Author: Kalashian Nyrie

PROTEST TARGETS PROPOSED FRENCH LAW ON ALLEGED ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
NTV MSNBC, Turkey
May 17 2006
France prepared draft legislation making it a crime to deny the
so-called Armenian genocide.
NTV-MSNBC
Guncelleme: 10:50 TSÝ 17 Mayýs 2006 CarþambaANKARA – The French
embassy in Ankara was the target of a group protesting against a
proposal before the French parliament to make it a criminal offence
to deny the Ottoman Empire committed an act of genocide against its
Armenian citizens during the years of the First World War.
A group calling itself the “Great Project 2006” kicked off the first of
what are intended to be a series of protests described as a “warning
on duty” by closing the road to the French Embassy on Monday.
The protestors included some parliamentary deputies of the opposition
Republican People’s party (CHP), the Turk-Is trade union, the Ataturk
Thought Association and the Workers Party (IP).
Ferit Ilsever, the Secretary General of the IP, called on France to
immediately withdraw the proposed legislation. Ilsever said that if
the law was passed Ankara should consider boycotting French goods,
downgrade its diplomatic relations with Paris and withdraw from its
negotiation process for European Union membership.
French parliament is expected to debate the draft on May 18.
–Boundary_(ID_/1SFP7aqDxsNH8457Zwcyg)–

THE ARMENIAN RESIDENTS OF SHOUSHI WERE DISPLACED 18 YEARS AGO
A1+
[03:18 pm] 16 May, 2006
These days, tragic events took place in Shoushi 18 years ago which
played a significant role in the further escalation and increase of
the Azerbaijani-Karabakh conflict: on May 16-17, 1988, the leadership
of the Azerbaijani SSR via its emissaries and local Azerbaijani
authorities of the Nagorno Karabakh Shoushi region started the
deportation of the Armenian population of the town of Shoushi.
These actions which became possible due to the impunity of the Armenian
pogroms organized the same year in the town of Sumgayit pursued the
aim to extirpate the Armenian element in Nagorno Karabakh.
Absence of adequate estimate, first of all, of the USSR leadership
to these actions which, according to international-legal norms were
an act of ethnic cleanings, allowed the Azerbaijani SSR authorities
to realize pogroms and deportation of the Armenian population of
the republic in 1988-91s (Khanlar, Kutkashen, Vartashen, Shamkhor
regions, the town of Mingechaur, etc. – November-December of 1988,
Kirovabad – November 1989, Baku – January 1990, “Kolco” operation –
April-June 1991) which actually created preconditions for the following
full-scale aggression against the Nagorno Karabakh Republic.
The NKR Ministry of Foreign Affairs focuses the attention of the
international community to the fact that the militaristic rhetoric and
charging of the atmosphere of xenophobia in the Azerbaijani society is
the continuation of the policy conducted by the Azerbaijani authorities
and calls to give a worthy evaluation to these events and recognize
the international-legal responsibility of the Azerbaijani Republic
for mass violation of the basic rights of the Armenian population of
the former Azerbaijani SSR and unleashing of aggressive war against
the Nagorno Karabakh Republic, which will have immense significance
for strengthening the security and peace in the region and will allow
to approach the final solution of the Azerbaijani-Karabakh conflict.

