earned al-Majid the nickname of “Chemical Ali”.
A report of Human right watch on al-Anfal campaign was detailed and
vivid and established beyond any doubt those gross crimes of Saddam’s
Regime against Kurds as Genocide, especially the Attack on Halabja
with Chemical weapons and al-anfal Campaign, which has been described
as a campaign of extermination against the Kurds of northern Iraq.
“The campaigns of 1987-1989 were characterized by the following gross
violations of human rights:
Mass summary executions and mass disappearance of many tens of
thousands of non-combatants, including large numbers of women
and children, and sometimes the entire population of villages; ·
The widespread use of chemical weapons, including mustard gas and
the nerve agent GB, or Sarin, against the town of Halabja as well as
dozens of Kurdish villages, killing many thousands of people, mainly
women and children; · The wholesale destruction of some 2,000 villages,
which are described in government documents as having been “burned,”
“destroyed,” “demolished”.
and “purified,” as well as at least a dozen larger towns and
administrative centers (nahyas and qadhas); · The wholesale destruction
of civilian objects by Army engineers, including all schools, mosques,
wells and other non-residential structures in the targeted villages,
and a number of electricity substations; · Looting of civilian property
and farm animals on a vast scale by army troops and pro-government
militia; · Arbitrary arrest of all villagers captured in designated
“prohibited areas” (manateq al-mahdoureh), despite the fact that
these were their own homes and lands; · Arbitrary jailing and
warehousing for months, in conditions of extreme deprivation, of
tens of thousands of women, children and elderly people, without
judicial order or any cause other than their presumed sympathies
for the Kurdish opposition. Many hundreds of them were allowed to
die of malnutrition and disease; · Forced displacement of hundreds
of thousands of villagers upon the demolition of their homes, their
release from jail or return from exile; these civilians were trucked
into areas of Kurdistan far from their homes and dumped there by
the army with only minimal governmental compensation or none at all
for their destroyed property, or any provision for relief, housing,
clothing or food, and forbidden to return to their villages of origin
on pain of death. In these conditions, many died within a year of their
forced displacement; · Destruction of the rural Kurdish economy and
infrastructure.” “According to Iraq’s report to the UN, the know-how
and material for developing chemical weapons were obtained from firms
in such countries as:
The United States, West Germany, the United Kingdom, France and
China. By far, the largest suppliers of precursors for chemical
weapons production were in Singapore (4,515 tons), the Netherlands
(4,261 tons), Egypt (2,400 tons), India (2,343 tons), and Federal
Republic of Germany (1,027 tons).
One Indian company, Exomet Plastics (now part of EPC Industries) sent
2,292 tons of precursor chemicals to Iraq. The Kim Al-Khaleej firm,
located in Singapore and affiliated to United Arab Emirates, supplied
more than 4,500 tons of VX, sarin, and mustard gas precursors and
production equipment to Iraq”.
Figures
-During the Anfal campaign, the Iraqi government destroyed about
4,500 villages in Iraqi Kurdistan -The Iraqi government executed
approximately 182,000 men, women, and children -1,754 schools
destroyed -2,450 mosques destroyed -27 churches destroyed -270
hospitals destroyed -around 75% of villages wiped out -The Kurdish
town of Qaladize of over 70,000 populations was totally destroyed.
– Parts of major Kurdish cities were demolished in 1991 as the start
of another or final phase of the annihilation of Kurds.
“The campaigns of 1987-1989 were not out of the blue, they were rather
deeply rooted in the history of the Iraqi Kurds. Since the earliest
days of the establishment of Iraq. when Kurds were coerced into an
involuntary union with the newly established Iraq and were denied
their rights. They faced that with a chain of revolutions.
However, the situation became worse when Ba’ath took power and started
a systematic plan to annihilate the Kurds who Saddam saw them as an
obstacle on his path of pan-Arab nationalism.
