Category: News

ARKA News Agency
April 8 2004
Armenian opposition is not trustworthy – Rector of State Institute of
Theater and Cinema
Armenian intelligentsia calls to authorities and opposition to a
dialogue
The Secretary General of OACS is arriving in Armenia today with a
three-day official visit
The NKR Minister of Defense: the situation on the border line in NKR
is stable
OSCE Office in Yerevan condemns the attacks on the reporters during
the meeting of the opposition on April 5 in Yerevan
*********************************************************************
ARMENIAN OPPOSITION IS NOT TRUSTWORTHY – RECTOR OF STATE INSTITUTE OF
THEATER AND CINEMA
YEREVAN, April 8. /ARKA/. Armenian opposition is not trustworthy,
Rector of State Institute of Theater and Cinema Sos Sargsian stated
during the discussion organized by Dashnaktsutyun party. `Acting
president must remain at power, because opposition is not solid, does
not have joint ideology and program’, he said. Sargsian urged
Dashnaktsutyun party to become a mediator between authorities and
opposition for achievement of agreement and decrease of tension. L.D.
–0–
*********************************************************************
ARMENIAN INTELLIGENTSIA CALLS TO AUTHORITIES AND OPPOSITION TO A
DIALOGUE
YEREVAN, April 8. /ARKA/. ARF Dashnaktsutyun initiated today a
meeting `Public Harmony and Collision’ with participation of
representatives of intelligentsia. According to RA NA Speaker, the
Member of ARF D Supreme Body Vahan Hovhannisian, `we will try to
create bridges between political powers and intelligentsia and to
create the atmosphere that will stop tension in created situation’.
Representatives of intelligentsia in their turn called to authorities
and opposition to a dialogue. According to the Director of the Center
of Aesthetic Education of Armenia Genrich Igitian there is no other
alternative to dialogue. `We have to first of all think about future
of the country. We must not break our home from the inside’, he said.
Rector of State Institute of Theater and Cinema Sos Sargsian added
that `if Armenian fights against Armenian, it is the first sign of
losing the State system’. L.D. –0–
*********************************************************************
THE SECRETARY GENERAL OF OACS IS ARRIVING IN ARMENIA TODAY WITH A
THREE-DAY OFFICIAL VISIT
YEREVAN, April 8. /ARKA/. The Secretary General of the Organization
for Agreement on Collective Security (OACS) Nikolai Bordiuzha is
arriving in Armenia today with a three-day official visit. According
to the RA MFA Press Service Department, meetings with the RA
President, RA NA Chairman, the RA Ministers of Defense and Foreign
Affairs, and the Director of National Security Service and the Head
of police are planned. A.H. -0–
*********************************************************************
THE NKR MINISTER OF DEFENSE: THE SITUATION ON THE BORDER LINE IN NKR
IS STABLE
STEPANAKERT, April 8. /ARKA/. The situation on the border line in NKR
is stable, as Seiran Ohanian, the NKR Minister of Defense,
General-Lieutenant stated, according to ARKA reporter in Stepanakert.
Speaking of the present situation in the Army, the minister noted
that it has entered a new stage of development. He emphasized that
`constructions of ñîåðøåíñòóþòñÿ frontier, strengthening and
defensive, engineering importance are improved day by day, and the
level of readiness for military action of the army, technical
equipment of the army is high’. `The NKR Army of defense commits its
duties of motherland defenders well. The army keeps the situation
under control. The concepts of motherland and army are connected with
the frontier, where an Armenia soldier serves, and he is ready to
defend his motherland from any encroachments’, said Ohanian.