THE PONTIAN GENOCIDE 1916-1923
Greek News, New York
May 15 2006
May 19 has been recognized by the Greek parliament as the day of
remembrance of the Pontian Greek Genocide by the Turks. There are
various estimates of the toll. Records kept mainly by priests show
a minimum 350,000 Pontian Greeks exterminated through systematic
slaughter by Turkish troops and Kurdish para-militaries. Other
estimates, including those of foreign missionaries, spoke of 500,000
deaths, most through deportation and forced marches into the Anatolian
desert interior. Thriving Greek cities like Pafra, Samsous, Kerasous,
and Trapezous, at the heart of Pontian Hellenism on the coast of
the Black Sea, endured recurring massacres and deportations that
eventually destroyed their Greek population.
The opening bell of the genocide came with the order in 1914 for
all Pontian men between the ages of 18 and 50 to report for military
duty. Those who “refused” or “failed” to appear, the order provided,
were to be summarily shot. The immediate result of this firman
(decree) was the murder of thousands of the more prominent Pontians,
whose name appeared on lists of “undesirables” already prepared by
the Young Turk regime.
Added thousands ended up in the notorious Labor Battalions (amele
taburu). In a precursor of what was to become a favorite practice in
Hitler’s extermination camps, Pontian men were driven from their homes
into the wilderness to perform hard labor and expire from exhaustion,
thirst, and disease. German advisors of the Turkish regime (what a
surprise!) suggested that Pontian populations be forced into internal
exile. This “advise” led directly to the emptying of hundreds of
Pontian villages and the forced march of women, children, and old
people to nowhere. The details of this systematic slaughter of the
Pontians by the Turks were dutifully recorded by both German and
Austrian diplomats.
The Pontians, unlike Greeks elsewhere in Asia Minor, did try to
organize armed resistance against their butchers. Pontian guerrilla
bands had appeared in the mountains of Santa as early as 1916. Brave
leaders, like Capitan Stylianos Kosmidis, even hoisted the flag of
independent Pontus in the hope of help from Greece and Russia (which
never arrived). But the struggle was unequal. The Turkish army,
assisted by the blood-thirsty Tsets, cuthroats of mostly Kurdish
extraction, attacked and destroyed undefended Pontian villages
in revenge.
On May 19, 1919, chief butcher Kemal himself disembarked at Samsous
to begin organizing the final phase of the Pontian genocide. Assisted
by his German advisers, and surrounded by his own band of killers —
monsters like Topal Osman, Refet Bey, Ismet Inonu, and Talaat Pasha —
the founder of “modern” Turkey applied himself to the destruction of
the Pontian Greeks. With the Greek army engaged in Anatolia, a new
wave of deportations, mass killings, and “preventative” executions
destroyed the remnants of Pontian Hellenism. The plan worked with
deadly precision. In the Amasia province alone, with a pre-war
population of some 180,000, records show a final tally of 134,000
people liquidated.
The memory of the Pontian Genocide is dedicated to all those in Europe
and the U.S. who shamelessly advocate admitting Turkey into the EU and
describe it as a “democracy.” They are all blind as they are shameless.
AUSTRIAN AND GERMAN ARCHIVES REVEAL THE CRIME
24 July 1909 German Ambassador in Athens Wangenheim to Chancellor
Bulow quoting Turkish Prime Minister Sefker Pasha: “The Turks have
decided upon a war of extermination against their Christian subjects.”
26 July 1909 Sefker Pasha visited Patriarch Ioakeim III and tells him:
“we will cut off your heads, we will make you disappear. It is either
you or us who will survive.”
14 May 1914 Official document from Talaat Bey Minister of the Interior
to Prefect of Smyrna: The Greeks, who are Ottoman subjects, and
form the majority of inhabitants in your district, take advantage
of the circumstances in order to provoke a revolutionary current,
favourable to the intervention of the Great Powers. Consequently, it
is urgently necessary that the Greeks occupying the coast-line of Asia
Minor be compelled to evacuate their villages and install themselves
in the vilayets of Erzerum and Chaldea. If they should refuse to be
transported to the appointed places, kindly give instructions to our
Moslem brothers, so that they shall induce the Greeks, through excesses
of all sorts, to leave their native places of their own accord. Do
not forget to obtain, in such cases, from the emigrants certificates
stating that they leave their homes on their own initiative, so that we
shall not have political complications ensuing from their displacement.
31 July 1915 German priest J. Lepsius: “The anti-Greek and
anti-Armenian persecutions are two phases of one programme – the
extermination of the Christian element from Turkey.
16 July 1916 German Consul Kuchhoff from Amisos to Berlin: “The entire
Greek population of Sinope and the coastal region of the county of
Kastanome has been exiled. Exile and extermination in Turkish are the
same, for whoever is not murdered, will die from hunger or illness.”
30 November 1916 Austrian consul at Amisos Kwiatkowski to Austria
Foreign Minister Baron Burian: “on 26 November Rafet Bey told me:
“we must finish off the Greeks as we did with the Armenians . . . on
28 November. Rafet Bey told me: “today I sent squads to the interior
to kill every Greek on sight.” I fear for the elimination of the
entire Greek population and a repeat of what occurred last year”
(meaning the Armenian genocide).
13 December 1916 German Ambassador Kuhlman to Chancellor Hollweg in
Berlin: “Consuls Bergfeld in Samsun and Schede in Kerasun report of
displacement of local population and murders. Prisoners are not kept.
Villages reduced to ashes. Greek refugee families consisting mostly
of women and children being marched from the coasts to Sebasteia. The
need is great.”
19 December 1916 Austrian Ambassador to Turkey Pallavicini to Vienna
lists the villages in the region of Amisos that were being burnt to
the ground and their inhabitants raped, murdered or dispersed.
20 January 1917 Austrian Ambassador Pallavicini: “the situation for
the displaced is desperate. Death awaits them all. I spoke to the
Grand Vizier and told him that it would be sad if the persecution of
the Greek element took the same scope and dimension as the Armenia
persecution. The Grand Vizier promised that he would influence Talaat
Bey and Emver Pasha.”
31 January 1917 Austrian Chancellor Hollweg’s report: “. . . the
indications are that the Turks plan to eliminate the Greek element
as enemies of the state, as they did earlier with the Armenians. The
strategy implemented by the Turks is of displacing people to the
interior without taking measures for their survival by exposing them
to death, hunger and illness. The abandoned homes are then looted
and burnt or destroyed. Whatever was done to the Armenians is being
repeated with the Greeks.
Thus, by government decree 1,500,000 Armenians and 300,000 Pontian
Greeks were annihilated through exile, starvation, cold, illness,
slaughter, murder, gallows, axe, and fire. Those who survived fled
never to return. The Pontians now lie scattered all over the world
as a result of the genocide and their unique history, language
(the dialect is a valuable link between ancient and modern Greek),
and culture are endangered and face extinction.
A double crime was committed – genocide and the uprooting of a people
from their ancestral homelands of three millenia. The Christian nations
were not only witnesses to this horrible and monstrous crime, which
remains unpunished, but for reasons of political expediency and self
interest have, by their silence, pardoned the criminal. The Ottoman
and Kemalist Turks were responsible for the genocide of the Pontian
people, the most heinous of all crimes according to international
law. The international community must recognise this crime.

