Author: Kajoyan Gevork

Food World News
Jan 30 2015

Armenian Genocide Denial: Amal Alamuddin Clooney Defends Armenia In
Top EU Human Rights Court [VIDEO]

Jan 30, 2015 01:53 PM EST |
By Victoria Guerra

Though she’s mostly known for being the woman who married George
Clooney, Amal Alamuddin Clooney’s one of the most recognized lawyers
in the human rights field, and she’s now taken on the case of the
Armenian genocide denial in the Human Rights Court of the European
Union.

For a full century, the government of Turkey has created a defense
based on the Armenian genocide denial, tweaking the death toll for the
event and even refusing to call the murder of 1.5 million Armenians in
1915 a genocide; in a case that has reached the highest court of the
EU on the matter, Amal Alamuddin Clooney has stepped up in defense of
the Armenian people.

As Time Magazine reports, the current case regarding the Armenian
genocide denial saw its birth in a 2005 Swiss court room: a Turkish
politician named Dogu Perinçek, from the Turkish Workers’ Party, was
convicted in Switzerland for racism, after having called the Armenian
genocide of 2015 an “international lie.”

According to The Chicago Tribune, Perinçek’s conviction was later
overturned, in 2013, when the European Court of Human Rights released
him saying that it was an issue of freedom of speech; last Thursday,
the acclaimed human rights lawyer said it was very hypocritical of the
Turkish government to put forward that defense, considering their
“disgraceful” record on the subject of freedom of expression.

As Today’s Zaman reports, the Swiss government asked the Court to
reconsider in 2014; now, the case is up for appeal in the same
Strasbourg court.

Of course, the new Armenian genocide denial case has reached news
sites around the world for two different reasons: the fact that it’s
an important case in human rights and freedom of expression … and
that Amal Alamuddin Clooney, George Clooney’s new wife, is the person
defending the Armenian people.

As Clooney was defending her point, she stated that the “most
important error” in the ruling that released Perinçek in 2013 was that
it put Armenia in a tough spot, as it “cast doubt on the reality of
the Armenian genocide.”

The ultimate goal is that, eventually, the Turkish government will
stop the Armenian genocide denial.

Sydney Morning Herald, Australia
Jan 31 2015

Book review: Armenian atrocities deemed ‘An Inconvenient Genocide’
that no one acknowledges

Jennifer Balint

History
An Inconvenient Genocide: Who Now Remembers the Armenians?
GEOFFREY ROBERTSON
Vintage

April 24, 1915 marks both the eve of the Anzac landing at Gallipoli,
Australia’s “coming of age”, and the night in which Armenian
political, intellectual and community leaders were rounded up in
Constantinople and throughout the Ottoman state, imprisoned, and
mostly executed. The 100th anniversary of the Gallipoli landing comes
one day after the 100th anniversary of a mostly unrecognised genocide,
the estimated 1.2 million Armenians killed by the Ottoman state under
cover of the First World War.

In An Inconvenient Genocide, international human-rights barrister
Geoffrey Robertson makes the case for the atrocities perpetrated
against the Armenian population to be categorised, legally, as
genocide. He is insistent that it is a matter of law, not history nor
morality.

An Inconvenient Genocide by Geoffrey Robertson.

The significance of this book is that since the establishment of
modern-day Turkey, the genocide has been denied. The systematic denial
has left the Armenian community in a state of unrecognised mourning.
As Robertson outlines, Turkey spends millions of dollars promoting its
justification of the massacres as “strategically necessary in a civil
war”, and has made denial a condition of diplomatic relations. In
showing that this is a matter of law, not history, Robertson engages
directly with Turkey’s denialist stance that it be “left to
historians”.

The crime was always known. At the end of the war, Ottoman newspapers
wrote editorials denouncing the massacres, and parliamentarians
decried the actions of the Young Turks; one railed “we inherited a
country turned into a huge slaughterhouse”. The Allies had promised an
international tribunal, describing the crimes – with the term used
for the first time as Robertson notes – as a “crime against
humanity”. No international tribunal eventuated. The Ottoman state set
up its own tribunal, which was shut down with the rise of the Kemalist
party and the establishment of the modern Turkish state.