One of these days the NKR Ministry of Defense has invited a group of
reporters from Armenia to get acquainted with the life and
conditions, under which soldiers of defensive army serve. 27
reporters, who represented 10 TV companies, at the head of the RA
Minister of Defense Press Secretary Seiran Shakhsouvaryan visited
different military units and the frontiers units of NKR Army and got
acquainted with the life conditions of the Army on the spot. A.H.–
0–
*********************************************************************
OSCE OFFICE IN YEREVAN CONDEMNS THE ATTACKS ON THE REPORTERS DURING
THE MEETING OF THE OPPOSITION ON APRIL 5 IN YEREVAN
YEREVAN, April 8. /ARKA/. Valeri Priakhin, the Head of OSCE Office in
Yerevan condemned the attacks on the reporters during the meeting of
the opposition on April 5 in Yerevan. According to OSCE Yerevan
Office Press Service Department, Priakhin noted that any attack on a
reporter must be condemned, and the organizers of such activities
should be punished and legal proceedings should be instituted against
them. `I hope that the RA Government will keep its promise to take
certain measures against all this’, said Priakhin. He also expressed
profound anxiety about the arrests of the member of the political
council of Respublika opposition party, the Press-Secretary of the
party Souren Sourenyants. `OSCE Yerevan Office will carefully follow
the further events’, said Priakhin.
On April 5 during the meeting some of National Unity opposition party
TV cameras of some local TV companies were broken as well as photo
cameras of the reporters. The General Office of Public Prosecutor
instituted legal proceedings against Sourenyants in the morning of
the same day. He is accused of public appeals to change the
constitutional order by force, and offences addressed to the
Government. A.H. –0–

ArmenPress
April 8 2004
THREE ARMENIAN REGIONS SUPPLIED WITH MOBILE GYNECOLOGICAL STATIONS
YEREVAN, APRIL 8, ARMENPRESS: The Armenian office of the UN
Population Fund has supplied with mobile gynecological station the
Nansen hospital in Spitak region. The new equipment was provided
within the project “Improving Reproductive Health of Women, Men and
Children.” Similar equipment was provided to Ararat and Armavir
regions as well. Other regions are also considered to be equipped
with such stations when funds are available. The total station costs
30 000 USD. In addition to the station, 10 clinics in different
communities of Spitak have been provided with medical equipment of
first aid. Armenian humanitarian health center also provided with
medicine.
Representative of the Fund, Karen Dadurian, told that they aim to
improve nursing-gynecological services in the communities. The
traveling station will travel among various communities according to
a set timetable and provide free of charge services to the
population. The personnel is having a training course to apply
international standards in using the new technology.

PanArmenian Network, Armenia
April 8 2004
NEW MINISTER TO RESTART TALKS
Dismissal of Foreign Minister of Azerbaijan may affect the Karabakh
talks.
Elmar Mamedyarov is a career diplomat, 42 years old. He was born in
the village of Yadji, Ordubad region of Nakhichevan. His father is an
academician, director of the Institute of Biology. He has graduated
from Kiev’s Institute for International Relations, where Mikhail
Sahakashvili has also studied. Mamedyarov works in the MFA system
from 1992. He is close enough to Ilham Aliyev. He was appointed
Ambassador in Italy when Ilham Aliyev was in fact governing the
country. He stayed in Italy for half a year. He has never been noted
during his career in the MFA that is why his appointment seemed a
little bit strange.
/PanARMENIAN.Net/ The appointment was more unexpected because
Mamedyarov is not very aware of the process of Karabakh settlement
and. The pro-governmental Baku press says he has written few
analytical articles on Karabakh settlement and has had lectures on
this subject. However, it is not enough to carry negotiations. He has
worked neither with the Minsk group co-chairmen nor even with the
Azeri diplomats involved in the process. Thus, Mamedyarov’s
appointment will hardly be a good proof of the fact that Aliyev
really wants to restart the talks. The leader of the National Front
Party of Azerbaijan Ali Kerimli said recently that Mamedyarov would
not have any political weight and the foreign policy would be totally
conducted by Ilham Aliyev personally. Evidently, he is right.
We shall note that the former Minister was dismissed immediately
after the regional visit of the US Deputy Secretary of State Richard
Armitage. The observers in Baku presume that while being the
Councilor of the Azerbaijani Embassy in the U.S., Mamedyarov had had
certain contacts with him. So, they believe he is Armitage’s protégé.
Why did Ilham Aliyev dismiss Vilayat Guliyev? It should be noted that
Guliyev was appointed in 2000 when conclusion of an agreement on
Karabakh was being outlined. Then Heydar Aliyev needed an experienced
political figure on the post of the Foreign Minister who would be
able to prepare the public opinion in favor of the agreement based on
Parisian principles. Guliyev matched very well. Now Baku carried out
a harsher political course and Ilham Aliyev does not want Guliyev any
more. Besides, an experienced political figure in the staff of a
President-beginner would be dangerous.
