Author: Kanayan Tamar

TRANSPARENCY INTERNATIONAL : L’URGENCE DE REGULER LE LOBBYING

Publie le : 17-04-2015

Info Collectif VAN – – A coup de milliards de
dollars, la Turquie et l’Azerbaïdjan mènent un lobbying acharne
dans toutes les instances nationales et internationales, afin de
faire obstacle aux reconnaissances du genocide armenien de 1915 et
meme – dans le cas de l’Azerbaïdjan – pour faire reconnaître comme
genocide des crimes ayant eu lieu en 1992 dans la guerre opposant le
Haut-Karabagh (armenien) a l’Azerbaïdjan. Des crimes instrumentalises,
dont rien ne prouve qu’ils soient a imputer aux forces armeniennes.

Bien au contraire. Mais peu importe, pour “l’alliance turcique
turco-azerie” (comme cette ideologie se definit elle-meme),
l’essentiel est de discrediter l’Armenie et les Armeniens avec pour
but de faire cesser toutes les reconnaissances internationales du
genocide armenien. Il ne semble pas que Transparency International
France, qui est la section francaise de Transparency International,
principale organisation de la societe civile qui se consacre a la
transparence et a l’integrite de la vie publique et economique, se
soit preoccupee du sujet puisqu’une rapide recherche dans le document
de sa première etude comparee sur l’encadrement du lobbying en Europe,
ne donne aucun resultat sur les mots “Turquie” et “Azerbaïdjan”. Ce
dernier pays est pourtant notoirement très actif, notamment par le
financement de clubs de football en France, et de musees, comme la
section des Arts islamiques du Louvre. Transparency International,
qui fait l’impasse sur ces lobbyings caches, souligne pourtant
l’urgence de reguler le lobbying. Elle note qu'”A ce jour, aucun
pays et institution de l’UE ne s’est dote d’un cadre satisfaisant
en matière de tracabilite de la decision publique, d’integrite des
echanges et d’equite d’accès aux processus de decision publique”. Le
Collectif VAN vous propose de prendre connaissance de cette etude et
du communique de presse mis en ligne le 15 avril 2015.

Transparency International

Encadrement du lobbying : un defi democratique pour tous les pays
europeens

Le rapport Lobbying en Europe : influence cachee, accès privilegie,
resultat d’une etude menee dans 19 pays europeens et dans les trois
principales institutions de l’Union europeenne, se veut un outil
au service d’un plaidoyer commun pour l’harmonisation des règles
d’encadrement du lobbying en Europe.

Seuls 7 pays se sont dotes d’un encadrement specifique au lobbying.

Mais meme dans ces pays, ces règles sont soit inadaptees, soit
insuffisamment mises en oeuvre. Comme Transparency France l’avait
revele dans le volet francais publie en octobre dernier la France,
qui fait pourtant partie de ces 7 pays, se situe en dessous de la
moyenne europeenne.

Partout en Europe, les citoyens disposent de moyens limites pour
identifier les acteurs qui influencent la decision publique, sur
quels sujets et de quelle manière.

Pour Transparency International France, il est essentiel pour
la societe de clarifier les relations entre decideurs publics et
representants d’interets dans les lieux de la decision publique.

Encadrement du lobbying : un defi democratique pour tous les pays
europeens

———————–

Communique de presse

Encadrement du lobbying : un defi democratique pour tous les pays
europeens

Paris, le 15 avril 2015

A l’occasion de la publication de la première etude comparee sur
l’encadrement du lobbying en Europe, Transparency International
souligne l’urgence de reguler le lobbying. A ce jour, aucun pays et
institution de l’UE ne s’est dote d’un cadre satisfaisant en matière
de tracabilite de la decision publique, d’integrite des echanges et
d’equite d’accès aux processus de decision publique.

Transparency International publie aujourd’hui son nouveau rapport
Lobbying en Europe : influence cachee, accès privilegie, elabore a une
echelle europeenne avec le soutien de la Commission europeenne. Cette
etude constitue la première evaluation exhaustive des règles,
politiques et pratiques de lobbying dans 19 pays europeens ainsi
que dans les trois principales institutions de l’Union europeenne
(Commission, Parlement, Conseil).

a l’aide des outils
numeriques contemporains, permettant de suivre les actions qui
influencent les processus de prise de decision (publication de la
liste des personnes et organisations auditionnees ou consultees,
de l’agenda des rencontres entre decideurs publics et representants
d’interets et des contributions recues).

