High-tech stale of stalking in the 21st century
By Naush Boghossian, Staff Writer

Los Angeles Daily News, CA
Sept 4 2004

GLENDALE — A Glendale businessman faces stalking charges that allege
that he attached a cell phone with Global Positioning System technology
to his ex-girlfriend’s car so he could track her every move and show
up unexpectedly wherever she was.

In what authorities said was the first stalking case of its kind
in Los Angeles County, Ara Gabrielyan, 32, was charged Tuesday with
stalking and threatening over a six-month period to kill his former
girlfriend and himself.

Gabrielyan — who ran an Armenian CD and video specialty shop — is
suspected of using GPS technology to pinpoint her location so he could
arrange apparent chance encounters at the bookstore, at the airport,
even at her brother’s grave site.

“This is what I would consider stalking of the 21st century — the
utilization of technology to track a victim,” said Lt. Jon Perkins
of the Glendale Police Department.

After the unidentified 35-year-old woman broke off their nearly
two-year relationship, Gabrielyan would follow her by car, show up
at her doorstep and call her 30 to 100 times a day, she told police.

But it wasn’t until he started to bump into her at odd places that she
became suspicious. Gabrielyan would pop up when she was having coffee
at Barnes & Noble, picking up a friend at Los Angeles International
Airport and even visiting the cemetery. In all, police said, he bumped
into her at dozens of locations.

“It was an obsession, an obsession to the point where 24 hours a day
he had to know where she was, what she did, who she met and how she
carried out her daily routine,” Glendale police Sgt. Tom Lorenz said.

“She, like other stalking victims, feels violated and extremely
vulnerable — like they no longer have that sense of security in
their own home.”

Gabrielyan’s luck ran out, according to authorities, when his
ex-girlfriend spotted him under her car — apparently trying to change
the cellular-phone battery, which lasts about five days. He said he was
trying to fix some wires, but she called police, who found the phone.

Gabrielyan was arrested Sunday and is being held on $500,000 bail.

The technology, which in recent years has been used to keep track of
children, the elderly and even pets, would give Gabrielyan real-time
updates on her location every minute.

“The technology was designed with every good intention in the world,
but it was utilized for bad in this case,” Detective Mike Stilton said.

The situation is such a rarity that the District Attorney’s Office
has assigned a prosecutor who specializes in complex stalking and
threatening cases — including actress Catherine Zeta-Jones’ recent
stalking case.

The Police Department has 57 pages of documents outlining the woman’s
movements since Aug. 16 — which is when police believe Gabrielyan
placed the device on her car — including where she was and how long
she spent at a particular place.

Gabrielyan had purchased a Nextel phone device that has a motion switch
on it that turns itself on when it moves. As long as the device is
on, it transmits a signal every minute to the GPS satellite, which
in turn sends the location information to a computer.

Gabrielyan, who paid for a service to send him the information, would
then log on to a Web site to monitor her locations, police said.
Police are investigating where Gabrielyan purchased the device and
the tracking service.

He’s scheduled to be arraigned Wednesday on one count of stalking
and three counts of making criminal threats. If convicted, he could
be sentenced to a maximum of six years in state prison.

Given the fact that the prosecutor is from a special team, Gabrielyan,
who has been arrested once in a credit card fraud case but has not
yet been tried, will be assigned a special public defender.

Capt. Al Michelena of the Los Angeles Police Department said stalking
somebody using GPS technology is not something his department has
encountered.

“I think that would be a rare instance where a stalking suspect would
use that kind of technology, and now that this incident has happened
it’s certainly something to be aware of,” Michelena said.

GPS technology can be used for tracking purposes in California only
by law enforcement agencies, and in cars if the owner chooses to sign
up for a service such as OnStar. Owners of cars equipped with the
OnStar service, for example, are one button away from being located.

Erin McGee of the Cellular Telecommunications and Internet Association
said GPS is wonderful technology to maintain safety and security.

“I guess it’s use of the technology gone wrong,” she said. The
organization lobbies on behalf of the wireless industry.

Technologically sophisticated methods of stalking are on the rise,
said Tracy Bahm, director of the Stalking Resource Center at the
National Center for Victims of Crime, and they expect these types of
stalking cases to become commonplace in coming years.

