Category: News

Cape Codder, MA
May 13 2004
Coming to America
By Bill Barnes / [email protected]
Artist seeks asylum in West Yarmouth
Stuck in the middle of Europe, wedged amidst Poland, Lithuania and
Russia is a little country called Belarus, just 10 million people in a
place the size of Kansas. It is one of the Soviet republics that won
independence after the collapse, but as is the case in many of the
former republics, independence for the country did not mean freedom
for its people.
The State Department’s annual human rights report on Belarus are
dismal. Human Rights Watch is constantly documenting cases of abuse.
Last year, The Committee to Protect Journalists cited Belarus with
a place on its list of the 10 “worst places to be a journalist.”
The way Alexandr Lukashenka, president since 1994, runs Belarus
reminds many of Stalin and people who don’t like that tend to wind
up in jail, or, in some cases, simply disappear. Elections are a
mockery. Dissenting newspapers are shut down.
Out of that climate comes Kseniya Kudrashova, a 23-year-old artist and
former university student. She expressed her views through her art,
on canvases that were sold clandestinely and in cartoons that were
published in an opposition paper.
She demonstrated with her fellow students from the University
in Minsk. She was hauled in by the police and threatened with
worse. Her apartment was raided and all her paintings were seized. She
disappeared, but she disappeared voluntarily.
Last June she escaped to Cape Cod, where she lives in a small house
in West Yarmouth with the man she plans to marry. She is not here
legally anymore, but she says she has nothing to go back to but fear.
With the help of friends she hopes to persuade the U.S. government
to grant her asylum.
On a recent evening, in the company of friends Vahan Hambardzumanyan
and Sergei Mahtesyan, she met with a reporter in a coffee shop in
the Cape Cod Mall to tell her story.
The young men are both from Armenia, legal residents working as
building contractors. Mahtesyan came to Starbucks to translate.
Hambardzumanyan is her fiance. They too come from a former republic
of the USSR, so Russian is their common language.
Kudrashova is an ethnic Russian who moved to the White Russian SSR,
now Belarus, with her parents as a baby. Her father was in the Soviet
military and had been ordered to work in a military aviation factory
in the republic. After the breakup the family became Belarus citizens
and lost the right to return to Russia, as did many others in their
situation.
In her hometown, an hour north of Minsk, Kudrashova studied painting
at the local academy and regularly showed her works in home-town
shows. When she went on to university in Minsk, where she studied
economics, she kept painting.
“In my free time I painted. I had regular customers who bought my
paintings. That is how I paid for my education and living expenses,”
she said. Along with the abstracts and the landscapes, there were
political paintings as well.
She also worked as an artist for the opposition newspaper Shag (meaning
“step”) and she was also involved with a group of young people called
the Youth Front who opposed the president. She did posters for the
demonstrations they held.
On April 14, 2003, she joined the Youth Front in a demonstration
which was broken up by police swinging batons. “They fractured her
collarbone when police were beating the crowd to get them into the
vans,” according to Mahtesyan. The medical papers from the hospital
are part of the evidence she will be putting into her application
for asylum.
Kudrashova could be considered one of the lucky ones that day. Forty
of the demonstrators were tried and sentenced to prison terms. Others
were expelled from the university. She was released without charges,
but the secret police soon visited her apartment.
“They warned me that if I do anything more against the president I
would have big problems. They confiscated all my paintings, including
those not concerned with politics,” she said, adding it was not her
role in the demonstrations that bothered the police as much as her
cartoons in Shag.
Last June, she did what so many Eastern Europeans have been doing
and joined the “Work and Travel USA” program to come to the United
States to work for the summer. She had no idea of where she was going,
but another girl on the plane suggested Cape Cod and she wound up
working at a McDonald’s in Hyannis.
Under the program, she was supposed to return in October, she said,
“but because so many students had escaped this way, the government
said that anyone who had not returned by Sept. 4 would be excluded
from the university.” She did not comply.
Over the summer the government shut down the newspaper Shag.
Since October, Kudrashova has been out of work. She spent a month
in New York trying to hook up with the arts community, but couldn’t
afford to stay. She has joined Belarusian dissident groups in the
United States and has been invited to submit cartoons for an exile
paper in New York.
According to Mahtesyan, she spends most of her time at home, monitoring
Belarusian affairs on the Internet and painting. She says she has
made no contacts with the arts community here and has no outlets for
her work, so the paintings are rapidly piling up.
They are an odd collection of protest and beauty. One of Minsk’s
main square enclosed in a prison cell faces a painting of a Cape
Cod lighthouse.
“Being in Cape Cod, I can freely create. Besides American freedom,
Cape Cod is a good environment for an artist,” she says. “I get a
lot of emotions from Cape Cod to put on canvas.”
Now she an the two Armenians are hard at work putting together her
application for asylum. Mahtesyan says the application is only three
pages, but the instructions are a book. They have no lawyer to help,
and the documentation is sometimes hard to get.
The rules for the granting asylum are strict and more are denied than
are accepted. But she and her friends are convinced it’s worth a try.
I have nothing to go back to. If I continued what I was doing there,
my family would be in trouble,” Kudrashova says.

