Author: Kajoyan Gevork

ARMENIAN GENOCIDE BILL ‘BETRAYS HISTORY’: TURKISH DEPUTY PM

Agence France Presse
December 22, 2011 Thursday 3:09 PM GMT

A French bill making the denial of Armenian genocide a criminal
offence was a “betrayal of history”, Turkish Deputy Prime Minister
Bulent Arinc said Thursday.

“I condemn the French parliament, which passed this bill meaning
betrayal of history and historical truth,” Arinc said on his Twitter
account.

“The French parliament… dimmed out history and truth by approving
the bill,” he added.

Arinc accused the French lawmakers backing the bill of “bringing back
the Inquisition”, and he said the legislation was “evil-minded”.

France’s lower house of parliament approved the bill, which makes it
a crime to deny that the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Armenians
at the hands of Turkish Ottoman forces amounted to a genocide during
World War I.

Turkey has recalled its ambassador from Paris in protest and about
30 people gathered outside the French consulate in Istanbul after
the French lower house approved the bill.

“We have not committed genocide, we defended the homeland. Wait for
us France, we will come,” chanted protesters from the nationalist
Worker’s Party.

The draft law will now be considered by the French Senate and
parliamentary committees, and may be enacted early next year, despite
reported concerns from the foreign ministry about damage to France’s
ties with Turkey.

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan was expected to announce
sanctions against Paris later Thursday.

GENOCIDE–JUST ANOTHER WORD?

Radio Netherlands

Dec 23 2011

A fierce row has broken out between Ankara and Paris following
a French decision to adopt a law criminalising the denial of the
Armenian genocide by the Turks (1915- 1916). Turkish Prime Minister
Tayyip Erdogan today accused France of committing genocide in Algeria
after World War II. When the word “genocide” enters the argument,
it seems, sweet reason flies out the door.

“Genocide” is one of the most loaded terms in international law. The
systematic killing of a racial or cultural group is commonly regarded
as the most serious crime against humanity. It is an indelible stain
on a nation’s history. The word brings to mind gruesome images of
the Holocaust or the 1994 Rwanda genocide.

Mass murder The Polish law professor Raphael Lemkin, who fled to the
United States in 1941, introduced the term “genocide” in his 1944
book Axis Rule in Occupied Europe. In 1945 and 1946 it was used
during the Nuremberg Trials of Germany’s Nazi leaders. In 1948,
the newly established United Nations adopted the Convention on the
Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. Due to pressure
from Russian dictator Joseph Stalin, mass murder of a political group
was not included in the Convention.

Thijs Bouwknegt of the Netherlands Institute for War Documentation
(NIOD) explains that the term “genocide” is strictly defined:

“It refers to violence against just four groups: national, ethnic,
religious or racial groups. Genocide occurs if one of these groups
is systematically murdered or driven out of a country. The latter
is what happened to the Armenians in 1915. The Ottoman (Turkish)
regime deported them in large numbers.”

Genocide It has become more and more common in recent years to
characterise a conflict as genocide. Opponents of former Libyan leader
Muammar Gadaffi were quick to accuse his regime of the crime. Critics
also accuse Syrian President Bashir al-Assad of genocide, due to
his regime’s violent suppression of protest. Larissa van den Herik,
professor of international law at Leiden University, says the word
is used for an important reason:

“‘The term is used so often because it’s an emergency call to the
international community to intervene in a conflict. It doesn’t get
worse than genocide, so the word is used for political reasons. Often
it’s a matter of responding emotionally rather than looking at cold,
hard facts. There’s a real danger that the whole concept of genocide
becomes devalued.”

International judges That’s a danger international judges and
prosecutors are alert to, according to Van den Herik. Genocide
is not automatically or easily included when charges are drawn
up against war crimes suspects. There are a range of other charges
available. Genocide, moreover, is a very difficult crime to prove. In
recent history, the charge has only been brought successfully in
connection with the conflicts in Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia.

