Author: Hambardsumian Paul

GINA OUT OF ARMENIA, AS QUESTIONS LOOM
David Vella

Malta Star, Malta
April 16 2007

Gina Khachatryan, the asylum seeker who was deported from England
to Armenia via Malta last week, has managed to once again leave her
homeland and is now "in a place of safety", according to her friends
in the UK.

But while human rights groups are relieved that she is not in danger
of persecution, journalists in Armenia are casting doubts on whether
or not Gina’s story of her hardships before leaving the country are
actually true.

Khachatryan made headlines in numerous British and Maltese newspapers,
including this e-newspaper, when she appealed for help to prevent her
deportation, since this would have put her, her husband, and their
five year old daughter at risk of political persecution.

The family had been living in the UK as asylum seekers since 2003.

But the British Home Office never granted them refugee status, and
last week the family was taken to a detention centre to be deported.

But human rights groups in the UK, along with a number of
journalists and journalist associations, started rallying against
the deportation. Gina had fled her country after exposing a case
of electoral fraud in 2003. She even spent 40 days in prison before
managing to escape Armenia, or so she claimed.

maltastar.com had talked to Gina herself, hours before she boarded an
Air Malta plane from London to Malta last Friday. She had explained
that she is afraid of going back to her country "because they will
arrest us immediately".

Unable to track down Gina’s story

But during the weekend, at least two journalists working in Armenia,
confirmed that they did not manage to find any details on Gina’s
experience back in 2003. On a blog hosted on the website of ‘The
Guardian’ newspaper, where Gina’s case was first mentioned, Roy
Greenslade wrote that a friend of his in Armenia "was unable to find
anyone at the Yerevan press club or the Investigative Journalists of
Armenia who knew of her or the incident she described. Furthermore,
[he] asked people in the newsroom of Armenia’s public TV company,
where Gina claims to have worked, and no-one there remembered her".

At the same time, in response to these doubts, the editor of
an Armenian newspaper wrote "we, too, have tried to validate Ms
Khachatryan’s claims, but so far found them unsubstantiated".

But, as Greenslade wrote in his blog, this does not necessarily mean
that her story was not true. "None of this is, of course, conclusive
proof that Gina has lied, but Armenian journalists – and journalists
everywhere – will be unhappy if she has pretended to be a journalist
in order to stay illegally in Britain… The truth is that there was
so little time to act after hearing about Gina’s detention that none
of us had time to check her story. On the other hand, we still don’t
know the truth. The whole thing remains a mystery".

Arka News Agency, Armenia
April 14 2006

"LAW-GOVERNED COUNTRY" PARTY INFORMS CEC OF INACCURACIES IN VPOTERS’
LISTS

YEREVAN, April 13. /ARKA/. The "Law-Governed Country" party has
informed the RA Central Electoral Commission (CEC) of inaccuracies in
voter’s lists, Chairman of the party Arttur Baghdasaryan told
reporters.
"The matter is that in monitoring the lists we discovered a number of
inaccuracies – deceased people, people outside Armenia and so on," he
said. Baghdasaryan said that the party addressed two letters to the
CEC, which are currently under consideration. We will be consistent
in monitoring voters’ lists and informing the CEC and the relevant
police departments of the inaccuracies," Baghdasaryan said.
The "Law-Governed Country" party was founded in 1997 and has about
100,000 members. The party has chapters in all Armenian regions. The
party’s slate includes 120 names.
The parliamentary elections are to be held in Armenia on May 12,
2007. P.T. -0–

IN 2006 ARTSAKH GOT HUMANITARIAN AID OF 66 MILLION DRAMS

KarabakhOpen
13-04-2007 17:21:14

The head of the department of humanitarian aid of the NKR Ministry
of Social Security M. Dadayan told the Azat Artsakh that in 2006
NKR received humanitarian aid of about 66 million 151 thousand
drams. Organizations and individuals from the United States, France,
Germany, Russia and Armenia provided second hand medical equipment
and medicine of 13 million 810 thousand drams, food of 46 million
900 thousand drams, secondhand clothes of 83 060 drams, different
appliances of 55 million 355 thousand drams. Humanitarian aid comes
through the programs of the Stepanakert office of the Red Cross, The
HALO Trust (U.K.), Shen (France) the Armenian Evangelical Association
and Agape (U.S.).

According to M. Dadayan, in 2006 humanitarian aid to Karabakh went
down by 10 million 727 thousand.

DAVOUDI FELICITATES NEW ARMENIAN PREMIER

Islamic Republic News Agency, Iran
April 12 2007

Iran-Armenia-Felicitations

First Vice-President Parviz Davoudi on Thursday felicitated new
Armenian Premier Serzh Sarkissian on taking the office.

He also extended felicitations to the Armenian government and Armenian
nation on the new appointment.

