http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/07/opinion/07fri2.html

March 7, 2008

Editorial

Dark Days in Armenia

The democracy that Armenians dreamed of during their long decades under Moscow’s yoke is slipping away. After opponents challenged last month’s flawed presidential election, the government imposed a brutal state of emergency. At least eight people are now dead, independent news outlets throttled and all protests silenced. President Bush and other Western leaders need to make clear to Armenia’s government that such behavior is unacceptable and will jeopardize future relations. Compared to post-Soviet tyrannies like Belarus or Uzbekistan, Armenia may not look so bad. That is why it is so important to halt this slide into authoritarianism before it is too late.

Official election results handed an overwhelming victory to the ruling party candidate, Serge Sargsyan. International monitors declared that while the overall outcome appeared fair, there were serious problems with the vote count. The protests that followed only turned violent after police began beating demonstrators.

Witnesses told our colleague, Sabrina Tavernise, that government authorities planted guns and grenades among the sleeping protestors last Saturday morning. Then, claiming that they were thwarting an attempted coup, police attacked the opposition camp. The next day, the outgoing president sent tanks into the streets, banned demonstrations and ordered Armenian news organizations to relay only information provided by his government. Local stations can no longer use the Armenian language programs produced by foreign broadcasters including the Voice of America and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty.

That drew an admirably strong protest from Washington’s Broadcasting Board of Governors, the independent federal agency that supervises these stations, while the State Department has expressed its concern over the death toll. Their words would carry more weight if President Bush added his voice. Armenia, embroiled in a lengthy standoff with neighboring Azerbaijan, is relatively isolated in its own region and especially values its good relations with the United States.

This is not a case of pure democratic virtue against pure authoritarian evil. The defeated opposition leader, Levon Ter-Petrossian, is a former president who in the 1990s sent armored cars into the streets to crush demonstrators protesting his electoral manipulations.

He insists, without credible evidence, that he won this election. And once government forces set off last weekend’s violence, some of those who turned out in Mr. Ter-Petrossian’s behalf seemed more interested in looting nearby shops. The main responsibility lies with Armenia’s government leaders, and it is to them that the White House must address its protests.

A day after the Turkish-language media harshly criticized celebrations in an historic Armenian town – now in Turkey -where locals ‘hanged’  killed Armenians after the latter hanged a Muslim leader in a play, English versions of dissenting voices are published in Turkey’s newspapers. In one of them, a Turkish columnist says that, “we are actually raising murderers.”

Image: Turkish children – from the audience – looking at an actor portraying a Muslim religous leader who was hanged by a group of Armenians. The Armenians later massacre women and children until they are stopped by the Turkish army that liberates Erzrum in a ceremonal play in central Turkey. “We are actually raising murders,” writes a Turkish columnist about the “celebration.”

The English translation of Mehmet Ali Birand’s column is in The Turkish Daily News, where the columnist writes the following:

[…] 

Supposedly, they had put on a representative play to prevent the young from forgetting the past. Eyes wide-opened in fear, small kids were watching drunk “Armenian militia” attack everybody, stab babies with bayonets and hanging the imam in punishment.

This must have been the worst-ever representative “reminder of history.” What is more, it was repeated year after year despite all objections. This year must have hit the zenith of bad taste. Once more supposedly, the objective is to raise some nationalist generations and to remind others of the bitter pages of the past

All it does is to indoctrinate young generations with grudges and to teach them to view Armenians as the enemy to be punished on sight.  This is the mentality that led to the murders of Hrant Dink, priest Santoro and the three people at the publishing house in Malatya.  We will never be able to save our young from the gangs that provide them with guns and incite them to murder as long as we continue to instill hostility in our youngsters.

There is no use in catching murderers and instigators and putting them in jail. Tomorrow, there will be others, for we infect those poor young brains with these primitive and inhumane ideas. The prime minister may talk of “brotherhood” as much as he wants to. Nothing will change as long as he overlooks such primitivism and does nothing to prevent it. He may be unaware of the fact that this is the very attitude that will gradually divide Turkey. The same youth that we now turn against Armenians will some day view all foreigners with hostility and will act out of the conviction that every “enemy” must be killed.