PanArmenian News
May 13 2004
PRAGUE, WARSAW, STRASBURG…
Next round of Karabakh talks may be more important.
The second meeting of the FMs of Armenia and Azerbaijan took place in
Strasbourg within the frames of the session of Foreign Ministers of
the Council of Europe member-countries. No information available
about the results of the meeting.
/PanARMENIAN.Net/ We shall remind that the Azeri Minister said
recently that the most important issue to be discussed in Strasburg
was the possibility of exchange of territories for communications.
The matter concerns an idea according to which the Armenian forces
will cede to Azerbaijan seven regions that make a security zone
around the NKR, in exchange Baku removes the blockade. It should be
clarified that the activation of the communications is more important
for Azerbaijan and not so much for Armenia because the railway
passing via Meghri is the only way to have links with the enclave of
Nakhichevan. Thus, proposing such an interesting ”exchange”, in
Baku they should not expect any result.
However, President Aliyev confirmed on the eve of the meeting that
the idea would be discussed in Strasburg. The Russian co-chair of the
OSCE Minsk group Yuri Merzlyakov clarified the issue. He said that
the agenda of the meeting would be ”free”. Parties and co-chairs
may propose everything they want, according to him. However, if
Mamedyarov proposes the idea of the security zone in exchange for
restoration of railway communications, it does not mean that the
discussion will take place. The Armenian party has always stated it
is not going to discuss such proposals. The issue will be closed as
soon as Vartan Oskanyan voices the official position of the Armenian
party. So, there is an impression that Mamedyarov’s statement was
supposed only for the local audience.
And what was discussed in Strasburg? We shall remind that according
to Merzlyakov, the ideas proposed by mediators during the Paris
meeting of Ministers and discussed further on by Kocharian and Aliyev
were the subject of discussion. He said only that it was an attempt
to find a ”compromise variant between the package and stage-by-stage
versions” of the conflict settlement.
The approaches of the parties to the proposed ideas may become clear
during the next round of high level talks. And if a progress is
achieved, Kocharian and Aliyev will commission their delegates, Tatul
Margaryan and Araz Azimov, to continue the negotiations. By the way,
according to the press, the delegates did not meet separately in
Strasburg which means that the parties are not sure that Margaryan
and Azimov will have to continue the interrupted contacts.

KOCHARIAN RECEIVES IRANIAN MINISTER
ArmenPress
May 13 2004
YEREVAN, MAY 13, ARMENPRESS: President Kocharian received today members
of an Iranian delegation who have arrived here, led by Iran’s oil and
gas minister, Bijan Zanganeh, to sign the basic treaty on construction
of a gas pipeline from Iran to Armenia, expected later today.
Kocharian’s press office said the minister conveyed the cordial
greetings of president Mohamamd Khatami to his Armenian counterpart.
The minister said also the to be signed agreement is coming after
years of fruitful work of both governments. The high level of diverse
bilateral relations, emphasized as a key condition for an overall
stabilization in the region, was commended by both sides.
The project provides for laying down a 100-kilometer gas pipeline along
the Iranian territory and 41 kilometers in Armenia. The pipeline will
pump daily 1.5 million cubic meters of Turkmen gas. The approximate
cost of the project is 96 million U.S. dollars.
The pipeline’s construction is planned to be started in several months
to be finished in 2006.
The gas pipeline from Iran is to be built only to meet domestic needs
of Armenia. Armenian authorities said previously any other direction
of the pipeline, for instance to Europe, is not under discussion.
“We regard this project as a serious question for Armenian energy
security,” the president underlined today.