NIOD’s Thijs Bouwknegt: “Not only must you prove that a large group
of people are exterminated or victimised in some way, but also that
those victims fall under one of the four specific categories. There’s
a heavy burden of proof.”

There are currently a number of genocide cases being heard, notably by
the Cambodia Tribunal. A number of senior figures of the former Khmer
Rouge regime have been charged with the genocide of two separate
groups in the 1970s: the Vietnamese minority (a national group)
and the Islamic Cham community (a religious group).

Denial Even denying a particular genocide has taken place is a crime
in some countries. In the Netherlands, among other countries, it is
illegal to deny the Jewish Holocaust by Nazi Germany during World War
II. France has now become the first European country to ban denial
of the Armenian genocide. It’s unlikely that countries such as the
Netherlands or Germany will follow the French example.

Van den Herik: “Both countries have large Turkish communities. No one
will be keen to offend them with a ban. But it would be good to put a
bit more pressure on Turkey. It’s always good to take an honest look
at your history.”

Honesty may be the best policy, but politics is a messy business and
Ankara’s furious reaction to the French move may discourage other
European governments from taking similar steps.

PRESIDENT AHMADINEJAD RETURNS HOME

Islamic Republic News Agency
Dec 23 2011

Tehran, Dec 24, IRNA – President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad returned home
on Friday night after a one-day official visit to Yerevan.

Ahmadinejad was welcomed by Iranian First Vice President Mohammad
Reza Rahimi at Tehran Mehrabad Airport.

President Ahmadinejad and Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan on
Friday discussed major topics concerning bilateral, regional, and
international issues.

President Ahmadinejad’s visit to Armenia took place upon an invitation
by Armenian President Sargsyan and in line with expansion of bilateral
ties between two countries.

Visiting Iranian president had also a meeting with Armenian President
Serzh Sargsyan and discussed major topics concerning bilateral,
regional, and international issues.

Ahmadinejad and Sargsyan emphasized, in a joint statement published
on Friday, on the right of all nations to use peaceful nuclear energy.

The statement stressed that all nations should respect Nuclear
Non-proliferation Treaty and the international rules and regulations
on prohibition of spread of Weapons of Mass Destruction.

Furthermore, President Ahmadinejad also in a speech at the Armenian
Parliament said that “Tehran and Yerevan have similar stand on variant
issues including the establishment of peace and justice in the world.

In the meantime, Iranian President in his meeting with Armenia Prime
Minister Tigran Sargsyan underlined that “Tehran and Yerevan have
good ancient, cultural relations and the two side relations in the
past decades have been always constructive.

In a meeting with Armenian Iranians in Yerevan, President Ahmadinejad
noted that hegemonic powers aim to give power to their pawns in the
region and make puppet regimes.

Iran and Armenia singed five letters of understanding during the
official visit of Iranian delegation led by President Ahmadinejad to
Yerevan on Friday.

Tehran and Yerevan MoUs cover various fields of cooperation including
the construction of hydroelectric power plants on Aras dam, cooperation
between the Institute for Standards and Industrial Research of Iran and
the Armenian National Institute for Standards as well as cooperation
in the fields of social welfare, employment and environment protection.

Supply of oil products to Armenia and construction of railways are
among main topics of discussion during President Ahmadinejad’s one-day
visit to Yerevan.

Trade stood at dlrs 270 million in 2010 between the two countries. The
figure rose up to dlrs 300 million in 2011.

Over the past 20 years, energy sector has played an important role
in Iran-Armenia trade relations.

Relations between Armenia and the Islamic Republic of Iran remain
extremely cordial and both Armenia and Iran are strategic partners
in the region. Armenia and Iran enjoy cultural and historical ties
that go back thousands of years. There are no border disputes between
the two countries and the Christian Armenian minority in Iran enjoys
official recognition.

In July, 2007, a memorandum was signed on the start of feasibility
studies on the ideas of building an Armenian-Iranian railway and a
Russian-owned oil refinery that would process Iranian crude.

