Traitors, martyrs or just brave men?
By Robert Fisk
Gulf Times, Qatar
April 19 2006
LONDON: More than 15 years ago, I travelled to the Belgian city of
Ypres with an Irish friend. She was from a good Fine Gael family which
nursed a healthy disrespect for the amount of romantic green blossom
draped around Padraig Pearse’s neck for the militarily hopeless but
politically explosive Dublin Easter Rising of 1916. But she displayed
an equally admirable suspicion of British – or “English” as she would
have put it – intentions towards Ireland, north and south. Her mother
once recalled for me a British military raid on their home in County
Carlow. “I was a little girl and one of the soldiers patted me on
the head and I told him: ‘You keep your hands off me.'”
But at Ypres one evening, beneath the great Menin Gate – upon which
are carved the names of 54,896 World War I British soldiers whose
bodies were never found – my Irish friend faced a real political
challenge. She had noted, among those thousands, the names of
hundreds of young Irishmen who had died in British uniform while their
countrymen at home were fighting and dying in battle against the same
British Army. She looked at one of the names. “Why in God’s name,”
she asked, “was a boy from the Station House, Tralee, dying here in
the mud of Flanders?” And it was at this point that an elderly man
approached us and asked my Irish friend to sign the visitors’ book.
She looked at the British Army’s insignia on the memorial volume
with distaste. There was the British crown glimmering in the evening
light. And the Belgian firemen who nightly play the Last Post beneath
the gate were already taking position. There was not much time. But
my friend remembered the young man from Tralee. She thought about
her own small Catholic nation and its centuries of suffering and
she realised that the boy from Tralee had gone to fight – or so
he thought – for little Catholic Belgium. She decided to inscribe
the British Army’s book in the Irish language. “Do thiortha beaga,”
she wrote. “For little countries.” All this happened years before an
economically powerful and self-confident Irish Republic would face
up to the sacrifice its pre-independence soldiers made in British
uniform; the estimated 35,000 Irishmen who died in the 1914-18 war
wildly outnumber the few hundred who fought in the Easter Rising. The
total of dead, wounded and missing among Irish Protestants in the 36th
(Ulster) Division on the Somme and at Ypres came to 32,180. The same
statistics among soldiers of the 10th and 16th Irish Divisions –
most of them Catholics – amounted to 37,761.
My own father was to fight alongside the Irish on the Somme in 1918
although – a fact I used to keep quiet about when I was The Times’s
correspondent in Belfast in the early 1970s – he was originally sent to
Ireland in the aftermath of the Rising. I have a faded photograph of
Bill Fisk, then in the Cheshire Regiment, kissing the Blarney Stone,
and some pictures he took of the front gate of Victoria Barracks –
now Collins Barracks – in Cork, its stonework plastered with appeals
to Irishmen to join the British Army and fight for Catholic Belgium
and France. It was only when I was invited to give the annual Bloody
Sunday memorial lecture in Derry – the first Brit to be asked to honour
the memory of the 14 Catholics who were killed by the 1st Battalion,
the Parachute Regiment in 1972 – that I talked about my Dad’s fight
against Sinn Fein (whom he always called the “Shinners”). If Padraig
Pearse had not raised the flag over the Dublin Post office in Easter
Week of 1916, I told my audience, Bill Fisk might have been sent to
die in the first Battle of the Somme three months later – and his son
Robert would not exist. So did I owe my life to Pearse? I can already
hear that most polemical, visceral, poignant, absolutely infuriating,
brilliant and doggedly insulting Irish Times columnist Kevin Myers
bursting into fits of sarcastic laughter and carefully aimed fury at
such a remark. Kevin was among the first to hammer away at Ireland’s
shameful refusal to acknowledge the vast sacrifice of its sons in
the 1914-18 cauldron. And Kevin it has been, while foolishly taking
the Turkish line of denial of the Armenian genocide of 1915, who has
repeatedly tried to hack down the reputations of martyrs Pearse and
James Connolly and John MacBride – and Eamon de Valera, who escaped
execution because of his American passport – and present the Rising as
not only a military disaster but an unnecessary sacrifice of civilian
life and the first example of “green fascism”.
I don’t like the way the “fascist” label gets stuck on anyone we
dislike. Lefties used to call policemen fascists. And now we have
“Islamofascism” which effectively binds Mussolini to one of the
world’s great religions. No wonder we could draw those outrageous
cartoons of the Prophet with a bomb in his turban.