Robertson’s book is an important contribution. Its strength lies in
its systematic presentation of the evidence, that he then applies to
the law of genocide – graphic eyewitness accounts by missionaries, aid
workers, army officers, business people, consuls and ambassadors, part
of which was collated by the British government in 1916, two
commissioned US reports in 1919, the evidence presented at the Ottoman
courts-martial, cables sent by key political leaders clearly outlining
genocidal intent, even of the laws passed at the time that gave
authority to the state to obtain the “abandoned” homes and property of
deportees.

He also includes diary entries found at the Australian National
Archives from Australian diggers who as prisoners of war were
witnesses to the slaughter of Armenians and the horrific deportations
they were subject to that resulted in death, rape and abduction.
Diaries from British servicemen are witness to the complicity of
Germany, a complicity that extended to assisting the key political
leaders to escape.

Robertson’s conclusion, in relation to the deportations authorised by
the Ottoman state, is that “those political leaders who gave the
orders intended that a substantial part of the Armenian population
would be exterminated in consequence. There is no other inference that
is ‘reasonable’.”

And if Turkey finds it so hard to recognise it as a genocide, he
maintains, then it should at least know that it is clearly at least a
“crime against humanity” for which it should apologise and make
reparations. “If these same events occurred today,” he argues, “there
can be no doubt that prosecutions before the International Criminal
Court of Talaat [Pasha] and other CUP [Committee of Union and
Progress] officials for genocide, for persecution and for other crimes
against humanity would succeed.”

The larger question in this book is what can be done when there is no
possibility of criminal legal accountability now that all the main
perpetrators are dead. Here, Robertson argues for the pursuit of legal
means as well as non-legal, including an apology and the gift of Mount
Ararat to Armenia. He cautions against genocide denial laws, although
his argument for “freedom of speech” neglects the harm that genocide
denial causes. And he illustrates what he terms “genocide
equivocators” through his own Freedom of Information requests that
reveal how the British government was advised not to recognise the
genocide.

When the term “genocide” was coined, it was with the memory of the
Ottoman massacres. The Holocaust led to its becoming law, but it was
the Armenian genocide that motivated its development, a story Robinson
tells in the book.

While he dismisses historians, arguing that it is lawyers who make
judgments on whether or not an act can be characterised as genocide,
using the law to make the case is necessary in the face of Turkey’s
continued denial. What Robertson clearly shows, as historians and
social scientists have said for decades, and victims and their
descendants have known, what the Ottoman state did, was, in fact and
in law, a genocide.

Jennifer Balint teaches in the school of social and political sciences
at the University of Melbourne.

Vestnik Kavkaza, Russia
Jan 30 2015

Armenia to save economy

30 January 2015 – 8:34pm

Armenian Prime Minister Ovik Abramyan said today that Armenia was
preparing to withstand the world economic war. He noted that a
governmental commission was formed to take measures, come up with laws
and decisions to make the national economy more sustainable, Arminfo
reports.

Vache Gabriyelyan, vice prime minister and the minister for
international economic integration and reforms, said that the economy
needed foreign currency. In his words, the government prepared a bill
to stimulate exports and introduce changes at currency exchange
offices.

The vice prime minister reminded that euro bonds worth a total of $700
million of emissions had been released in September 2013 at a rate of
6.25%. The bonds were released for 7 years.

Breitbart
Jan 30 2015

Turkey Scrambles to Undo `Mistaken’ Publication of Armenian Genocide
Monument Photo

by Thomas D. Williams, Ph.D.
30 Jan 20156

As Armenians are gearing up to commemorate the centenary of the
Armenian Genocide at the hands of the Ottoman Empire, the Turkish
Foreign Ministry has `mistakenly’ published a picture of the Armenian
Genocide Monument amidst a collage of photos in a 2015 calendar.

The Foreign Ministry has scrambled to distance itself from the photo
and an official has said that an investigation has been undertaken to
determine how such an error was possible, assuring that the person
responsible will be punished.

The official also vigorously denied that the photograph is part of a
new policy of `openness’ toward Armenia, and added that most of the
calendars have not yet been distributed.

The photograph in question is of the `Monument to the Armenian
Genocide’ erected in Yerevan, the capital of Armenia, and the picture
included in an official calendar prepared to commemorate the Battle of
Çanakkale (the Dardanelles Campaign), fought by Turkey against allied
forces during the First World War. For months the Ottoman troops
successfully repelled Allied forces, who eventually had to withdraw to
Egypt.