Dismissal of Guliyev was stipulated also by the backstage
confrontation of two commanding clans – the Nakhichevani group and
the clan of politicians and officials coming from Armenia and
Karabakh. Mamedyarov represents the Nakhichevani group, while
Guliyev’s origins are from Shoushi. The observers think that after
Guliyev’s dismissal the career of other officials coming from Armenia
– state Advisor to the President Idayat Orujev, Health Minister Ali
Insanov and Minister of Education Misir Mardanov will also suffer. At
the same, the positions of the informal leader of the Nakhichevani
clan, head of the president’s administration Ramiz Mehtiyev have
strengthened recently. He has become a power broker in the staff of
Ilham Aliyev.

Snapping a 3D picture of reality
by Erin Kandel
Washington Square News (New York University)
Onlookers mulling over Dave Krikorian’s three-picture exhibit, “Genesis
Embrace,” may feel as if they’re back in the heyday of Magic Eye images.
Viewers squint their eyes and shift their perspective, lean forward and
arch back. They scan Krikorian’s small black-and-white landscapes, which
line a wall of the Gulf and Western Gallery in the Tisch School of the
Arts, not in the hopes of deciphering hidden images, but to determine
whether the pictures are actually “real.”
“The worlds I create are confusing because I try to make them as
realistic as possible,” said Krikorian, a Tisch senior. “People look at
them, and they look again, and they’re still not sure if they’re real.
But they are kind of suspicious.”
Krikorian is part of a small core of Tisch students exploring the
avant-garde and potentially controversial role “computer-generated” – or
3D – imaging has found in the realm of contemporary photography.
Unlike the scores of “real” photography on display in Tisch’s Department
of Photography and Imaging’s latest Senior Exhibition (open through
April 17), Krikorian’s landscapes are the only “unreal” photographs –
wholly imaginary images created not with a camera, but a computer.
Thanks to advances in digital technology, “any image can be
manipulated,” Krikorian said, making it “impossible to tell by the
picture if an event ever really happened.”
At NYU, Krikorian enjoys a new freedom of expression, or rather,
non-expression, found in the ambiguous separation between photography
and 3D art. His exhibit in the Tisch gallery offers nothing – no
description, no sign on the wall – to distinguish that, unlike other
Tisch students’ traditional photography, his landscapes began as green
grid lines on a computer screen.
“In photography, all you can do is point a camera,” he said. “If you
make a mistake, it’s harder to fix. With my computer, I can do
absolutely anything. I can change anything.”
At the show’s opening on March 25, an attention-shy Krikorian admitted
he felt awkward pointing out to perplexed-looking viewers that his three
otherworldly-looking panoramas, picturing crumbling cottages in a forest
glen, suburban houses submerged in a flood, and a solitary window
emitting a bright stream of light onto an empty wood floor, took weeks
and sometimes months of tweaking, painting, texturizing and detailing in
a complex software program to achieve the most realistic-looking form he
was capable of.
Why not let viewers draw their own conclusions? Krikorian says.
“I think its cool when people can’t tell if my photographs are real or
not. I’m still pretty new at [3D art], so if I manage to convince
someone, even just for a moment, that my 3D image is real, I feel like
I’ve succeeded in some way,” he said.
But while realistic 3D imaging is a coveted feature of video games and
movie special effects, its place in modern photography is much more
complicated.
Critics of computer-generated photography say the art form cheapens
people’s ability to believe what they see in “real” pictures. Allowing
photography like Krikorian’s to be viewed with traditional photography,
they say, damages the camera’s ability to tell an honest story.
But Krikorian said the line between real and computer-generated
photography has already been blurred beyond recognition.
“There is already no way to tell what is true and what is not,” he said.
“Almost every picture in magazines and newspapers is already touched up
with computers. Nothing can be trusted.”
During Krikorian’s first two years at NYU, the Fresno, Calif. native
struggled to find his “place” in the highly talented and competitive
pool of New York City photographers, before deciding he wasn’t “cut out
at making a living taking pictures.” Disillusioned with his curriculum
and lacking a career path, Krikorian moved to computer graphics in fall
2002.