Mettre en place ou renforcer le respect du >
avant lequel un agent public ou un elu ne peut exercer une activite
de lobbying susceptible de creer un conflit d’interets.

Toute personne ou organisation souhaitant participer a un debat et
cherchant a influencer une decision publique doit :

Inscrire ses engagements et pratiques de lobbying dans une politique
de responsabilite societale (RSO) Publier de manière proactive des
informations sur ses activites de lobbying, incluant les documents
et argumentaires adresses pour participer au debat public, ainsi que
les budgets consacres aux actions d’influence de la decision publique.

[1] Autriche, France, Irlande, Lituanie, Pologne, Royaume-Uni, Slovenie

Encadrement du lobbying : un defi democratique pour tous les pays
europeens

CITIZENS HAVE QUESTIONS TO SERZH SARGSYAN: “HOW CAN YOU SLEEP AT NIGHT?” (VIDEO)

11:01 | April 17,2015 | Politics

After Mihran Hakobyan, a member of the Republican Party of Armenia
(HHK), and Mikael Minasyan, Armenia’s Ambassador to Vatican and Serzh
Sargsyan’s influential son-in-law, Serzh Sargsyan is probably the
third person who publicly ignores journalists in Armenia.

However, our fellow citizens have numerous questions to this person
who overtly ignores journalists. Many wonder when Serzh Sargsyan is
going to step down as the country’s president and leave Armenia.

Others say he is unable to answer citizens’ questions because he cares
only about himself and his associates, he ‘plunders’ the country. One
of our respondents wonders how Serzh Sargsyan can sleep at night.

People hold different opinions about the man who is sitting in the
President’s chair.

KILLING FIELDS OF THE YOUNG TURKS

The Spectator, UK
April 16 2015

On the centenary of the Armenian genocide, Justin Marozzi is appalled
by how this great catastrophe has been almost entirely buried,
through neglect or denial, until now Books

Justin Marozzi 18 April 2015

They Can Live in the Desert but Nowhere Else: A History of the Armenian
Genocide Ronald Grigor Suny

Princeton, pp.520, £24.95, ISBN: 9780691147307

Great Catastrophe: Armenians and Turks in the Shadow of Genocide
Thomas de Waal

OUP, pp.259, £20, ISBN: 9780199350698

For most of us, the centenary of the Great War means recalling the
misery and sacrifices of the Western Front: Ypres, the Marne, Arras,
Verdun, Passchendaele, the Somme. Few of us give as much thought to
the Eastern Front and, apart from regular studies of the ever-popular,
self-mythologising Lawrence of Arabia, fewer still dwell on the first
world war in the Middle East. This was the theatre that hosted the Arab
Revolt, famously dismissed by Lawrence as ‘a sideshow of a sideshow’.

The Great War centenary brings renewed attention to another neglected
tragedy of the conflict. Starting in 1915, the Turks embarked on a
process that culminated in the systematic extermination of the Armenian
people. By the end of the war between 600,000 and one million had been
killed, according to the more conservative estimates (the historian
Bernard Lewis reckoned the true figure was 1.5 million).

That equated to the annihilation of 90 per cent of Ottoman Armenians.

In recent years it has come to be known by most of the world as the
Armenian genocide, a term hotly contested by the Turkish authorities.

They Can Live in the Desert but Nowhere Else tells the fiercely
disputed story of what happened to the Armenians in the aftermath of
the Battle of Sarikamish in early 1915, when Ottoman defeat by the
Russians triggered a punitive response from the Young Turks against
what was seen as Armenian treachery. The killing fields stretched
1,000 miles east from Istanbul. Armenian soldiers were disarmed,
demobilised and killed. Armenian intellectuals and politicians in
Istanbul followed them to their graves. Of the survivors, hundreds of
thousands of Christian women and children suffered forced conversion
to Islam and joined the families of Arabs, Turks and Kurds.