But I’m still not at all sure how to regard the men of 1916. The
very best book on the Rising – George Dangerfield’s magnificent The
Damnable Question – proves that the “rebels” (as my father called
them) were very brave as well as very dismissive of their own and
others’ lives. They were not to know the deviant way in which their
“blood sacrifice” – which was not exactly the first in Irish history
– would be adopted by later armed groups who sought their mandate in
blood shed before those 1916 British execution parties.
Had they not been so cruelly shot down as punishment for their armed
assault on British power, would they have been so honoured in the long,
dark, stagnant Ireland of the 1920s and 30s and then in the terrible
and much later years of the civil conflict in Northern Ireland? Do
you have to be a martyr to have honour?
I was much struck by this thought five years ago when I was searching
through the British National Archives at Kew for details of the
execution of a young Australian soldier in the British Army whom
my father was ordered to shoot at the end of World War I. Bill Fisk
refused, so another officer performed the dirty deed. But there in the
documents of British military executions – routinely filed under 1916
– were the names of Pearse and Connolly and McBride. The exemplary
punishment accorded to them and their comrades in Dublin turned Irish
public scorn to sympathy and admiration. But to the Brits, it was just
another act of military law, the shooting by firing squad of traitors
to the Crown – in just the same way as deserters, army murderers and
cowards were shot at dawn behind the trenches of France. The martyrs
of the Easter Rising suffered Western Front punishment.
And now Ireland’s minister for defence tells us the military Easter
Rising pomp in Dublin last weekend symbolised the end of the war in
the North. Maybe. But who will remember the boy from the Station House,
Tralee? – The Independent.

AKSU: AZERBAIJAN’S TERRITORIES REMAINING UNDER OCCUPATION POSES GREAT OBSTACLE TO STABILITY IN THE REGION
Azeri Press Agency, Azerbaijan
April 19 2006
Turkey’s Interior Minister Abdulkadir Aksu today started his visit
to Azerbaijan at the invitation of his Azerbaijani counterpart,
Colonel-General Ramil Usubov (APA).
Mr.Aksu visited the tomb of the then President Heydar Aliyev in the
Honorary Alley, Martyr’s Alley and the Alley of Turkish martyrs.
Following that, the two Interior Ministers had talks in the Interior
Ministry. Mr.Usubov said that Azerbaijan-Turkey relations are
developing in all spheres. The Azerbaijani Minister noted that the
relations between the Interior Ministries of the two countries were
established in 1992 and the ties are strengthening.
“These relationships should be further strengthened. We should unite
our efforts to fight against transnational organized crimes such
as terrorism, illegal arms and drug traffic, trafficking in human
beings, illegal migration, which poses a serious threat to stability,”
Usubov underlined.
The Minister also said that the meeting of Turkish, Azerbaijani and
Georgian Interior Ministers is intended to be held soon.
Turkish Minister said that this visit will promote deepening of the
cooperation relations between Azerbaijan and Turkey. Stressing the
importance of collaborating to fight transnational crimes, the visitor
proposed to conduct exchange of information between Azerbaijan and
Turkey in this field.
“Nagorno Garabagh or in general, 20 percent of Azerbaijan’s territories
remaining under occupation is unacceptable. This factor poses a great
obstacle to ensure stability in the region,” Mr.Aksu underlined.
The Ministers signed a document on cooperation between bodies of
interior affairs of Turkey and Azerbaijan.

AZERBAIJAN RECEIVES NO OFFICIAL PROPOSAL ON RESOLUTION OF NK CONFLICT FROM WASHINGTON – AZERI DEPUTY FM
Author: S.Agayeva
TREND Info, Azerbaijan
April 19 2006
Azerbaijan has not officially received from Washington proposals on the
resolution of the Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict over Nagorno-Karabakh,
Trend reports citing Araz Asimov, the Azerbaijani Deputy Foreign
Minister, as saying to journalists.
No document, or a project in form of new proposals, has been
presented to Azerbaijan. “They have only proposed concrete ideas
on the establishment of normal relationships with Armenia on the
completion of the military conflict,” he stressed.
The Deputy FM noted that the liberation of the Azerbaijani territory
will become the first step in the resolution of the conflict.
Azerbaijan does not support war. “We are interested in continuing peace
talks on the resolution of the problems,” the diplomat underlined.