“The concerns from our perspective is GPS is becoming more common,
smaller and smaller, cheaper and cheaper, and all these things make
it easier for a stalker to use it,” Bahm said. “We know of a handful
of cases throughout the nation and that tells me there’s a lot more
of it going on, but people who encounter it may not be reporting it.”
The group is also working to make sure each state’s laws cover stalking
by GPS.

If Gabrielyan had not been charged with felony stalking and
threatening, simply placing the GPS device under the car would have
been considered a misdemeanor, Lorenz said.

“This is sort of old technology coupled with new applications and the
law is trying to catch up to it,” said prosecutor Debra Archuleta,
the head of the stalking and threat assessment team.

The public needs to be aware of the reach of this technology and how
it can intrude on lives, law enforcement officials said.

“This particular case alerts the community and it alerts the public
to the extremes some people could go to to prey upon an innocent and
unsuspecting victim,” Perkins said. “What started out as a device to
help keep track of children has transitioned into a covert type of
device that’s used for wrongful purposes.”

Tri-Valley Herald, CA
Sept 4 2004

Health system expands coverage

ValleyCare volunteers work to improve health care in Azerbaijan
By Matt Carter, STAFF WRITER

PLEASANTON — When U.S. interests are at stake in odd corners of the
world, the “boots on the ground” aren’t always worn by soldiers.
Volunteers with ValleyCare Health System and the Alameda County
Department of Public Health have signed on to a four-year project to
improve health care in troubled Azerbaijan.

The predominantly Muslim nation of 7.9 million people is rich
in oil, but has been fragmented by war since the collapse of the
Soviet Union. Situated between Iran and Russia on the Caspian Sea,
Azerbaijan also is coping with environmental damage caused by oil
spills and pesticides.

A five-member delegation from the emerging nation arrives Sunday for
a week-long stay in the Valley, where they’ll see the latest medical
techniques and practices first hand.

Azerbaijan has an infant mortality rate of 82 deaths for every 1,000
live births — more than 10 times greater than the United States.
ValleyCare board member David Mertes of Livermore said the main goal
of the program is to improve health care for women of childbearing age,
newborns and children.

“While some of the program will impact (adult) men and older folks,
the priority issues are related to women of reproductive age,” Mertes
said. “Things such as ovarian cancer, breast cancer and cervical
cancer are very high on the list.”

ValleyCare has been involved in a similar project before, helping
doctors in Snezhinsk, Russia, provide better medical care.

The goals of that three-year program included creating jobs and
bettering living conditions for Russian nuclear weapons scientists,
in the hopes of reducing the likelihood that they’d leave home to
work for nations hostile to the United States.

Mertes said the “very successful” outcome of that project led to
another offer.

“A year or so went by, and we were contacted by the American
International Health Alliance, and asked if we were interested in a
project in Azerbaijan,”

Mertes said.

The Health Alliance, which administered a $750,000 Department of
Energy grant for the Snezhinsk project, is overseeing a U.S. Agency
for International Development grant of about $800,000 for work in
Azerbaijan.

“When we were approached again, I think it was because we had the
experience,” Mertes said. “They said this was their first program in
Azerbaijan, and they didn’t want to have a failure right off the bat.”

As was the case with Snezhinsk, most of the money is earmarked for
travel expenses. The goal of both programs is an exchange of expertise,
not the purchase of supplies and equipment.

“We have two criteria,” Mertes said. “Whatever is done must be of
a nature that it can continue after the project ends. It has to be
sustainable — not, ‘We leave after four years and it stops.’ Second,
it must be replicable in other cities.”

According to the CIA Fact Book, the average life expectancy in
Azerbaijan is 63. The CIA estimates that foreign firms plan to invest
some $60 billion in the country’s oil fields, but a dispute with
Armenia over the Nagorno-Karabakh region has slowed the country’s
development and created 800,000 refugees.

“Corruption is ubiquitous and the promise of widespread wealth
from Azerbaijan’s undeveloped petroleum resources remains largely
unfulfilled,” the book concludes.

Mertes and Mike Ranahan, a gynecologist affiliated with ValleyCare,
visited Azerbaijan’s capital, Baku, and another city, Ganca, in May.
In June, a delegation of five health care professionals from the East
Bay conducted a tour that included refugee camps surrounding Ganca.

In addition to Ranahan, the delegation included ValleyCare infectious
disease nurse Jessica Jordan and three Alameda County Public Health
employees: Marla Blagg, and doctors Tony Iton and James Steward.

Mertes said the information will flow both ways in the program,
and that ValleyCare’s volunteers expect to learn as well as teach.

