Author: Emil Lazarian

MUNICIPALITY APPLIES ELECTRONIC CIRCULATION OF DOCUMENTS
Panorama.am
13:02 11/09/06
Yerevan community administrations will soon circulate documents
electronically, Grigor Melkumyan, Yerevan municipality staff head,
told a briefing today. In his words, Elpas system will enable to
process information addressed to the municipality by the citizens. The
system automatically records and edits applications, accepts reports
and controls circulation of documents.
The staff head says this system is applicable since June 5 but it
has been developing since last year. All municipality employees have
passed trainings to use the program.
Melkumyan assures that citizen applications are replied within
2-45 days. Everyone can read the reply in case of having individual
password.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

TURKISH PREMIER SAYS ARMENIAN GENOCIDE CLAIMS “UNACCEPTABLE”
Anatolia news agency
11 Sep 06
Ankara, 11 September: “Accusations of irrelevant countries on the
so-called Armenian genocide are unacceptable,” Turkish Premier Recep
Tayyip Erdogan said on Monday [11 September].
Taking the floor at the 15th Turkish History Congress, Erdogan said:
“Turkey has nothing to be ashamed of in the past. In spite of this,
there are countries, which try to slander our history by political
reasons. The calumny regarding the so-called Armenian genocide is
one of them.”
“I personally proposed Armenian authorities to establish a joint
history commission. I underlined that this issue should be investigated
and assessed by historians. We have not yet received any affirmative
response (from them),” Erdogan indicated.
“History should be studied thoroughly based on documents and without
any political consideration. This is very important in achieving
peace in our region and in the world,” Erdogan added.
Turkish premier also noted that 310 scientists from 43 countries
were attending the 15th History Congress, stating that he believed
the congress would lead to new horizons.
“Turkey, which has the position of a central country at the
intersection of Europe, Asia and Africa, cannot keep itself off the
tensions in the Balkans, Caucus and the Middle East,” Erdogan said,
noting that, “we should be vigilant against the dangers and threats
and put necessary measures in place.”
Recalling that Turkey and Spain initiated last year the Alliance of
Civilizations Initiative to pioneer settlement of a peaceful and
prosperous world, Erdogan said, “studies performed by estimable
scientists like you, will of course have very big contribution to
this initiative.”
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

OSCE MINSK GROUP CO-CHAIRS TO HOLD CONSULTATIONS IN PARIS AND LONDON
ArmRadio.am
11.09.2006 17:31
The OSCE Minsk Group Co-Chairs intend to hold consultations in Paris
and London, the Group on Nagorno Karabakh of the Russian Ministry of
Foreign Affairs told “Trend” agency.
It was noted that the Russian Co-Chair of the OSCE Minsk Group Yuri
Merzlyakov left for Paris, where the mediators are scheduled to hold
consultations with RA Foreign Minister Vardan Oskanyan on September
12. Later the Co-Chairs will leave for London, where they will meet
with Azeri Foreign Minister Elmar Mammadyarov.
During the stay in Paris and London the Co-Chairs intend to analyze
the negotiation process and to decide upon the future deeds.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

NEW YORK COMMEMORATES SEPTEMBER 11 VICTIMS
PanARMENIAN.Net
11.09.2006 13:13 GMT+04:00
/PanARMENIAN.Net/ New York commemorates victims of the September 11
tragedy in 200, when resulting from a terrorist attack on the World
Trade Center 3 thousand were killed. The mourning ceremony will start
with a minute of silence at 8.46 a.m., when the first plane hijacked
by the terrorists crashed into one of the twin skyscrapers. Then
bells will ring in New York churches.
Names of all established victims of the wreckage of the World Trade
Center will again read today. Rays of two searchlights will be aimed
in the sky from the empty space, where the buildings symbolizing New
York’s business power once were. That place is now called the zero
mark, where the building of over 500-meter-high Freedom Tower have
already begun, reports RIA Novosti.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