This is Turkey’s second major blunder concerning Armenia in just
weeks. Earlier this month, Turkish President Recep Tayyip ErdoÄ?an
invited world leaders, including Armenian President Serzh Sarkysian,
to participate in festivities to be held in Turkey to celebrate the
anniversary of the Battle of Gallipoli on April 24. That is the very
day when Armenians have been preparing an international event
dedicated to the memory of the Armenian victims.

On Thursday, Turkish President ErdoÄ?an stated that Ankara is `ready to
pay for any misdeed’ if an `impartial board of historians’ concludes
that it was at fault for the events of 1915, though he continues to
vehemently deny that any genocide was committed.

`We are not obliged to accept that the so-called Armenian genocide was
`made-to-order,” he said.

ErdoÄ?an also said that while he was prime minister, he had sent a
letter to former Armenian President Robert Kocharian, proposing that
impartial historians investigate the 1915 killings of Anatolian
Armenians during the Ottoman era.

Earlier this month, ErdoÄ?an stated that he would `actively’ challenge
a campaign to pressure Turkey to recognize the massacres as genocide.

Pope Francis has announced that he will celebrated a Mass of
commemoration of the Armenian slaughter in the Vatican on April 12,
and has called it the first in a series of genocides in the 20th
century.

Amal Clooney: Making headlines for all the right reasons

The media clamoured to see the global human rights lawyer in action
this week. She was simply doing her job

PETER POPHAM
Friday 30 January 2015

There is no doubting George Clooney’s eye for beautiful women, but
until October 2013 his relationships followed a certain pattern.

Actress; cocktail waitress; waitress and reality show contender;
underwear model and actress; professional wrestler – each abandoned in
turn, the gossips tell us, when commitment raised its ugly head. As
recently as September 2013, the actor told GQ magazine in answer to a
question about marriage: “I haven’t had aspirations in that way, ever.
I was married in 1989. I wasn’t very good at it.”

And now here he is, hitched – to another great beauty, to be sure, but
a woman from a totally different place, in every sense, than her
predecessors.

No less in the public eye than her husband, this week Mrs Amal Clooney
was in the headlines on her own account, standing in a courtroom at
the International Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg before an
international bench of judges, wearing black lawyer’s robes and
“falling bands”, the two plain linen rectangles that cover the shirt
collar.

The subject was one of vast importance: the mass murder of some 1.5
million Armenians during the First World War – long regarded as the
first genocide of the 20th century, but which her antagonist in the
case, Dogu Perincek, chairman of the Turkish Workers’ Party, claims
was nothing of the sort.

The court was packed with far more journalists than the question at
issue would normally draw, many of them from organisations whose
interest in matters Turkish and Armenian is marginal at best. Geoffrey
Robertson, the veteran human rights barrister and Clooney’s colleague
in the Doughty Street Chambers where they both work, twisted on his
chair at her side. But Amal Clooney, speaking in the English vowels
chiselled at St Hugh’s College, Oxford, betrayed no nerves. She knew
very well what she was about.

Amal Clooney is no less in the public eye than her husband (Lauren Crow)

The Armenians were killed, she told the court, “with specific
genocidal intent”. There are photographs of the River Euphrates filled
with blood. “A campaign of racial extermination was in progress
against the Armenians,” she insisted. Its object was “the total
obliteration of Armenians”. She quoted a contemporary Turkish leader’s
statement that there was “no room for Christians” in Turkey.

The court was hushed. God knows what some hacks were making of it. The
world of Vegas cocktail waitresses and underwear models and curvaceous
young women wrestling in bikinis seemed a very long way away. George
Clooney had fallen head over heels for what one reporter called “the
allure of the brainiac”.

The daughter of a prominent and intellectual Lebanese family, her
father a Druze, Amal Alamuddin was brought to London aged three with
her siblings, fleeing her homeland’s civil war. The family was well
off: a government minister and the founder of Lebanon’s airline were
among their relatives, and they settled in a comfortable home in
Gerrards Cross, Buckinghamshire.