However, with the granting of emergency powers to al-Majid in March
1987, the intermittent counterinsurgency against the Kurds became a
campaign of destruction. As Raul Hilberg observes in his monumental
history of the Holocausts” Hilberg’s Paradigm
Raul Hilberg (born June 2, 1926) is one of the best-known and most
distinguished of genocide historians. His three-volume, 1,273-page
“The Destruction of the European Jews” regarded as the seminal study
of the Nazi Final Solution “A destruction process has an inherent
pattern. There is only one way in which a scattered group can
effectively be destroyed. Three steps are organic in the operation:
Definition –> Concentration (or seizure) –> Annihilation
“This is the invariant structure of the basic process, for no group
can be killed without a concentration or seizure of the victims,
and no victims can be segregated before the perpetrator knows who
belongs to the group.
To pursue Hilberg’s paradigm a little further, once the concentration
and seizure was complete, the annihilation could begin. The target
group had already been defined with care. Now came the definition
of the second, concentric circle within the group: those who were
actually to be killed.”Beginning with a presidential order of October
15, 1987–two days before the census–that “the names of persons
who are to be subjected to a general/blanket judgment must not be
listed collectively. Rather, refer to them or treat them in your
correspondence on an individual basis.” The effects of this order
are reflected in the lists that the Army and Amn compiled of Kurds
arrested during Anfal, which note each person’s name, sex, age, place
of residence and place of capture”.”The Kurdish genocide of 1987-1989,
with the Anfal campaign as its centerpiece, fits Hilberg’s paradigm
to perfection” as Dr. Khalid Salih deems it.
The Halabja Attack
Almost all current accounts of the incident regard Iraq as the party
responsible for the gas attack, which occurred during the Iran-Iraq
War.
The war between Iran and Iraq was in its eighth year when, on March 16
and 17, 1988, Iraq dropped poison gas on the Kurdish city of Halabja.
“The poison gas attack on the Iraqi town of Halabja was the
largest-scale chemical weapons (CW) attack against a civilian
population in modern times.
It began early in the evening of March 16, when a group of eight
aircraft began dropping chemical bombs, and the chemical bombardment
continued all night. The Halabja attack involved multiple chemical
agents, including mustard gas, and the nerve agents sarin, tabun
and VX. Some sources have also pointed to the blood agent hydrogen
cyanide” The massacre at Halabja did not raise protests by the
international community in March 1988. At the time, it was admitted
that the civilians had been killed “collaterally” due to an error in
handling the combat gas.
Two years later, when the Iran-Iraq War was finished and the Western
powers stopped supporting Saddam Hussein, the massacre of Halabja
was attributed to the Iraqi government.
After 1991 uprising in Iraqi Kurdistan, as Kurdish people were
liberating their cities they discovered hundreds of tons of documents
enough to indict every single Iraqi official who was involved. These
documents were transferred to the United States. All the elements
of the definition of Genocide under international law individually
and collectively do apply to the Kurdish case. For example,
killing members of the group, the attack carried all the element of
every type of Genocide: ideological, retributive, developmental,
and despotic. Simply, because the regime was trying to achieve
an ideal social structure in which all Iraqis are alike and hold
the same beliefs based on pan-Arabism. Their ideology based on pan
Arab nationalism mixed with the principles of socialism led them to
believe that Kurds as a different ethnic group are the major obstacle
in their way to implement their policies and achieve their goals.
Therefore, they have to be eliminated or at least neutralized or
marginalized.
Although Iraq is one of the signatory of the Genocide Convention
since January 20, 1959 the Iraqi regime was never charged for any
crimes committed against Kurdish people. It was the Ba’ath’s mentality
translated into state policy to annihilate Kurdish people since the
very beginning.