Davoudi said that it is expected that through collective cooperation
of Iran and Armenia, the current level of cooperation would further
broaden in all grounds.

Former Armenian Prime Minister Andranik Margarian, leader of the
ruling Republican party died of a heart attack last month.

INDIAN COMPANY ILLEGALLY TAPPING GOLD IN OCCUPIED AZERI LANDS TO BE PUNISHED, RAMESH VOWS

Azeri Press Agency, Azerbaijan
April 11 2007

India will probe the issue with its company that is engaged in illegal
exploitation of gold in Azeri territories occupied by Armenia, said
Indian Minister of State for Commerce Shri Jairam Ramesh in Baku.

"In Baku I heard about the illegal involvement of an Indian company
in Azerbaijan’s territory. We will investigate this issue and will
take effective action," he added.

He said India supports the fact that Indian companies have to
operate in accordance with the intergovernmental agreements and local
legislation.

UN RWANDA GENOCIDE EXHIBIT DELAYED

Al-Arab online, UK
April 10 2007

A U.N. exhibit on the 13th anniversary of the Rwanda genocide has
been delayed after Turkish objections to a mention of the killing of
Armenians in Turkey during World War One, organizers said on Monday.

James Smith, chief executive of the British-based Aegis Trust which
works to prevent genocide and helped organize the photo exhibition,
said the U.N. Department of Public Information approved the contents
and it was put up on Thursday.

The photo and text exhibit, organized in part by the
British-based Aegis Trust, was scheduled to be opened on Monday by
U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon.

But Turkey objected to a sentence in the text, which showed how the
Armenian killings contributed to the creation of the term genocide,
according to James Smith, chief executive of Aegis, whose mission is
to prevent genocide.

It said: "Following World War One, during which 1 million Armenians
were murdered in Turkey, Polish lawyer Raphael Lemkin urged the League
of Nations to recognize crimes of barbarity as international crimes,"
Smith said.

Organizers said they were informed of the delay by the U.N. Department
of Public Information, which had initially approved the exhibit in
the visitors’ lobby.

The secretary-general’s office then consented to the postponement.

U.N. officials confirmed that objections by Turkey and others, which
they did not mention, were responsible for the delay.

One staff member said an official in the Department of Public
Information had not sent the text to other divisions for fact-checking.

"The exhibition has been postponed until the regular review process
is completed," U.N. associate spokesman Farhan Haq said.

David Browan, communications director for Aegis, told Reuters that
Armenian diplomats had agreed to the removal of the words "in Turkey,"
which was acceptable to his group. But he said, "We understand that
was not acceptable to the U.N."

Historians estimate up to 1.5 million Armenians were killed by
Ottoman Turks around the time of World War I, an event widely viewed
by genocide scholars as the first genocide of the 20th century.

Turkey, however, denies the deaths constituted genocide, saying that
the toll has been inflated and that those killed were victims of
civil war and unrest.

Turkey says large numbers of both Christian Armenians and Muslim
Turks died in a partisan conflict raging at that time.

Aegis, however, is resisting removing references to the Armenian
killings in connection with the exhibit on Rwanda, where at least
800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus were massacred by Hutus.

The murders began on April 6, 1994.

The exhibit also mentions the Nazi extermination of Jews in World
War Two and has passing references to Cambodia’s killing fields and
crimes in Bosnia, East Timor and Sudan.

But a U.N. official insisted the exhibit would take place.

"We are committed to it. It is a very important issue," said Manoel de
Almeida e Silva, an official in the strategic communications division.

Rwanda’s genocide began hours after a plane carrying President
Juvenal Habyarimana was shot down as it approached the capital,
Kigali, on April 6, 1994.

The 100-day slaughter, in which more than 500,000 minority Tutsis
were killed by Hutus, ended after rebels ousted the extremist Hutu
government that orchestrated the killings.

Smith said the panel on the origin of genocide could have been done
without referring to the Armenians.

But once the Armenian reference "was there and approved, we felt as a
matter of principle you can’t just go around striking things out. It
is a form of denial, and as an organization that deals with genocide
issues, we couldn’t do that on any genocide, and we can’t do this,"
he said.

"If we can’t get this right, it undermines all the values of the U.N.

It undermines everything the U.N. is meant to stand for in terms of
preventing (genocide)," Smith said.

"You can’t learn the lessons from history if you’re going to sweep
all of that history under the carpet. And what about accountability?

What about ending impunity if you’re going to hide part of the truth?

It makes a mockery of all of this."

TURKISH OBJECTION POSTPONES RWANDA GENOCIDE SHOW

Pravda, Russia
April 10 2007

An exhibition on the 1994 Rwanda genocide, scheduled for Monday
was to be opened by Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon. But it has been
postponed because of Turkish objections to a reference to the murder
of a million Armenians in Turkey during World War I.