The Armenian government is building a second, bigger highway leading
to the Iranian border in the hope of boosting trade with Iran.

The two countries have reached a preliminary agreement to make joint
TV serials. The joint venture would portray the social and cultural
life of Iran and Armenia and expand cinematic ties between the two
countries.

TURKEY ANNOUNCES SANCTIONS ON FRANCE OVER ARMENIAN BILL

Xinhua General News Service
December 22, 2011 Thursday 12:10 PM EST
China

Turkey announced Thursday a set of sanctions against France over
a French bill criminalizing the denial of the so-called “Armenian
genocide”.

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan told a news conference in
the Turkish capital of Ankara that Turkey is cancelling all economic,
political, military meetings with France.

Turkey halts “all political consultations, joint military activities
and maneuvers” in response to the French approval of the bill,
which stipulates criminal sentences and fines for these who refuse
to recognize the killing of Armenians in 1915 under the as “genocide”
in France, said Erdogan.

He added that Turkey also cancels permission for French military
planes to land and warships to dock in Turkey.

Despite strong protests by Turkey, French lawmakers in the National
Assembly, the lower house of the parliament, voted Thursday in favor
of the bill, which will be debated next year in the Senate.

A group of Turkish protestors gathered in front of the French embassy
in Ankara on Thursday to protest the approval of the bill by the
French parliament’s lower house, the semi-official Anatolia news
agency reported.

The protestors carried banners that read “Stop France. We did not
commit genocide but we defended our homeland,” as the police were
tightening security measures in front of the French embassy.

A protestor named Bulent Esinoglu was quoted as saying that ” the
French decision implied the Turkish nation was a killer”.

Meanwhile, Chairman of Turkish Confederation of Tradesmen and Craftsmen
(TESK) Bendevi Palandoken said Thursday that they strongly condemned
the bill.

“We are removing all French products from our shelves,” Palandoken
said.

The main opposition Republican People’s Party also issued a
condemnation over the bill, saying that its members would closely
follow the developments regarding the bill.

In January 2001, the French parliament adopted a bill recognizing
the so-called “Armenian genocide”. In 2006, the lower house of the
French parliament approved a resolution criminalizing the denial of
the so-called “Armenian genocide”, but the resolution failed to pass
in the Senate.

Turkey and Armenia have had no diplomatic or economic ties since
Armenia declared independence in 1991. The two countries have
been bogged down in a dispute over the World War I-era deaths of
Armenians under the Ottoman rule. Armenia says the deaths occurred
in a “genocide,” while Turkey denies the charge and insists that the
Armenians were victims of widespread chaos and governmental breakdown
as the Ottoman Empire collapsed before modern Turkey was created.

IRAN, ARMENIA SIGN 5 COOPERATION AGREEMENTS

On Line: 23 December 2011 15:06

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and his Armenian counterpart
Serzh Sargsyan signed five cooperation agreements and memorandums of
understanding in Yerevan on Friday to boost economic ties, the IRNA
news agency reported.

Building and operating hydroelectric power plants on Aras River
which runs along the two countries’ border, cooperation between
national standards institutes of the two sides, cooperation in the
social welfare sector, and cooperation in the field of environment
protection were among the agreements.

Trade turnover between Tehran and Yerevan has been increasing, from
$206 million (157 million euros) in 2009 to $273 million (209 million
euros) last year.

TURKEY ACCUSES FRANCE OF GENOCIDE AFTER ARMENIAN BILL

Al-Masry Al-Youm

Dec 23 2011
Egypt

ISTANBUL – Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan accused France
of genocide in Algeria in the 1940s and 50s, in his latest response
to a French parliament vote to make it a crime to deny that the mass
killings of Armenians in Ottoman Turkey was genocide.

Erdogan also said President Nicolas Sarkozy’s father might have direct
knowledge about French “massacres” in Algeria.

