Author: Kalantarian Kevo

LA QUESTION ARMENIENNE ET L’ALLIANCE TURCO-ALLEMANDE (1913-1914)

Orient XXI
12 mars 2015

Orient XXI > L’Orient en guerre (1914-1918) >
Thomas Schmutz > 12 mars 2015

Cet article examine le rôle que Berlin a joue dans les reformes
proposees en Anatolie orientale en 1913 et 1914, et notamment pour
resoudre le problème armenien. Il eclaire d’un jour nouveau le degre
d’implication de l’Allemagne dans l’empire ottoman d’avant-guerre.

L’Allemagne etait nouvelle venue dans l’histoire mondiale du
colonialisme et de l’imperialisme. La celèbre quete d’une place au
soleil — > — ne debuta pas avant la fin des
annees 1890, alors qu’il ne restait quasiment plus un seul espace
vide sur la carte du monde et que les sphères d’influence des grandes
puissances avaient pratiquement divise chaque centimètre carre de
l’espace connu de la planète. Comme il devenait difficile de trouver
de l’espace libre, la strategie consista a combattre des pays plus
faibles et a prendre leur place. L’antagonisme avec son voisin la
France et son hemisphère colonial fut une obsession durable dans
la pensee geostrategique allemande. La relation avec la Russie
s’envenima sous le règne Guillaume II (1888-1918). L’Angleterre
etait un partenaire souhaitable mais l’Allemagne n’etait pas prete
a ne faire figure que d’associe mineur. Une question de prestige,
doublee de la volonte de jouer dans la cour des grands, fut pour
l’Allemagne le motif principal de son implication en Orient.

Les premiers pas furent faits sous la conduite du chancelier Otto von
Bismarck (chancelier du nouvel empire allemand de 1871 a 1890) et du
sultan Abdul Hamid (1842-1918). En 1880, le sultan reclama l’envoi
de fonctionnaires allemands pour l’administration, les finances et
l’armee. L’engagement debuta par une affaire civile, car au depart
aucun officier allemand n’avait ete envoye. L’Allemagne ne s’etait pas
opposee au sultan durant la crise autour de la Crète et les massacres
armeniens de 1895-1896.

En 1898, Guillaume II se rendit lui-meme en Orient, acte d’une portee
symbolique forte. L’empereur approuva le projet de prestige du chemin
de fer de Bagdad, dont la construction prendra plusieurs annees. Les
banques allemandes et l’industrie d’armement — telle que Krupp —
renforcèrent leurs liens avec la Sublime Porte et l’Anatolie sous Abdul
Hamid II. La revolution des Jeunes-Turcs eut pour effet de consolider
leur amitie, (ainsi que les tensions dans les Balkans). De nombreux
officiers chez les Jeunes-Turcs connaissaient le système militaire
allemand en raison du programme d’echange existant entre les deux
armees. Des conseillers militaires allemands essayèrent de reformer
l’armee, et Colmar von der Goltz tout particulièrement s’attira une
grande admiration pour sa participation. Mais tous les Jeunes-Turcs
ne virent pas d’un bon oeil l’influence allemande croissante ;
certains etaient davantage tournes vers Paris ou Londres. Ceci eut
son importance pour la recherche d’un allie au cours de la periode
cruciale de la crise de juillet 1914. Des diplomates allemands, tels
que l’ambassadeur Hans Freiherr von Wangenheim etaient consideres
comme amis des Turcs. Les moyens dont disposait l’Allemagne etaient
des navires de guerre, des officiers, et des voies ferrees.

L’Angleterre, la France et la Russie les observaient avec mefiance.

Parfois Vienne et Rome prenaient la defense de la position allemande,
etant donne que grâce a la Dreibund, la Triple-Entente (ou Triple
Alliance), elles avaient forme un contrepoids a l’Entente cordiale.

L’Allemagne voulait avoir sa place parmi les acteurs importants
en Orient.

Des reformes pour les provinces orientales d’Anatolie

Les guerres balkaniques (1912-1913) et leurs consequences revelèrent
la faiblesse de l’empire ottoman. Le temps etait compte pour la
plupart des puissances europeennes, qui n’etaient pas encore pretes a
poursuivre leurs reves imperiaux au Proche-Orient. La Russie voulait
>1 mais n’etait pas prete a entrer en guerre avant
1917 en raison de calculs internes. Malgre tout, le discours russe
en 1912 et 1913 etait plutôt belliqueux. Sa strategie consistait
a saper la stabilite ottomane et a etendre son influence sur le
territoire au-dela de leur frontière commune. Une facon d’y parvenir
etait d’armer et de radicaliser a la fois les Kurdes et les Armeniens
contre le gouvernement central.