23 MILLION EUROS NEEDED FOR UPGRADING ABOVIAN GAS STOREHOUSE
ArmenPress
May 13 2004
YEREVAN, MAY 13, ARMENPRESS: A 23 million euros worth project for
upgrading an underground natural gas storehouse in the town of Abovian,
some 20 off the capital Yerevan, developed by HayRusGazArd company,
the sole supplier of Russian gas to Armenia, was praised highly
by the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) and
participants of a round table, held on the sidelines of a ministerial
meeting of INOGATE program.
Edward Nersisian, head of HayRusGazArd’s department for external
relations, told Armenpress the underground storehouse is of key
importance for Armenia in terms of its safe gas supply and energy
independence and “is no less important than the Iran-Armenia gas
pipeline the construction of which is supposed to start later this
year.
The upgraded storehouse will be able to store some 200 million cubic
meters of gas, while today it can contain only 80 million. In case
of securing the necessary funds the upgrading will be over in 2-3
years. Nersisian said a mobile station for quick repair of breaks
on the pipeline is expected to come to Armenia as part of INOGATE’s
2004 program.

FORUM 18 NEWS SERVICE, Oslo, Norway
The right to believe, to worship and witness
The right to change one’s belief or religion
The right to join together and express one’s belief
=================================================
Thursday 13 May 2004
TURKMENISTAN: RELIGIOUS PERSECUTION’S LATEST DISGUISES
In his latest attempt to disguise Turkmenistan’s de facto criminalisation
of religious belief, President Saparmurat Niyazov has today (13 May)
revoked the de jure criminalisation of unregistered religious activity.
Believers were, before the de jure criminalization, treated as de facto
criminals and fined, detained, beaten, threatened, sacked from their jobs,
had their homes confiscated, banished to remote parts of the country or
deported in retaliation for unregistered religious activity. Niyazov has
also cancelled a secret decree requiring registered religious communities
to subject themselves to tight financial regulation by the state –
but has imposed tight financial regulation in a different way, through an
official model statute for religious communities. Forum 18 News Service has
obtained a copy of this, and religious leaders in Turkmenistan have told
Forum 18 that they find these restrictions unacceptable. Many prefer to
continue to exist in the underground.
TURKMENISTAN: RELIGIOUS PERSECUTION’S LATEST DISGUISES
By Felix Corley, Forum 18 News Service
Under intense international pressure over its repression of religious life,
Turkmenistan’s president Saparmurat Niyazov has today (13 May) revoked the
punishments introduced into the Criminal Code last year on those involved
in unregistered religious activity. Before these punishments were
introduced, Turkmenistan already had tight controls -which it still
maintains – on unregistered religious activity. All Shia Muslim, Baptist,
Pentecostal, Adventist, Armenian Apostolic, Lutheran, Hare Krishna,
Jehovah’s Witness, Baha’i and Jewish activity was de facto if not de jure
treated as illegal. Believers were, even before the de jure criminalization
of unregistered activity, fined, detained, beaten, threatened, sacked from
their jobs, had their homes confiscated, banished to remote parts of the
country or deported in retaliation for involvement in unregistered
religious activity. De jure decriminalisation is not expected to change the
established pattern of de facto criminalisation.
President Niyazov also cancelled a secret decree he had issued on 23 March
which required registered religious communities to subject themselves to
tight financial regulation by the state. However, Forum 18 News Service has
also received a copy of the six-page model statute handed out to religious
communities by the Adalat (Fairness or Justice) Ministry which requires all
religious communities to pay 20 per cent of their income to the
government’s Gengeshi (Council) for Religious Affairs and imposes other
tight controls. This imposes tight financial regulation in a different way,
as well as forcing registered communities to provide the state with
information helpful to its continued persecution of religious believers
(see F18News 10 May ).
The pro-government website turkmenistan.ru claimed that the president
cancelled the criminal penalties and the secret decree “with the aim
of creating the necessary legal guarantees to secure freedom of religion