“In Algeria from 1945, an estimated 15 percent of the population
was massacred by the French. This is a genocide,” Erdogan said on
live television.

“If the French President Mr. Sarkozy doesn’t know about this genocide
he should go and ask his father, Paul Sarkozy.

“His father served in the French Legion in Algeria in the 1940s. I
am sure he would have lots to tell his son about the French massacres
in Algeria,” the Turkish premier said.

Parliamentarians in France’s lower house of parliament voted
overwhelmingly in favor of a draft law outlawing genocide denial
Thursday, which the Senate will debate next year.

If passed, the bill would make it illegal to deny the 1915 mass killing
of Armenians by Ottoman Turks amounted to genocide. The issue has
caused outrage in Turkey, which argues killings took place on all
sides during a fierce partisan conflict.

Erdogan condemned the bill shortly after the vote, recalled Ankara’s
ambassador to France for consultations and canceled all joint economic,
political and military meetings. Friday, he vowed to take more steps.

“We will take gradual measures as long as the current [French]
attitude is maintained,” he said, without elaborating.

“The vote in the French parliament has shown how dangerous racism,
discrimination and Islamophobia have become in France and Europe.”

Although nearly a century has passed since the killings in the middle
of World War I, successive Turkish governments and the vast majority
of Turks feel the charge of Armenian genocide is an insult to their
nation.

GENOCIDE, THE GRAVEST CRIME IN INTERNATIONAL LAW

Khaleej Times

Dec 23 2011
UAE

23 December 2011THE HAGUE – Genocide, which Turkey on Friday accused
France of committing in its former colony Algeria, is the gravest
crime in international humanitarian law – and also the most difficult
to prove.

Turkey’s accusation comes a day after French lawmakers voted to
outlaw denial of the 1915 Armenian genocide in Ottoman Turkey, now
threatening to cause a huge rift between the two countries.

Derived from the Greek word “genos”, for race or tribe, and the suffix
“cide” from the Latin for “to kill”; genocide is defined by the United
Nations as an “act committed with intent to destroy in whole or in
part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group.”

The word was coined in 1944 by Raphael Lemkin, a Polish Jew who took
refuge in the United States, to describe crimes committed by Nazi
Germany during the Holocaust.

It was used for the first time within a legal framework by an
international military tribunal at Nuremberg to try Nazi leaders for
their crimes in 1945. Those accused were however convicted of crimes
against humanity.

Genocide has been recognised within international law since 1948,
with the advent of the UN Convention and lists murder among a series
of crimes.

The UN in 1985 recognised the killing of hundreds of thousands of
Armenians in 1915 as genocide.

The European Parliament recognised the Armenian genocide in 1987,
followed by Belgium in 1998, France in 2001, Switzerland in 2003
(through its national Council, against government advice) and Greece.

In Russia, its lower house of parliament condemned the Armenian
genocide in 1994.

That same year, the Rwandan genocide in which the UN said some 800,000
Tutsis and moderate Hutus were murdered, led to the creation of the
International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, based in Arusha, Tanzania.

It has been handing out convictions since 1998 for the crime of
genocide and complicity.

The massacre of almost 8,000 Muslim men and boys by Bosnian Serb forces
at Srebrenica in July 1995 during the Bosnian war, was recognised as
genocide by the UN’s highest judicial organ, the International Court
of Justice in 2007.

The Balkans war crimes court, the International Criminal Tribunal
for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY), has convicted several accused
of genocide.

Three former leaders of Cambodia’s Khmer Rouge regime from 1975-79
are currently on trial in Phnom Penh for genocide and war crimes
before a UN-sponsored tribunal.

Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir is wanted by the International
Criminal Court (ICC) on an arrest warrant for genocide related to
crimes committed against Darfur’s civilian population.

The Hague-based ICC is the only permanent international tribunal to
try the perpetrators of genocide since its inception in 1992.