Dans ces circonstances, une autre discussion sur les reformes debuta.

En 1895 la Russie bloqua la possibilite d’une intervention en faveur
des Armeniens ottomans et en 1908, la Russie etait le principal
oppresseur du mouvement revolutionnaire armenien. Seules les guerres
balkaniques modifièrent la strategie, et la condition armenienne amena
la Russie a exiger des reformes dans les six provinces orientales
sous la menace d’une intervention militaire. En juin 1913, la Russie
proposa un projet d’accord en vue d’ameliorer le statut des Armeniens
par le biais d’une representation dans les organes administratifs et
judiciaires qui leur garantirait l’egalite.

Les diplomates allemands connaissaient les souhaits russes de nouvelles
reformes en Anatolie orientale, et leur strategie au printemps
1913 etait d’empecher qu’une region ne passe sous domination russe a
l’interieur de l’empire ottoman et d’empecher la partition de l’Empire,
.

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“DO NOTHING, SAY NOTHING, TAKE WHAT IS GIVEN”: WHY THE EEU IS CONVENIENT FOR ARMENIAN LEADERS

03.13.2015 18:29 epress.am

In recent years, a culture of sanctimonious, pseudo-traditional
relations has formed in Armenia, which has been mixed with criminal
world’s “rule book.” The latter was said by writer, public intellectual
Vahram Martirosyan (pictured on right) during a press conference
today, March 13, speaking of the peculiarities of the current
political culture.

According to the writer, the proof of the latter is that the conflict
between President Serzh Sargsyan and Prosperous Armenia Party Gagik
Tsarukyan was resolved by the rules of a “a criminal showdown.”

“A quite distant mediator appeared, reconcilatory gestures were
found between the sides. One was expelled with humiliation, the
other generously won without using all of his winner’s rights,”
said Martirosyan. He stressed, however, that they did make numerous
accusations about each other, which has to do with the “qyart (rabiz)
culture” that has formed in Armenia.

To the question of whether the situation were to get worse after
joining the Eurasian Economic Union, Vahram Martirosyan answered
in agreement, noting that Russia’ political culture has a negative
influence on Armenia.

Another press conference participant cultural academic Vardan Jaloyan
(pictured on left) stressed that Russia’s negative influence did not
start in one day and is not only connected to joining the EEU. He
recalled that the Russian ruling “United Russia Party” slogan, “Go,
Russia!”, was copied by Serzh Sargsyan’s team in 2008 saying, “Go,
Armenia!” According to Jaloyan, Armenia’s ruling Republican Party
copies the United Russia Party’s structure in the same manner; “Both
of them are the same type of party – a party of everything. You can
find whatever you want there, if, of course, the person is corrupted,
or has any other kind of weakness.” That, according to the speaker,
is tied to Serzh Sargsyan’s basic approach of ‘don’t do anything and
don’t say anything, take what’s given and make an autonomous state
into a political colony.’

Turning to the formulation of ‘not doing anything,’ Vahram Martirosyan
tied the second and third presidencies of Robert Kocharyan and Serzh
Sargsyan to the Soviet past.

“Both, Serzh Sargsyan and Robert Kocharyan were officials of a middle
management party. They are used to working in a hierarchal structure.

And now, that the EEU’s reality is conceived, it is of a higher
psychological convenience for that type of officials, because they
have someone higher than them,” said Martirosyan.

ARMENIANS REMEMBER THE DEATHS, CELEBRATE THE SURVIVORS OF GENOCIDE

Los Angeles Daily News, CA
March 12 2015

By Susan Abram, Los Angeles Daily News

The pieces of human bones have come to rest under glass and light
inside a San Fernando Valley chapel, far from the sun-drenched Syrian
desert where they were once found unburied and scattered.

Little is known about them except that they belonged to Armenians,
forced from their homes in villages in the Ottoman Empire and marched
out to the Der Zor desert where they died.

The remains carry a century-old story, not only of death, but also
of survival, as well as the pain of denial and the yearning to be
remembered.

“Wherever you go in the Der Zor desert, you will find the bones of
our people,” said Maggie Mangassarian-Goschin, curator of the Ararat
Eskijian Museum in Mission Hills. “It is still a wound for us that
has never quite healed.”