A typical eyewitness account, from an American missionary, recorded how

they gathered all the men into one place and carried them out in
companies of about 25 each to be shot down in cold blood. Others
were tied with their heads sticking through the rungs of a ladder
and decapitated, others hacked to pieces or mutilated before death.

Needless to say, the mass extermination of a people had its
accomplices, by turn willing and unwilling, carefully orchestrated and
out of control far from the centre of authority. Yet the administration
set the tone. Talat Pasha, the Young Turk leader who branded Armenians
‘enemies of the state’, and Enver Pasha, his minister of war, were
arguably the architects of the massacres. Cemal Pasha, the last of
the ‘three pashas’ triumvirate who ruled the Ottoman empire during
the Great War, who was no shrinking violet when it came to hanging
Arab nationalists, was decidedly less keen on erasing the Armenians
from history.

Ronald Grigor Suny, an Armenian-American whose great-grandparents
fell victim to the genocide, has written a tremendously powerful,
scrupulously balanced, rigorous and humane account of a tragedy that
still casts a shadow over the modern state of Turkey. It is likely to
become the definitive reference book on the subject for years to come.

The context of war and invasion, he argues, created ‘a mental and
emotional universe’ that included ‘perceived threats, the Manichean
construction of internal enemies, and a pervasive fear that triggered a
deadly, pathological response to real and imagined immediate and future
dangers’. The view grew among the Young Turks, in power from 1908, that
all Armenians were a dangerous fifth column allied to the Russians.

There have long been two defining narratives surrounding the events
of 1915, lined up like opposing armies, bombarding each other with
accusations and denials. The traditional Turkish case argues that
the measures taken against the Armenians during a time of crisis
were a rational and reasonable government response to the rebellious
behaviour of a traitorous minority. The Armenian counterpart to this
line has often held the Turks to be inherently bloodthirsty and bent on
extermination, the Armenians as entirely blameless amid the maelstrom
of a collapsing Ottoman empire.

Suny has little truck with the cultural demonisation of the Turks,
be it Armenian or western European. Exhibit A for the latter is
Gladstone’s notorious description of the Turks as ‘the one great
anti-human specimen of humanity’ who left ‘a broad line of blood’
wherever they went.

Within the crumbling empire, the Armenians were by no means alone
in revolutionary intent. From the 1890s, there was fierce, sometimes
militant, opposition to Sultan Abdulhamid II from both Macedonians and
Young Turks, not to mention Arabs, Albanians, Circassians and Kurds.

It is important to remember that for centuries before 1915, Armenians,
alongside other minorities, were integrated into a multinational
Ottoman empire, albeit as second-class citizens. One thinks of the
Abbasid caliphate headquartered in Baghdad for half a millennium from
the late eighth century, a cosmopolitan affair of Muslims, Jews and
Christians thriving together.

Terminology is critical. Today many of us find it bewildering
that British government ministers, the BBC and other media
routinely describe the terrorists of Daesh as ‘Islamic State’,
unintentionally conferring religious and national legitimacy on a
self-declared caliphate whose absurdity would be amusing if it were
not so disgustingly blood-soaked. Suny is right to conclude that
although controversies still rage over the Armenian genocide, and
will continue to do so, the weight of scholarly opinion has shifted
dramatically in the 21st century toward the view that ‘the Ottoman
government conceived, initiated and implemented deliberate acts of
ethnic cleansing and mass murder, targeted at specific ethno-religious
communities’. In a word, genocide.

At one level, official Turkish denial in the face of all this evidence
makes little sense. Yet at another it is eminently understandable. The
destruction of the Armenians, together with the ethnic cleansing and
population exchanges of the Anatolian Greeks, was the ‘foundational
crime’ that facilitated the formation of ‘an ethno-national Turkish
republic’. One followed the other.

Commemorating the centenary of the genocide in a no less moving
account, Thomas de Waal’s Great Catastrophe brings to bear a very
personal focus, through history informed by reportage and travelogue.