They have never given up on that. After the collapse of the Kurdish
revolution in the spring of the 1975 as the result of the Algiers
‘s Agreement, Hundreds of thousands of Kurds left Iraq to Iran and
other counties while the rest surrendered to the government. They were
deported to southern Iraqi desert. The majority of them perished or
were shot in unmarked mass graves. Arabization has been an official
policy of this government. Many Kurdish cities and towns such as
Kirkuk, Mendaly, Khanaqin, Shingar and Atrush has been systematically
evacuated of their Kurdish population and replaced with Arab tribes.
In 1980 the government arrested hundreds of thousands of the Faily
Kurds who were dwelling Baghdad and actually running the economy of
the capital city. They were rounded up, after confiscating all their
properties except the cloth on their back. They were split into two
groups. One group just disappeared without any traces. While the other
was deported to Iran. Nevertheless, the government was persistent on
pursuing its deadly policies towards the Kurds. In 1983 they rounded
up over 8 thousand male members of the Barzani tribe, and nobody ever
heard anything about their unfortunate fate. The rest of the women,
elderly male, and children were put in a concentration camp similar
to those used in Europe by the Nazi for Jews during the WW11.
However, the worst was still lurking ahead. In 1988 the government
attacked the Kurdish town of Halabja with chemical and possibly
biological weapons killing indiscriminately over 5000 people, mostly
women and children. This was the first time these weapons of mass
destruction has been used since the WW1.As a result and after showing
the demonic crime on the TV screens all over the world. It was decided
in a conference in Paris to reprimand the Iraqi regime while refusing
the Kurdish representatives, here, the real victims of the crime of
the century, to even attend the conference. This savage attack was
followed by the infamous al- ANFAL Campaign led by defense minister
Ali Hassan Al Majid, Known in Kurdistan as Ali the Chemical, who is
the dictator Saddam Hussein’s cousin. During this barbarous campaign
the entire southern Kurdistan was turned into a military zone. The
Iraqi army, whose only experience was the killing of Kurdish people,
was authorized to shoot and kill anything alive and moving. Over a
quarter of a million of Kurdish people were eliminated.
Many were taken to the Iraqi desert in the south and buried alive
in unidentified mass graves, according to very few eye witnesses who
survived by a miracle.
Human Watch report on al-Anfal Campaign The fact that al-Anfal was, by
the narrowest definition, a counterinsurgency as dictator Saddam and
defense team are trying to portray it, does nothing to diminish the
fact that it was also an act of genocide. There is nothing mutually
exclusive about counterinsurgency and genocide. Indeed, one may be
the instrument used to consummate the other.
Article I of the Genocide Convention affirms that “genocide, whether
committed in time of peace or in time of war, is a crime under
international law.” Summarily executing noncombatant or captured
members of an ethnical-national group as such is not a legitimate
wartime or counterinsurgency measure, regardless of the nature of the
conflict In addition to this argument of principle, many features of
Anfal far transcend the realm of counterinsurgency. These include,
first of all, the simple facts of what happened after the military
goals of the operation had been accomplished:
The mass murder and disappearance of many tens of thousands of
non-combatants–50,000 by the most conservative estimate, and possibly
twice that number; · The use of chemical weapons against non-combatants
in dozens of locations, killing thousands and terrifying many more
into abandoning their homes; · The near-total destruction of family and
community assets and infrastructure, including the entire agricultural
mainstay of the rural Kurdish economy; · The literal abandonment,
in punishing conditions, of thousands of women, children and elderly
people, resulting in the deaths of many hundreds.
Those who survived did so largely due to the clandestine help of
nearby Kurdish townspeople.
“Finally, there is the question of intent, which goes to the heart
of the notion of genocide. Documentary materials captured from the
Iraqi intelligence agencies demonstrate with great clarity that the
mass killings, disappearances and forced relocations associated with
Anfal and the other anti-Kurdish campaigns of 1987-1989 were planned
in coherent fashion. While power over these campaigns was highly
centralized, their success depended on the orchestration of the
efforts of a large number of agencies and institutions at the local,
regional and national level, from the Office of the Presidency of
the Republic on down to the lowliest jahsh”.