The bones are often displayed inside the museum, which was opened in
1996 near the Ararat Home of Los Angeles, a senior care facility where
a special memorial service was held Thursday to observe the 100th
anniversary of the Armenian Genocide. Armenians say 1.5 million of
their people died from 1915 to 1923 as the Turks worked to establish
their own country. Historians, scholars and human-rights activists
call it the first genocide of the 20th century.

Thursday’s ceremony included a brief Mass held by archbishops and
clergy from several local Armenian churches. They stood together
and blessed the bones, which have been placed carefully inside the
senior facility’s chapel. Later, the clergy unveiled a tall, granite
memorial dedicated to those who perished and those who survived the
genocide. A mulberry tree also was planted nearby, to symbolize that
the fruit of the Armenian nation will continue to grow.

Many of those who attended the service were residents of the Ararat
senior care facility such as 101-year-old Yevnige Salibian. Salibian
was born just before the formal start of the genocide, but as a
young child she remembers growing up under fear and threats. There
are certain sounds and voices she can still hear.

“My father had a friend named Mohammed who helped us stay in Turkey,”
she said. “But when I used to look out of our door, I would hear
people crying. I would hear mothers, fathers, children saying,
‘I’m hungry, I’m thirsty.'”

And she remembers whips.

“The Turkish general would crack his whip, and he would say, ‘You!

You! You! Get out of here!'”

Salibian said her family left Turkey in 1921. They used two wagons led
by horses to go to Syria. While on the road she and an older woman
traded seats. The wagons overturned in an accident and the older
woman died, while Salibian’s right leg was caught by an iron bar in
the wagon and she suffered a deep gash. The scar is still present.

“My aunt said, that old woman gave her life for the little girl,”
Salibian said.

Armenians mark the date April 24, 1915, as the start of the genocide
because it is when their nation’s intellectuals were rounded up,
arrested and later executed by the Turkish soldiers as part of a
movement to “Turkify” the region.

Today, the Turkish government maintains the deaths were a consequence
of betrayal and civil unrest in what was then a collapsing
Ottoman Empire. Armenians, however, say the killings involved the
systematic cleansing of their collective existence from the region,
where Assyrians and Pontic Greeks also were affected. Priests and
intellectuals were beheaded. Women and children were terrorized as
they were marched out of their homeland and into the Middle East.

The issue remains politicized, with both the United States and Turkish
governments refusing to call it a genocide. Armenian-American activists
have said the U.S. government won’t officially recognize the killings
as genocide because it would hurt relations with Turkey, a NATO ally.

Thursday’s ceremony was one of several Armenian Genocide-related
events to be held across Los Angeles in the next few weeks. The goal
behind such memorials is to both remember those who died and celebrate
the living, said Joseph Kanimian, chairman of the Ararat Home of Los
Angeles Board of Trustees

“If you forget the past then you tend to repeat history, and we don’t
want this to happen again, to any nation,” Kanimian said. “But we also
want to honor our people, to celebrate the living and the survivors.

It’s a day of resurrection for us.”

Most of those who attended the ceremony wore purple scarves or sweaters
and a pin that features a forget-me-not flower, its petals symbolizing
the past, present and future.

But some continue to worry about the Armenian nation, particularly
for those survivors of the genocide who stayed in Syria and whose
families remained there. The Islamic State last year forced Armenians
out of the area of Kessab. Churches were desecrated and homes were
burned by IS. The extremists also recently destroyed 35 Assyrian
villages and kidnapped more than 200 people. The group’s intent to
cleanse the area of Christians and other minorities parallels with
the events that began in 1915, said Nancy Eskijian, whose father
built the museum that houses historical maps, coins, crafts, medals,
sketches, musical instruments and a library.

If the Turkish government had been held accountable, if they had
recognized what they did as a genocide, then future atrocities such as
the Holocaust and massacres in Bosnia-Herzegovina, Rwanda and Darfur
and those occurring now in Syria and Iraq could have been avoided,
she and her brother, Martin Eskijian, said.

“What’s happening now (in Syria and Iraq) is about the same as 100
years ago,” Martin Eskijian added. “That’s the tragedy of it.”