Concerned on the frequent meetings of the OSCE Minsk Group co-chairs
the diplomat said he did not expect more progress from the meeting
of the settlement of the problem.
The OSCE Minsk Group co-chairs will visit Yerevan and after Baku.
“The key objective is to continue outlining the future steps upon
the meeting in Rambouillet,” Azimov underscored.

BAKU-SHUSHA ROUTE IS ONE OF PRIORITY DIRECTIONS FOR DEVELOPMENT OF TOURISM – SENIOR OFFICIAL OF TOURISM MINISTRY ASSURES
Author: R.Abdullayev
TREND Info, Azerbaijan
April 19 2006
The Baku-Shusha route is one of priority directions for development of
tourism, the statement was sounded by Faik Gurbanov, the head of the
Division on internal tourism development of the Azerbaijani Ministry
of Culture and Tourism, at a news conference held in Baku on 19 April
in connection with the opening of 5th jubilee international exhibition
‘Tourism and Traveling’.
The Ministry of Culture and Tourism has defined 6 directions for
development of tourism in Azerbaijan, including the Baku-Shusha
direction.
“Upon liberation of the lands from Armenian occupation this direction
will become a priority and there no doubt in this respect,” Gurbanov
underlined. A list of historic and culture monuments located in the
occupied territory of Azerbaijan has been compiled. However, possible
destruction of part of these monuments by Armenians excites deep alarm,
he warned.

ARMENIAN FM: “US PLANS TO BUILD NUCLEAR PLANT IN ARMENIA”
Today, Azerbaijan
April 19 2006
Vardan Oskanyan, Foreign Minister of Armenia, reportedly said: “Today
Americans are almost eager to build a new nuclear plant in Armenia.”
As Trend reports, in his interview published today Oskanyan said “there
was a time when they (Americans) didn’t even want to hear of it.”
“The USA is concerned in this issue, the US government discusses it
and, I suggest, we have a chance to replace our old nuclear plant
with a new one,” Minister said.
“As far as I know, the USA are going to solve regional problems through
constructing this new plant and thus are seriously thinking it over,”
Oskanyan added.
URL:

ARMENIA HAS SET THE GOAL TO JOIN TRANS-CASPIAN GAS PIPELINE AND ALREADY STARTED SERIOUS CONVERSATIONS WITH THE USA (VARDAN OSKANYAN)
Caucaz, Georgia
April 19 2006
Yerevan, 19 April 2006 (Trend.az- website) – Vardan Oskanyan, Armenian
Foreign Minister, said “Armenia has set the goal to join Trans-Caspian
gas pipeline and already started serious conversations with the USA.”
Trend reports with reference to Mediamaz agency that in his interview
published today in Armenian Aykakan Zhamanak, Oskanyan said the goal
of Trans-Caspian gas pipeline is “supply of gas from Central Asian
countries and Azerbaijan to Europe through our region”. “Standard
bearers in this program are the USA and the EU”, – minister said.
“In the event of the project execution Armenia will possess three
gas supply sources – from Russia, Iran and Central Asia”,- Oskanyan
stressed.
Alongside, the minister opined that sale of 5 power block at Razdan
head power plant to Russia would not adversely influence Armenian
policy in respect of power sources diversification.
“These facilities are located in Armenia and the owner is unable to
take them away. Moreover, these facilities are privatized or handed
over at very strict terms”, – Oskanyan said.

AZERBAIJANI LEADER TO MEET BUSH ON IRAN N-CRISIS
IranMania, Iran
April 19 2006
LONDON, April 19 (IranMania) – Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev will
hold talks next week at the White House with US President George W
Bush on the impasse over Iran’s nuclear program and other strategic
issues in the Caspian region, officials said Tuesday, according to AFP.
The Azerbaijani leader will travel to Washington on Tuesday for an
official visit Wednesday and Thursday, presidential spokesman Tair
Tagizade said.
Aliyev will also meet other US officials to discuss issues including
Iran, construction of oil and gas pipelines through Azerbaijan and
steps toward resolving Azerbaijan’s conflict with Armenia over the
enclave of Nagorno Karabakh, a diplomatic source in the president’s
office told AFP.
The oil-rich former Soviet republic of Azerbaijan sits on the northern
border of Iran and is seen as a potential staging post for a military
attack on the Islamic republic.