His background in traditional photography has helped him hurdle a
“high-learning curve” and support his transition into the
fast-developing world of 3D art, he said.
“The transition was actually very natural,” he said. “Photography helped
me understand how light works, how it interacts with objects. I imagine
the lights, surfaces and cameras in a 3D scene as if they were truly
photographic, and that really helps make my computer-generated images
look more believable.”
There are still times when form wins over content. In the months leading
up to his senior exhibition, Krikorian had to abandon his favorite
project – an image of Baghdad destroyed and partially converted into an
oil field – because he didn’t “buy it.”
“It looked too fake to me,” he said, revealing a lingering annoyance.
“Sometimes the most idealistic concepts are the hardest to make a photo
out of.”
But the way his post-graduate plans are shaping up, Krikorian said his
ideological beliefs won’t impede his career as a 3D artist.
“I’d rather make a living than a statement,” Krikorian said.
And, no matter what his artist friends say, that does not make him a
“sell-out.” He said he hopes to get a job creating level design, the
interactive environments in video games, a craft that will require his
steadfast attention to computer-generated realism.
“Video games are the art form of the century,” Krikorian said with a
smile, and with all the sincerity of true a believer in the computer
generation.
# # #

The Daily Star, Lebanon
April 8 2004
Members of Iraqi boy band dream of Rock ‘n Roll fame
But with instability in country, their opportunities are even more
limited than during Saddam’s reign
By Borzou Daragahi
Special to The Daily Star
BAGHDAD: They’re young, cute and talented. After the fall of Saddam
Hussein, Western journalists swooned over Art Haroutunian, Nadeem
Hamid, Hassan Ali, Shant Zawar and Diar Delyar, the fun-loving
members the Iraqi boy band, Unknown to No One. They were invited to
England. They dreamed they’d soon see their names in lights, joining
the ranks of their idols: Wham!, Backstreet Boys, Boys to Men, West
Life and Michael Jackson.
Alas, Iraq’s bungled reconstruction effort and continuing instability
have put a damper on their rise. Despite its new freedoms and new
possibilities, the new era hasn’t made the pop life any easier, and
it’s brought plenty of disappointments, even for Baghdad’s jovial boy
band.
“Good things during Saddam’s time have turned bad while bad things
about the Saddam time have turned good,” says Haroutunian, the band’s
leader. “We don’t have to fear being summoned for military service or
hunted by the intelligence officers. But we fear terrorist bombings
and insecurity. Even though we have more money, there are no night
clubs and no entertainment.”
Indeed, the light-hearted band’s experiences since the toppling of
Saddam Hussein’s regime on April 9, 2003 encapsulates many of
post-war Iraq’s successes and failures.
The band members, who sing and speak perfect English, thought they
had paid their dues, trying to live out their Rock n Roll fantasies
under Saddam Hussein’s brutal dictatorship, where satellite dishes
were outlawed and Western music had to be smuggled into the country.
Once they wanted to get their song, Hey, Girl, on a radio station
controlled by Saddam Hussein’s son Odai, who was killed by American
troops in Mosul last summer. Keyboardist Haroutunian says they were
told no way, not even with payola, unless they came up with a
birthday song for Saddam Hussein.
They whipped something together: “Shining throught the times, Your
light never ends, You’re the one who helps us find the truth out of
lies, You’re the answer to all our hopes and dreams, Our love, our
lives to you we have have given, Our love, you bring, all bells let
them ring, As we all will sing, long live dear Saddam.” Odai’s radio
station aired the Saddam song on the hour for a week.
“Then our love song, they broadcast it only once, and that was it,”
says Haroutunian.
For Haroutunian, an Iraqi Christian, and his Sunni, Kurdish and
Shiite bandmates, the US invasion liberated them from tyranny. It was
time to party, or so they thought.
“My whole life I was living this lie and it was gone in a twinkle of
an eye,” Haroutunian said. “I laughed and cried. We celebrated.”
Indeed, the US invasion transformed Iraq’s pop landscape. Record
stores became filled with bootlegged copies of Britney Spears, 50
Cent and Christina Aguilera.