HAMMER MUSEUM
10899 Wilshire Blvd.
Los Angeles, CA 90024
Fiona Higgins
Public Programs Assistant
Email: [email protected]
Web:

Ravished Armenia

WEDNESDAY MAR 25, 2015
7:30PM

The story of Aurora Mardiganian, an Armenian girl caught up in the
1915 Armenian Genocide, was the basis of a hugely popular book and the
1919 silent film Ravished Armenia. After witnessing the murder of her
family, Aurora was kidnapped, forced to march over 1,400 miles, and
sold into slavery before finally escaping. All known copies of the
film, which starred Aurora herself, have been lost. For this program,
filmmaker Carla Garapedian of the Armenian Film Foundation and film
historian Anthony Slide, author of Ravished Armenia and the Story of
Aurora Mardiganian, bring Aurora’s compelling story to life through
rare film clips and photos.

I AM ARMENIAN: A YEAR OF ARMENIAN CULTURE AND HISTORY ON FILM
In commemoration of the 100th anniversary of the Armenian Genocide, we
dedicate 2015 to an exploration of multiple facets of Armenian
culture, history, and landscape through film.

ALL HAMMER PUBLIC PROGRAMS ARE FREE. Tickets for assigned seating in
the Billy Wilder Theater are required and available at the Box Office
one hour before each program. Early arrival is recommended. Tickets
are available one per person on a first come, first served basis. As a
benefit for their support,
members enjoy priority
ticketing and seat selection, subject to availability.
Parking is available under the museum for a flat fee of $3 after 6PM.
All Hammer public programs are free and made possible by a major gift
from the Dream Fund at UCLA.
Generous support is also provided by Susan Bay Nimoy and Leonard
Nimoy, Good Works Foundation and Laura Donnelley, an anonymous donor,
and all Hammer members.

Zhoghovurd: Kuwaiti businessmen pledge infrastructure investments in Armenia

11:41 * 14.03.15

The paper says it has learned from sources that Prime Minister Hovik
Abrahamyan’s recent trip to Kuwait was motivated by an interest to
attract investments.

With the Government seeking huge funds to avoid an economic crisis
(about $800,000,000-$1,000,000,000, according to the paper’s
estimate), the premier is thought to have made up his mind to
negotiate an investment plan with Kuwaiti sheikhs. Citing its sources,
the paper says that several businessmen have promised to make
large-scale investments in Armenia’s irrigation infrastructures. It
remains to be seen if they will be as good as their word, says the
paper, commenting on the report.

Turkey Slams Report Calling for Armenian Genocide Recognition

(c) AP Photo
Middle East
18:00 14.03.2015(updated 18:41 14.03.2015)

Turkey’s Foreign Ministry’s spokesman Tanju Bilgic called the European
Parliament’s report urging the EU member states to recognize the
Armenian genocide “problematic and controversial in all the aspects.”

(c) East News/ Yvan TRAVERT
Recognition of Armenian Genocide in Interests of Turkey, Armenia: Diplomat
MOSCOW (Sputnik) — The European Parliament’s report urging the EU
member states to recognize the Armenian genocide is concerning and
“far from historic reality,” Turkey’s Foreign Ministry’s spokesman
Tanju Bilgic said Saturday.

“We regret that this [European Parliament’s] statement is problematic
and controversial in all the aspects,” Bilgic said in a statement
published on the ministry’s website.

The European Parliament’s Annual Report on Human Rights and Democracy
published earlier this week called “ahead of the 100th anniversary of
the Armenian genocide, on all the Member States legally to acknowledge
it, and encourages the Member States and the EU institutions to
contribute further to its recognition.”

(c) AFP 2015/ FREDERICK FLORIN
Amal Clooney Criticizes Turkey on Freedom of Speech Hypocrisy
The Armenian Genocide refers to the Armenia’s claims of the Ottoman
government’s extermination of Armenians in their historical homeland
during the First World War.

Yerevan says that over 1.5 million Armenians were killed during the
mass genocide.

Turkey, the successor state of the Ottoman Empire, refuses to
recognize the Armenian Genocide. Ankara argues that the number of
people killed is hugely exaggerated, and that the Ottoman Empire was
simply responding to Armenian attacks on Turkish population while it
was trying to establish the Armenian state on the Anatolian peninsula.

Commemorations of the 100th anniversary of the 1915 Armenian genocide
in the Ottoman Empire will take place in Yerevan on April 24, 2015.