Snezhinsk “was the first foray ValleyCare got into with international
stuff,” Mertes said. “We learned a lot about ourselves by looking at
how other people looked at the way we did things. You can’t do it
without asking yourself, ‘Why am I doing it this way?’ It’s really
valuable.”

While they are here, the group from Azerbaijan will tour ValleyCare
facilities in Livermore and Pleasanton, Highland Hospital in Oakland,
and the University of San Francisco Medical Center.

On Wednesday, the group — which includes Ganca’s vice mayor and the
minister of health for the region — will see an Oakland A’s game,
courtesy of Alameda County Supervisor Scott Haggerty.

Next Saturday, the group will meet with their American counterparts
and devise a work plan for achieving the program’s goals.

“During the course of the week, we’ll decide on specific things they
want to accomplish,” Mertes said, “and determine whether we can help
them achieve them.”

The Globe and Mail
Entertainment
Saturday, September 4, 2004 – Page R8

Armenian Lullabies

Hasmik Harutyunyan

with the Shoghaken Ensemble

Forget the don’t-you-cry stuff. This may one of the very few albums to
contain a lullaby based on an incident of genocide, and it’s a surpassingly
beautiful tune, with a serenity that stems as much from heart-sore
resignation as from a desire to get that wee one to sleep. Armenian women in
the villages where most of these tunes were gathered had hard lives and
little freedom, a condition that makes many of these folk lullabies sound
like the night’s bitter farewell to the privations of the day. Harutyunyan’s
voice has an earthy purity that’s just right for this music, which often
unfolds against little more than a wheezing flute introduction and a hushed
drone. — R. E.-G.

Central Asian and Southern Caucasus Freedom of Expression Network
(CASCFEN), Azerbaijan
Sept 4 2004

Newspapers published with blank front pages

…To protest planned arrival of Armenian officers to Azerbaijan

CASCFEN, Baku, 4 Sept 2004 — Today about two dozens of dailies were
published with blank front pages to protest planned arrival of
Armenian officers to participate in maneuvers to take place in
Azerbaijan within NATO “Partnership for Pease” Program on September
12, 2004. The decision was taken by 9 leading mass media heads a day
before and others were called to join an action. As a result other
popular dailies joined action too. Alongside with dailies Group of
Companies ANS (includes TV, Radio channels, news agency and several
magazines) suspended broadcasts between 10am to 11am and 04pm to 05pm
and is going to suspend it from 08pm to 09pm. Among those published
with blank front pages are most popular newspapers such as “Azadliq”,
“Yeni Musavat”, “Baki Khaber”, “Xeber.net”, “Baku Today”, “Ekspress”,
“Uc noqte”, “Iki sahil”, “Sharq”, “525-ci qezet”, “Ayna”,
“Mukhalifet”, “Olaylar”, Russian-language “Zerkalo”, “Ekho”, “Novoye
Vremya” and others. The electronic versions of these newspapers
published protest slogans on their web sites too.

The statement published on the papers on Sept 3 warned that if the
arrival of Armenians will not be prevented media outlets reserve the
right to broaden protest actions: “Depending on development of events
we reserve the right to broaden our protest activities even further
and to suspend our activity for longer term”.

Those joining protest consider arrival of Armenian officers to
Azerbaijan as a disrespect for the nation: “Letting the officers of
occupational forces into the training facilities of Azerbaijan,
letting them train together with our soldiers means disrespect
towards the military interests of the host country and playing with
the nerves of the Azerbaijan nation”.

“We think that admission of the Armenian forces to Baku is insult to
Azerbaijani nation, which lost thousands of its sons, aggravates a
political situation in the country, causes mass protest, and creates
ground for infringement of existing stability and unpredictable
negative consequences”, reads the statement.

The Statement of Protest by Mass Media of Azerbaijan

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

Equatorial Guinea officials to question Mark Thatcher, probe Armenian company over coup

Agence France Presse
Sept 4 2004

MALABO : A team of state prosecutors from Equatorial Guinea was to
leave Malabo for South Africa to question Mark Thatcher over his
alleged involvement in a complex bid to oust President Teodoro Obiang
Nguema, a government source said.

Another legal team from the tiny, oil-rich country on Africa’s west
coast was in Armenia to probe links between a local air transport
company and the same alleged coup plot, a judicial official said
Saturday.