Satellite music channels began pumping out the latest Arab pop tunes
from Beirut and Cairo. The airwaves were flooded with America’s Radio
Sawa, with its mix of Western, Middle Eastern and even Indian hits.
Despite the flood of new entertainment, the band found opportunities
in the new Iraq even more limited than before. Just after the war,
they were invited to England by Channel 4. Promoters and media
descended on them, vowing to make them the next big thing.
But Iraq’s Foreign Ministry burned down after the war, and since the
boys didn’t have passports, they’ve been waiting a whole year to get
permission to leave the country. They’re stuck in Iraq until at least
June 30, Haroutunian says.
The band would have loved spending the last year in Baghdad putting
together a new album. From Now On, their first album, sold 2,000
copies at about $2 a piece. But the Baghdad music scene is even more
moribund than before. All the studios have cleared of their equipment
in fear of robbers.
“Nobody’s producing songs here,” Haroutunian.
Under Saddam Hussein, the boys tried in vain to find a venue in which
to perform live in Iraq. These days they wouldn’t dream of it. An
epidemic of violence has shaken the country, says guitarist Ali. “Who
will risk his life and go watch an Iraqi boy band in a concert?” he
asks. “Nobody would do it.”
The post-war Iraq has even robbed Unknown to No One of the main
fringe benefits of being in a pop band. “All the parents keep their
girls locked up at home,” says singer Hamid, whose slim, tall figure
and bedroom eyes made him the band heartthrob before the war. “None
of us is getting lucky with the girls,” he says.
The band wanted to spend the past year sharpening their act, getting
tighter musically. But Iraq’s phone service was destroyed during the
war and full service has yet to be restored. Just arranging a
practice has become a complicated nightmare.
All of the boys are in their early 20s, except for Art, who’s 26, a
little gray for boy band stardom. But they remain hopeful.
“We have the ambition of becoming rock stars,” says Hamid. “It hasn’t
happened yet. But,” he takes a deep breath, “fingers crossed.”
;categ_id=4&article_id=1724

Azat Artsakh, Republic of Nagorno Karabakh (NKR)
April 8 2004
DEMOGRAPHIC DATA FOR JANUARY-MARCH 2004
Against the months January-March 2003 growth of birth rate was
registered in the region of Martouni (by 25 children), Hadrout (19
children), Shahoumian (9) and Shoushi (4). The birth rate dropped in
Stepanakert (19), the region of Askeran (17), Kashatagh (5) and
Martakert (3). In the months January-March 2004 the death rate in the
republic totaled 412 people, which has increased against the same
months of 2003 by 105 or 34.2 percent. Growth of death rate was
reported in all the regions of the republic. In the mentioned period
of the current year the natural growth of the population of the
Republic of Nagorni Karabakh totaled 57 people, having dropped against
last year by 62.4 percent or 95 people. In the months January-March of
2004 the number of the officially registered comers (including
internal migration) totaled 313 people, and 173 people left the
republic. The mechanical growth totaled 140 people which has increased
against the same period in 2003 by 79 people. In January-March 2004
163 marriages were recorded in the Republic of Nagorni Karabakh,
having increased against the same period in 2003 by 24.4 percent, and
the divorce rate formed 19, decreasing by 6 or 24 percent.
AA

Georgia on their mind
The west has once again thrown its weight behind a dictatorship to
guarantee oil supplies
The Guardian (UK)
April 1, 2004
By John Laughland in Batumi
In 1918, when Lord Balfour was foreign secretary, he said: “The only
thing which interests me in the Caucasus is the railway line which
delivers oil from Baku to Batumi. The natives can cut each other to
pieces for all I care.” Little has changed in world geopolitics since
the end of the first world war, when the Black Sea port of Batumi in
Georgia was briefly under British rule. Although an oil pipeline from
Baku to the Mediterranean port of Ceyhan in Turkey is planned, it will
take years to complete. When it is built, it will deliver oil
exclusively to the American market, but for the time being Caspian oil
still trundles across the Caucasus to Batumi in trains.