In addition to its interest in Azerbaijan’s oil and gas resources,
the United States has quietly provided military assistance to the
country in the form of upgrading naval vessels, training personnel
and building two powerful radar stations there.
US officials have said the assistance is not unusual and comes under
the heading of friendly bilateral US-Azerbaijani ties. Russia however
has kept a wary eye on the evolution of the US presence in Azerbaijan
and officials occasionally cite it as a source of regional tension.
Meanwhile, Azerbaijani authorities announced that Iranian Defense
Minister Mostafa Mohammad-Najar was scheduled to travel to Baku on
Wednesday for a three day visit.
The Iranian minister was due to hold talks with his Azerbaijani
counterpart, Safar Abiyev, and other officials, a defense ministry
spokesman said. No agreements were expected to be signed.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

FAREED ZAKARIA’S FOREIGN EXCHANGE PRGM: THE ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
Source: EurasiaNet.org
Foreign Exchange
April 14 2006
Show 215 Transcript – April 14, 2006
Americans are talking about immigration; we’ll get the international
perspective.
Hundreds of thousands died–was it genocide? Armenia says yes,
Turkey says no; we’ll take a look at a new film that tries to answer
the question.
And finally, will AIDS derail India’s economic future?
All this and more on Foreign Exchange…
[parts omitted]
In Focus: Genocide?
Fareed Zakaria: The word genocide did not exist until World War II
when it was used to describe Nazi atrocities toward the Jews. But
can something that took place well before the Nazis in a different
historical context still be called a genocide? For Armenia and Turkey
use of the word has been a source of deep debate. Historians have
established that hundreds of thousands of Armenians died due to
Turkey’s actions in the events during World War I; however Turkish
officials strongly reject the assertion that this was a genocide.
They argue that it was a tragedy of war in a war with many such
tragedies. A new film explores this complex history. Tune into PBS
stations this week to see more and now here’s a clip.
Speaker: As war broke out in August 1914 between Germany and Russia the
Turkish Empire had to decide what to do and [inaudible] particularly
wanted to join Germany and use the German alliance to expand the Empire
to the East. The major enemy for Turkey at that point was Russia and
their dream was to conquer the caucuses and Russia and Central Asia and
unite all the Turkey peoples of those lands in a grand Turkic Empire.
Speaker: In December 1914 led by their Minister of War, [Inaudible]
the Ottomans attacked Russia at Sarikamish along the Russian Border.
It was a strategic blunder; the Ottomans were overwhelmingly
defeated. Their hopes for a united empire were smashed. A few months
later as over 120,000 Russian troops advanced into the Empire their
ranks included a contingent of between 5,000 and 6,000 Armenian
soldiers; this Armenian contingent consisted of both Russian
Armenian conscripts and a smaller number of Ottoman Armenians who
had defected. Seeing their own Armenian subjects volunteering and
fighting for the enemy enraged the Turkish leaders; fearing that
still more of their subjects might join the enemy, they now saw the
Armenians of the Empire as a threat to the state.
Speaker: It was now in the wake of the disastrous loss at Sarikamish
that the CUP decided to disarm all the Armenian soldiers in the Ottoman
Army. They had decided that the Armenians were an unreliable group;
and Enver was blaming the Armenians for his loss at Sarikamish. And
then from disarming them they were thrown into labor battalions–that
is grunt work forces by which they were building roads, cleaning
latrines, and so forth, and were easily segregated, rounded up and
just massacred on mass.
Speaker: The massacres of the Armenian soldiers were the first stage
of the Armenian genocide but it was still just a beginning. The
International Association of Genocide Scholars affirms that over
1,000,000 Armenians died during the Armenian genocide. Other scholars
put the numbers as high as 1,500,000. The Turkish government today
denies that a genocide took place and has denied this historical fact
for nearly a century.
Speaker: In 1923 a new Turkish state, a new Turkish Republic was
created which really disconnected itself comprehensively from the
young Turks of 1915.
[Video Clip–News Clip] News Anchor: …impatient with former
methods, Anaturk banished ancient ways. Under Anaturk’s 15 year rule,
Constantinople was renamed Istanbul and became a westernized city
of modern well-planned buildings. Under his one-party government,
factories increased as the he industrialized Turkey. The social
revolution he accomplished was widespread. In everyway he emphasized
the change from the old Turkey to the new.