and belief, as well as to complete the laws of the country on religious
organisations”. Turkmenistan has for the last seven years refused to
register all communities of the Shia Muslims, Armenian Apostolic Church,
all Protestants (including Pentecostals, Lutherans and Baptists), Jews,
Baha’is, the Hare Krishna community and the New Apostolic Church.
The president’s moves are the latest in an embarrassing series of
conflicting legal moves designed to head off international criticism
sparked by last October’s amendments to the religion law and the criminal
code which tightened even further restrictions on registered religious
communities and criminalized unregistered religious activity.
In March this year, the president also announced an apparent paper
relaxation of persecution, apparently allowing religious communities to
gain official registration regardless of how many members they have or what
faith they belong to (see F18News 12 March
). However, it became
clear that this apparent relaxation masked moves to impose stringent
controls on any community that registered, such as a requirement that any
worship service or other event needs state permission to take place (see
F18News 10 May ).
The change in bureaucratic requirements also did not signal any respite in
persecution, being apparently intended to allow religious communities to
exist in theory but be persecuted in practice. Secret police raids
continued and on the same day the March announcement was made, a Jehovah’s
Witness was arrested and pressured by officials, including a Mullah, to
renounce his faith and then fired from his job (see F18News
). As Forum 18 has
documented, persecution continued since then unabated, Muslims, for
example, being barred from building new mosques on 29 March (see F18News 30
March ). It is highly
unlikely that today’s announcement marks any actual relaxation in
persecution.
The registration regulations issued by the Adalat Ministry on 10 March,
which appear still to be in force despite the latest legal moves, come in
the form of a model statute which religious communities appear required to
follow very closely if they are to get registration. Article 13 defines the
first aim of a religious organization, ahead even of “jointly
confessing and spreading their faith”, as “respecting the
Constitution and laws of Turkmenistan”.
Services would be allowed in property owned by religious organisations and
in private homes “in cases of ritual necessity”. It remains
unclear if regular services in private homes or elsewhere would be
illegal.
Only adults citizens of Turkmenistan would be allowed to belong to
religious organizations, according to Article 16, leaving it unclear
whether foreign citizens living in the country would even be allowed to
attend religious services of registered organizations.
Although registered religious communities would be able to teach children
on their own premises, teachers would have to be approved in advance by the
Gengeshi.
Article 15 of the statute requires the payment of 20 per cent of income to
the Gengeshi every quarter, while all donations from abroad have to be
registered at the Adalat Ministry.
Leaders of religious organizations have to be Turkmen citizens, making it
difficult for faiths like the Catholics or the Armenians which do not have
native clergy. The model statute also defines how the administration of
each faith must work and how often its governing body must meet.
The model statute also states that leaders of religious organizations are
also expected to have higher religious education, a concept which is not
defined. This concept may be a further restriction on the clergy who can be
appointed, possibly related to Niyazov’s decree dismissing from state
employment, with effect from 1 June, anyone who holds higher education
decrees awarded outside Turkmenistan since 1993.
Article 38 allows courts to liquidate religious organizations for
“repeated or gross violations” of the country’s laws, while the
Adalat Ministry can also terminate an organisation’s registration (for
which the statute gives no further explanation).
Religious leaders in Turkmenistan have already told Forum 18 that they find
the restrictions in the model statute unacceptable. Many prefer to continue
to exist in the underground, as the latest apparent relaxations mark no
change in the continued de facto criminalisation and persecution of
religious believers.
For more background see Forum 18’s latest religious freedom survey at
A printer-friendly map of Turkmenistan is available at
s/index.html?Parent=asia&Rootmap=turkme
(END)