De Waal, a journalist and scholar based at the Carnegie Endowment for
International Peace, is as interested in the ‘history of the history’
as in the genocide itself: how it has been remembered and denied over
the decades.

Both Suny and de Waal write of the Turkish thaw in coming to terms
with the events of 1915, a process that is not without its dangers.

Take the story of Hrant Dink, a Turkish Armenian activist who had
devoted himself to improving understanding between Armenians and Turks
through Agos, the newspaper he founded and edited from the late 1990s.

Less interested in the question of denial or acknowledgment —
he opposed foreign governments’ genocide resolutions — he argued
that the real problem was a lack of comprehension on the part of
Turkey. Only democracy would allow that. In 2007, Dink was shot dead
by a 17-year-old Turkish nationalist.

Armenian activism unquestionably has helped force the issue
of historical scrutiny and political accountability. As the
Armenian-American writer Leon Surmelian proclaimed in his essay
‘Mourning is not Enough’, published in 1965 on the 50th anniversary of
the atrocities, there was a responsibility to stand up and be counted.

‘For too long now we have been the forgotten people of the western
world. And we deserve to be forgotten forever if we take no action
now.’

It has been a long, fraught process. Starting in 2000, the Workshop
for Armenian/Turkish Scholarship, brainchild of Suny and another
colleague, brought Turkish and Armenian scholarship together in joint
endeavour for the first time. In 2011 its contributors published A
Question of Genocide, helping establish an academic consensus on the
slaughter. There is an instructive comparison to be made here with
Germany after the Holocaust, a war crime that triggered a level of
soul-searching as yet unmatched in Turkey.

Both books offer painful reading, compelling for the general reader,
cathartic for Armenian and Turk alike. For a century since the
massacres, one people has been haunted by silence, the other by
denial. The walls of both have now started to come tumbling down. As
an Armenian from the eastern Turkish city of Diyarbakir, an epicentre
of the atrocities that was once more than half Christian, puts it:
‘For the Turks 100 years is too soon, for us it is too late.’

‘They Can Live in the Desert but Nowhere Else’, £21.95 and ‘Great
Catastrophe’, £18 are available from the Spectator Bookshop, Tel:
08430 600033. Justin Marozzi is the author of Baghdad: City of Peace,
City of Blood.

This article first appeared in the print edition of The Spectator
magazine, dated 18 April 2015

ITALY CALLS TURKEY’S ‘TOUGH TONE’ AGAINST POPE’S REMARKS ‘UNJUSTIFIED’

Global English (Middle East and North Africa Financial Network)
April 14, 2015 Tuesday

Italy has weighed into the diplomatic stand-off between the Vatican
and Turkey over Pope Francis’ description of the 1915 events involving
Armenians as “genocide,” saying the “toughness” of Ankara’s reaction
to the pontiff’s remarks “does not seem justified”.

Speaking to journalists on the fringes of an EU-Mediterranean
conference in Barcelona, Italian Foreign Minister Paolo Gentiloni
said: “The toughness of the Turkish tone does not seem justified,
especially when taking into account the fact that 15 years ago,
John Paul II had expressed similar remarks.”

Gentiloni added that “we always have invited the two friend countries
Armenia and Turkey to engage in dialogue to avoid these situations
being an obstacle” to the re-establishment of relations.

Italy has consistently supported Turkish membership of the European
Union.

Earlier on Monday, Turkey’s head of religious affairs, Mehmet Gormez,
criticized Pope Francis’s description of the 1915 events as “genocide”.

Gormez said in Hatay: “It is upsetting that political lobbies and PR
firms around the world have extended their activities to religious
institutions’ rites and prayers.”

Turkey’s Parliament Speaker Cemil Cicek also condemned Pope Francis’
remarks on Monday, describing them as “slander” and “discrimination”.

“It is a statement which provokes political discrimination, racism
and hate speech,” Cicek said.

The debate on “genocide” allegations and the differing opinions between
the present day Turkish government and the Armenian diaspora, along
with the current administration in Yerevan, still generates political
tension between Turks and Armenians.

Turkey’s official position against allegations of “genocide” is that
it acknowledges the past experiences were a great tragedy and that both
parties suffered heavy casualties, including hundreds of Muslim Turks.