ANTI-CRIMINAL INITIATIVE STARTS CONSULTATIONS
Lragir.am
11 Sept 06
On September 11 the representaties of 10 political forces
(National Democratic Union, Nor Zhamanakner, Fatherland and Honor,
People’s Fatherland, Republic, the Democratic Party, the Liberal
Progressive Party, Constitutional Right Union) marked the start a
series of consultations, which if organized well, will grow into
an anti-criminal coalition and an anti-criminal movement, aimed to
return power to people.
The activitsts of the movement say although the latest similar
meeting took place on the days of the referendum in November 2005,
and it is necessary to make a roll-call, it is clear that “there is
a wish to struggle”. All the oppositionist forces were invited to the
first meeting. It became clear that the invitation did not reach the
People’s Party of Armenia for technical reasons. The ARF Dashnaktsutyun
was only informed, the Republican Party was not invited. “What does
Dashnaktsutyun have to do here?” asked Smbat Ayvazyan, Republic
Party. “How can the government fight the criminal if they are not
masochists,” asked the leader of the National Democratic Union Vazgen
Manukyan. Besides questions there were also evaluations. Garnik
Margaryan, the leader of the Fatherland and Honor Party believes,
“The country is on the verge of destruction, the national security
is hanging on a thread, and remaining silent in this situation is
condemnable carelessness.”
The deputy leader of the National Unity Party Gagik Tadevosyan thinks
that if Serge Sargsyan says someone who has a nickname or does not
speak Armenian well is not necessarily a criminal, it is similarly
unnecessary that someone who has a nickname or speaks Armenian badly
become member of parliament or be in power.
The initiators of the anti-criminal movement also underline the
activity of the public, because the society seems to have started
to take murder and violence for granted. It is also important to
define the notion of criminal distinctly. By an initial variant,
the criminal is a community of criminals who do not obey the state
laws, live under their own laws and seek the obedience of the entire
society and wealth. After publishing the formula the representatives
of the anti-criminal movement are ready to publish the names of these
people. For the time being, however, all the political forces should
express their opinion on the anti-criminal movement, “to know who is
who, and who we are going to fight against.” The result of the battle
must be at least two normal general elections.
The next meeting of the anti-criminal initiative will take place
on September 15, already without journalists. The reason for this
secrecy is clear. It is unclear, however, why there are people among
the initiators who are said to cooperate with Serge Sargsyan. Not in
favor of the opposition, of course.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

FALL SESSION STARTED AT THE NATIONAL ASSEMBLY
ArmRadio.am
11.09.2006 16:30
The National Assembly of third convocation started its eighths session
today. The Parliament adopted the agenda of the fall session and that
of the current four-day sittings. Over 80 issues are included in the
agenda of the session; the agenda of the sitting includes about 50
questions and 6 international agreements.
The Parliament refused to include in the agenda the draft on
“Establishing an ad hoc Parliamentary Committee to study the
Government’s activity in the sphere of civil aviation” presented by
the “Justice” block.
The National Assembly undertook the discussion of the draft on
implementing amendments in RA Law on Local Self-Governance.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

SELLERS OF COUNTERFEIT BANKNOTES APPREHENDED IN MOSCOW
ITAR-TASS News Agency
September 10, 2006 Sunday 04:34 PM EST
A criminal group has been detained in Moscow when trying to sell about
500,000 counterfeit rubles, a source at the city police department’s
organized crime agency told Itar-Tass on Sunday.
Plain-clothes cops got in touch with the criminals in the Moscow
region, pretending that they wanted to buy counterfeit banknotes.
“The meeting was planned on Dmitrovskoye highway, and the
intermediary – a graduate of a Moscow prestigious college – was caught
red-handed. Soon two of his accomplices, natives of Armenia and North
Ossetia and Moscow college students, were apprehended. The detained
men age 20-25 years,” the source.
The young men were selling counterfeit banknotes, which were made on
a laser printer with watermarks. “Yet the banknotes were lacking the
metallic stripe. The scoundrels were asking for 450 rubles per each
counterfeit banknote,” the source said.
A criminal case was opened. Police think that the detained men were
simply intermediaries and did not counterfeit the banknotes themselves.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

