Author: Hovhannisian John

WE SHOULD FIGHT ARMENIAN TERRORISM ON AZERBAIJAN’S OCCUPIED GROUNDS – MINISTRY OF ECOLOGY
Author: S.Babayeva
TREND Information, Azerbaijan
April 27 2006
It is necessary to combat Armenian ecological terror on Azerbaijan’s
occupied grounds, Trend reports with reference to the release of
Ministry of Ecology and Natural Resources of Azerbaijan issued
April 27.
The release says after Armenians had occupied Zangilan area it turned
into a real dead zone as a result of their ecological terror.
Zangilan area in southwestern Azerbaijan is famous for its outtanding
landscape, currently spoiled by Okhchuchay river that begins in
Armenia and, passing Zangilan and 20 villages flows in Azerbaijan’s
second largest river Araz.
Contaminated industrail waters from Gadjaran and Gafan industrail
plants, as well as all municipal and agricultural wastes ar4e
discahrged in Okhchuchay.
While using this water, the population suffers from various diaseases,
an increse of children mortality, content of heavy metals, such as
copper, zinc, molybdenum, etc. in vegetables and mat was recorded.

From: “Alexanian, Moorad”
Subject: Why White House woos Azerbaijan
from the April 28, 2006 edition –
html
Why White House woos Azerbaijan
President Ilham Aliyev’s visit to Washington Friday comes as the
country’s oil and geography make it increasingly important.
By Brendan Hoffman | Contributor to The Christian Science Monitor

WASHINGTON – In the boxing ring of international diplomacy and
influence, Azerbaijan punches above its weight.
Coming at the White House’s invitation, Azerbaijan’s President Ilham
Aliyev will meet Friday with top administration officials – including
President Bush – in his first official visit to the US since taking
office in a widely criticized election in October 2003
The visit, analysts say, is part of a broader effort by the Bush
administration to gain support in a key region in the face of a
growing confrontation with Iran, particularly from Muslim countries.
But Azerbaijan’s history of corruption and its poor human rights
record have raised eyebrows about strengthening ties with the Central
Asian country, and many point to oil as another driving factor in the
relationship.
The visit is “a little anomalous,” admits Cory Welt, deputy director
of the Russia and Eurasia program at the Center for Strategic and
International Studies, though he adds that there are “a number of
reasons why Azerbaijan is of particular interest to the US now.”
The predominantely Shiite Muslim country of 8 million shares a
380-mile border with Iran, with whom it retains close economic and
cultural links, though it maintains its political distance. That
geographical position makes Azerbaijan a natural ally for the US, said
Azeri Foreign Minister Elmar Mammadyarov on a recent visit to
Washington.
“The US is improving its relations with all countries on Iran’s
periphery,” explains Ariel Cohen, senior research fellow at the
Heritage Foundation. “In case economic sanctions or other measures are
to be taken on the Iran issue, we should have a better relationship
with Azerbaijan than the other side.”
Dr. Welt adds that soured relations with Uzbekistan, home to a key US
military base, impelled the US to develop other potential military
allies in the region.
But many experts point to a different key factor: oil. A major oil
pipeline stretching 1,000 miles from Azerbaijan’s capital of Baku
through Georgia to the Turkish port of Ceyhan on the Mediterranean was
recently completed and the first tanker ship will be filled this
summer. A natural-gas pipeline is being constructed parallel to the
so-called BTC (Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan) oil pipeline, designed to deliver
upward of a million barrels of oil a day.
Azerbaijan’s location may become even more pivotal if a plan to extend
the pipeline eastward to provide an outlet for gas and oil from
Kazakhstan, currently under negotiation, bears fruit. Vice President
Cheney will travel to Kazakhstan to meet President Nazarbayev in early
May.
With oil prices at record highs, Azerbaijan’s state oil company will
soon see an unprecedented influx of cash. The government has
established a special fund to manage the extra oil revenue, and
President Aliyev has indicated that the money will be used for
military budget and citizen benefits such as improving living
conditions for internally displaced persons.
Up to a million Azeris fled their homes in the autonomous
Nagorno-Karabakh territory during fighting in the early 1990s with
Armenian soldiers, who remain there. More than 100,000 still live in
refugee camps while tensions simmer under a cease-fire agreement.
While some experts have expressed concern that the conflict could boil
over and draw in other countries, more international attention has
been focused on Azerbaijan’s poor governance.
The US vocally criticized its elections last fall, one in a string of
polls held since gaining independence from the Soviets in 1991 that
have not met international standards.
According to Transparency International, an anticorruption watchdog
group, Azerbaijan is one of the most corrupt countries in the
world. And human rights groups like Amnesty International have
criticized forceful responses to political protests and politically
motivated arrests. This week, Human Rights Watch called on President
Bush to push for concrete improvements to Azerbaijan’s human rights
record.
But if the US is to leverage the two countries’ growing closeness to
promote change in Azerbaijan, it will have to be “much more upfront
and harsher with [Aliyev],” says Charles King, a professor of foreign
service and government at Georgetown University in Washington.
| Copyright © 2006 The Christian Science
Monitor. All rights reserved.