By April 23, 1989, the Ba’ath Party felt that it had accomplished its
goals, for on that date it revoked the special powers that had been
granted to Ali Hassan al-Majid two years earlier. At a ceremony to
greet his successor, the supreme commander of Anfal made it clear that
“the exceptional situation is over.”
To use the language of the Genocide Convention, the regime’s aim had
been to destroy the group (Iraqi Kurds) in part, and it had done so,
mission was accomplished as they proclaimed it. Intent and act had
been combined, resulting in the consummated crime of genocide against
Kurdish people. The survivors, the families of the victims, the entire
Kurdish people, those who have suffered from Saddam’s successive
belligerence and aggression, every decent human being and the whole
civilized world is waiting for this court to get the justice done.
–Boundary_(ID_/8XksnYhj+jkUF8pYaJwiA)–
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

JACQUES CHIRAC: CO-CHAIRS’ PROPOSALS ARE QUITE BALANCED AND FAIR
Azeri Press Agency
Sept 28 2006
“The proposals offered by the co-chairs of the OSCE Minsk Group for
the settlement of the Nagorno Garabagh conflict is quite balanced
and fair,” said France’s President Jacques Chirac while commenting on
current situation in the settlement of the Nagorno Garabagh conflict
between Armenia and Azerbaijan.
APA reports President Chirac stated that Azerbaijani and Armenian
Presidents should demonstrate political will for the solution of the
conflict.

EU PARLIAMENT WITHDREW PARAGRAPH RELATING TURKEY`S ACKNOWLEDGEMENT OF ARMENIAN GENOCIDE – PRE-CONDITION FOR TURKEY TO JOIN EU
TREND, Azerbaijan
Sept 28 2006
Yesterday, EU Parliament adopted a report on Turkey. Notably a
paragraph of Turkey`s acknowledgement of the Armenian Genocide of
1915 had been a pre-condition for Turkey to join EU, Trend reports
referring to REGNUM.
Instead of that, the report being adopted by the EU Parliament includes
a call to Turkey to acknowledge the Armenian Genocide.
“The Parliament again confirms its call to Turkey to acknowledge the
Armenian Genocide like its previous resolutions did”. At the same
time, the resolution adopted in September 2005 said that Turkey`s
acknowledgement of the genocide is a pre-condition for the Country
to join the EU. “The EU Parliament urges Turkey to acknowledge the
Armenian Genocide, and considers that as a pre-condition for Turkey’s
membership into the EU”.
At the same time, speaking in the name of the EU Executive Body
yesterday, Luis Michelle, EU Commission Commissar, told members
of the EU Parliament that the Genocide acknowledgement issue as a
pre-condition for Turkey to join the EU will become “changing the
rules during play”.
The report adopted yesterday is not of an obligatory nature.
However, it is very critical, and blames Turkey in its non-compliance
with the promise the Country gave the EU. “The EU Parliament expresses
its shame that the process of reforms has slowed”, the report tells. EU
Parliament stresses that 11 months after the beginning of the process
on Turkey`s membership into the EU, “unsatisfactory progress” on the
freedom of word, religious, and national minorities, women`s right
has been fixed, Radio Free Europe/Liberty reports.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

ARMENIA, AZERBAIJAN MULL THEÅLAND MODEL
By Emil Danielian and Kenan Guluzade in the land Islands
Institute for War and Peace Reporting, UK
Sept 28 2006
Could the Finnish-Swedish arrangement for the land Islands work for
Nagorny Karabakh?
Finland’s Åland Islands, an archipelago mainly populated by ethnic
Swedes, enjoy extensive self-government that makes them effectively
independent of Helsinki. It is an example that has long been proposed
for the resolution of the Nagorny Karabakh dispute, yet never found
universal acceptance.