This is why, in Sunday’s partial rerun of last November’s
parliamentary elections, the world’s media concentrated exclusively on
the prickly relations between the Georgian capital, Tbilisi, and the
autonomous region of Adjara, of which Batumi is the capital. This is
in spite of the fact that Adjara, unlike Abkhazia and South Ossetia,
has never declared independence from Georgia. The standard- issue
media fairy-tale pits a democratically elected Georgian president,
Mikheil Saakashvili – who overthrew his predecessor Edward
Shevardnadze in a US-backed coup last November – opposing an
authoritarian regional leader in Adjara, Aslan Abashidze.
This is not how the Georgians see things. In an interview with a Dutch
magazine, Sandra Roelofs, the Dutch wife of the new Georgian president
and hence the new first lady of Georgia, explained that her husband
aspires to follow in the long tradition of strong Georgian leaders
“like Stalin and Beria”. Saakashvili started his march on Tbilisi last
November with a rally in front of the statue of Stalin in his
birthplace, Gori. Unfazed, the western media continue to chatter about
Saakashvili’s democratic credentials, even though his seizure of power
was consolidated with more than 95% of the vote in a poll in January,
and even though he said last week that he did not see the point of
having any opposition deputies in the national parliament.
In Sunday’s vote – for which final results are mysteriously still
unavailable – the government appears to have won nearly every
seat. Georgia is now effectively a one-party state, and Saakashvili
has even adopted his party flag as the national flag.
New world order enthusiasts have praised the nightly displays on
Georgian television of people being arrested and bundled off to prison
in handcuffs. The politics of envy and fear combine in an echo of
1930s Moscow, as Saakashvili’s anti-corruption campaign, egged on by
the west, allows the biggest gangsters in this gangster state to
eliminate their rivals.
History is repeating itself: it was on the back of an anti- corruption
campaign that Shevardnadze became first secretary of the Communist
party in Georgia in 1972. Following his stint as foreign minister of
the Soviet Union under Gorbachev, he returned to his former fiefdom,
which he ran as a brutal dictator from 1992 to 2003. He was as
assiduously lauded by the west then as his protege and successor is
now.
And as for the operetta “revolution” staged against Shevardnadze’s
regime last November, it has allowed a changing of the guard within an
unchanged power structure. Not only was Saakashvili minister of
justice under Shevardnadze, but the thuggish Zurab Zhvania, the prime
minister, had the same job under Shevardnadze, during which the worst
abuses of power (now denounced) occurred. The head of national
security is the same, and all the members of the former president’s
party have converted to the new president’s party. Shevardnadze’s old
party has disappeared.
That November’s “revolution of roses” was stage-managed by the
Americans has been admitted even by the new president himself, who has
said that his coup could not have succeeded without US help.
Abashidze also confirmed it on Saturday in Batumi, when he said that
his discussions with the American ambassador to Georgia, Richard
Miles, had convinced him that nothing can happen in the country
without a green light from Washington. Georgia, Russia’s backyard, and
the country used as a base by the Chechens, is now as thoroughly
controlled by the US as Panama – and for much the same reasons. As in
Central America, economic devastation has been the handmaiden of
political control, reducing what was previously the richest Soviet
republic to a miserable, pre-industrial subsistence.
As we know from Tony Blair’s visit to Libya, the west is happy to make
alliances with dictatorships if strategic interests dictate. Georgia
certainly qualifies on that score. And events in the Caucasus are
connected to events in Iraq. Because of the intensity of Iraqi
resistance to US and British occupation, oil is not flowing from there
as freely as had been hoped. Hence the imperative quickly to secure
other sources of cheap fuel for America’s gas-guzzlers. In Libya as in
Georgia, western support for dictators, in the name of strategy, may
be the oldest trick in the book. But it is also the most
short-sighted.
John Laughland is a trustee of the British Helsinki Human Rights Group
Copyright, Guardian Newspapers Limited, Apr 01, 2004

A1 Plus | 21:11:58 | 07-04-2004 | Politics |
NEW TIMES PARTY SLAMS VIOLENCE AGAINST MEDIA REPORTERS
New Times party came up with a statement on Wednesday condemning violence
committed against media representatives. The party blames the police of
turning blind eye to that.