Thatcher, 51, the millionaire son of former British prime minister
Margaret Thatcher, was arrested in a dawn raid on his luxury Cape
Town home on August 25 and charged with bankrolling a plot involving
mercenaries to oust Obiang, in power in Equatorial Guinea since 1979.

“A delegation from the public ministry led by Attorney General Jose Olo
Obono will on Saturday travel to South Africa” to question Thatcher,
said the source, who asked not to be named.

Government officials in Malabo last week told AFP that Malabo and
Pretoria were discussing the possibility of Equato-Guinean officials
interviewing Thatcher in South Africa.

Nineteen people accused of plotting to topple Obiang have been on trial
in Malabo since last month. Their trial was suspended indefinitely
on Tuesday to take into account new developments including the arrest
of Margaret Thatcher’s son in South Africa.

On August 27, a court in Zimbabwe absolved most of the 70 men on
trial there over the same alleged plot.

Press reports have implicated an international network of wealthy
businessmen in the alleged plot to oust Obiang, in exchange for which
they would be given a slice of Equatorial Guinea’s oil riches.

Thatcher is due in court in South Africa on November 25 to answer
charges he contributed 275,000 dollars (230,000 euros) to the plot,
whose alleged mastermind, Briton Simon Mann, is a friend and neighbour
in the plush Cape Town suburb of Constantia.

Mann, founder of the defunct mercenary outfit Executive Outcomes, was
found guilty of attempting to illegally purchase weapons in a Zimbabwe
court last week in connection with the conspiracy in Equatorial Guinea.

Meanwhile, the suspected leader of the 19 would-be coup makers on
trial in Malabo, South African businessman Nick du Toit — a former
business partner of Mann’s — has told a court here that he met with
Thatcher, but insisted their meeting was strictly business-related.

The focus of the Equato-Guinean investigators’ visit to Armenia
was a contract between the central Asian country’s Tiger Air and a
German company whose representative in Malabo, Gerhard Eugen Merz,
was among 15 foreigners arrested in Equatorial Guinea in March and
accused of plotting the coup, a legal official said here.

Merz died days after his arrest, officially from cerebral malaria,
but with rights groups saying he was tortured to death.

Among those arrested were the six Armenian air crew of an Antonov
cargo plane. All six have denied involvement in the alleged coup bid,
and told a court in Malabo that they had come to Equatorial Guinea to
work under contract to Merz’s company, which had leased their plane
and services.

The Antonov and its Armenian crew arrived in Equatorial Guinea in
January this year.

Between then and the discovery of the alleged coup plot in March
they made only one flight, on behalf of a company owned by du Toit,
who faces the death penalty for allegedly leading the coup bid.

Putin makes televised address to people of Russia

ITAR-TASS, Russia
Sept 4 2004

MOSCOW, September 4 (Itar-Tass) – President Vladimir Putin has
addressed the people of Russia on major radio and television channels
in the aftermath of the brutal hostage-taking in Beslan, North
Ossetia, that ended in the deaths of about 350 people.

Following is the full text of the address.

“A horrendous tragedy has befallen our country. We all of us deeply
suffered in the past few days, letting through our hearts all the
developments in the town of Beslan.

“It was not mere murderers whom we had to face; we encountered the
ones who had taken up arms against defenseless children.

“First and foremost, I would like to give the words of support to the
people who lost the dearest of all the treasures one can have –
children, family members, close friends. I share their grief with
them.

“I would like to ask you to recall all those who fell at the hands of
terrorists in the past few days.

“Russian history has had many tragic pages and has seen many tragic
events. We are living in a situation that took shape after the
disintegration of a giant state that turned out unviable in the
conditions of a rapidly changing world. But in spite of all the
difficulties, we managed to keep up the kernel of that giant and
called it the Russian Federation.

“We expected a change – a change for the better, but we found
ourselves unprepared for many of the things that came upon us. Why
did it happen?

“We are living in a transitional economy, which does not meet the
requirements or the level of development of society and its political
system. Internal conflicts and ethnic contradictions, so toughly
suppressed by the dominating ideology in the previous epoch, are
mounting now.

“Our attention to the issues of defense and security started
flagging, and we let corruption mute our judiciary and law
enforcement systems. Our country used to have a most potent system of
border defenses, and yet it became defenseless both in the West and
in the East virtually overnight.

“Creation of tangible border defenses will take years and billions of
rubles, but even there our performance could be more efficient if we
reacted timely and professionally.