© Forum 18 News Service. All rights reserved.
You may reproduce or quote this article provided that credit is given to
F18News
Past and current Forum 18 information can be found at
=================================================

YENI SAFAK SAID: HARIRI: TURKEY, AN EXAMPLE FOR ISLAMIC WORLD
Turkish Daily News, Press Scanner
May 12 2004
Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri said Turkey, which is a bridge
between Europe and Asia, was an example for the Islamic world with
its efforts for modernization.
“This enhances the importance of Turkey’s role,” said Hariri.
The Lebanese premier will pay a visit to Ankara in the upcoming days
and before his visit to Turkey, daily Yeni Safak held an interview
with Hariri at his house.
“Turkey is an important country in the region and has historic
ties with Lebanon. There is no doubt that the AK Party government’s
policies have pushed the Arabs and us for new initiatives in Turkey.
That’s why, we support the AK Party’s efforts to improve its relations
with its neighbors and the Arabs,” said Hariri.
Asked about whether the European Union would open its doors to Turkey,
the premier said Lebanon supported Turkey’s EU aspirations.
“Through the reforms, Turkey proved that it is very serious and sincere
on the issue. The EU should respond to Turkey with a similar serious
and sincere way and open its doors to Turkey,” added Hariri.
Asked about whether he was thinking about acting as a mediator between
Armenia and Turkey since his country enjoyed friendly relations
with Armenia, Hariri said his visit’s primary goal was to improve
and strengthen the relations between Lebanon and Turkey and also
expressed the hope that all of the disagreements and problems in the
region would be resolved in a way that would contribute to peace.
In reply to a question concerning the U.S.-led Middle East Initiative,
Hariri said he opposed the fact that the United States launched such
an initiative without asking the peoples of the region.
The Lebanese premier is known to oppose the U.S.-led initiative.
“None of us are against democracy, reforms and freedoms but all of
them should be done in accordance with our own will and peoples’
expectations and interests. The power that will determine the future
of a region is the people of that region,” said Hariri.
Asked about the inhuman treatment in Iraq, the premier said the Arabic
world was shocked by the brutal torture against the Iraqi captives
and condemned the torture.
Hariri went on to say that the methods adopted by Britain and the
United States were not enough to control Iraq and said: “There is no
need for more troops or weapons. The only thing that Iraq needs is
a political solution.”
Hariri said that the United Nations should play a major role in the
transfer of Iraqi administration to the Iraqis and formation of a
political structure and should support the efforts to establish a
new government.
The Lebanese premier said that Arabic countries were in contact with
the big states and friendly countries for a solution that would help
Iraq’s stability and territorial integrity.

GEORGIAN INTERIOR MINISTER EXPECTED IN TSALKA TO GET FIRST-HAND
INFORMATION
ArmenPress
May 13 2004
TSALKA, MAY 13, ARMENPRESS: Georgia’s interior minister is expected
to travel to Tsalka, the region of a recent clash between Armenians
and Georgians, to get first-hand information. The clash occurred on
May 9 after a football match in the center of Tsalka, leaving some
10 people with different injuries.
A local A-Info news agency said Georgian law-enforces have opened a
criminal case into the accident. It said the tension has somewhat
diffused now, quoting also the chief of the local administration,
Razmik Hanesian, as saying that 150 servicemen of the interior
ministry, dispatched to the region, will remain for several more days.
Members of the Georgian community are still complaining that Armenians
are armed and that they fear new clashes, but the agency said it
is the Georgians who are armed, citing several incidents when they
terrorized Armenians by their guns.
Earlier Georgian president Mikheil Saakashvili said one should not
consider the fight between Georgians and ethnic Armenians in Tsalka as
an ethnic conflict. “I don’t want to dramatize the situation. This is
not an inter-ethnic conflict. It was a common fight between Georgians
and Armenians. But we will not allow violation of law and order and
we are not going to be involved in a provocation,” he said.