IRANIAN, ARMENIAN PRESIDENTS EMPHASIZE NEED FOR REGIONAL PEACE

Tehran Times

Dec 23 2011
Iran

TEHRAN – After a meeting on Friday, Iranian President Mahmoud
Ahmadinejad and his Armenian counterpart Serzh Sargsyan issued
a joint statement insisting on the need to accelerate efforts to
improve security and peace in the region.

In the statement, the Iranian and Armenian presidents also expressed
satisfaction at the level of relations between the two countries
and said the ties are based on longstanding friendship between the
peoples of the countries.

The presidents also said the two countries have great potential which
should be utilized to increase cooperation in all spheres.

They added that Tehran and Yerevan have many affinities which would
help strengthen their ties.

The issue of Nagorno-Karabakh conflict was also addressed in the
statement and the necessity of resolving the conflict was emphasized.

The conflict between Azerbaijan and Armenia began in 1988 when Armenia
made territorial claims against Azerbaijan. The two countries signed
a ceasefire agreement in 1994. The co-chairs of the Minsk Group of the
Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe — Russia, France,
and the U.S. — are currently mediating in the peace negotiations.

TURKEY FREEZES ALL POLITICAL RELATIONS WITH FRANCE

AZG DAILY
24-12-2011

Turkey has frozen relations with France, recalling its ambassador and
suspending all economic, political and military meetings in response to
French MPs’ approval of a law that would make it a crime to deny that
the mass killing of Armenians in 1915 by Ottoman Turks was genocide.

The furious Turkish reaction to Paris’s parliamentary vote marked an
unprecedented low between the Nato partners, The Guardian reports.

Accordinf to the source, the Turkish prime minister, Recep Tayyip
Erdogan, cancelled permission for French military planes to land and
warships to dock in Turkey, annulled all joint military exercises,
recalled the Turkish ambassador to France for consultations and said
he would decide case by case whether to let the French military use
Turkish airspace.

He said this was just the start and “gradually” but “decisively”
other retaliation measures would be taken against France. He warned
of heavy diplomatic “wounds” that would be “difficult to heal”.

A majority of the 50 MPs present in France’s lower chamber approved
the bill which would make denying any genocide – but implicitly
the Armenian genocide – a criminal offence punishable by a one-year
prison sentence and a fine of ~@45,000 (£37,500). The bill was put
forward by an MP from Sarkozy’s rightwing UMP party, but the issue
was supported by socialists.

“This is politics based on racism, discrimination and xenophobia. This
is using Turkophobia and Islamophobia to gain votes, it raises concerns
regarding these issues not only in France but all over Europe,” Erdogan
said, accusing the French president, Nicolas Sarkozy, of deliberately
courting the large Armenian-French vote ahead of next year’s election.

The French foreign minister Alain Juppe said he didn’t want “our
Turkish friends” to “overreact”. Earlier, trying to smooth the row
with Turkey, he dismissed the bill as “useless and counterproductive”.

He said Turkey, “a proud nation”, should work on its issues of history
and memory, but threatening French criminal sanctions was not the
right way to make them do it.

Under Sarkozy, who opposes Turkish entry to the European Union,
relations between Paris and Ankara have been difficult. But the Nato
allies had been working together on key issues such as the Syria
uprising. Erdogan said Turkey was now “suspending all kinds of
political consultations with France”.

A Turkish official indicated the freeze would not affect the country’s
membership of Nato, and that the withdrawal of military co-operation
would be at a bilateral level.

EDUARD SHARMAZANOV PARTICIPATED IN VACLAV HAVEL’S FUNERAL CEREMONY

AZG DAILY
24-12-2011

Armenia-Czechia Update: 2011-12-24 00:23:00 (GMT +04:00)

On December 23 the Deputy Speaker of the RA National Assembly Eduard
Sharmazanov as an official representative of the Republic of Armenia
took part in the funeral ceremony of former President of the Czech
Republic Vaclav Havel in Prague, the NA press service reported.

The source notes that the representatives of Turkey and Azerbaijan
have not participated in the funeral ceremony.