A visit to the islands by a group of Armenian and Azerbaijani
IWPR journalists, supported by the Åland Islands Peace Institute,
highlighted the success of the formula of autonomy found for the
islands themselves as well as lessons for the unresolved Karabakh
dispute.
Perhaps the most obvious difference is that Finland and Sweden never
went to war over the cluster of more than 6,000 islands and islets
in the Baltic Sea. The heavily wooded region was for centuries part
of the Swedish Kingdom before being incorporated into the Russian
Empire (along with modern-day Finland) in 1809. Its overwhelmingly
Swedish-speaking population demanded reunification with Sweden as
the empire crumbled and Finland became independent in 1917. The Finns
rejected these demands and turned to the League of Nations for support.
Under a compromise solution forged in 1921, the islands were declared
part of Finland but granted a considerable degree of independence. As
Peter Lindback, the territory’s Helsinki-appointed governor, puts it,
“Åland is not an autonomous region. It’s a partly independent state.”
In line with its internationally-guaranteed status, Åland has
an elected legislative assembly, Lagtinget, that forms the local
government responsible for economic development, education, healthcare,
and policing. Even the region’s governor, whose powers are largely
ceremonial, cannot be named by the president of Finland without the
assembly’s consent. With Swedish being the islands’ sole official
language, few locals speak Finnish or have social or cultural links
with mainland Finland. Three-quarters of young Ålanders choose to get
higher education in nearby Sweden. Ethnic Finns now make up just five
per cent of the 27,000-strong local population.
The picturesque archipelago is also a demilitarised zone, meaning
that Finnish troops cannot be stationed there in peacetime.
Furthermore, international treaties signed by Finland have to
be ratified by Lagtinget if they are to have a legal force on the
islands. Finland, for example, had to negotiate a special membership
“protocol” for Åland when it joined the European Union in 1995.
Ålanders, who are not just at peace but also prosperous, readily share
their success story with visitors, while stressing that their status
is not necessarily a blueprint for conflict resolution. “Åland is
not a model. It’s just an example,” Robert Jansson, director of the
Åland Islands Peace Institute, told visiting IWPR journalists.
Mediators trying to resolve the Karabakh conflict first tried to use
the example of the islands when the war was still raging. In December
1993, with the support of the Finnish government, a symposium was
held in the islands’ capital Marienhamn for parliamentarians from
the region.
Later, a representative of the Peace Institute attended the talks
that led to the May 1994 ceasefire and in 1995, Finland, as then
joint mediators with Russia of the Karabakh dispute, invited the
parties to negotiations in the Åland Islands.
Three years later, the American, French and Russian co-chairs of the
OSCE Minsk Group clearly drew on the example of the islands when they
presented a new peace plan under which Azerbaijan and Karabakh would
form a “common state” made up of two essentially equal entities.
Karabakh would be able to maintain a “national guard” and police force
independent of Baku, establish direct ties with foreign states, block
the entry into force of any Azerbaijani law on its territory, issue
internationally- recognised passports and even have its own currency.
The Armenian authorities in Yerevan and Nagorny Karabakh accepted the
proposed deal with some reservations at the time, while Azerbaijani
leaders rejected it, saying they are only ready to give the Karabakh
Armenians a high degree of conventional autonomy.
However, some are still inspired by the detailed formula for peaceful
co-existence provided by the Åland Islands.
“Even twelve years after the end of fighting in Karabakh, the Åland
model has not lost its meaning as a symbol of resolving disputes
through reason and not through bloodshed and as an intellectual
rebuke to those who call for new bloodshed,” Russian diplomat Vladimir
Kazimirov, who negotiated the 1994 ceasefire, wrote recently.
“We should use accumulated international experience to settle the
Karabakh conflict, taking into account the preservation of the
territorial integrity of Azerbaijan,” said Fuad Mustafiev, deputy
leader of Azerbaijan’s opposition Popular Front party.