“I must admit that we did not give a close look to the processes
unfolding in our own country and abroad, or anyway we failed to react
to them properly.

“We winked at our own weakness, and it is the weak who are always
beaten up. Some want to tear away saucy piece of our wealth, while
others help these aspirants in so doing. They still believe that
Russia poses a threat to them as a nuclear power. That is why this
threat must be eliminated, and terrorism is just another instrument
in implementing their designs.

“As I said, we encountered crises, revolts, and terrorist acts on
many occasions, but what happened this time is a terrorist crime, the
cruelty of which stands beyond precedence. This is not a challenge to
the President, Parliament, or cabinet of ministers; this is a
challenge to the entire Russian state and its people. This is
aggression against us.

“The terrorists believe they are stronger than ourselves, that their
cruelty will intimidate us, paralyze our will and degenerate our
society. Here we have a seeming alternative – to rebuff them or to
begin obeying their orders. The second means to give in and to let
them partition Russia in a hope that they will somehow let us alone.

“As President of the Russian state, a person who gave an oath to
defend the nation and its territorial integrity, and last but not
least, as a Russian citizen, I am confident that we have no such
alternative.

“The moment we give in to their blackmail and succumb to panic, we
will plunge millions of people into an endless chain of bloodletting
conflicts, like Karabakh [an enclave of Azerbaijan predominantly
populated by Armenians – Itar-Tass] or the Dniester region [a part of
Moldova that proclaimed itself independent in the early 1990’s –
Itar-Tass] or other tragedies of the kind. One cannot but see that
this is obvious.

“What we have on our hands is not the scattered acts of intimidation
or odd terrorist sorties. This is direct intervention on the part of
international terrorism in Russia. It is a total and full-blown war
that keeps claiming the lives of our compatriots.

“But world experience proves that such wars do not end quickly. Given
this situation, we cannot afford complacent treatment of it anymore.

“We must set up a much more efficient system of security and make
demands to our law enforcement system that its actions become
proportionate to the size of new threats.

“The main thing, however, is to mobilize the consciousness of the
nation in the face of a common threat. Events in other countries show
that terrorists get the most adequate responses in the places where
they run into the power of the state, on the one hand, and organized
and united civic society, on the other.

“Dear fellow countrymen,

The people who sent the terrorists to commit that utterly heinous
crime harbored a hope to set on our peoples to fight with one another
and unleash a bloody feud in Northern Caucasus.

“I would like to tell you the following in that connection.

“First, an expansive set of measures aimed at strengthening the
country’s unity will be prepared shortly.

“Second, I believe it is vital that we set up a new system of
interaction between the forces controlling situations in Northern
Caucasus.

“Third, we need a new efficient system of crisis management, based on
completely novel approaches to the activity of law enforcement
agencies.

“I would like make special stress on the intention to implement those
measures in strict conformity with the Constitution”.

“My dear friends, all of us are living through mournful and painful
hours now, and I would like to thank all of you for your
self-restraint and civic responsibility.

“We have always been stronger than them and will remain so. I mean
our morals, courage, and human solidarity. I saw it again this early
morning.

“Beslan is literally imbued with grief and pain, but people there
were so much caring for one another, so much cooperative.

“They were not afraid to risk their lives for the sake of others.
They remained real people even in the most inhumane conditions.

“It is hard to reconcile oneself with bitter losses, but the ordeal
has made us closer to one another and compelled us to reassess many
things. We must be together nowadays, because that is the only way to
defeat the enemy”.

Azer Tag, Azerbaijan State Info Agency
Sept 4 2004

FOREIGN MINISTER TO VISIT ITALY
[September 04, 2004, 23:28:33]

Minister of Foreign Affairs of Azerbaijan Elmar Mammadyarov will
leave for Italy on September 7. The goal of the visit is to negotiate
development of cooperation between the two countries in all spheres.
Italy has also concern in that, and I hope the negotiations will be
fruitful, he stated.

During the trip Minister Mammadyarov is expected to meet with his
Italian counterpart and other officials.

***

Foreign Minister Elmar Mammadyarov also told AzerTAj that the peace
talks on Armenia-Azerbaijan conflict are on a due level so far,
and give a chance to hope for good result. The next meeting of the
two countries Presidents is expected during September 15 summit of
the CIS Heads of State in Astana, Kazakhstan. Reportedly, the OSCE
Minsk group co-chairs will also arrive in Astana and meet there with
President Ilham Aliyev.