“We think the law enforcement is fully responsible for increasingly
worsening situation. Any step that can lead to further aggravation of the
situation is unacceptable”, the statement says.
—

A1 Plus | 13:08:37 | 08-04-2004 | Official |
LETTER TO PRESIDENT
Dear President Robert Kocharyan,
We are writing to you to express our deep concern over the recent attack on
human rights defender Mikael Danielian. Human Rights Watch has worked
closely with Danielian for thirteen years and highly values his contribution
to defending human rights in Armenia. We fear that the attack was an attempt
to intimidate and silence Danielian, and to stop him from carrying out his
human rights work. {BR}
On March 30, 2004 at 9:00 a.m., four unknown men assaulted Danielian near
his house as he was returning home from walking his dog. They punched him
repeatedly to the head, and kicked him after he fell to the ground.
Danielian was taken to hospital, where he remained until April 2. He is now
recovering at home. He is remains very weak, finds it hard to walk, and is
suffering from headaches and dizziness.
Danielian believes that the attack was an act of retribution for his human
rights work. He told Human Rights Watch that he has been a source of
information for the international community regarding the growing protests
of the political opposition in Armenia. These protests relate to allegations
of widespread vote rigging in last year’s presidential elections, held in
February and March 2003, and to the Constitutional Court decision that
upheld the results, but suggested that a referendum be held within a year to
gauge public confidence in the president. Thus far, no referendum has been
planned.
Danielian also gave an interview to the Baku-based newspaper, Ekho, in which
he made statements sharply criticizing you. Shortly before the attack on
Danielian, local press in Armenia criticized him for these statements.
We welcome your public statement calling on the General Procurator to
investigate the attack on Danielian, and ask you to ensure that the
investigation will be carried out promptly and thoroughly. We are concerned
that as of April 3 no forensic medical examination had yet been carried out
on Danielian and call on you to ensure that such an examination be carried
out as soon as possible.
We remind you of your government’s international obligations to uphold the
rights of human rights defenders to carry out their work, and to ensure that
the right to freedom of expression is available to all people in Armenia.
Under the United Nations Declaration on the Right and Responsibility of
Individuals, Groups and Organs of Society to Promote and Protect Universally
Recognized Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms (Resolution 53/144), states
are called upon to take all necessary measures to ensure the protection of
human rights defenders. We ask that your government adhere to the letter and
spirit of the principles set out in the declaration in protecting all human
rights defenders in Armenia.
We thank you for your attention to our concerns.
Yours sincerely,
Rachel Denber,
Acting Executive Director
Europe and Central Asia Division

BC-RWANDA-GENOCIDE (FACTBOX)
FACTBOX-Genocides helped make 20th century bloodiest ever
GENEVA (Reuters) – U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan
Wednesday warned of another possible genocide in western Sudan
as he marked the tenth anniversary of the Rwandan genocide, in
which 800,000 people died.
The Hague-based International Criminal Court — the only
permanent global court capable of trying those accused of
genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity — said
genocide has helped make the 20th century the bloodiest in
history.
Below is a partial list of genocides — defined as the
systematic and planned extermination of a national, racial,
religious or ethnic group — plus acts of mass political
slaughter committed in the 20th century.
Armenian Genocide – 1915-1923: About 1.5 million killed
Former Soviet Union – 1918-1921, 1930-1938: About
100-200,000 Jews, five million Ukrainians, 14-15 million
peasants, and three million “enemies of the people” killed.
Holocaust – 1941-1945: Six million Jews killed plus 5
million others including Gypsies, Poles and homosexuals
Indonesia – 1965-1966, 1972, 1999: About 500,000 killed in
Indonesia; 200-300,000 killed in East Timor
Burundi – 1972: 100,000-200,000 Hutu killed in ethnic
violence
Cambodia – 1975-1979: One- to three million killed
Iraq – 1987-1988: About 100,000 Kurds killed
Bosnia – 1992-1995: About 200,000 killed
Rwanda – 1994: About 800,000 killed
Sudan – Ongoing: About two million killed since 1983
Congo – Ongoing: About 3.5 million killed in past four
years
NOTE: Sources: International Criminal Court,
REUTERS
Reut14:29 04-07-04