Alamuddin – who turns 37 next week – shone at Dr Challoner’s High
School in the same county, winning an exhibition to St Hugh’s, the
formerly women-only college which was also alma mater of Aung San Suu
Kyi. Gaining a 2.1, she went on to take a master’s degree at New York
University. While there she received the Jack J Katz Memorial Award
for excellence in entertainment law – probably the first time that her
world and that of the playboy film star, twice declared “sexiest man
alive” by the US’s People magazine, came within shouting distance of
each other.

Alamuddin was already clear that her future lay in international law,
and graduation was followed by stints with the International Court of
Justice and the special UN tribunals for Lebanon and former
Yugoslavia. She was not only very gifted but also a workaholic of huge
ambition. Over the following years she was involved in some of the
highest profile international cases on the planet, including those of
Yulia Tymoshenko, Muammar Gaddafi’s former intelligence chief Abdallah
al-Senussi, and WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.

When she returned to London in 2010 and knocked on the door of Doughty
Street Chambers, there was no doubting that she was a prize: not only
a superb lawyer, but also one with unusually strong motivation.
Geoffrey Robertson said that she showed strong commitment to “the
basic idea that everyone is entitled to a basic level of dignity… We
offered her an exceptional pupillage, which we do for exceptional
people, and she indeed was exceptional.”

Nor was it surprising – to those familiar with the sort of dedication
that lawyering at this level requires – that Alamuddin had not yet
married or even, leaving aside vague suggestions of close friendship
with Eric Schmidt, the chairman of Google, paired up with a serious
boyfriend. As Robertson points out, human rights law is not
intrinsically glamorous work – “cramped over a desk with thousands of
pages of case law to get through in an evening”.

Pan-Armenian Declaration best answer to Turkey – Ruben Safrastyan

14:40 * 30.01.15

The Pan-Armenian Declaration on the 100thanniversary of Armenian
Genocide is an unprecedented event – Armenia, Artsakh
(Nagorno-Karabakh) and the Armenian Diaspora issued the first-ever
joint declaration, Ruben Safrastyan, Director of the Institute of
Oriental Studies, told reporters on Friday.

“I am deeply convinced that the common will the Armenian people is
showing on the threshold of the anniversary of the Armenian Genocide
is the greatest benefit.

“The declaration is evidence that all Armenians perceive the issue as
requiring tremendous efforts and that Armenia, Artsakh and the
Armenian Diaspora are acting jointly. This is the best answer to
Turkish authorities’ policy,” Mr Safrastyan said.

The declaration proves that it is time for the issue to be considered
in its legal respects.

“We must start the most serious work and carry it through – having the
issue considered in its legal respects thus achieving our historical
aim. Yes, for decades we have made efforts at recognition and
condemnation of the Armenian Genocide, and it is time for the issue to
be considered in legal respects. I think the relevant work will be
done at a proper level,” Mr Safrastyan said.

Investigation launched as Turkish Foreign Ministry mistakenly
publishes Tsitsernakaberd picture on official calendar

14:31 30/01/2015 » SOCIETY

The Turkish Foreign Ministry has `mistakenly’
published a picture of the Armenian Genocide Monument –
Tsitsernakaberd on an official day planner, prepared to commemorate
the 100th anniversary of the Battle of Canakkale in World War I,
Hurriyet Daily News reported.

A picture of the monument in Yerevan is included on the April page of
the planner.

A Foreign Ministry official told the Hurriyet Daily News that the
picture had been `accidentally included with other
photographs.’

An investigation has been launched into the mistake and the individual
responsible will be punished, the official said, adding that most of
the day planners have yet to be distributed.

The official strongly refuted claims that the picture is part of a new
`Armenian opening’ on the part of Ankara,
stressing that elements of any opening on dialogue with Armenians are
delivered either by President Recep Tayyip ErdoÄ?an or Prime
Minister Ahmet DavutoÄ?lu.

Government Grant Distributed by `Secret’ Experts: Ministry of
Education and Science Won’t Publish Names

Marine Madatyan
10:34, January 26, 2015

In 2013, the Ministry of Education and Science of ArmeniaÕ?s State
Committee of Science set up the `Contractual Funding for Scientific
and Technical Activities’ biennial research grant competition.

Applications were submitted by some members of the Council of Experts
and a number of beneficiaries were also on the list. The committee did
not consider this a violation, claiming that the Council of Experts
reviewed every application and out of a maximum of 100 only 15 were
considered.