CONSOMMATION
Forte hausse de l’exportation des cigarettes d’Arménie vers les pays
arabes, dont l’Irak

En 2014 les exportations des cigarettes d’Arménie ont connu une
croissance très forte de plus de 70 % par rapport à 2013 atteignant
plus de 116 millions de dollars. Chiffres diffusés par le Centre des
statistiques nationales d’Arménie. Selon le ministère des Finances se
basant sur les chiffres des douanes, l’Arménie a exporté 10,7
milliards de cigarettes, en hausse de 76 % en un an. L’exportation des
cigarettes arménienne vers les pays arabes a enregistré une forte
croissance. L’Arménie a exporté vers l’Irak, premier pays de la
production arménienne de cigarettes, 79,1 millions de dollars, en
hausse de 71% par rapport à 2013. L’exportation vers les Emirats
Arabes Unis ont quant à elles connu une croissance de 44% avec 3,27
millions de dollars. Les autres chiffres sont la Jordanie (en hausse
de 1 800% en un an avec 3,35 millions de dollars) et la Syrie avec
18,26 millions de dollars, en hausse de 1 600%.

Krikor Amirzayan

samedi 14 mars 2015,
Krikor Amirzayan (c)armenews.com

FONDS ARMENIEN
Le village de Sassounik en Arménia va avoir son école maternelle en
mai prochain grce au Fonds Hayastan

Le village de Sassounik dans la région d’Arakadzodn (Arménie)
disposera en mai prochain de son école maternelle a annoncé le bureau
du Fonds Arménien (Hayastan Himnatram) à Erévan. Depuis 1998 la
commune de Sassounik qui compte 4 000 habitants ne disposait pas d’un
btiment pour la maternelle, obligeant nombre d’enfants à fréquenter
les maternelles de la ville d’Achtarak. Créant des difficultés dans
ces établissements chargés. La nouvelle construction disposant d’un
étage va prochainement être livré avec les mobiliers scolaires. Ainsi
les villageois de Sassounik qui sont pour une centaine employés à
l’usine à vin du village, les autres s’occupant de l’agriculture et de
l’élevage, vont pouvoir envoyer leurs jeunes enfants à la maternelle
du village.

Krikor Amirzayan

samedi 14 mars 2015,
Krikor Amirzayan (c)armenews.com

Result of Turkish intelligence agencies’ poor work: Azerbaijani ISIS
terrorist kills policemen in Turkey

15:12 14/03/2015 >> SOCIETY

Azerbaijani media have released shocking details of the testimony of
Islamic State (ISIS) member, Azerbaijani citizen Fuad Movsumov
arrested on charge of killing gendarmerie and police officers in
Turkey a few months ago, Azerbaijani information outlet Oxu.az reports
citing Virtualaz.org.

According to the article, Azerbaijani citizen Fuad Movsumov and two of
his comrades-in-arms drove from Turkish Khatay region to Istanbul in a
rented taxi. The officers of gendarmerie and police stopped their car
near the settlement Ulukisla. When the Turkish security service
officers tried to search the car, the extremists opened fire on them.
As a result, a gendarmerie officer and a policeman were killed. The
Azerbaijani citizen and his comrades-in-arms were arrested. Their
trial is expected to take place in the near future but a decision
concerning its place has not yet been made.

According to the article, it can be assumed from the Azerbaijani
terrorist’s testimony that he moved into Turkey in 2013 and tried to
find his friend Araz with whom he had got acquainted when the latter
was in Azerbaijan. He found his family in Istanbul who told the
Azerbaijani that Araz had left to fight in Syria against Bashar
al-Assad’s forces and joined the group of a man nicknamed Omar
al-Shishani. According to the information of Oxu.az, the latter is
“the most authoritative field commander” of ISIS – Tarkhan
Batirashvili born in village of Birkiani, located in the Pankisi
Gorge.

As the article has it, the Azerbaijani also met his friend’s wife
Aida, and returning to Turkey in March stepped into religious marriage
with her.

In its turn, the outlet highlights that Turkey is a corridor to move
into Syria from many foreign countries. “Some time ago the Turkish
sources reported that the Azerbaijani youth, attracted to fight in
Syria, is first taught jihadist ideology in mosques in Istanbul,” the
outlet writes adding that their transfer to Syria is organized later
on. Some Azerbaijani extremists’ families stay in Istanbul, and some
leave for Syria.

Despite the fact that several Azerbaijanis, who wanted to join ISIS,
were detained in Turkey, the intelligence agencies of that country do
not take up proper measures to prevent their recruitment and transfer
into Syria, Oxu.az writes.