BR ARMENIAN CHURCH TO HOLD SPECIAL SERVICE
The Advocate
May 13, 2006 Saturday
Main Edition
Advocate staff report
The state’s first Armenian house of worship, St. Garabed Armenian
Church, will hold consecration services Sunday.
The ceremony, which begins at 10:30 a.m. at the church, 6208 Florida
Blvd., will be led by Archbishop Khajag Barsamian, primate of the
Diocese of the Armenian Church of America, headquartered in New
York City. The Armenian Church is thought to be one of the Apostolic
churches claiming descent from Christ’s original apostles. While the
local church has been operational for two years, it will now receive
the special blessings that will allow it to be used as a “sacred
sanctuary for the state’s Armenian Christians, many of whom are
first generation arrivals to America.” The traditional liturgy used
in services closely resembles those used in Orthodox churches. The
Armenian consecration service will include prayers, blessings and
symbolic acts. To learn more Information on the church history is
available at

HEARINGS ON THE 15TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE ETHNIC CLEANSING HELD IN NAGORNO-KARABAKH
ArmRadio.am
15.05.2006 16:48
Speaker of the NKR National Assembly Ashot Ghulyan declared today that
in April-June 1991 the authorities of Soviet Azerbaijan organized and
carried out ” a cruel policy of ethnic cleansing in Nagorno-Karabakh
and adjacent territories” on the state level.”
Ashot Ghulyan said this speaking at the parliamentary hearings on
“Oghak operation: The violations of Soviet Azerbaijan and Soviet Union
authorities against the Armenian population of Nagorno-Karabakh and
adjacent territories.”
Ashot Ghulyan noted that the accomplishment of these programs stalled
the nationwide struggle of the Karabakh people, which ended in the
establishment of the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic.
“Only establishment of statehood could resist this policy, which
resulted in the establishment of the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic in
1992,” the NA Speaker noted.
Head of the NKR Parliament spoke for the unification of the efforts
of state structures to collect facts of anti-Armenian policy of
Azerbaijan. He informed that an ad hoc committee will be set to
investigate the violations against the people of Nagorno-Karabakh by
authorities of Soviet and independent Azerbaijan.
Participants of the hearings characterized the “Oghak” operation as a
” terrorist act by Azerbaijan.” It was noted during the hearings that
the Azeri authorities did not only refuse to take responsibility for
these actions, but also continue to speak on the language of terrorism
with Nagorno-Karabakh, threatening to resolve the Karabakh conflict
via force.
During the “Ohak” operation 6030 people from 24 villages were
forcefully displaced.