In order to be convinced, it’s necessary to know who the other 85
competing expert applicants were.

The Ministry of Education and Science and the State Committee of
Science refuse to publish their names without substantiating what law
defines their secrecy status.

The State Committee of Science announced the competition for this
science grant in 2013 and received 500 applications for the research
project, of which 158 were determined winners.

The winners will receive financing until June 2015. They will have to
publish their findings according to the rules of the contest.

Commissions of Professionals and Experts were formed per an order by
the Ministry to review the applications.But the Committee confirmed
that 85 percent of the applications were processed by two independent
expert evaluations made by those not affiliated with the board.

Who are the independent experts and why aren’t their names being published?

Committee’s Chief of Staff Levon Mardoyan replied that a conflict of
interest would arise.

`Can you imagine what could happen in Armenia?’ Mardoyan asked. `If I
made an assessment of your work, or you made one of mine, we wouldn’t
get along so well, there could be a stabbing or we could kill each
other. You don’t know. And the same thing is done all over the world.
You could know the expert’s opinion but not the identity of the person
who made the assessment. You don’t see such a thing anywhere in the
world in grant aid where you know the name of the expert. We’re not
reinventing the wheel here’whatever’s done around the world, we do.’

He stated that every application was reviewed by two independent
experts, one of which works abroad as a volunteer, without pay. Only
local experts are paid due to a limited budget.

The distribution of millions of drams of a government grant has been
entrusted to them.

Who will stab whom once the expert’s names are published is still
unclear since Hetq asked Mardoyan not about specific experts but
rather the entire list of experts.

The contest really has no need for moral regulation. It’s regulated by
actual acts of law, and the names of the expert reviewers that uphold
them are not secret information.

To obtain the list of experts Hetq submitted a request to the Ministry
of Education and Science. Minister Armen Ashotyan, referring to the
committee, replied that the secrecy of the experts is protected under
`compliance with international criteria.’

Since the list of 85 experts has not been published, we have no
guarantees that the independent `experts’ reviewing the applications
are not members of the Council of Experts. And since ministry orders
137A/K and 172A/Õ’K were drafted by members of the Council of Experts,
they include the same stakeholders. Four out of seven members of the
`Natural Sciences’ council of professionals and experts are included
in the list of beneficiaries.

The Ministry of Education and Science Violated a Governmental Decision

The grant competition did not conform to Armenian criteria. The
biennial research grant competition has to conform to decision 1122-N,
`Contracts for financing of scientific and technical activities
(thematic)’ dated November 17, 2001. According to point 3 in the
decision, applications are to be reviewed by the Council of Experts.

The decision does not contain anything about independent and `secret’
experts. Jurisdiction of the evaluation of applications by unknown
experts was given to the State Committee of Science by Ashotyan.One of
the points in ministry decree N 51-A/K stipulates that besides members
of the Council of Experts, `experts included in the database of the
Council of Experts’ can also be a part of the evaluation process.

Professional `Appraisals’ of Unknown Experts

Hetq obtained the work documents for one of the experts that took part
in the competition. He was not included in the list of beneficiaries.
The first expert reviewed about 68.5 out of 85 applications and the
second reviewed 84. The last reviewed application, an average of these
two evaluations, did not make the cut. The scientist then complained.
The work of the committee per the consent of the competition’s
regulations was transferred to a third expert. Not only did he not
raise the grade, he lowered it so much that he put into question the
qualifications of the previous two experts.

Apart from making assessments, the experts also commented on the work.
In the first round, one of the experts made a comment regarding the
feasibility of the project, stating that `the project is clearly
presented, but I consider the contents of the old results to be
unnecessary.’The third expert made a comment that threw the
candidate’s chances for winning out the window, stating that the
`realization of the scientific project has not been presented.’

Just how the scientific project wasn’t `realized’ and whether it was
`clearly presented’ before the appeal can only be explained by the
`secret’ experts.

It is on this basis of professional appraisals that the
`Investigations of the Scientific and Technical Contract’ 2013 and
2014 budgets of 1,106,507,000 drams and 1,515,690,000 drams,
respectfully, were allocated.

The 2015 budget will amount to 1,333,100,000 drams.