James Smith, chief executive of the British-based Aegis Trust, which
works to prevent genocide and helped organize the photo exhibition,
said the U.N. Department of Public Information approved the contents
and it was put up on Thursday.

A Turkish diplomat complained about the reference to the Armenian
murders, he said, and Armenia’s U.N. Ambassador Armen Martirosyan
went to see the new Undersecretary for Public Information Kiyotaka
Akasaka and they agreed to remove the words "in Turkey."

Martirosyan said Akasaka invited him to the exhibition’s opening,
but late Sunday "I was informed that the opening would be postponed,
or delayed, or even canceled." He blamed Turkish "censorship" and
the country’s refusal "to come to terms with their own history."

On Monday, the exhibition in the visitor’s lobby had been turned around
so it could not be seen by the public. Smith said he was still hoping
for a diplomatic solution to the dispute.

"We are very disappointed about it because for us, this was meant to be
about the Rwandan genocide, and the lessons from the Rwandan genocide,"
and to engage the secretary-general on the pledge by world leaders to
protect civilians from genocide, war crimes and ethnic cleansing, which
Smith said was not happening in Sudan’s conflict-wracked Darfur region.

U.N. associate spokesman Farhan Haq confirmed Turkey complained about
the exhibition, but he said "the basic concern" was that the review
process for U.N. exhibitions, which takes into account "all positions,"
was not followed. He said there were other concerns which he refused
to disclose.

"The exhibition has been postponed until the regular review process
is completed," Haq said.

Smith told The Associated Press the exhibition refers to the Armenian
murders to help explain the word "genocide," which was coined
by Raphael Lemkin, a lawyer of Polish-Jewish descent. Lemkin was
inspired by what happened to the Armenians and other mass killings,
and campaigned in the League of Nations – the precursor of the United
Nations – against what he called "barbarity" and "vandalism."

Historians estimate up to 1.5 million Armenians were killed by
Ottoman Turks around the time of World War I, an event widely viewed
by genocide scholars as the first genocide of the 20th century.

Turkey, however, denies the deaths constituted genocide, saying that
the toll has been inflated and that those killed were victims of
civil war and unrest.

Smith said a small panel on Lemkin in the exhibit "says that during
World War I a million Armenians were murdered in Turkey." It goes on
to explain that Lemkin first used the word genocide in 1943, and then
focuses on the Rwanda genocide, lessons from it, and the responsibility
of the international community to prevent future genocides, he said.

Haq said "the U.N. hasn’t expressed any position on incidents that
took place long before the United Nations was established" after
World War II.

"In any case, the focus during the anniversary of the Rwanda genocide
should remain on Rwanda itself," he said.

Rwanda’s genocide began hours after a plane carrying President Juvenal
Habyarimana was mysteriously shot down as it approached the capital,
Kigali, on April 6, 1994. The 100-day slaughter, in which more than
500,000 minority Tutsis were killed by Hutu extremists, ended after
rebels ousted the extremist Hutu government that orchestrated the
killings.

Smith said the panel on the origin of genocide could have been done
without referring to the Armenians.

But once the Armenian reference "was there and approved, we felt as a
matter of principle you can’t just go around striking things out. It
is a form of denial, and as an organization that deals with genocide
issues, we couldn’t do that on any genocide, and we can’t do this,"
he said.

"If we can’t get this right, it undermines all the values of the U.N.

It undermines everything the U.N. is meant to stand for in terms
of preventing (genocide)," Smith said. "You can’t learn the lessons
from history if you’re going to sweep all of that history under the
carpet. And what about accountability? What about ending impunity
if you’re going to hide part of the truth? It makes a mockery of all
of this."

Haq said Ban planned to meet with Rwanda’s U.N. ambassador late Monday,
and he read a message from the secretary-general who recalled the
"personal impact" of his visit to Rwanda last year to pay his respects
to victims and survivors of the genocide.

"On this 13th anniversary of the genocide in Rwanda, two messages
should be paramount," Ban said. "First, never forget. Second never
stop working to prevent another genocide."

ld/10-04-2007/89376-genocide_show-0

12 % OF TURKEY’S POPULATION SAYS ARMENIAN GENOCIDE IS HISTORICALLY PROVED FACT

PanARMENIAN.Net
09.04.2007 14:29 GMT+04:00

/PanARMENIAN.Net/ An overwhelming majority of Turks oppose the Armenian
Genocide Resolution currently pending in the U.S. Senate and House
of Representatives, as well as another resolution, which demands
from Turkey to normalize its relations with neighboring Armenia,
Zaman reports. The poll, recently conducted by Terror Free Tomorrow,
revealed, that if the U.S. Congress approves the Genocide Resolution,
83 percent of respondents would oppose or strongly oppose Turkey
assisting the United States in Iraq. Almost four-fifths of Turks favor
strong action by the Turkish government if the Genocide Resolution
is passed, including suspension of diplomatic relations.