Armenian Parliament speaker stressed broadening ties with Iran

Tehran Times
Sept 4 2004

MOSCOW (IRNA) — Armenian National Assembly Chairman Arthur Baqdasaryan
on Thursday called for further expansion of mutual cooperation between
his country and Iran in various areas.

In a meeting with Iran’s Ambassador to Yerevan, Ali-Reza Haqiqiyan,
Baqdasaryan said the forthcoming visit by Iran’s President Mohammad
Khatami to Armenia is considered as a significant factor to promote
bilateral ties.

He also attached significance to Iran-Armenia mutual cooperation,
parliamentary relations and further communication between parliamentary
friendship groups of the two countries.

The Iranian diplomat, for his part, attached significance to
Khatami’s visit to Yerevan and parliamentary cooperation between the
two countries.

“The Republic of Armenia enjoys special status in Iranian foreign
policy. Tehran calls for strengthening stability and security and
economy of Armenia, said Haqiqiyan.

President Mohammad Khatami is scheduled to pay an official visit to
the Republic of Armenia in near future.

Our earliest Pravasis
by Indrajit Hazra

Hindustan Times, India
Sept 5 2004

Long before the Kumars had moved into No. 42 or Bombay Dreams wowed
West End, an Armenian lady from the Mughal court of Jehangir in Agra
married William Hawkins, an English representative of the East India
Company in 1609. Two years later, they set sail towards Britain.
Unfortunately, Mariam was widowed before she reached her husband’s
land. But in between Hawkins’ death and Mariam’s arrival, she became
romantically involved with Gabriel Towerson, another Englishman
travelling on the ship. In London, the two married and lived happily
ever after — or, at least, till Towerson returned with Mariam to
India in 1617, after which their marriage went to pieces.

What is revealing is that in her three years in London, an Indian
married (twice) to an Englishman — something that in later centuries
may have been considered ‘inter-racial’ — did not evoke any adverse
comments. In fact, like Mariam, there were many other Indians who
noiselessly fitted into the cubbyholes of class and gender of British
— marrying Britons, keeping English servants, going to church. Like
the Cambridge-educated Guy Perron in Paul Scott’s Raj Quartet three
centuries later, who feels a great affinity with the Indian Hari
Kumar, who went to the same public school as he did, pre-Company and
Company Raj Britain was class driven in its interactions with
Indians.

Counterflows to Colonialism traces Indian responses to Britain and
the interactions of Indians with Britons in the latter’s ‘natural
habitat’ from 1600 to the year of the Sepoy Mutiny, a pivotal point
in the history of two cultures looking at each other. The book is
also about two other aspects of this gradually one-sided
cross-cultural exchange. Apart from providing rich streams of
narratives on the first Indian travellers to Britain and the ‘first
NRIs’, it also explores a much neglected part of British history —
the existence of a multicultural Britain that wasn’t just a
pluralising gesture of what a country should be, but what a country
was. Fisher also charts how self-perception changed for Indians as
the mirrors available for viewing oneself overwhelmingly started
carrying the ‘Made in England’ tag.

The lay reader learns that in the British-Indian matrix, Indians had
not always been objects of scrutiny but also observers and of the
outsiders-turned-colonisers. The first Indians to travel to Britain
were overwhelmingly seamen, slaves and servants — and wives of
Englishmen. (Exchanges between Indians and Arabs, Africans, Persians,
other Asians predate those with Britons, and the initial interactions
with Westerners were shared with the Dutch, the French and the
Danes.) Fisher delves into archival material to tell us what people
like Mariam, Catherine Bengall, John the Indian and many others faced
in a country that had not yet turned into the HQs of the British
Empire.

Perhaps the most rivetting portion of the book is the section that
deals with the Indians who went to vilayt to establish themselves as
teachers. One of the primary figures in this list was Mirza Abu Talib
Khan Isfahani who went to Britain during 1799-1802 intending to
establish a British government-sponsored Persian language training
institute. His writings, especially Masir Talibi fi Bilad Afranji,
detailing his experiences and judgments about British life was meant
for both Indian and European (Persian-reading) consumption.

The reason we know so little about the experience of early Indians
in Britain even at the archival level — especially when compared with
the mountains of archival, historical and popular material about the
British experience in India — may be pinpointed to one year: 1837.
Two years after Thomas Macaulay’s ‘Minute on Education’ (“a single
shelf of a good European library was worth the whole native
literature of India and Arabia”), the East India Company changed its
official language for administration from Persian to English.