Azerbaijani opposition political analyst Zardusht Alizade told IWPR
that the principles of the Åland Island dispute “can create a basis
for both peoples – Armenians and Azerbaijanis – to get themselves
out of the trap we have been driven into”.
Alizade argues that the Åland model would benefit the Armenians
by giving them a guarantee of permanent democracy and would suit
Azerbaijan in so far as everything would be decided within a legal
framework, “Besides Karabakh will not be detached from the territory
of our state. The international community will act as a guarantor of
security. And most importantly, peace will be established.”
However, some Azerbaijanis see the Åland model as a betrayal of
Azerbaijan’s basic interests.
“I am categorically against using the possibility of using any
models of autonomy in relation to Karabakh,” Vafa Guluzade, formerly
Azerbaijani state foreign affairs aide, told IWPR. “It is Azerbaijani
land and there are four UN resolutions on the occupation of our
territory.”
And most Armenian politicians are also sceptical, holding out for an
even higher level of sovereignty for Nagorny Karabakh.
“In the case of Karabakh, anything falling short of full independence
is unacceptable to us,” said Armen Rustamian, a leader of the governing
Armenian Revolutionary Federation (or Dashnak) party who heads the
foreign relations committee of Armenia’s parliament.
Karabakh Armenians, who remain deeply distrustful of Azerbaijan,
argue that the Caucasus is very different from the Baltic.
“May be I would agree to this model if the democratic level in our
countries was the same as in Scandinavia for example,” said Karen
Ohanjanian, head of the Helsinki Initiative-92 group in Karabakh,
calling it a “step backwards”.
“Azerbaijan is no Finland, and Azerbaijan’s demands and actions
have been very different from Finland’s,” said Arman Melikian,
a Yerevan-based senior aide to Arkady Ghukasian, leader of
the unrecognised Nagorny Karabakh Republic (which is still
internationally-recognised Azerbaijani territory.)
In his turn former Azerbaijani foreign minister Tofik Zulfugarov
responded to the statement that “Azerbaijan is not Finland,” by saying,
“And the Armenians are not Swedes.”
Melikian claims that the Åland model would also not work in Karabakh
because of the often conflicting interests of major world powers
tussling for influence in the South Caucasus. “The Åland islands
were not of strategic importance to Finland, Sweden or any external
power,” he said. “The Karabakh problem has much more far-reaching
regional ramifications.”
The most recent proposal to resolve the issue of the disputed status
of Nagorny Karabakh proposes a different path. It is for a referendum
on self-determination in Karabakh that would be held years after the
liberation of most of the Armenian-occupied Azerbaijani territories
surrounding the disputed enclave.
However, this plan is now in trouble following the breakdown of the
latest peace talks and the final status of Nagorny Karabakh seems as
elusive as ever.
Emil Danielian is a Yerevan-based journalist at Radio Liberty Armenia;
Kenan Guluzade is editor of Zerkalo Newspaper in Baku.
Nagorny Karabakh journalist Karine Ohanian contributed to this report.
–Boundary_(ID_PVyv4rFz2J/O1CtbRwlytA)–
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

Azad-Hye, Dubai, 2 October 2006: The Embassy is located in a beautiful and
spacious villa endowed with private garden in the Zamalek district, an
affluent area were most embassies are located, relatively close to downtown
Cairo. The site, originally belonged to Janik and Satenig Chaker and was
bestowed in 1976 to the local AGBU by Satenig Chaker. It was eventually
forwarded to the Armenian Foreign Ministry to serve as premises for the
Embassy at a nominal rent. The Embassy of Armenia first was in an apartment
in Dokki.
Artak Hovhannisian, a graduate of oriental studies from Yerevan, the Second
Secretary of the Embassy welcomed us in the Embassy and gave a briefing
about the location. Hovhannisian used to work in the Abu Dhabi Armenian
Embassy (2001-2003).  
Araxy Khatcherian-Deronian, a friend from the Egyptian Armenian community
accompanied us in this visit.  