`BASTARD’ PITS TURKEY AGAINST ITSELF
AP , ISTANBUL
Taipai Times, Taiwan
Sept 10 2006
Europe’s governing body is watching which way Turkish courts will
jump as author Elif Shafak is prosecuted for insulting her nation
For best-selling Turkish author Elif Shafak, this month promises to
be one of joy and tribulation.
Nine months pregnant, the University of Arizona literature professor
is set to give birth to her first child. Another important date looms:
the start of her trial on charges of “insulting Turkishness” in her
novel that deals with the waning years of the Ottoman Empire.
In a quiet cafe in the backstreets of Istanbul’s historic Beyoglu
district, where Turks, Armenians and Jews once lived in harmony,
Shafak reflected on the peculiarities of a case in which it is nothing
she said herself that is being put on trial, but words she gave to
a fictitious Armenian character.
“I think my case is very bizarre, because for the first time they
are trying fictional characters,” said Shafak, a striking woman with
unruly locks of blond hair.
If convicted Shafak, who divides her time between Tucson, Arizona,
and Istanbul, could face three years in prison. Turkey has refused
her request to delay the Sept. 21 trial because of her pregnancy.
The case will be closely watched by the EU, which has repeatedly
insisted that Turkey abolish laws that limit freedom of expression if
it is to fulfill its dream of joining the elite club of nations —
which sees itself both as an economic bloc and a beacon of liberal,
democratic values.
Shafak said the law on insulting Turkishness “has been used as a
weapon to silence many people. … My case is perhaps just another
step in this long chain.”
That chain includes Turkey’s best known novelist Orhan Pamuk — a
perennial candidate for the Nobel Prize in literature — and dozens
of other writers and intellectuals forced to defend themselves against
charges of “insulting Turkishness.”
Shafak says he has received hate mail from nationalists calling her a
“pawn of the enemies of Turkey.”
Although most of the cases have been dropped for technical reasons —
such as the case involving Pamuk — and no one has ended up in prison,
the trials have raised serious questions about whether Turkey is
ready to embrace European values.
To Shafak, the trials, brought forward by a coalition of
ultranationalist lawyers, are an attempt to resist EU-inspired changes
toward a more democratic and pluralistic Turkey that some see as
a threat to the powerful central state, which has strong ties to
the military.
Yet Shafak sees reason for hope: The surge in nationalism, she
says, is a clear sign that Turkey is truly undergoing a momentous
transformation.
“This ultranationalist movement is taking place not because nothing
is changing in Turkey, but just the opposite, because things are
changing,” Shafak said. “The bigger the transformation, the bigger
their panic.”
Shafak’s novel, The Bastard of Istanbul, touches upon the massacres
of Armenians during the final years of the Ottoman Empire, telling
the tale of a Turkish and an American-Armenian family whose lives
become intertwined.
The book also deals with other taboos — domestic violence and
incestuous rape — which are rarely discussed in this conservative,
predominantly Muslim country.
But it was fictional Armenian-American characters in the book who sent
Shafak to court. In one passage, a character is deeply concerned about
the prospect of his niece being brought up by a Turkish stepfather.
“What will that innocent lamb tell her friends when she grows up?”
the man asks. “[That] I am the grandchild of genocide survivors who
lost all their relatives to the hands of Turkish butchers in 1915,
but I myself have been brainwashed to deny the genocide because I
was raised by some Turk named Mustapha!”
Later, a radical Armenian-American blogger who goes by the name of
Lady Peacock/Siramark writes: “Do you think [the Turks] are going
to say: Oh yeah, we are sorry we massacred and deported you guys,
and then contentedly denied it all.”
Turkey insists that the mass evacuation and deaths of up to 1.5
million Armenians during World War I was not a planned genocide.
Labeling it as such can be considered a criminal offense.
The book has sold 60,000 copies since it was published — considered
a big hit in Turkey, where readership is low.
The daughter of a female diplomat who raised Shafak alone — her
father left when she was young — the novelist said that she first
became aware of the Armenian issue after Armenian militants killed
dozens of Turkish diplomats across the 1970s and 1980s.
“My very first acquaintance with the word `Armenian’ was so negative,
it just meant someone who wanted to kill my mother,” Shafak said. “I
then started to ask questions, `why so much hatred against Turkish
diplomats? What is behind this?'”
She does not take sides on the genocide debate, but criticizes Turkey
for what she calls a “collective amnesia” of the atrocities.
“Turks and Armenians are not speaking the same language,” she
explained. “For the Turks all the past is gone, erased from our
memories. That’s the way we Westernized: by being future-oriented…
The grandchildren of the 1915 survivors tend to be very, very
past-oriented.”
The English version of The Bastard of Istanbul is to be published
next year.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

“ZHAMANAK YEREVAN” NEWSPAPER’S EDITOR-IN-CHIEF SENTENCED TO 4 YEARS’ IMPRISONMENT
Noyan Tapan
Sept 08 2006
YEREVAN, SEPTEMBER 8, NOYAN TAPAN. The first instance court of
Kentron and Nork-Marash Yerevan communities presided over by judge
Mnatsakan Martirosian, by the September 8 verdict sentenced “Zhamanak
Yerevan” newspaper’s editor-in-chief Arman Babajanian to 4 years’
imprisonment. The court considered completely proved the accusation
brought to him, evasion of military service through forging documents
and considered him innocent on the accusation of misappropriation
of documents. To recap, the defendant pleaded guilty only on the
first accusation.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