Azerbaijani terrorists are fighting in the ranks of various terrorist
groupings that operate in Syria, Afghanistan and Pakistan. According
to the Azerbaijani news outlets, over the past three years almost 200
Azerbaijani terrorists have been killed in Syria alone. News outlets
have more than once reported the liquidation of commanders among
Azerbaijani terrorists.

The relationship between international terrorist groups and Azerbaijan
originated in the early 1990s. That time, the Azerbaijani army, having
failed in the aggression against Nagorno-Karabakh Republic (NKR),
retreated with losses. Trying to save the situation, the Azerbaijani
leadership, headed by Heydar Aliyev, attracted to the war against the
Armenians of Nagorno-Karabakh international terrorists and members of
radical groups from Afghanistan (groupings of Gulbuddin Hekmatyar),
Turkey (“Grey Wolves”, etc.), Chechnya (groupings Basayev and Raduyev
etc.) and some other regions.

Despite the involvement of thousands of foreign mercenaries and
terrorists in the Azerbaijani army during the war, the Azerbaijani
aggression against Nagorno-Karabakh Republic failed, and the Baku
authorities were forced to sign an armistice with the NKR and Armenia.
However, international terrorists found ties in Azerbaijan, and used
them in the future. Recruitment was conducted among Azerbaijanis, who
then were sent to Afghanistan and the North Caucasus, where
participated in the battles against the forces of the international
coalition and Russian organizations. In recent years, the citizens of
Azerbaijan are actively involved in terrorist and extremist activities
in Russia, Afghanistan, Syria and Iraq.

Related: Well-known political party members in Azerbaijan have
recruited extremists to go to war in Syria

Armenian Genocide: New way to commemorate – The Economist

17:30 * 12.03.15

In the early 20th century, concern for the fate of the Armenians was
often presented in the Western world as a matter of inter-Christian
solidarity. If you were an American Protestant church-goer, you
probably heard sermons about the suffering endured by your
co-religionists in the Near and Middle East. American missionaries
were by that time well-established in the Ottoman lands, tending to
the education and welfare of Christian communities in far-flung
places.

American and other missionaries were crucial witnesses of the terrible
fate that was meted out to well over a million Armenians starting in
the spring of 1915: a mass “deportation” in which most did not
survive, whether they died of heat, hunger, exhaustion or were killed
outright. In places ranging from Syria to Transcaucasia, missionaries
succoured those whose did somehow live through the experience, and
made sure that orphans were fed, educated and given a new life. Money
for this cause was raised in American churches. In devout American
households, a child who ate poorly would be told to “think of the
hungry Armenians” and be more grateful.

In New York today, an initiative was launched to honour the dead and
celebrate survivors in ways that far transcend the bounds of any one
religion or ethnic group. Two businessmen of Armenian origin, one
Russian and one American, teamed up with a scholar and philanthropist,
Vartan Gregorian, head of the Carnegie Corporation, to come up with a
response to the dreadful events of 1915 that goes beyond lamenting the
victims of genocide or demanding recompense.

One aim of the 100 Lives project is to uncover stories of “survivors
and saviours”, in other words cases where an individual or family
lived through the horrors thanks to courageous helpers. Ruben
Vardanyan, a co-founder who also built up the Russian investment bank
Troika Dialog, said his grandfather was saved and schooled by American
missionaries; his Armenian-American partner, Noubar Afeyan, a biotech
entrepreneur, recalls that his grandfather was spared from execution
thanks to the intervention of German officers who were building a
Berlin-Baghdad railway for their Turkish allies. But in some cases,
the “saviours” might turn out to be a Muslim Turkish or Kurdish family
who hid an Armenian family at risk to themselves.

A second part of the project will establish a prize for people in any
part of the world who take risks to help others survive, from health
workers braving an epidemic to human-rights campaigners in a zone of
war or oppression. An Aurora prize of $1m will will be awarded
annually to one individual, who will then be invited to pass the money
on to an organisation that is doing inspiring work. Selectors will
include Elie Wiesel, a Nobel prize laureate and Holocaust survivor,
Mary Robinson, a former Irish president and UN human-rights
commissioner, and George Clooney, an actor and human-rights
campaigner.

There are, of course, lots of initiatives that aim to investigate and
denounce genocide; and plenty of efforts to recognise those who have
courageously saved human lives, either recently or long ago. This is a
proposal to serve all those purposes, with no regard for the religion
or race of the saviour or the saved.