The 1915 events took place during World War I when a portion of
the Armenian population living in the Ottoman Empire sided with the
invading Russians and revolted against the empire.

The Ottoman Empire relocated Armenians in eastern Anatolia following
the revolts and there were Armenian casualties during the relocation
process.

Armenia has demanded an apology and compensation, while Turkey has
officially refuted Armenian allegations over the incidents saying that,
although Armenians died during the relocations, many Turks also lost
their lives in attacks carried out by Armenian gangs in Anatolia.

Ankara agrees that there were certainly Armenian casualties during
World War I, but says that it is impossible to define these incidents
as “genocide.”

In 2014, then Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan expressed
his condolences for the first time to all Ottoman citizens who lost
their lives in the events of 1915.

“May Armenians who lost their lives in the events in the early
twentieth century rest in peace, and we convey our condolences to
their grandchildren,” Erdogan said.

A TIME TO HEAL INSTEAD OF ARGUING OVER THE GENOCIDE WORD, TURKS SHOULD MEND FENCES WITH THE ARMENIANS

The Economist
April 16 2015

Apr 18th 2015

NOTHING inflames the present like the past. When Pope Francis said
on April 12th that the “first genocide” of the 20th century was of
the Armenians in 1915, Turkey angrily recalled its ambassador to the
Vatican. Far from being resolved, the argument over exactly what to
call the death of as many as 1m-1.5m Armenian citizens of the Ottoman
empire still spreads hatred. This fight does nothing for Turks and
Armenians–nor for the century-old memory of the victims.

At issue is not the terrible fate that befell the Armenians of eastern
Anatolia, in massacres, forced labour and death marches towards the
Syrian desert. It is whether to use the word “genocide”. Historians
differ, not just Armenians and Turks, on whether extermination was
a side-effect or the intention, as genocide requires. As America’s
president, Barack Obama has talked only of the Meds Yeghern (“great
crime” in Armenian), despite promising the Armenian lobby as a
candidate to call it genocide. Yet, on the face of it, the facts
support Pope Francis, not least because Raphael Lemkin, the Polish
lawyer who coined the word in 1943, cited the Armenian case.

By treating the dispute as a matter of vital national interest, the
Turkish government is falling into a nationalistic trap. Instead
it should admit past sins. Like other European powers, including
Britain, Germany and Russia, it has plenty to acknowledge. Turkey
has in the past mistreated, deported or killed not only Armenians but
also Assyrians, Greeks and Kurds. But it also has reasons for pride,
for the Ottoman empire was, for example, often more tolerant of its
ethnic minorities, including Jews, than the rest of Europe was.

Today’s Turkish government can also boast of improvements in its
treatment of minorities. As Turkey’s president and founder of the
Islamist Justice and Development (AK) party that forms its government,
Recep Tayyip Erdogan has distanced himself from the narrow secular
nationalism of Kemal Ataturk, modern Turkey’s founder. He is
tantalisingly close to making peace with the Kurds, the country’s
biggest minority, a goal that has eluded all his predecessors. And
last year he bravely offered condolences, if not an apology, to the
grandchildren of the Armenian victims of 1915 (see article).

Yet of late, Mr Erdogan has taken on an angrier, more nationalistic,
Islamist and autocratic tone. This is making it harder for him not
just to get on with his neighbours but also to preserve Turkey’s
pro-Western credentials as a bulwark of NATO and prospective member
of the European Union. That is why Turkish twitchiness over what
happened in 1915 is so counter-productive. Better would be to try,
once again, to repair relations with the Armenians.

Fence-mending in Anatolia

After a bout of “football diplomacy” in 2008-09 Turkey and Armenia
signed protocols that would have allowed their border to be reopened.

But the protocols were never ratified, not because of the genocide
row, but because the Turks insisted as a condition on the resolution
of the frozen conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan, Turkey’s ally,
over the disputed enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh. Yet the best chance
of solving Nagorno-Karabakh would be better relations–and an open
border–between Turkey and Armenia, which otherwise feels hemmed in
and dependent on the dubious prop of Russian support.