REVUE DE PRESSE
France-Arménie à Nice, Marseille s’énerve

La Fédération Française de Football a annoncé cette semaine qu’un
match amical entre la France et l’Arménie allait se jouer le jeudi 8
octobre prochain à l’Allianz Riviera de Nice. Si cela a évidemment
fait le bonheur des Niçois, on ne peut pas dire la même chose du côté
de Marseille où ce sont les supporters arméniens, nombreux dans la
région, qui sont furieux devant ce choix de la FFF.

>, a lancé, dans La Provence, Albert Arstanian, qui représente la
fédération arménienne et qui est installé dans la région phocéenne de
longue date. Quoi qu’il en soit, le match aura bien lieu à Nice et non
pas au Vélodrome, où les places risquent de s’arracher.

,166753

vendredi 30 janvier 2015,
Stéphane (c)armenews.com

ARMENIE
Le procureur général a répondu aux questions des élus concernant la
tuerie de Gumri

L’ensemble de la presse rend compte des auditions parlementaires
consacrées à la tragédie de Gumri au cours desquelles le procureur
général Guévorg Kostanian a répondu aux multiples questions des élus.
Les journaux constatent que le procureur n’a rien dit de nouveau par
rapport à ce que la société arménienne connaissait déjà et qu’il n’a
pas pu donner de réponses à une grande majorité de questions, compte
tenu du fait qu’une enquête est actuellement en cours. Néanmoins, les
journaux retiennent les propos du procureur concernant les actions des
gardes-frontières russes, à savoir que, ceux-ci, en vertu des accords
interétatiques arméno-russes, auraient dû remettre toute personne
tentant de franchir illégalement la frontière d’Etat d’Arménie, quelle
que soit sa nationalité, au Service arménien de sécurité nationale.
Par conséquent, les gardes-frontières russes, après avoir arrêté V.
Permyakov, auraient dû en informer les services respectifs arméniens
et le remettre à la partie arménienne. Plusieurs députés d’opposition
ont accusé les organes policiers arméniens d’avoir été incapables de
capturer eux-mêmes le suspect et ceci sur fond de déclarations du chef
de la Police, Vladimir Gasparian, selon lequel la partie arménienne
savait deux heures avant l’arrestation de V. Permyakov qu’il se
dirigeait vers la frontière arméno-turque. Le procureur a par ailleurs
indiqué qu’il ne s’est pas encore adressé à son homologue russe pour
solliciter la remise du meurtrier présumé à la partie arménienne. Il a
affirmé qu’il le fera lorsque >.

Le député d’opposition, Nikol Pachinian, considère, sur les pages de
Haykakan Jamanak, comme tout à fait illégales les actions des
gardes-frontières russes, d’autant que le suspect était en tenue
civile (il avait laissé sa tenue militaire sur le lieu du crime) et
sans pièce d’identité. Le soldat russe aurait ainsi dû être conduit au
Service de sécurité nationale d’Arménie et serait donc placé sous la
compétence des organes judiciaires arméniens, ce qui éviterait
d’affronter la polémique actuelle avec la partie russe sur son futur
jugement. Le député s’étonne du silence des autorités arméniennes face
à cette flagrante violation d’accords bilatéraux. Il en déduit que V.
Permyakov est gardé illégalement sur le territoire de la base
militaire russe et sa remise à la partie arménienne est une demande
légitime.

Par ailleurs, les habitants de Gumri ont lancé une pétition à travers
la ville en demandant de transférer le suspect aux organes judiciaires
arméniens.

L’éditorial d’Aravot revient sur les appels, y compris par les
autorités russes, de ne pas politiser ce crime, et estime que demander
la remise du suspect à l’Arménie ne signifie pas demander un retrait
de la base militaire russe ou aller à l’encontre de la coopération
arméno-russe. D’après l’éditorialiste Aram Abrahamian, c’est la partie
russe qui a contribué à ce que l’affaire soit politisée, en ne
respectant pas les accords bilatéraux. >, écrit-il. Tout en se disant en faveur de la coopération
arméno-russe, M. Abrahamian estime que ce manque de respect de la
partie russe vis-à-vis de l’Arménie dans cette affaire, ne fera que
dégrader les relations entre les deux pays et les deux nations et