Speaker: What this new Turkish state then did was, it embarked on
an all-out program of westernization, adopting your western style
constitution, adopting secularism, dropping the old Arabic inspired
alphabet in favor of the Latin script, adopting western style
dress–costume, the civil code, everything; as a result Britain,
France, Germany–everybody else, they were now out to court this new
Turkey to try to become friends with it and the great powers did not
have any interest in pursuing the dirty matter of what had happened
in 1915. And all kinds of reasons like this made it undesirable for
the young republic to maintain an–an honest memory of what had been
done in 1915, and as a result you have an enormously constructed,
fabricated, manipulated national memory.
The “Dark Years” Armenians get 40% of their power from the Metsamor
nuclear power plant. The plant shut down for 8 years after a 1988
earthquake.
During this period “residents stripped the capital Yerevan of virtually
everything made of wood” to heat their homes.
;PHPSESSID=e4544675e99a6b12ad234131fef8346c
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

ASBAREZ ONLINE
TOP STORIES
04/20/2006
TO ACCESS PREVIOUS ASBAREZ ONLINE EDITIONS PLEASE VISIT OUR
WEBSITE AT <;HTTP://WWW.ASBAREZ. COM 1) US Envoy Steven Mann Meets with Armenian Leaders 2) ARF Bureau Member Says Recognition of Karabagh Should Be on Agenda 3) Armenian Church in Baku May Be Converted to Library 4) Turkey's Definition of 'Terror' Not in Line with European Council 1) US Envoy Steven Mann Meets with Armenian Leaders YEREVAN (RFE/RL)Steven Mann, Washington's chief Karabagh negotiator, met with Armenian leaders Thursday to discuss the Karabagh peace process on yet another visit to Yerevan. During their meeting, Mann and Armenian Foreign Minister Vartan Oskanian discussed "prospects for continuing negotiations" aimed at resolving the Karabagh conflict. Mann also met President Robert Kocharian later in the day. Mann will be in Baku on Friday to meet with Azeri President Ilham Aliyev about the latter's upcoming visit to Washington during which he will be received by President George W. Bush. The OSCE Minsk Group co-chairs, including Mann, have said that the flurry of diplomatic activity is aimed at arranging another meeting between the presidents of the two South Caucasus nations. French co-chair Bernard Fassier said they hope that Aliyev and Kocharian will meet in June or July at the latest. The planned Aliyev-Kocharian meeting may take place ahead of the Group of Eight summit in the Russian city of St. Petersburg scheduled for July. The United States, France, and Russia, which is chairing G8 for the first time this year, are all members of the group of rich nations. US Undersecretary of State Nicholas Burns said late Wednesday that Washington wants the conflicts in Karabagh and elsewhere in the former Soviet Union to be included on the summit agenda. "On the agenda we suggested today, for the first time, should be these...issues pertaining to conflicts very close to Russia's borders," Burns told a news briefing during a visit to Moscow. The formal G8 agenda proposed by Russia does not include a specific mention of the ex-Soviet conflicts. 2) ARF Bureau Member Says Recognition of Karabagh Should Be on Agenda YEREVAN (Combined Sources) - Armenian Revolutionary Federation (ARF) Bureau member and Parliament Vice Speaker Vahan Hovannisian spoke Thursday about the Karabagh conflict, Armenia-Russia relations, and domestic political developments. Speaking about Yerevan's position on the Karabagh conflict settlement, Hovannisian said that Yerevan is not going to make more concessions other than those already spelled out for years. "The statements Armenia makes to succeed in talks and show the country in a better light should not be confused with the final goal," Hovannisian said. "If Azerbaijan admits even once it recognizes the self-determination right of Nagorno Karabagh, it would be hard for it to take its words back later." "Today, the negotiations with Azerbaijan should not be the first issue on the agenda. Instead, the first item on the agenda should be the recognition of Karabagh--in any form--by the international community. This would make Azerbaijan go for more compromise." He added that presently not only the ARF but also state officials realize this. Referring to the latest gas deals with Russia, Hovannisian said that the political side of the deal was "really very obnoxious," but in terms of economics, the deal was the best solution currently possible. Speaking of the prospects of the political developments and the possible outcome of the parliamentary election due next year, Hovannisian said he was sure the ARF will be represented in Parliament. He predicted that next year's parliamentary election in Armenia will be "unusually tense," because they will take place less than a year before the next presidential election. Those that are keen to succeed President Robert Kocharian in 2008 will spare no effort to win the 2007 vote, he said, adding that the ARF will likely field its own presidential candidate. He warned that Armenia may suffer a setback in terms of its international image if these elections are not deemed democratic. Therefore, he said, the president, the parliament, and the government must guarantee free and fair elections. Hovannisian said his party stands prepared to fight against every form of election fraud. He said law-enforcers must make it clear that those who to try to rig the polls will not be forgiven. 