ADVOCATES HAVE RIGHT TO DEFEND EVEN DEVILS
Story By Peter Mwaura | Fair Play
Daily Nation , Kenya
Sept 8 2006
One of the issues that arose during the Kiruki Commission of Inquiry
into the Armenian brothers’ saga was how far an advocate can go to
defend a person widely perceived to be a criminal. Lawyer Gibson Kamau
Kuria was particularly emphatic that it was his professional duty to
defend even “the devil” (when it appeared to some people like he was
defending the Armenians).
Dr Kuria was grappling with an age-old question that seems to confuse
the public: Should lawyers defend bad people? The question has been
contagious, now and in the past. Recently six MPs in western Kenya
warned lawyers not to represent suspects charged with the brutal
murder of six people in Nyamira District.
The Kenyatta and Moi regimes went even further: they blacklisted
lawyers who defended “dissidents” or politically incorrect individuals
or causes and denied them parastatal work, which was a lucrative
source of income for most lawyers.
English peasant revolt
The idea that a lawyer who defends an unpopular person is himself bad
is widespread and historical. The 1997 movie, “The Devil’s Advocate”,
popularises this “dark side” of law and the notion that lawyers are
purveyors of evil rather than good. Shakespeare summed up this in his
famous line in King Henry VI, Part 2, when the leader of an English
peasant revolt suggested: “The first thing we do, let’s kill all
the lawyers.”
The reason people hate lawyers who defend unpopular individuals or
causes is that people tend to think that right is on their side and
wrong on the other side. They tend to think that when a person is
accused of a crime he is immediately guilty. They do not respect the
presumption of innocence.
Such attitudes show that the public does not understand the role of
lawyers. When lawyers defend bad people the public thinks of them as
“devil’s advocates.” Lawyers, truly, are devil’s advocates but they
do not work for the devil. Their job is to zealously guard the legal
rights and interests of their clients.
A devil’s advocate is, in fact, a defence lawyer who takes nothing
for granted and asks tough questions, even unpopular ones, like the
ones lawyers Gibson Kamau Kuria and Jane Ondieki were asking in the
Kiruki Commission. The term “devil’s advocate” is in fact borrowed
from the Catholic Church, which appoints an official as the “devil’s
advocate” to present arguments against the canonisation of a candidate
for sainthood.
Without lawyers playing the devil’s advocate the integrity of our
judicial system would collapse. Devil’s advocates are needed because
courts assume, and rightly so, that there are two sides to every
question. They also presuppose that all parties ought to receive a
fair hearing and it is the job of lawyers to articulate the relevant
legal principles. Then judges, who are supposed to be disinterested,
can fairly decide on the merits of the case.
A lawyer does not defend the crime committed by his client. He defends
his legal rights. A lawyer cannot, because of his professional code
of conduct and ethics, refuse to represent a client because he is
“bad” any more than a doctor can refuse to treat a patient because
he has syphilis. A lawyer should not be adjudged guilty or bad simply
because of his association with his client.
A lawyer’s professional obligation is to zealously protect and pursue
his client’s legitimate interests within the bounds of the law, even
at the expense of incurring public unpopularity or judicial disfavor.
Lawyers owe their clients complete devotion. A lawyer is supposed to
do everything that is legal to defend his client, and a good lawyer
does everything he knows to cast doubt on the prosecution case. He
does so not because he condones crime but because the law assumes a
person is innocent until proven guilty.
Principles of equality
This duty of lawyers is internationally recognised. The Universal
Declaration of Human Rights enshrines the principles of equality
before the law, the presumption of innocence, and the right to a fair
hearing. The United Nations Basic Principles on the Role of Lawyers,
formulated in September 1990 and incumbent on all member states,
also requires lawyers to protect the interests of their clients “in
every appropriate way.” Rule 18 of the Basic Principles requires that
lawyers “shall not be identified with their clients or their clients’
causes as a result of discharging their functions.”
Dr Kuria was absolutely right when he said that he will defend the
devil – not that his client was one – at all costs. If that were not
the case, we can all forget about a fair judicial system.