A1+
THE AMBITIONS DESTROYED THE COALITION
[02:10 pm] 12 May, 2006
«Before the elections the authorities must come to an agreement about
three posts: the President, the Prime Minister and the NA
President. It was obvious last year that Arthur Baghdasaryan was not
meant for any of the three posts by this agreement», NA deputy
Shavarsh Kocharyan told «A1+».
According to him, the problem is not that Baghdasaryan must become
another Sahakashvili, neither that he can be an unwanted
rival. According to Kocharyan, Arthur Baghdasaryan was in a situation
when he had high ambitions but was not placed in the agreement of the
authorities. So he had either to perform a secondary role or to
quit. He chose the second option.
Asked the question if the fact that Arthur Baghdasaryan becomes
opposition will not ‘hit’ the opposition itself, Shavarsh Kocharyan
answered that the opposition has been ‘hit’ so many times that this
step can even contribute to its coming to its senses. According to
him, Robert Kocharyan will not dissolve the Parliament as he will not
benefit from it.

PanARMENIAN.Net
Implementation of Melange Utilization Program in Armenia Example for
Other Countries

12.05.2006 20:27 GMT+04:00

/PanARMENIAN.Net/ The opening of the melange processing enterprise is
a good example of cooperation between the OSCE and the Armenian
Government, OSCE Secretary General Marc Perrin de Brichambau said at
the opening of a plant for utilization of propellant components in
Lori region of Armenia. In his words, implementation of the program
will be an example for other countries in the post-soviet space.
At that he remarked that experts from Germany, canada and finland
trained specialists, who will work in Armenia. The OSCE Secretary
General said that the program was composed of three phsses. The US
Government funded the first one. The second one – technical and
economic grounding of the project – was performed by German
specialists. The third phase was the building of the enterprise, in
which all aforementioned OSCE member states participated.

Zaman, Turkey
May 12 2006
French Companies Worried About Boycott Threats
While debates over the bill to criminalize the denial of the
so-called Armenian genocide continue in France, French companies
worry about a possible boycott threat from Turkey, officials said.
French businessmen regard the proposed bill proposal as the
“irresponsibility of politicians,’ wrote the French daily Le Monde.
“This crisis could be worse than the crisis that occurred between the
two countries when France officially recognized the so-called
genocide in 2001,” commented reporters, while boycott calls on French
goods in Turkey received wide coverage in the news.
Meanwhile, “The Defense Committee for Armenian Case” (CCAF) in France
reacted to the rejection of the bill at the Parliament Law Affairs
Commission in yesterday’s session.
The CCAF disclosed that the bill was rejected upon the request of
President Jacques Chirac.
Parliament Foreign Affairs Commission Vice President Herve de
Charrette; however, pronounced his objection to the bill and said
that the bill would most probably be rejected in the General
Assembly.

Regnum, Russia
May 12 2006
Orinats Yerkir Party started breakdown of Armenian ruling coalition
Orinats Yerkir (OYe) Party leaves the Armenian ruling coalition
(Republican Party, OYe, ARFD); political council of the party decided
later on May 11 at its session. A REGNUM correspondent was informed
at OYe headquarters that OYe Head, Parliament Speaker Artur
Bagdassaryan was going to speak to the press on May 12.
It should be reminded that 9 MPs, including leading entrepreneurs
Arkady Ambartsumyan, Eduard Gabrielyan, Sayad Zaharyan, Tigran
Eganyan, Samwel Shakhgaldyan, as well as businessmen Grigor
Margaryan, Melik Manukyan, and Arshak Mkhitaryan, left the coalition
OYe party and its parliamentary fraction recently.
The ruling coalition was established after on May 25, 2003,
parliamentary elections on the basis of an agreement between Armenian
President Robert Kocharyan and representatives of Republican Party,
OYe Party, and Dashnaktsutiun Armenian Revolutionary Federation
(ARFD). The OYe Party has three representatives at the Armenian
government.

ROBERT KOCHARIAN MEETS UAE AMBASSADOR
Armenpress
May 11 2006
YEREVAN, MAY 11, ARMENPRESS: Armenian president Robert Kocharian
received today Khalifa Shahin Al-Marri, the ambassador of the United
Arab Emirates (UAE) to Armenia, who is seated in Tehran, Iran.
Kocharian’s press office quoted the president as saying that
he was satisfied with the dynamically developing bilateral
relations. Kocharian also singled out frequented various-level
reciprocal visits and contacts.
The two men also spoke about how to expand the frames of
cooperation. Kocharian underscored implementation of investment
projects, which he said should go parallel to intensifying trade
contacts.