RUSSIA: RACISM ON THE RISE
Zygmunt Dzieciolowski
Open Democracy, UK
April 26 2006
A spate of attacks against ethnic minorities and African students
reflects a wider growth of nationalist political sentiment, says
Zygmunt Dzieciolowski.
Anjani Kumar is a 23-year-old student at St Petersburg’s Mechnikoff
Medical Academy. As he was returning to his hostel one night, a group
of youths attacked him, stabbing him in the neck.
Zaut Tutov is the minister of culture for the autonomous republic of
Kabardino-Balkaria in the northern Caucasus. He was taking his daughter
home from dance classes when fifteen skinheads surrounded him, shouting
“Russia for the Russians”, and beat him up.
Both Anjani Kumar and Zaut Tutov were lucky: they survived. Dozens
of other victims of racially motivated assaults over the past fifteen
months did not. Recent victims were a nine-year-old Tajik girl in St
Petersburg, a Chinese street-trader in Vladivostok, and students from
Guinea-Bissau and Peru who were killed in Voronezh. In the central
Russian city of Volzhsky, a man and a woman died when skinheads armed
with steel rods attacked a gypsy camp.
Zygmunt Dzieciolowski is a Polish journalist and writer who has
reported on Russia for leading German, Swiss and Polish newspapers
since 1989. He is the author of the book Planet Russia, published in
Poland in 2005.
In what appear to be the latest cases, a 17-year-old ethnic Armenian
university student died on 22 April after being stabbed on a Moscow
metro station platform, and a young Tajik man died from knife wounds
on 24 April after he and his companion were attacked while walking
in Moscow.
“We have been living in Moscow for nearly ten years”, a Tajik friend
told me. “We experienced no fear when we arrived. We felt at home,
despite the anti-Caucasian sentiment following the fighting in
Chechnya. It’s different now. We are worried that the Asian features
of our teenaged children might lead to them being beaten up. I told
them to be especially careful if they’re out late or visiting friends
in remote neighbourhoods.”
Even in a country with 140 million people, the number of attacks is
alarming. In 2005, twenty-eight people died in hate attacks in Russia,
and 366 were wounded. The number of murders in 2006 is already well
into double figures. Human-rights activists say these figures hide
the true number, and that people of different races, skin colours
and anti-fascist groups are all targets of street violence.
Groups calling for Russia to be cleansed of foreigners, and using
fascist salutes and emblems, are now active in nearly every major
Russian city. On 20 April, the birthday of Adolf Hitler, most black
students living in Russia spent the day at home rather than risk
being caught outside by skinheads.
The members of these gangs are generally young, aged from thirteen to
thirty, according to a report by the website gazeta.ru. They tend to
come from low-income families and live in rundown suburbs. Around 1,000
skinheads live in the Moscow region, most of them outside the capital
itself. A majority of attacks take place on suburban trains and in
neighbourhoods away from the bustling main streets of the city centre.
The statistics in St Petersburg are even more alarming. The local
governor, Valentina Matviyenko, has been unable to stop the city on
the River Neva earning a reputation for hate crimes. The twenty large
skinhead gangs in St Petersburg have an estimated 12,000 members.
Across Russia, there are thought to be as many as 70,000 skinheads.
Small Russian towns are covered in nationalist graffiti, swastikas
and slogans like “Russia for the Russians” and “Death to Jews”.