3) Armenian Church in Baku May Be Converted to Library BAKU (Armenpress)The Azeri culture and tourism ministry is intending to turn Baku's Armenian Church into a library. "I think that turning the Armenian Church in Baku into a library is purposeful," APA news agency cited the minister Abulfaz Garaev as saying. According to Garaev, converting the church into a library would be the right thing to do, as there are not that many Christians in Azerbaijan. 4) Turkey's Definition of 'Terror' Not in Line with European Council ANKARA (Zaman/BIA)--The definition of "terror" in Turkey's Counter-terrorism Act (CTA) was not modified by its Cabinet, even though Turkish Justice Minister Cemil Cicek had said earlier said that it would be modified in line with the European Union Council decision. The CTA aims to boost the powers of the country's security forces in combating terrorism. Cicek said the condition of using "force and violence" was preserved in the draft that has been sent to Parliament. "In fact, it is impossible to commit terror crimes in many aspects without using force and violence. This point should be kept in mind when such acts are evaluated," said the minister. According to the information obtained, individuals chanting slogans in favor of terror organizations and carry their symbols can be sentenced to 1-3 years in prison. Cicek held a press conference after the cabinet meeting to inform that the CTA does not target ordinary citizens. The Minister explained the reason why the definition was not modified as follows: "The EU Council decision is only a suggestion. Besides, not everybody agrees on the EU's terror definition. We believe our definition contains all the necessary elements." Expectations that the CTA will bring an end to terror are wrong, he warned. Human rights activists are challenging the Anti-terror bill, which they say is "incompatible with human rights" and intends to revert to past suppression laws. They say the law restricts democratic rights in the country and punishes those who attempt to enjoy their rights in order to pursue their goals. Ayhan Bilgen, the Deputy Chairman of the Association for Human Rights and Solidarity with the Oppressed, said that he was seriously concerned about escalating violence in Turkey if the draft was passed in its present form by Parliament. "To adopt violence against violence serves no purpose but to strengthen violence" he said. "This is the kind of intervention that will stimulate the violence stemming from the Kurdish problem instead of focusing on the Kurdish issue and its reasons." Bilgen said the mentality behind the bill was "to punish activities that could be perceived as supporting armed groups in order to eradicate those groups, thus preventing that support." Bilgen added that both in the articles of the bill and its reasoning, freedom of expression, democratic struggle, and human rights activists were being held responsible and expected to pay for the failure of the security forces and intelligence organizations in conducting their duties. All subscription inquiries and changes must be made through the proper carrier and not Asbarez Online. ASBAREZ ONLINE does not transmit address changes and subscription requests. (c) 2006 ASBAREZ ONLINE. All Rights Reserved. ASBAREZ provides this news service to ARMENIAN NEWS NETWORK members for academic research or personal use only and may not be reproduced in or through mass media outlets.

Institute for War and Peace Reporting
Caucasus Reporting Service
Azerbaijan: Famous Medieval Cemetery Vanishes
IWPR reporter confirms that there is nothing left of the celebrated stone
crosses of Jugha.
By IWPR staff in Nakhichevan, Baku and Yerevan (CRS No. 336, 19-Apr-06)
Jugha Cemetery (13th-16th centuries)
Photographs from 1970s and 2006
View more…
It has become one of the most bitterly divisive issues in the Caucasus
– but up until now no one has been able to clear up the mystery
surrounding the fate of the famous medieval Christian cemetery of
Jugha in Azerbaijan.
The cemetery was regarded by Armenians as the biggest and most
precious repository of medieval headstones marked with crosses –
the Armenians call them “khachkars” – of which more than 2,000 were
still there in the late Eighties. Each elaborately carved tombstone
was a masterpiece of carving.
Armenians have said that the cemetery has been razed, comparing its
destruction to the demolition of two giant Buddha figures by the
Taleban in Afghanistan. Azerbaijan has hit back by accusing Armenia
of scaremongering, and of destroying Azerbaijani monuments on its
own territory.