Conference on Russia-Armenia cooperation opens in Samara
By Lyudmila Yermakova
ITAR-TASS News Agency
May 12, 2004 Wednesday
MOSCOW, May 13 — The conference “Russian-Armenian inter-regional
cooperation: state and prospects” opens in the city of Samara, situated
in the middle reaches of the Volga River, Tass learnt on Wednesday at
the Committee for CIS Affairs of the Russian parliament upper chamber.
The two parliaments decided to use “the regional factor” to improve
relations. Fifteen agreements are now operable between regions of
the two countries. It is also planned to discuss participation of an
Armenian delegation in a Petersburg economic forum which will be held
in June and where presentation of Armenia will be held.
Speaker of the Federation Council Sergei Mironov arrives on Thursday
in Samara to participate in the forum at the head of the Russian
delegation. The Armenian delegation is led by speaker of the National
Assembly Artur Bagdasaryan.
According to a Tass dispatch from Yerevan, the Armenian delegation also
includes representatives from all political forces in the republican
parliament as well as executives of several ministries and regions of
the country. The Armenian speaker plans to have meetings with Mironov,
executives of the Samara Region and members of the business community.
Mironov will also have his own, Russian programme. For instance he
will meet regional Governor Konstantin Titov and deputies to the
Samara legislative assembly and will visit the Volgaburmash company.
The forum will be held under the aegis of the Russian parliament
upper chamber and the Armenian parliament.

Yerevan, Teheran sign treaty on building gas pipeline
By Tigran Liloyan
ITAR-TASS News Agency
May 12, 2004 Wednesday
YEREVAN, May 13 — A basic treaty on construction of a gas pipeline
from Iran to Armenia will be signed in the Armenian capital on
Thursday. For this purpose, Iranian Oil and Gas Minister Bijan Zanganeh
arrives in Yerevan, Tass learnt on Thursday from press service head
of the Armenian Energy ministry Lusine Arutyunyan. The Iranian guest
will be received by President Robert Kocharyan and Prime Minister
Andranik Margaryan.
The project provides for laying down a 100-kilometer gas pipeline along
the Iranian territory and 41 kilometers in Armenia. The pipeline will
pump daily 1.5 million cubic meters of Turkmen gas. The approximate
cost of the project is 96 million U.S. dollars.
According to Armenian Energy Minister Armen Movsesyan, it is planned
to start construction within this year and to complete tentatively
in 2006.
The gas pipeline from Iran is to be built only to meet domestic needs
of Armenia, Kocharyan emphasized. According to the president, any
other direction of the pipeline, for instance to Europe, is not under
discussion, since this will raise problems for the republic. “We regard
this project as a serious question for Armenian energy security,”
the president underlined.
Besides, the republic is now building the second high-voltage power
transmission line which will, apart from boosting power flow to
Iran, be used for selling power, generated in Armenia, in exchange
for deliveries of Iranian gas. According to the president, “this is
profitable business”.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

Fener Greek Orthodox Patriarch: Peace Should Be Everybody’s Target
Anadolu Agency
May 13 2004
MARDIN – Peace should be everybody’s target, Fener Greek Orthodox
Patriarch Bartholomew said on Thursday.
A symposium on religions and peace in the light of Prophet Abraham
was held in southeastern Mardin province by Turkish Intercultural
Dialogue Platform.
Speaking in the symposium, Bartholomew said that human beings had to
be honest, fair and pacifist.
Bartholomew noted that they could see a few pacifists in today’s world.
Stating that terrorists killed people insolently, Bartholomew said,
”where are pacifists among all these agonies? We don’t have any
other remedy than working for peace. Let peace be our target.”
Ishak Haleva, the Chief Rabbi in Turkey, said that not only
similarities, but also differences among cultures should be underlined
and thus, everybody should protect all those features.
Haleva stated that thus, they should be an example for forthcoming
generations.
Mesrob Mutafian, the Patriarch of Armenians in Turkey, sent a message
to the symposium in which he wished that that meeting would contribute
to efforts to end wars and overcome violence.
Representatives of three monotheist religions sang hymns in the
symposium. Many religious personalities and 40 guests from 17 countries
attended the meeting.
Religious representatives later freed a pigeon.