For ordinary Armenians, the most promising idea for marking the 100th
anniversary of the terrible events of 1915 would be to regain direct
access to their sacred mountain of Ararat and to their ancient capital
of Ani, both of which are now blocked off in Turkey. For Turkey, too,
the best memorial would be improved relations with Armenia.

ARMENIAN ORGANIZATIONS IN GEORGIA APPEAL TO PARLIAMENT TO RECOGNIZE THE FACT OF GENOCIDE

April 17, 2015 11:36

Yerevan/Mediamax/. The Armenian NGOs and religious organizations in
Georgia appealed to the country’s parliament to begin considering
Georgia’s recognition of the fact of the Armenian Genocide in the
Ottoman Turkey in 1915.

Mediamax was told in the Community of the Armenians of Georgia that
“the Armenian NGOs and religious organizations call for joining the
initiatives of the civilized international community and initiate
parliamentary discussions on the Armenian people’s Genocide in Ottoman
Turkey for the sake of justice and democratic values”.

The Community noted that it’s already the 10th time that Armenian
NGOs operating in Georgia have turned to the country’s leadership to
start considering the recognition of the fact of Genocide, “however,
despite the numerous requests, the Georgian leadership ignores the
will of their citizens making up over 6% of the overall population
of the country”.

The appeal was signed by the Diocese of the Armenian Apostolic
Church in Georgia, “Hayartun” cultural center at the Diocese of
the Armenian Apostolic Church in Georgia, Board of Armenian NGOs of
Samtskhe-Javakheti, Armenian Theater in Tbilisi, Community of Armenians
of Ajaria, Assembly of Tbilisi Armenians, Union of Georgian Armenians,
Union of Tbilisi Armenians, National Congress of Armenians in Georgia,
“Vrastan” newspaper, Armenian-Georgian Union of Businessmen, Youth
Center of Akhaltskhe – overall 30 organizations and representatives
of intelligentsia.

TURKISH HACKERS KNOCK OUT VATICAN WEBSITE IN PROTEST OF POPE’S GENOCIDE COMMENTS

Breitbart News
April 16 2015

by Thomas D. Williams, Ph.D.16 Apr 20158

Access to the Vatican website, , was blocked twice in
the space of 24 hours this week following Pope Francis’s comments
Sunday regarding the Armenian genocide.

The Vatican website was hacked during the night between Monday
and Tuesday, after Pope Francis described the Turkish massacre of
1.5 million Armenians a century ago as “the first genocide of the
twentieth century.”

A London-based group that calls itself THTHerakles has taken credit
for the cyber attack.

The Vatican website was offline for several hours following the
attack, until the problem was solved Tuesday morning. But on Wednesday
afternoon, it was offline again.

According to the specialist publication “Techworm,” the attack was
an unofficial retaliation to the words of the Pope.

A tweet written in Turkish on the group’s Twitter feed read, “Dear
Pope you should have defended your website as much as you defended
the Armenians.”

The hacker stated that the Pope’s comments were “unacceptable” for a
respected religious leader. “Taking sides and calling what happened
with the Armenians genocide is not true. … We want Pope [Francis]
to apologize for his words or we will make sure the website remains
offline,” he said.

The Pope’s comments Sunday produced immediate diplomatic fallout
between the Vatican and Ankara, with the Turkish government recalling
its ambassador to the Holy See. Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut
Cavusoglu said the Pope was fueling “hatred and animosity” by spreading
“unfounded allegations.”

AZERBAIJANI HUMAN RIGHTS DEFENDER RASUL JAFAROV SENTENCED TO 6.5 YEARS’ IMPRISONMENT

18:29 16/04/2015 >> LAW

Rasul Jafarov, a well-known human rights defender, “Art for Democracy”
campaign organizer, was sentenced to 6.5 years’ imprisonment in
Azerbaijan. The verdict was brought in by the judge Eldar Ismayilov
in the Baku court of grave crimes on April 16. Jafarov is banned
taking up any post for three years after his release, Azerbaijani
information agency Turan reports.