Now an IWPR contributor has become the first journalist to visit
the site of the cemetery on Azerbaijan’s border with Iran – and has
confirmed that the graveyard has completely vanished.
The European Parliament, UNESCO and Britain’s House of Lords have
all taken an interest in the fate of the Jugha cemetery. A European
Parliament delegation is currently visiting the South Caucasus. But
so far none has been allowed to visit the site itself.
If international observers can confirm that the cemetery has been
razed, it is sure to spark a new high-voltage row between the two
countries, which have engaged in a bitter war of allegation and
counter-allegation since fighting ended in the Nagorny Karabkah
conflict in 1994.
The IWPR contributor was accompanied by two Azerbaijani security
service officers and was restricted in his movements. He was unable to
go right down to the River Araxes, the site of the former cemetery,
as it lies in a protected border zone. However, he was able to see
clearly that there was no cemetery there, merely bare ground. Nor
was there, as some Armenians have claimed, a military training ground.
He did manage to see a 20th century cemetery with Armenian tombstones
that lay untouched in a nearby village.
This is one of the most inaccessible parts of Europe, located in the
Azerbaijani exclave of Nakhichevan, which is surrounded by Armenia and
Iran and – because of the unresolved Armenian-Azerbaijani dispute –
is only accessible from the rest of Azerbaijan by air.
Old Julfa, or Jugha as it is known by the Armenians, sits on the
northern bank of the River Araxes which divides Nakhichevan from Iran.
According to Armenian and other historians, Julfa was a flourishing
Armenian town in the Middle Ages. But in 1604, Shah Abbas of Persia
forcibly resettled the inhabitants to Isfahan, where to this day
there is still an Armenian quarter known as New Julfa.
The ruined town and its cemetery remained, and were visited by a
number of travellers over the years. British Orientalist Sir William
Ouseley arrived in July 1812 and found “a city now in perfect decay”,
and the remains of what had been one of the most famous stone bridges
in the world.
He wrote, “I examined the principal remains of Julfa, where 45
Armenian families, apparently of the lowest class, constituted the
entire population.
“But of its former inhabitants, the multiplicity was sufficiently
evinced by the ample and crowded cemetery, situated on a bank
sloping towards the river, and covered with numerous rows of upright
tombstones, which when viewed at a little distance, resembled a
concourse of people or rather regiments of troops drawn up in close
order.”
Historian Argam Aivazian, the principal expert on the Armenian
monuments of Nakhichevan, said that Jugha was a unique monument of
medieval art and the largest Armenian cemetery in existence. There
were unique tombstones shaped like rams, a church and the remains
of a massive stone bridge. Nowhere else in the world, he said, was
there such a big concentration of thousands of khachkars in one place.
Aivazian last visited the site in 1987, when it was still mostly
intact, despite its poor upkeep during the Soviet period.
Artist Lusik Aguletsi, a Nakhichevan-born Armenian, also last visited
the cemetery in 1987, although she was under escort.
“There is nothing like it in Armenia,” she said. “It was a thrilling
sight. Two hills completely covered in khachkars. We weren’t allowed
to draw or photograph them.”
Armenian experts now accuse Azerbaijan of a deliberate act of cultural
vandalism.
“The destruction of the khachkars of Old Jugha means the destruction
of an entire phenomenon in the history of humanity, because they are
not only proof of the culture of the people who created them, they
are also symbols that tell us about a particular cultural epoch,”
said Hranush Kharatian, head of the Armenian government’s department
for national and religious minorities.
“On the entire territory of Nakhichevan there existed 27,000
monasteries, churches, khachkars, tombstones and other Armenian
monuments,” said Aivazian. “Today they have all been destroyed.”
Although the historical provenance of the cemetery is disputed
in Azerbaijan, its cultural importance is confirmed by the 1986
Azerbaijani book “The Architecture of Ancient and Early Medieval
Azerbaijan” by Davud Akhundov, which contains several photographs of
the cross-stones of Jugha.
In Akhundov’s book, the stones are said to be of Caucasian Albanian
origin, in line with the official theory taught in Azerbaijan that
the Christian monuments there are the work not of Armenians, but of
the Albanians. The Caucasian Albanians – a people unconnected with
Albania – lived in the south-eastern Caucasus but their culture began
to die out in the Middle Ages.
Nowadays, there is a village of some 500 inhabitants known as Gulistan
near where the cemetery used to lie. The climate is harsh and dry
and the houses are mostly built of wattle and daub and stones from
the river.