Almost overnight, Company colleges at Haileybury and Addiscombe (and
at the shortlived Fort William College in Calcutta) changed the
status of Indian teachers in England and in India forever. Out went
the earlier ‘Orientalist’ approach as championed by the likes of Sir
William Jones, who believed the key to better trade and administer
was understanding and using the Indian languages and cultures.
Instead, there was the new ‘Anglicist’ approach to India, a
proto-Neocon strategy of ‘taming’ a land with British values.

Fisher’s immensely readable and scholarly book showcases the two-way
traffic that took place between two civilisations, and its gradual
mutation into a one-directional flow — that is, until Bollywood
started correcting matters somewhat.

Counterflows to Colonialism: Indian Travellers and Settlers in
Britain 1600-1857
By Michael H. Fisher
Permanent Black
Rs 795

EDITORIAL: Hostages to Putin’s rigid policy

Daily Times, Pakistan
Sept 5 2004

The gory images and footage coming out of the Middle School 1
in Beslan, North Ossetia, are deeply disturbing. They compel the
international community, especially the powerful countries of the
West, to look at where Russia might be headed under President Vladimir
Putin. Consider.

There is trouble all round in the Caucasus. While the conflict
was initially confined to Chechnya, it has now spilled over into
Ingushetia, parts of Daghestan and North Ossetia. The epicentre
of this trouble lies in the policies pursued by the Kremlin under
Mr Putin. Under Mr Boris Yeltsin Russia tried to extricate itself
from Chechnya in August 1996 through a deal clinched by Alexander
Lebed, Russia’s former security chief. However, after the Russian
withdrawal from Chechnya, no sustained effort was made by Moscow to
pursue the issue politically. The situation was further complicated by
violent events like the Moscow apartment bombings which the Kremlin
laid at the door of Chechen separatists. Mr Putin himself rode to
power on an agenda that, among other things, promised an end to the
Chechen problem in favour of the Russian Federation. In other words,
Mr Putin told his Russian voters that he would effectively put down
the separatists and bring Chechnya to heel.

This approach since early 2000 has guided Moscow’s Chechnya policy.
Mr Putin unleashed his army once again on the Chechens. In the last
four years Russian troops have committed hair-raising atrocities in
the region by attempting to kill off all able-bodied Chechen males.
While the West feebly objected to these violations initially, after
the events of September 11, 2001 Mr Putin got a virtual carte blanche
to put down the Chechens on the basis of his fallacious argument that
they were all linked with the international Islamist movement. The
Russian outrages have been well recorded by Amnesty International
and Human Rights Watch, among other organisations, as well as by
independent analysts within Russia. The frequency with which Chechen
widows have been mounting attacks on Russian targets also testifies
to the male genocide in the region by the Russian army and the level
of despondency felt by the Chechens.

The irony is that while Mr Putin tells the international community
that his fight against the Chechens is part of the world’s war on
terror and seeks international understanding for his actions there,
he, nonetheless, does not want the international community to mediate
the conflict because he considers it to be Russia’s “internal”
problem. The recent incident in Ossetia is essentially linked to
Chechnya. Mr Putin’s policies have caused such despair and sense
of outrage in the region that there appears nothing left for the
Chechens and Ingushetians except to give their own lives in order to
take Russian lives. On both sides, innocent people continue to die.
This is shameful and it has to come to an end.

Mr Putin has generally shown himself to be carrying the mantle of the
Tsars. Further south, he has picked up a row with Georgia in South
Ossetia because the Russian population in that region wants to break
away from Georgia and join North Ossetia. Mr Putin has also tried his
best since the mid-1990s to bring the Central Asia republics back into
a security arrangement with Moscow. He has supported Armenia against
Azerbaijan and has generally shown himself to be a tough, impassive
leader whose training as a KGB agent gives him a steely resolve to deal
with difficult issues with determination. But this misguided toughness
without the ability to make political compromises has now increasingly
resulted in tragedies, both in Russia and Chechnya. Russia’s Chechnya
problem requires immediate international response and mediation,
preferably under Chapter VII of the UN Charter. The world cannot
allow children, whether Chechen or Russian, to be held hostage to
the violence that has resulted from Moscow’s foolish policies. *