The authorities have been unable or unwilling to deal with the
explosion in these gangs, and some minorities have set up self-defence
groups in response. At Moscow’s Peoples’ Friendship University
(formerly Patrice Lumumba University), African students have set up
their own self-defence groups.
The roots of violence
Much of the problem dates from the late 1980s, the years of Soviet
collapse. At that time, members of the Pamyat group dressed in black
and openly paraded their anti-semitism. Vladimir Zhirinovsky, the
populist leader of the Liberal Democratic party, achieved unexpectedly
good results in the 1993 parliamentary elections on the back of
nationalist rhetoric; his party came in first, capturing nearly a
quarter of the votes cast.
The two wars in Chechnya and a series of terrorist attacks on
targets across Russia fuelled ill-feeling towards Chechens and other
Caucasians. Public opinion has also turned against Ukrainians,
Georgians, Poles and Moldovans for their roles in the various
“colour”, or “flower”, revolutions that have swept through a number
of Russia’s neighbours. Estonians, Latvians and Lithuanians have also
been criticised, thanks to the perceived prejudice and discrimination
against Russian minorities in the Baltic states.
The change and uncertainty that the collapse of the Soviet Union caused
turned Russia into fertile ground for racism. But some journalists and
opposition activists believe the alarming recent growth in xenophobic
gangs is the result of something far more sinister. They think some
interests are benefiting from the rise in nationalist sentiments, and
argue that some politicians and secret services might be manipulating
events as part of their struggle for power, wealth and influence. Some
point out that powerful interest groups in the Kremlin are looking for
ways to keep power in the same hands even after the end of Vladimir
Putin’s presidency in 2008.
Many Russians, especially those with memories of the horrors of the
Nazi invasion, wonder why Putin’s government is so tolerant of those
who use slogans reminiscent of Hitler’s Germany. In his column for
, Georgy Bovt, the editor of Profil magazine, writes of
his suspicion that skinheads are being used to intimidate and frighten
the public into sticking with the establishment at the polls in 2008.
Dmitri Rogozin, the former leader of the Rodina (Motherland) faction
in the Duma and an enthusiastic supporter of nationalist politics,
argues something similar. He sees the skinhead violence playing
into the hands of those in the Kremlin at the next parliamentary
and presidential elections. In a television interview in March, he
predicted that politics would be “a struggle between the authorities
and the fascists. This would help them to sell these undemocratic
elections to the west. And as there were no real fascists in Russia,
they were having to create them.”
Such a game, if the conspiracy theorists are right, would be extremely
dangerous. Vyacheslav Nikonov, a member of the recently founded Public
Chamber (an advisory body set up by the government as a bridge between
the state and civil society after the 2004 Beslan school siege by
Chechen guerrillas) believes the country’s unity is at stake. “The
ultimate result of slogans like ‘Russia for the Russians’,” he said
in a recent speech, “is slogans like ‘Tatarstan for the Tatars’ or
‘Kabardino-Balkaria for the Kabardins and Balkarians’.”
The Kremlin’s critics are even more outspoken in their warnings. They
say Russia’s multiculturalism, its future as a civilised state and
even its continued existence as they know it could be under threat.