According to the article, after the verdict was announced, Jafarov
said he considered it to be trumped up and politically motivated. The
court did not prove any of the charges brought against the human
rights defender. All of the prosecution witnesses testified in favor
of the human rights defender, and the process actually proved his
complete innocence.

Following his arrest Jafarov said that he was persecuted as he
continuously focused attention on the issue of political prisoners,
held protests during the PACE session in Strasburg where Ilham Aliyev
was present, urged to boycott the European Games, the article reads.

Anastasia Miller, a human rights defender from the International
Federation for Human Rights (FIDH), who had observed the process,
told the Turan correspondent that the trial of the human rights
defender Rasul Jafarov was featured by violations of international
standards regarding the protection of the human rights.

“According to the international standards, openness, publicity and
transparency of a trial are crucial to be provided. However, many of
those wishing were not able to get into the hearings for there was
not enough space in the hall. In spite of having a larger hall in the
Baku court of grave crimes, the process was held in a smaller room,”
Miller said.

According to the article, Miller also pointed to the judges’ refusal
of a numerous requests to turn on speakers in the hall to be able
to normally listen to those speaking. It created difficulties for
the observers, as well. She also highlighted the court’s refusal to
allow audio, video recordings and photoshoots.

Miller was not allowed to take a photo of Jafarov even during the
break of the trial. The court bailiffs took away her camera and gave
it back only after the trial, the publication reads.

“I did not see any evidence of guilt. The complainants declared that
they had not suffered any damage and did not consider themselves as
such. The lawyers showed the fiscal documents confirming the use of
the grants for the intended purpose,” the human rights defender said.

Summing up her observation of the process she came to believe Jafarov
was persecuted for his human rights activities, the publication reads.

Rasul Jafarov is an Azerbaijani human rights activist, who in December
2012 launched a campaign “Art for Democracy,” calling on young people
to stand up for justice through the arts, and not through violence. He
was arrested on August 2, 2014 on charges of illegal entrepreneurship,
tax evasion and abuse of power – charges he denies. The international
human rights organizations Amnesty International and Human Rights
Watch condemned Rasul Jafarov’s arrest. Amnesty International considers
him a prisoner of conscience.

Moreover, in 2014, spokespersons of EU commissioners Catherine Ashton
and European Commissioner for Enlargement and European Neighborhood
Policy Stefan Fule made a joint statement expressing their concern over
the arrest of another well-known human rights defender in Azerbaijan,
Rasul Jafarov.

Earlier, during a PACE session in Strasburg Rasul Jafarov and several
other human rights activists made a report on political prisoners in
Azerbaijan. At the Parliamentary Assembly of the OSCE in Baku, Jafarov
and other activists held a public hearing on civil society issues.

Both of these events have caused a backlash in Baku.

Related:

Azerbaijani political prisoners Leyla Yunus and Rasul Jafarov nominated
for Human Rights Tulip award

GUNMACHINE FROM THE GIUMRY FAMILY MURDER SCENE HAD NO SUPPRESSOR – BALLISTIC EVIDENCE

YEREVAN, April 17. /ARKA/. Armenia’s Investigative Committee has
released the results of ballistic, forensic, chemical and trace tests
in the Giumry family murder case.

The tests found that no suppressor was used on the machine gun found
at the crime scene, the website of the Investigative Committee says.

Russian soldier Valery Permyakov, who pleaded guilty is charged
with killing seven members of the Avetisyan family, including a
two-year-old girl and a six-month-old boy, in a January 12 shooting
rampage in Gyumri.

The tests also showed the casings and the bullets were released from
AKS-74 machine gun owned by Permyakov.

Metallization was found on the military uniform, as well as on the
clothing and bed linen of the victims, according to the report.

Cotton fiber and chemical microfiber found on the stabber were
identical to the ones on six-month-old Serezha Avetisyan’s vest. -0–

INTERNATIONAL COMMUNITY SHARPLY CONDEMNS VERDICT AGAINST AZERBAIJANI HUMAN RIGHTS DEFENDER RASUL JAFAROV

17:02 17/04/2015 ” LAW

OSCE Representative on Freedom of the Media Dunja MijatoviÄ~G condemned
the sentencing of Rasul Jafarov, a free expression and free media
advocate and human rights defender in Azerbaijan, to six and a half
years in a penal colony, the OSCE website reports.