The local inhabitants are tight-lipped, denying there was ever an
Armenian cemetery here
“In some parts of Julfa there are historic Christian cemeteries,
but they are monuments of Caucasian Albania and have nothing to do
with Armenians,” said political scientist Zaur Ibragimli, who lives
in Julfa.
He added that there is a large Armenian cemetery and church, still
preserved, near the village of Salkhangaya.
Husein Shukuraliev, editor of the Julfa local newspaper Voice of
Araxes said the destruction of the cemetery began as early as 1828,
when Azerbaijan became part of the Russian empire. Thousands of
tombstones were then destroyed at the turn of the 20th century when
a railway was constructed, he said.
Safar Ashurov, a scholar with Azerbaijan’s Institute of Archaeology
and Ethnography disputed that the cemetery was Armenian, calling the
ram shapes an “element of exclusively Turkish Muslim grave art”.
However, two other witnesses told IWPR that there has been more recent
destruction of the cemetery – though it may have started much further
back than Armenians allege.
A man named Intigam who works repairing tin cans in Baku said he was
posted in Julfa with the Soviet army in 1988-89. At the end of 1989,
the radical Azerbaijani nationalist politician Nemat Panahov dismantled
the border-posts on Nakhichevan’s border with Iran. Intigam said that
part of the Julfa cemetery was destroyed at that time.
Panakhov himself declined to comment when contacted by IWPR, saying,
“Journalists always deceive me, and I don’t want anything more to do
with them.”
A second witness, who asked for his name not to be given, said that
there were khachkar stones on the site up until 2002, but they were
then removed on the orders of the Nakhichevan military command.
An Armenian architect, Arpiar Petrossian, told IWPR he visited the
Iranian side of the border in 1998 with a friend in order to look
at the monuments on that side. They also viewed the remains of the
bridge. Looking across the river into Azerbaijan, he said, they
noticed a flat-bed train apparently removing the cross-stones from
the cemetery.
Armenian deputy culture minister Gagik Gyurdjian said his government
raised the alarm in 1998.
“Then we got the entire international community up in arms and stopped
the destruction,” he told IWPR. “But in 2003 the destruction started
again. Many khachkars were buried under the earth, and the rest were
destroyed and thrown into the Araxes.”
In the last few months, the propaganda war over Jugha has reached
a new intensity – just as the latest round of Karabakh peace talks
between presidents Ilham Aliev and Robert Kocharian, held in February,
ran into trouble.
Azerbaijani president Aliev angrily denied Armenian allegations
about the Jugha cemetery last week, saying the claims were “a lie
and a provocation”.
International institutions are now demanding to be allowed to visit
the site of the cemetery. The European Parliament passed a resolution
in February condemning the destruction of the cemetery.
However, Azerbaijan said it would only accept a European parliamentary
delegation if it visited Armenian-controlled territory as well. Around
one seventh of what is internationally recognised as Azerbaijani
territory has been under Armenian control since the end of the
Karabakh conflict.
“We think that if a comprehensive approach is taken to the problems
that have been raised, it will be possible to study Christian monuments
on the territory of Azerbaijan, including in the Nakhichevan Autonomous
Republic,” said Azerbaijani foreign ministry spokesman Tahir Tagizade.
The Azerbaijani foreign ministry says old Muslim monuments have
disappeared from Armenia. In a statement, it said that at least
1,587 mosques and 23 madrassas had been destroyed in what was once
the Muslim-governed Yerevan Khanate – now part of Armenia. In the
Zangezur and Echmiadzin areas alone, more than 830 mosques have been
demolished, it said, adding that more than 500 Muslim cemeteries
have been destroyed within the territory of Armenia. The statement
did not specify when this destruction occurred.
Avetik Ishkhanian, president of Armenia’s Helsinki Committee, blames
the international community for not reacting sooner to the razing
of Jugha, contrasting the response with the outcry that followed the
Taleban’s demolition of the Buddhas of Bamian in 2001.
“Why has there not been the same reaction in this case?” asked
Ishkhanian. “At that time, world public attention was directed against
the Taleban regime, and this act of barbarism was used as a propaganda
weapon to launch military action against them.”
Reporting by Idrak Abbasov in Nakhichevan; Shahin Rzayev and Jasur
Mamedov in Baku; and Seda Muradian, Narine Avetian and Karine
Ter-Sahakian in Yerevan.