GERMANS OF JEWISH DESCENT PROTEST FAKED ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
Author: J.Shakhverdiyev
TREND Info, Azerbaijan
April 24 2006
On April 23 political movement Azerbaijan’s Way together with Turkish
community arranged a action of protest against fake Armenian genocide;
the action took place in Ujun, Germany, Trend reports quoting Asli
Khalilgyzy, foreign relations coordinator with aforesaid movement.
Khalilgyzy said the action had been supported by Turkish youth and
other movements of Germany; next action will be held May 2 in town
of Feirbacj, then in Izmir, Stockholm and Oslo.
Khalilgyzy said, quoting Guldana Rzayeva, Azerbaijan Way’s
representative to Germany, the movement is going to arrange one more
protest action today in the same city. This action, alongside Turkish
people, will be supported by Jewish residents.
She also said the reason for support Jewish communities granted to
this action are the documents provided to these communities, which
list the names of 87 Jews murdered by Armenians in 1918 in Guba.

ARMENIANS REMEMBER VICTIMS OF 1915 MASSACRE
By Rym Ghazal
Daily Star staff
The Daily Star, Lebanon
April 25, 2006
Turkey still denies targeting minority community
BEIRUT: Thousands of Armenians from all over Lebanon gathered at Bourj
Hammoud Stadium on Monday to commemorate the 91st anniversary of the
Armenian genocide, demanding that Turkey “recognize and apologize for”
the massacre committed by the Ottoman Turks in 1915.
“It was the first massacre of the 20th century to which the whole world
turned a blind eye,” former Minister Alain Tabourian told the crowd.
The gathering was attended by 35,000 Armenians who came wearing the
Armenian flag but singing the national Lebanese anthem as they marched
into the stadium in the Armenian suburb of Beirut.
“Turkey tried to wipe us out of existence, but we survived and were
reborn with new citizenships,” said Tabourian, who also thanked
Lebanon for having welcomed Armenian refugees who fled Turkey. “We
never forgot our roots.”
He also thanked representatives from the government and President
Emile Lahoud, along with Lebanese Forces MP Strida Geagea, who attended
the commemoration ceremony.
Beginning on April 24, 1915, Armenians say about 1.5 million Armenians
“were massacred” by the Ottoman Turks as part of a government-led
“genocide,” a term Turkey has fiercely and consistently rejected for
decades. Ankara also says the dead numbered 300,000-500,000.
Survivors fled to Syria and Lebanon, with the latter now home to the
largest Armenian community in the Arab world, made up of about 75,000
descendants of those who fled the 1915-1917 violence.
“In order for the Armenians to open a new page with Turkey, it has
to acknowledge and admit its crime against us, and apologize for
committing the highest kind of atrocities possible against human
beings,” Tabourian said.
“Their admission of this crime would benefit them and help them
accomplish their dream of entering the European Union, and would give
us our peace and compensation which are rightfully ours,” he added,
referring to EU demands that Turkey face its past and expand freedom
of speech before it can qualify to enter the union.
Apart from the speeches, which were mainly delivered in Armenian, white
balloons were released in honor of those killed in the bloodletting
and in hope that peace can finally be realized between Turkey and
the Armenians.
“It is rather unlikely they Turkey will admit it, but we have to
prove that as Armenians, we still exist, and just as Palestinians are
fighting for their land, so are we,” said one participant at the event,
Anto Narguizian, 17.
“Turkey’s alliance with the United States is very strategic, both
economically and geographically, so the United States will not agree
that such a mass genocide occurred, even if most European states
have agreed to this,” he added. “But if America does not agree,
Turkey will not return the land it has taken from the Armenians,
and will not repay all the damages it has caused.”
Narguizian’s mother, Maral, who did not attend the commemoration,
told The Daily Star: “Everyone has their way of expressing their
beliefs and what they stand for; I would rather express myself through
monetary aid to local charities and churches.”
But she added that these “protests need to be done, to ask for our
rights, which have long been ignored.”

HUIT “STèLES” ARMENIENNES ERIGEES A PARIS
Le Figaro, France
24 avril 2006
GENOCIDE. Huit “stèles” geantes a la memoire du “genocide armenien”
perpetre en 1915 et contre le refus des autorites turques de le
reconnaître ont ete dressees hier devant la cathedrale Notre-Dame de
Paris par un collectif “antinegationnisme”. Le memorial lyonnais du
genocide armenien, objet de polemiques et d’une recente profanation,
devrait etre inaugure cet après-midi, jour de la commemoration du 91
e anniversaire du genocide.
–Boundary_(ID_bk2VikzKpeBShaCOc47q8A)- –

APRIL 23-29 PROCLAIMED A WEEK OF COMMEMORATION OF THE ARMENIAN GENOCIDE IN CALIFORNIA
ArmRadio.am
24.04.2006 15:30
The Governor of California Arnold Shwarzenegger has proclaimed April
23-29 a week of commemoration of the Armenian Genocide victims.
The decree signed by the Governor says in particular that April 24,
1915 marks the start start of the Armenian Genocide – the crime
against humanity in the result of which 1.5 million Armenians were
massacred till 1923. The document notes also that the “500 thousand
Armenians that escaped the annihilation policy were displaced from
their homeland and settled in other countries.
“These people found shelter in a new homeland, including in California,
which is the State which now has the largest Armenian community in
the US. Today, when we mark the 91st anniversary of the Genocide, we
should understand the lessons of the history to fight all expressions
of hatred. I join the Armenian community calling for recognition
of the Armenian Genocide and thus call on the Americans and other
peoples of the world to do the same,” Shwarzenegger’ s decree says.