“Jafarov’s sentencing is nothing short of an act of injustice and it
adds to the growing number of journalists and free expression advocates
serving time in Azerbaijani prisons for their work. This systematic
and wide-scale persecution of independent voices in Azerbaijan is a
clear violation of the fundamental and basic human right of freedom
of expression,” MijatoviÄ~G said pointing to the various reports
indicating that both the investigation and the judicial process
involving Jafarov were flawed because of serious violations.

According to the statement of the official representative of the US
Department of State, Marie Harf, published on Department of State
website, the US is deeply troubled by the decision of the Azerbaijani
court, which is widely considered to be politically motivated.

“His conviction is a further setback to Azerbaijan’s democratic
development. We urge the Government of Azerbaijan to abide by its
international commitments and respect the rights of its citizens. As a
first step, we urge the authorities to release Mr. Jafarov and others
incarcerated in connection with exercising their fundamental freedoms,”
the statement reads.

In her microblog in Twitter, President of the Parliamentary Assembly of
the Council of Europe (PACE), Anne Brasseur, wrote that the reprisals
against human rights defenders in Azerbaijan reflect persistent
degradation of human rights and deplored the 6.5 years sentence
against Rasul Jafarov.

International human rights organizations also turned to Jafarov’s
sentencing. In its statement, Human Rights Watch calls on Azerbaijan’s
international partners to make clear they will not be sending
high-level delegations to the opening of the European Games in Baku
unless Rasul Jafarov and other political prisoners are freed and the
government’s crackdown on civil society is brought to an end.

“Jafarov was one of the most authoritative and outspoken critics of
politically motivated prosecutions in Azerbaijan, and now he has become
a victim of one,” said Giorgi Gogia, senior South Caucasus researcher
at Human Rights Watch, and added that Jafarov’s conviction should be
a jarring wake-up call to Azerbaijan’s international partners to send
a clear message to Baku that business as usual is impossible until
Jafarov and his colleagues are freed.

On March, 30 the authorities of Azerbaijan did not allow Giorgi Gogia
to enter the country. He was planning to take part in the court
hearings of the Azerbaijani human rights defenders, Rasul Jafarov
and Intigam Aliyev.

The Observatory for the Protection of Human Rights Defenders, a joint
program of the FIDH (International Federation for Human Rights) and
the OMCT (World Organisation Against Torture) – whose representative
was present at Rasul Jafarov’s trial and said that it was clear that
the trial was based on trumped-up charges – declared that the court
was unacceptable, FIDH website reports.

“We must not allow the glitz of the Baku 2015 European Games to
whitewash President Ilham Aliyev’s abysmal record on human rights,”
said Index on Censorship CEO Jodie Ginsberg, as the website of the
organization reports.

According to RFE/RL, Jafarov’s lawyer, Fariz Namazly, said after the
ruling that they would appeal the “illegal and politically motivated
verdict.” The Sun Daily adds that oil-rich ex-Soviet Azerbaijan
often responds to dissent with tough measures. The American news
media company BuzzFeed reminds that Jafarov’s “Sing For Democracy”
campaign used Azerbaijan’s hosting of the 2012 Eurovision Song Contest
to draw attention to his country’s poor human rights record. When he
was arrested in 2014, he was planning a campaign “Sport for Rights”
to coincide with Azerbaijan hosting the European Games in June 2015.

Rasul Jafarov, a well-known human rights defender, “Art for Democracy”
campaign organizer, was sentenced to 6.5 years’ imprisonment in
Azerbaijan. The verdict was brought in by the judge Eldar Ismayilov in
the Baku court of grave crimes on April 16. Jafarov is banned taking
up any post for three years after his release.

After the verdict was handed down, Jafarov said he considered it to be
trumped up and politically motivated. The court did not prove any of
the allegations brought against the human rights defender. All of the
prosecution witnesses testified in favor of the human rights defender,
and the process actually proved his complete innocence.

Related:

Azerbaijani human rights defender Rasul Jafarov sentenced to 6.5
years’ imprisonment