Asked why the U.S. Congress would approve the Resolution on the
Genocide, 42 percent of the respondents cited anti-Muslim feelings
in the U.S. and some 31 percent said it was due to domestic politics
in the United States. Another 12 percent said the "Armenian Genocide"
was a proven historical fact.

If the U.S. Congress approves the Armenian Genocide Resolution, 78
percent said they would boycott American products, vote for candidates
that oppose the United States or demonstrate. Only 11 percent said
they would take no action. On relations with Armenia, 73 percent said
they think the passage of the resolution would worsen relations between
Turkey and Armenia. 84 percent of those who now have a very favorable
opinion of the U.S. would change their opinion for the worse. The
poll was conducted among 1200 people in 15 provinces of Turkey.

GRIGOR AMALIAN APPOINTED MEMBER OF TELEVISION AND RADIO NATIONAL
COMMITTEE FOR 6-YEAR TERM

YEREVAN, APRIL 9, NOYAN TAPAN. RA President Robert Kocharian signed a
decree on April 7 on appointing Grigor Amalian a member of the
Television and Radio National Committee for six-year term. Noyan Tapan
was informed about it by the RA President’s Press Office.

Chicago Sun-Times
April 7 2007

Resolution on Armenian genocide risks foreign policy

Backlash could compromise Turkey’s role as gateway for supply of U.S.
forces in Iraq

April 7, 2007
BY JOEL J. SPRAYREGEN

Congress is on the verge of inflicting a devastating blow to U.S.
foreign policy. At issue is a resolution introduced in the House of
Representatives that brands as genocide the deaths and deportations
of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire during World War I.
Turkey is the gateway for supply of U.S. forces in Iraq as well as
supplier of basic necessities — food, water, gas, electricity — to
Iraq. Turkey has been a staunch American ally in NATO; Turkish forces
play an important role in Afghanistan.

Passage of the resolution — which Turks see as officially adjudging
them to be a nation of barbarians — will produce popular indignation
that no Turkish government could ignore. As Professor Soner Cagaptay
of Princeton University says, ”This backlash would inevitably
cripple U.S.-Turkish military cooperation.”

The modern Turkish Republic, successor to the Ottoman Empire within
shrunken borders, is the only Muslim country in the Middle East that
maintains a functioning democracy. Turkey borders Iran, Iraq, Syria
and Russia. Passing a self-serving resolution condemning Turks for
horrific things that occurred 90 years ago would alienate an
important ally without achieving anything of substance for the United
States. An American rebuff, added to recent European actions hostile
to Turkey, would only strengthen malign anti-Western Islamist and
nationalist minorities in Turkey.

Armenians contend 1.5 million or more people were systematically
killed between 1915 and 1923. Turks say a far smaller number of
people died, not by deliberate extermination, but as a consequence of
a brutal war in which Armenians were deported because they sided
militarily with invading Russians. There is no doubt that large
numbers of Armenians suffered terrible deaths and deportations;
Muslim civilians were also ravaged.

The weight of opinion outside Turkey has favored Armenian claims. But
Chris Morris, British author of The New Turkey, says: ”Both sides
produce stacks of documents to back up their arguments . . .”
Respected historian Guenter Lewy concludes, ”The primary intent of
the [Ottoman] deportation order was undoubtedly not to eradicate an
entire people but to deny support for the Armenian guerrilla bands
and to remove Armenians from war zones.” The tragic consequences for
Armenian civilians should be remembered. But politicians have no
qualifications to judge Ottoman intentions nine decades ago.

Similar congressional resolutions have failed to pass in recent
years. The reason the current resolution is being pushed by more than
160 House co-sponsors is that the November elections empowered
California Democrats, and there are many Armenian Americans residing
in California and elsewhere who are actively lobbying. They deserve
respect for keeping alive the memory of what happened to their
ancestors, but not at the price of rupturing relations with a key
American ally.

Turkish Americans are too few to lobby effectively. Speaker Nancy
Pelosi, ignoring concerns persuasive to prior House leadership, has
scheduled a rushed vote for this month. Pelosi should ask the
Department of Defense what would happen if Turkey curtailed
co-operation with U.S. forces in the Middle East and Afghanistan.

There is much Turkey can do to prevent congressional resolutions from
becoming a perennial irritant, e.g., tempering anti-American
propaganda in media close to the ruling AKP party and increasing
protection of human rights. Turkey is not improving its image by
cozying up to Hamas terrorists.

But passage of this resolution would inflict a major foreign policy
disaster on America by rupturing relations with a country vital to
execution of our foreign policy.

CChicago lawyer Joel J. Sprayregen participates annually in a
symposium in Istanbul to advance civil society in Turkey.