Karabakh aims to draw up “acceptable” settlement principles – MP
Aravot, Yerevan
20 Apr 06
The purpose of the Karabakh hearings organized by the parliament of
the Nagornyy Karabakh republic (NKR) is to agree on conflict settlement
principles acceptable to the NKR, the head of the parliament’s foreign
relations commission, Vagram Atanesyan, has said.
“Our purpose is to unify positions existing in the parliament on
principles which are acceptable for us to move the Karabakh negotiating
process forward,” Atanesyan said in an interview with the Armenian
newspaper Aravot on 20 April.
He said that the Karabakh parliament will not ask Armenia to give up
its place in the talks with Azerbaijan in favour of the NKR. “I do
not think that at present we should prompt Armenia at the level of
the NKR parliament. We shall present our position,” he said.
He went on to say that the parliament will issue a statement following
the hearings, but denied the parliament’s plans to influence the
negotiating process.

“TURKS CONDEMNED ARMENIAN GENOCIDE IN 1919”
Panorama.am
14:43 22/04/06
“Time will come when the Turkish people will finally realize the
whole seriousness of the crime their ancestors committed and will
demand that their government should publicly recognize the fact of
Armenian Genocide and apologize to the Armenian people,” the acting
dean the Historical Faculty of Armenian Pedagogical Institute,
doctor of historical sciences Mher karapetyan said in the talk with
our correspondent.
Such an optimistic attitude of the historian has its basis,
i.e. history doesn’t leave any crime against the humanity non-punished,
and moreover the Turks themselves condemned the Young Turks in
1919. “The Turkish Court sentenced those criminals to death, tens
of people were exiled, in a word that fact really exists and it is
stated in historical works,” M.
Karapetyan reminded. As the historian mentions “governments come
and pass, people’s mentality changes, thus one cannot consider
it hopeless that Turkey is not going to recognize the Armenian
Genocide.” /Panorama.am/

The News-Sentinel
Distributed by Knight/Ridder Tribune News Service
April 17, 2006 Monday
Holocaust survivor wants to stop other genocides
by Erika Nordblom, The News-Sentinel, Fort Wayne, Ind.
Apr. 17–Philip Bialowitz was just 16 when he narrowly escaped death
at the hands of the Nazis. Unlike his father, mother and millions of
other Polish citizens, he survived to tell the story of the Nazis and
their campaign of ethnic cleansing.
An estimated 250,000 Jews were murdered at Sobibor, a prison camp in
Poland.
In 1943, Bialowitz was part of a successful uprising in which six
hundred prisoners fled. Many were killed during the escape, while
others made it to the forest surrounding the camp. Bialowitz was one
of only 48 who survived to see the end of the war that following
year.
He will be in Fort Wayne through April 20 and is scheduled to appear
at 7 tonight at Congregation Achduth Vesholom, 5200 Old Mill Rd. His
speech is part of the annual Yom Hashoah (Holocaust remembrance)
observance of the Fort Wayne Jewish Federation.
The service is free and open to the public. Bialowitz will also speak
at area schools, including Indiana University-Purdue University Fort
Wayne.
By telling his story, Bialowitz hopes to bring attention to the fact
that the Holocaust was not an isolated incident.
“The systematic murder of innocent human beings continues, even in
the 21st century,” he says, “My survival means very little if
Hitler’s legacy of genocide lives on.”
Bialowitz points to the mass killings in the Darfur region of western
Sudan as a recent example of genocide.
“Four-hundred thousand human beings have been murdered only because
of their race,” he says of the conflict in Africa.
When Bialowitz remembers the people who suffered at Sobibor, he
thinks of groups like the people in Darfur, who continue to suffer
today.
“Sobibor stands forever as a warning of what happens when we allow
barbarism to grow out of control,” he says.
Bialowitz says his story is a warning to future generations about the
danger of letting evil prevail.
“We cannot allow our world’s leaders to continue to abandon our
fellow human beings in the same way that they abandoned the
Armenians, the Jews, the Chinese, the Cambodians, the Rwandans, the
Bosnians, and now the Darfurians,” he says, “Sobibor must stand,
today and throughout the ages, as a reminder of the power we all have
within us to save our lives and the lives of our fellow human
beings.”
HEAR HIM: Philip Bialowitz will speak at noon tomorrow in Kettler
Hall (Room G32) on the IPFW campus, 2101 E. Coliseum Blvd. This event
is free and open to the public. For more information, contact the
IPFW Office of Diversity and Multicultural Affairs at 481-6608.