The Embassy of Armenia in Egypt is the most important Armenian Embassy in
the Arab World due to the weight that Egypt enjoys as a leading Arab
country. The historical presence of the Armenians in Egypt, dating back to
the Middle Ages, gives additional significance to the role of the Armenian
diplomacy in this country.  
Ambassador Dr. Rouben Karapetian welcomed us with a very sincere touch in
his voice.
During our meeting he said that the Embassy is engaged nowadays in an active
campaign to publicize to the Egyptian and general Arab public everything
related to Armenia.
The Ambassador had the initiative to issue a tri-monthly bulletin called
`Akhbar Armenia’ (News of Armenia) since January 2006. The bulletin is now
distributed to hundreds of important addresses all around Egypt and the Arab
World. See the first two issues of the bulletin at the end of this report.
He stressed that the Armenian diplomats should consider the Arab World and
particularly Egypt as a vital sphere for Armenian interests. Do not forget,
he added, that we have historical presence here, which we need to highlight.
This is why we organized the presentation of Sona Zeitlian’s most valuable
book `Armenians in Egypt’ and we are preparing now our own website, which
will be in Arabic and English languages.  
Karapetian underlined the fact that the Egyptians highly appreciate the
Armenian community. `There are few capitals worldwide, outside Armenia,
where the Armenians have thrived and left their marks. One of these is
Cairo. We have always taken on ourselves the role of bridging and
communicating between the East and West. This has been our mission. Why we
should ignore this mission?’, he commented.
We have not recognized our potential yet in the region, the Ambassador
acknowledged. We have to highlight our role in the region as the only
Eastern Christian independent state that has so deep and comprehensive
understanding of the Arabs and Muslims, without being a colonial power in
the past.   
 
On the other hand Ambassador Karapetian recognizes the need to educate our
own citizens on issues such as the Armenian-Arab relations.
On Armenian-Egyptian bilateral level, Karapetian refers to the visit of
Prime Minister Antranik Markarian to Egypt, which marked the beginning of a
new phase in the relations of the two friendly countries. `We are working on
a friendship agreement with Egypt, which will translate the visit into a
long-lasting commitment for both sides. Egypt is trying to achieve progress
and has done remarkable efforts and needs to find partners in economic
development, especially in our region’, he explained.  
About other activities in the horizon, Karapetian mentioned the plan of
erecting a friendship statue in a main square in Cairo (and a similar one in
Yerevan).
With the most sincere manners, Karapetian acknowledged the need to clarify
relations with Diaspora, especially in light of the Armenia-Diaspora
conference. `We need to clarify our mutual concerns. We need to talk
transparently about our issues. We have to point out clearly what we should
do and take lessons from the past. We should not pacify ourselves by saying
everything is brilliant. This is not the way to progress. Nothing comes
easily. The system should develop gradually. After 15 years of independence
we can now talk about Armenian diplomacy. All the previous years were years
of formation. The coming presidential elections in Armenia (2008) should
have great meaning for us as a factor of stability and progress. We need the
input of our politically matured population. We have to develop further
democracy. Overall progress is needed in the economic and educational
spheres, without which nothing could be achieved. Rural areas should be
developed. Armenia cannot be concentrated only around the capital Yerevan’.
These were some of the challenges the Ambassador mentioned at the end of the
conversation.   
Bulletin of the Embassy in Arabic language:
Issue no. 1 of `Akhbar Armenia’ (News of Armenia)
Issue no. 2 of `Akhbar Armenia’ (News of Armenia)
Download bulletins from the following page:
wsId=621sff41
Photos:
1- Ambassador Dr. Rouben Karapetian in front of the Embassy building.
2- Artak Hovhannisian, Second Secretary of the Embassy.
3- The Building of the Embassy (historically Chakrian family’s property).
4- The Egyptian guard in front of the Embassy.
See photos at the following link:
wsId=621sff41
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress