THE POWER OF OUTRAGE: THE BEST WEAPON AGAINST GENOCIDE IS NEGATIVE PUBLICITY
By Nicholas D. Kristof
Science & Theology News, MA
Aug. 10, 2006
POWER OF THE PRESS: Spreading the word about atrocities in Africa
can help save the people suffering there.
More than two years ago, on the Chad-Sudan border, I came across an
oasis where 30,000 people from Darfur had taken refuge. There was no
international aid available in that remote spot, so they were huddled
under trees, shell-shocked, trying to keep their children alive.
I went tree to tree and began interviewing. Under the first tree,
I found two brothers. One had been shot in the neck and in the jaw
– his jaw was mostly gone – and left for dead in a pile of corpses
that included his parents. His brother, shot only in the foot, had
managed to escape and had returned at night to bury his parents. But
then he found his brother was still alive, so he left his parents’
corpses and carried his brother – traveling only at night for safety –
on his back for 49 days to this oasis.
Under the next tree was a woman whose parents had been shot and then
thrown into the village well to poison it. The Janjaweed, an armed
Arab militia, tracked down the rest of her family several weeks later
and shot her husband in front of her. She had managed to escape with
her three small children and was trying to soothe their nightmares.
Under the third tree were two little orphans: a 4-year-old girl
carrying her 1-year-old brother on her back. The Janjaweed, before
their eyes, had killed their parents. Now they had only each other.
Under the fourth tree was Zahra, a woman whose husband had been
murdered in front of her. Her two small children were grabbed from her
and killed, and she and her two sisters were kidnapped and gang-raped
over the next three days. Finally, one sister was shot dead, and the
other had her throat cut. Zahra was merely mutilated on the leg to
stigmatize her forever as a rape victim, and then left naked in the
desert to find her tribe.
Those were the people under only the first four trees I visited.
There were trees in every direction, and several tens of thousands of
people with stories just like these, stories just as anguished and
heartbreaking. That was the moment I fully realized that what was
unfolding in Darfur was not just one more tragedy in a world full
of them, but a genocide on a substantial scale – and a challenge to
us all.
It fits neatly into the historical pattern. In 1915, Armenians were
being slaughtered by the Ottoman Turks, and president Woodrow Wilson
did not want to get involved. In the Holocaust, President Franklin
Roosevelt rejected pleas to try to bomb the rail lines leading to
death camps. During the Rwandan crisis, the Clinton administration
refused to use the word “genocide” for fear that then it might have
to do something. And over the last few years, President George W.
Bush has dithered as several hundred thousand people have been killed
in Darfur. What we have is a bipartisan and consistent record of
inhumanity.
“Never again” becomes more of the same
When I first began to write about Darfur in early 2004, it was
a bit before the 10-year anniversary of the Rwandan genocide. It
infuriated me to have somber memorials for the victims of Rwanda
without ever mentioning Darfur. We always say “never again” but then
define “again” so narrowly that it applies only to German National
Socialists named Hitler.
Likewise, since I am part Armenian, I was asked in 2005 to join in
the 90th-anniversary commemorations for the victims of Armenian
genocide. But what Armenians should have been doing was spending
less time remembering atrocities in 1915 and more time trying to
stop similar atrocities today. (More recently, they have been doing
just that.)
The best way to honor victims of past genocide isn’t to build museums
or hold memorials – or even to read indignant articles like this one –
but to stop the next genocide from happening. And that’s why we are
being tested in Darfur.
The origins of violence in Darfur
What happened in Darfur? Let me back up a moment and explain.
Darfur is the far western region of the African nation of Sudan. It
is mostly Muslim but divided between Arab and non-Arab tribes. That
distinction is overlaid by a racial distinction, for some Arabs have
lighter complexions than the people in the non-Arab tribes, who are
completely black. And there’s also the traditional tension between
herders and farmers, for the Arabs tend to be nomadic herdsmen while
the non-Arabs are mostly settled farmers.
These tensions have been exacerbated by competition for forage and
water, the spread of the Sahara Desert and rising Arab nationalism.
The Arab government of Sudan has sided firmly with the Arab tribes
of Darfur against the non-Arab tribes. Three black African tribes
in particular were increasingly pressured and made the subject of
violent raids: the Fur, Massalit and Zaghawa.
In early 2003, those three tribes banded together and launched an
incipient rebellion to demand better treatment and an end to the
violence against them. But the Sudanese government went nuts with the
rebellion. Sudan decided that the simplest counter-insurgency method
was to depopulate rural Darfur of those tribes by using the Janjaweed
militia. The government chose as head of the Janjaweed an Arab leader
who has been quoted as having expressed gratitude for “the necessary
weapons and ammunition to exterminate the African tribes in Darfur.”
It’s eerie now to travel in Darfur – you pass village after village
that has been burned out and empty. It’s strange as a reporter,
because when I see someone, my instinct is to run. And the other
person’s instinct is to run. It makes interviews rather difficult.
The Sudanese government claims that the killing in Darfur, while
tragic, is the result of tribal clashes and that the government is not
to blame. It’s much the same argument Turkey made about the slaughter
of Armenians, and it’s equally ludicrous. The Janjaweed was formed by
the Sudanese government, which also paid its salaries. The Janjaweed
wear Sudanese military uniforms, and the Sudanese army defers to it.
In November 2005, when I was in Darfur driving back from a massacre
site on the Kalma-Nyala highway, there were lots of soldiers about
– indeed, one soldier had jumped into my car. We passed a convoy
of Janjaweed, the same people who had just massacred children in
the village I had left. The Sudanese military paid no attention,
and didn’t stop them at checkpoints. In contrast, I was stopped and
grilled at every checkpoint.
Scariest of all, the Sudanese government thugs tried to detain my
interpreter at one checkpoint. He was from the Fur tribe, so they
told me to go on and leave him behind “for investigation.” He was
terrified, fearing he would be shot the moment I left. I refused to go,
and then they detained me as well. Frankly, if the Sudanese government
simply applied the same restrictions to the Janjaweed that they do
to foreign journalists, the genocide would be over in a moment.
The question of genocide
Is this genocide? Some are skeptical, because they say there’s no
effort to exterminate every last member of the African tribes. And
that’s true – in Darfur, men and boys are mostly killed, and young
women are frequently raped, but small children and old people are
often left alone. The Janjaweed often can’t be bothered to kill them.
Although we associate genocide with extermination, in fact that’s not
a requirement. The 1948 genocide convention defines genocide as “acts
committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national,
ethnic, racial or religious group, as such.”
There’s no doubt that is exactly what is happening in Darfur.
Why care about Darfur?
A larger question I’ve wrestled with is why this should be such a
priority. Frankly, the number killed in Darfur so far is relatively
modest – maybe 300,000 or 400,000 at this writing, and it has taken
several years to kill that many. In contrast, somewhere between 1
million and 3 million people die of malaria each year, so the death
toll from Darfur is easily within the margin of error of Africans who
die of malaria each year. And a mother whose child dies of malaria
is just as inconsolable as one whose child is heaved on a bonfire.
It may also be that we can get more bang for the buck by trying to
save lives elsewhere. For example, if our sole calculus is trying
to maximize the number of lives saved, we can probably do best by
supporting vaccination initiatives in Africa, buying mosquito nets
to fight malaria or establishing order in Congo – where more than 3
million people have died since 1998 in the most lethal conflict since
World War II.
I’ve covered lots of nasty things in my career. I’ve held babies
dying of malaria and malnutrition, and I’ve seen soldiers open fire
on pro-democracy protesters. And yet what I see in Darfur evokes
particular horror, precisely because it is genocide. When a government
chooses people on the basis of their tribe or skin color, and kills
or rapes them, that is an affront to all of us. It’s an insult to our
humanity. And the way we assert our own humanity is to stand up to it.
So, granted, we should do more to save children dying of malaria. We
should do much more to stop the heartbreak in Congo. But when children
die there, they are in a sense dying because of mosquitoes, and somehow
that is less of a breach of our common humanity than when children
are speared on bayonets in Darfur. That’s why the gas chambers evoke
particular horror, even though 6 million is not in itself such a
vast number – the number killed by malaria in about three years –
and why it’s particularly incumbent on us to stand up to it.
When inertia becomes deadly
What is truly astonishing is how little we do respond. President Bush,
like past presidents, initially mostly looked the other way. He
supplied substantial amounts of relief aid to keep people alive,
but did very little to stop the killing itself. That relief is hugely
important, but it remains deeply unsatisfying.
One Western woman aid worker told me about visiting an area where the
Janjaweed were still in control, and she met two African sisters who
were obviously traumatized. Finally, this aid worker managed to talk
to them on their own. They told how the Janjaweed soldiers had burst
into their home and forced them all to become their servants, cooking
for them, fetching water for them and sleeping with them. Finally,
after many days of this, the father worked up his courage and knelt
before the commander and begged him to please let his daughters go.
The commander laughed and summoned the daughters – and then cut off
the father’s head in front of them.
This aid worker felt utterly helpless because this was happening in
an area where the international community was present. These sisters
didn’t need food or bandages, but a forceful response.
Why don’t we do more than provide aid? One reason, I think, is a
failure on the part of the institution that I am part of: the news
media. We in the media have an inconsistent record. We gave lots
of coverage to the slaughter of Armenians, Biafrans and Bosnians,
but very little to Cambodians or Jews. The New York Times published
24,000 front-page stories during the Holocaust, according to Laurel
Leff’s book Buried By The Times. And of those front-page stories,
six referred to the attacks on Jews by the Nazis.
Darfur has again been failed, particularly by television. Throughout
all of 2005, CBS Evening News only gave two minutes of coverage to
Darfur. In contrast, the three major American broadcast networks –
NBC, ABC and CBS – gave an average of 28 minutes coverage to the
Michael Jackson trial during 2005. I wish that the trial had been
held in Darfur, so that genocide might have gotten some exposure.
Explaining America’s lack of action
My hunch is that the Bush administration has failed to respond more
satisfactorily to Darfur for three reasons in particular.
First, President Bush was worried to some degree about upsetting the
north-south agreement in Sudan, which ended a separate war in Sudan
that cost 2 million lives. That was a legitimate concern, and it was
magnified because the north-south agreement was a diplomatic triumph
for the administration. But ultimately, Darfur ended up risking the
north-south deal. The way to assure it is to stop genocide in Darfur,
not pretend the genocide doesn’t exist.
The second reason is that Sudan has genuinely furnished important
intelligence useful in the war on terrorism – and, awkwardly, the head
of Sudan’s intelligence agency has also helped oversee the genocide in
Darfur. Granted, our relationship with Sudan cannot be driven solely
by humanitarianism, but it also cannot turn a blind eye to genocide.
Finally, perhaps the most important reason for the lack of firm action
is that the White House just doesn’t know what to do. And that’s
the same problem that presidents have always had in such episodes –
there are no good solutions, so we end up doing nothing.
In the case of Africa, the reluctance to engage is accentuated by
memories of humanitarian intervention in Somalia that turned out
disastrously, and a feeling that Africa is always a mess and that
there’s nothing we can do to make it better.
This spring, public protests about Darfur increased around the
United States, and – presumably in part as a response – the Bush
administration became increasingly engaged with the issue. Bush pushed
U.N. and European leaders to pay attention to Darfur, and talked about
NATO taking action. Crucially, he also pushed hard to get a new peace
agreement between the Sudanese government and the rebels in Darfur, and
the result in early May was a tentative and fragile peace accord. It
was a ray of hope – Sudan pledged to disarm the Janjaweed – and it led
to more serious preparations for an eventual U.N. peacekeeping force
in Darfur. But there was also widespread skepticism because Sudan
had broken so many promises before, and because two rebel factions
did not sign on to the agreement. All that left the prospects quite
uncertain and Darfur as tense as ever.
Shaming those who slaughter
History suggests that the West made a classic mistake by thinking
that because it didn’t know just what to do, it shouldn’t even raise
the issue. Indeed, one of the striking things about genocide is how
ashamed governments are of it. The Nazis kept their extermination
policy top-secret, and the Turks still keep their genocide a secret.
Therefore, one of our obligations is to shine a spotlight on the
slaughter and call attention to it.
In the case of Darfur, whenever we have done that, the level of killing
has subsided to some degree. When the Asian tsunami came along in
December 2004 and focused attention elsewhere, Sudan promptly stepped
up the killing. One lesson from Darfur and other past genocides is
simply the importance of making a fuss – and using photos and other
intelligence – to embarrass the governments responsible. They do back
off, to some degree.
Another lesson is the importance of using force. Today, in the shadow
of Iraq, we tend to think of the limits of military intervention. But
just a few years ago, we were absorbing the opposite lesson. For all
the warnings of disaster, the Kosovo intervention went very well,
and the Serbs backed off in the face of an air campaign. Much the
same was true of the humanitarian intervention in Iraqi Kurdistan,
and the offshore American presence in Liberia. The British presence
in Sierra Leone and the international security force in Mozambique
were all absolutely crucial to bringing hope to those countries,
and the modest French force in Chad is one reason that Sudan has
not yet invaded and extended its genocide to all of that country,
though it has nibbled at the edges.
The danger is to get bogged down in all the policy measures that the
White House could take – smart sanctions, photo-ops at the White House,
a presidential envoy, a no-fly zone, consultations with Arabs and
Europeans, and so on. All those are important, but what is needed most
of all is simply outrage. If there is true outrage at the genocide,
then policymakers will find the tools to respond.
The fact is that politicians will always look the other way. It’s
easier. But strong citizen pressure can make a difference, partly
because there is no counter-argument – there is no constituency in
favor of genocide. It’s just a matter of overcoming the inertia of
the political system and the chronic obliviousness to suffering abroad.
Then genocide can be overcome.
Nicholas D. Kristof is a columnist for The New York Times. He won
the 2006 Pulitzer Prize for commentary, partly because of writings
about events in Darfur.

ARMENIAN FILM: EXAMINING ONE NATION’S IDENTITY
The Japan Times, Japan
Aug. 11, 2006
Seven films by directors from Armenia and its diaspora will be screened
as part of the “Armenian Film Selection,” taking place Aug.
11-12 and Aug. 19 at two Tokyo venues, Athenee Francais Cultural Center
in Chiyoda Ward and Uplink Factory in Shibuya. Four films — Harutyun
Khachatryan’s “Return to the Promised Land” and “Documentarist,”
“Mariam” by Edgar Baghdasaryan and “Lord have Mercy” by Vigen
Chaldranyan — will screen with English subtitles. Atom Egoyan’s
“Calendar” is an English-language film.
Arsinee Khanjian in “Calendar,” an Atom Egoyan-directed film showing
as part of “Armenian Film Selection” (C) EGO FILM ARTS
The son of Armenian refugees, Cairo-born, Canada-raised Egoyan shot
some of 1993’s “Calendar” (Aug. 11, 7 p.m., Aug. 12, 7 p.m., Aug. 19,
2:30 p.m) in Armenia, and examines the question of Armenian identity
through a man hired to photograph churches for a calendar. Egoyan
would go on to gain acclaim for 2002’s “Ararat.”
Sergei Parajanov’s experimental 1968 film “Color of Pomegranates”
(Aug. 12, 1: 40 p.m., Armenian with Japanese subtitles only), is a
unique work which has little dialogue and was filmed mostly using
stationary cameras.
Born in 1924 in Tbilisi, Georgia, to Armenian parents, Parajanov
lived an eventful life that included spells in gulags in the 1970s
on charges of “homosexuality and illegal trafficking of religious
icons” that were widely accepted as being trumped up by the Soviet
authorities. Made at a time when most films coming out of the USSR
were state propaganda, the dreamy “Color of Pomegranates” vividly
explores the art and poetry of Armenia by looking at the life of a
troubadour named Sayat Nova, played by Sofiko Chiareli, who also took
on five other roles — male and female — in the film.
In addition to the screenings, Mitsuyoshi Numano, a professor at the
University of Tokyo, will discuss Armenian literature and film after
the screening of “Documentarist” (3:30 p.m., Aug. 12).
Tickets per screening are 1,000 yen at the door (800 yen in advance
from Athenee Francais Cultural Center, near Ochanomizu Station on
the JR Sobu Line and Marunouchi Subway Line, and Uplink Factory,
a 10-minute walk from JR Shibuya Station).
For the complete schedule, visit yoshida_m/.

ANTI-CRIMINAL MOVEMENT GIVES A CHANCE TO THE CRIMINAL
Lragir.am
11 Aug 06
We have learned that the anti-criminal movement in Armenia is going
to have new expressions. The initiators of the movement are going to
set up a task force, which will study the data gathered by the task
forces of the movement, and will make its decision for every “prodigal
son”. In other words, some representatives of the criminal may get a
chance of pardon of the public. Hence, it will be rather useful for
the criminal to cooperate with the anti-criminal pact if it hands in
the pages of its own biography honestly. Unlike the Armenian Apostolic
Church, the pact provides for the mechanism of individual repentance,
as well as privacy of the confession. By the way, some members of the
Republican Party wished to join the task force, who are dissatisfied
with the developments inside and around the political party.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

ARMENIA-DIASPORA FORUM ENRICHES ONES AND IMPOVERISHES OTHERS
Lragir.am
11 Aug 06
The Lragir.am has learned that a group of Armenian Dashnaks from
Greece wanted to arrive in Armenia in September and take part in
the third Armenia-Diaspora Forum, however they encountered the real
nature of the Armenia-Diaspora relation long before arriving in
Yerevan. After reserving air tickets, the group of Greek Armenians
decided to reserve rooms in a hotel in Yerevan. All the hotels in
Yerevan told them that there were no vacant rooms. Certain people from
the organizational committee of the Armenia-Diaspora Forum offered
the group of Diasporan Armenians to stay at hotels near the capital
and informed them that they would have to pay as much as 5000 U.S. for
ten days, food not included. The group of Dashnak patriots, including
mainly elderly Diasporans, thought that a “5000 dollar worth forum”
is too expensive and gave up the idea of arriving in Armenia at all,
returning the air tickets they had reserved.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

IT IS NOT FAVORABLE FOR PEOPLE WHO RELY ON ARMENIA
James Hakobyan
Lragir.am
11 Aug 06
In Armenia a home political panic occurred, and the reflection of it is
not only the “maneuver” of the Republican Party. The exchange rate of
the dollar is perhaps a more vivid example of this panic. Of course,
when it is 40 degrees C outside, not only the dollars but also the
presidents on it would love to float, but it is impossible to float
all the time, for one can become tired and get drowned. And it is
not only impossible to swim all the time but also to remain in the
government. The elite in Armenia understood this, or part of this
elite. And the panic shows that they not only understood but also
understood everything may happen earlier than they could imagine. And
since it is not too late, they must use the possibilities of power. And
the exchange rate is one of these possibilities, maybe even the best
one. It is clear to a young child that with a low exchange rate of the
dollar one can buy a lot of dollars with fewer drams. It seems that
presently it is not favorable to buy dollars because it is growing
cheaper. On the other hand, it is not favorable for those people who
rely on Armenia, in other words, the citizens who do not have bank
accounts abroad and offshore companies. The same child would realize
that the government elite and big businessmen have such bank accounts
and companies. Consequently, they prefer the dollar to the dram. Hence,
by bringing down the exchange rate of the dollar they manage to buy
millions of dollars for a cheaper price at the expense of citizens,
who receive transfers, and tourists. It should be done as quickly as
possible, as long as they are in power. And they do.
However, they do this not only at the expense of citizens and
tourists. They accumulate millions at the expense of foreign projects
implemented in Armenia. These are implemented in dollars. It is clear
that in Armenia the dollar is exchanged for drams, consequently, the
cheaper they buy the dollars of Lincy, for instance or international
loan projects, the more they will buy. In fact, they are not worried
that the dropping exchange rate causes the costs of these projects
implemented in dollars to go up. For instance, if Lincy’s 60 million
dollars was calculated several years ago by an exchange rate, during
the implementation of the project, when the dollar amount comes to
Armenia, the exchange rate is quite different. With 60 million dollars
we deal with a difference of several million drams.
But we the citizens of Armenia deal with this difference. The
government does not have anything to do with it, the government is
concerned only about their own purse.
Especially that the sudden fluctuations and dropping of the exchange
rate of the dollar provides excellent conditions for maneuvers. The
point is that during implementation of Lincy or any big loan projects
some amount of money becomes “material for digestion”.
Therefore, the money is never enough for the projects. The evidence
to this is the first project of Lincy, when the volume of work was
reduced because the money was not enough. For instance, in Gyumri
high rises were built with fewer floors. Hence, the juggling of the
exchange rate of the dollar is an excellent way for the government
to justify the shortage of money. The exchange rate went down, day
by day, and the money of the project is not enough. Let them not give
more money, at least they will not demand account for the past.

MILLI MAJLIS TO DISCUSS ISSUES CONCERNING NAGORNO-KARABAKH
Author: J. Shakhverdiyev
TREND Information, Azerbaijan
Aug. 10, 2006
The issue to discuss the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict has been sounded
in the Parliament, the member of the Political Council of the Ruling
Party of Yeni Azerbaijan, the Chairman of the Permanent Commission
on Defense and Security Matters Aydin Mirzazadeh told Trend.
He pointed out that the Milli Majlis supports President Ilham Aliyev`s
existing position toward the Nagorno-Karabakh issue. “That is not
only the position of members of parliament from Yeni Azerbaijan
Party; this is the position of all the members of the parliament. The
President`s position sooner or later will bring us to the recovering
of our territories”, stated A. Mirzazadeh.
The MP pointed out that it was several times when there were
discussions concerning this issue in the Parliament. A. Mirzazadeh
underlined that both chairmen of parties and politicians not
representing in the Milli Majlis can take part in discussions devoted
to the Nagorno-Karabakh issue.

ECONOMIC INTERVENTION IS NECESSARY
Lragir.am
11 Aug 06
“The depreciation of the dollar is the result of certain forecasts
and I wouldn’t say that it is only an Armenian syndrome, on the other
hand, it is evident that the exchange rate of the dollar drops, but
there is no decline in prices,” announced Abgar Yeghoyan, the chair
of Protection of Consumers’ Rights NGO.
Abgar Yeghoyan thinks there is a problem of misuse of power and
inappropriate economic competition, which it may need to settle. In the
meantime, Abgar Yeghoyan endorses the use of public reserve funds and
trade intervention policy. “If the price of butter does not decline,
one may have only 20 tons of butter and sell it cheaply, the breaching
the cartel agreement. Similar levers were used in all the countries
where they wanted to establish the sphere of protection of the rights
of consumers.” And economic interventions take place in the financial
sphere. This is not happening, and the chair of Protection of Human
Rights NGO thinks that the government needs to think on this.

AIDS KILLED 91 In Armenia
ArmRadio.am
11.08.2006 16:10
91 lethal incomes of AIDS have been recorded in Armenia over 18 years
since the first case of the disease in Armenia, Arminfo reported.
According to the Republican HIV/AIDS Prevention Center, among the
victims were 18 women and 3 children. The first lethal income of AIDS
in Armenia was registered in 2001. The number of AIDS-infected has
sharply risen also this year. Since the beginning of the epidemic in
1988, 141 cases of AIDS were recorded.
Since the registration of the first HIV-AIDS infected patient, the
number of HIV-infected patients reached 420 people (96 women and 8
children). This year 51 new cases of HIV were fixed. Majority of women
(92.7%) were neither prostitutes nor drug addicts. They were infected
by their own husbands, who in their turn, got the infection in CIS,
particularly in Russia and Ukraine. 53.2% of the infected men are drug
addicts. The specialists of the Center say the official statistics
cannot display the real situation with HIV-AIDS in the country as
the real figures ten times exceed the official statistics.
According to the assessment of the Center’s personnel, there are over
3,000 HIV-infected people in Armenia.

POLISH PREMIER VISITS NAZI CAMP SITE IN RESPONSE TO GERMAN EXPELLEES’ EXHIBITION
TV Polonia, Warsaw
10 Aug 06
Presenter] And now about the Berlin exhibition that was opened to
the public today and that has been arousing enormous controversy
for a long time. The exhibition devoted to expulsions in Europe was
organized by the head of the German Expellees Association, Erika
Steinbach. Most Polish commentators feel that this is a successive
step leading towards the obliteration of the truth about World War II.
Prime Minister Jaroslaw Kaczynski broke-off his holiday today and
visited the German concentration camp site at Sztuthof [Polish:
Sztutowo – in northern Poland]. He said that he had done so in order
to recall who had been the aggressor and who had allowed this enormous
crime. Here is [reporter] Jacek Karnowski:
[Reporter] A successive exhibition, and successive controversies. The
expellees are taking care that the memory of their wrongs will remain
constantly alive. In Berlin, they are showing their fate alongside
that of other nations that have lost their homelands: Armenians,
Bosnians, Jews. There is also a lot about Poles – those who were
expelled from the East and from the Zamosc region.
[Erika Steinbach, head of the Expellees Association, with Polish
translation overlaid] I would also like this exhibition to be
visited by Poles. This would please me very much, we could talk
about everything.
[Reporter] The German expellees thus want to be perceived like other
victims of ethnic cleansing. And this is what arouses the greatest
fears. There is little room here for any indication of who was the
exclusive perpetrator of the wartime cataclysm.
[Jaroslaw Kaczynski, prime minister of the Republic of Poland]
There was an aggressor at the time, there was a state that admitted
enormous atrocities, there were authorities with wide social support
that decided on these atrocities and that planned them.
[Reporter] In reply to the exhibition, the prime minister today visited
the former camp at Sztuthof, a place where the Germans murdered 65,000
people. He paid homage to completely innocent victims, those who were
not aggressors but also those who resisted.
[Helga Hirsch, commentator, in German, with Polish translation
overlaid] There is no coincidence that the Polish prime minister
travelled today to Sztuthof. I can say that I am sad that Poles cling
so strongly to their stereotypes. We here perceive your suffering.
[Reporter] The Berlin exhibition is a testing ground. If it is
well-received, the road to the construction of the Centre Against
Expulsions will be considerably shortened, and then the expellees
will write their fate into the German identity on a lasting basis.
[Frank Herold, Berliner Zeitung journalist, in German, with Polish
translation overlaid] The subject of the expellees is not the main
problem in Germany, but the interest is indeed large. The expulsions
play a greater role in public debate than they did 10-15 years ago.
[Reporter] Erika Steinbach cannot in fact call herself an expellee. Her
parents occupied this house in Rumia [near Gdansk] after the outbreak
of war [in 1939]. Her father was a soldier in the Wehrmacht and her
mother was an official from Berlin. Despite this, she is close to
the success of her life – the construction of the centre.
[Professor Czeslaw Madajczyk, Polish Academy of Sciences] This is
also a bit of a test of the resistance of the Polish side – how far
such things will be accepted and how far not.
[Reporter] Small groups of German and Polish young people protested
against the exhibition. But the head of the German parliament turned
up at the opening. For some Poles, this is proof that the expellees
are successfully persuading the German elites to their point of view.
[Irena Lipowicz, expert on German affairs] This threatens to bring a
deviation from the very much tried and tested line of Polish-German
reconciliation that was commenced by the letter of the Polish bishops
to the German bishops [in 1965].
[Reporter] Sixty years after the war, we can thus see the beginnings
of a successive struggle for memory. This is why the authorities in
Warsaw are returning to the idea of calculating all Polish losses
from the wartime years.
[Krzysztof Olendzki, deputy minister of culture] The point is for us
to know how large was the scale of genocide, to become aware of this,
so that this can never happen again.
[Reporter] Contrary to announcements, the Polish-German treaty of
1990 was not shown at the exhibition in Berlin – this was the treaty
in which Berlin renounced its claims to its former [eastern] lands.

“SIDE INCOME” IN DRAM AMOUNTS
Lragir.am
11 Aug 06
The dropping exchange rate of the dollar brought about panic and
uncertainty among certain officials of Armenia. Their salaries are
naturally in drams. But the salary is not a source of income for them
but an alibi rather. They earn their living in dollars. “Side income”
is meant. We have learned that certain public officials decided to
take the “side income” in drams. However, our source has not found out
yet by which exchange rate they will calculate the “side income”. In
brief, this information proves the effectiveness of the policy of
revaluation of the dram.