In other words, we are actually raising murderers. What is more, this nonsense is repeated every year despite all the negative criticism.

[…]  

This and other commentaries resonate with murdered Armenian journalist Hrant Dink’s wife’s statement that Turks should ask themselves how babies become murders. The conversation gets sick but more than real when photos of Turkish infants with real guns are circulated in the Internet by proud nationalist Turks.

These are the children who literaly use own blood to paint Turkey’s flagand children that can hardly be recovered. I would call these Turkish babies the stolen generations. And it is definitely time to stop the theft.

Minutes ago on ABC Live Hillary Clinton’s senior campaign adviser Kiki McLean said Mrs. Clinton would be ready on day one to be commander-in-chef. Then she corrected herself saying, “chief.” 🙂

Armenian opposition leader and former president Levon Ter-Petrosyan has written a column in the Washington Post charging the west with conformity and non-action in regards to alleged violations in the February 19, 2008, presidential vote in Armenia. The criticism of the west comes in the face of some claims that Petrosyan is sponsored by the United States for his “moderate” views.

At the end of the column the former president suggests that if the West doesn’t criticize Armenia’s authorities then the opposite of “peaceful and lawful means of political struggle” is inevitable.

Whether Ter-Petrosyan’s column is a violation of Armenia’s state of emergency that forbids political activity by the opposition and restrictions on the media will likely be asked.

Here is the entire column:

In Armenia‘s presidential election last month, I stood as the main opposition candidate against incumbent Prime Minister Serzh Sarkissian. The election followed a sadly familiar script: The regime harassed the opposition’s representatives, bribed and intimidated voters, stuffed ballot boxes, and systematically miscounted votes. Indeed, the rigging of the outcome did not begin on Feb. 19. For the duration of the campaign the country’s main medium of communication, television, which is tightly controlled by the regime, churned out propaganda that would have made Brezhnev-era Soviet propagandists blush in shame.

We in the opposition were angered by all of this but not surprised. What surprised and dismayed us was the deafening silence from the West. What dismayed us even more was the technical report of the observer mission from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, which rubber-stamped Sarkissian’s farcical claim of victory.

The people of Armenia, unlike the OSCE monitors, chose to see what happened at the polling stations. Naturally, they discounted Sarkissian’s claim and gathered to demand annulment of the results. They staged a continuous protest at Opera Square that became the most wonderful celebration of freedom and one that should be studied as an example of nonviolent, lawful resistance against illegitimate rule.

Deeply concerned that the ranks of protesters were swelling by the day, the regime decided early Saturday to resort to force. Riot police were ordered to disperse the crowd, detain the opposition leaders and put me under house arrest. After several hours, citizens reassembled at another site, demanding to see their leaders, but instead they encountered more riot police, later reinforced by units of the Armenian army, which was ordered to crush the protest. At least eight people were killed this weekend, and emergency rule has been declared.

How did we come to this? Why did the regime headed by outgoing President Robert Kocharianand “president-elect” Sarkissian think it could get away with using force against its own people? Surely the two men had their reasons, but the West’s signal, even if unintentional, that they did not have to worry about a strong international reaction was the most important one.

We in Armenia have been trying to understand the roots of such indifference to the rape of our democracy by the Kocharian-Sarkissian regime. The available evidence suggests two explanations: First, some influential organizations and actors in the West, and in Europe in particular, are naively wedded to the notion of positive reinforcement. They seem to think that praising small improvements, instead of criticizing major flaws, creates an incentive for good behavior. Anyone who has studied this regime closely, however, understands the absurdity of such an approach.

Second, and perhaps more important, is the oft-stated claim that the only people able to settle Armenia’s long-standing conflict over the Nagorno-Karabakh region will be leaders who are themselves from Nagorno-Karabakh — as Kocharian and Sarkissian are — and who are perceived domestically as hard-liners. This is analogous to the “only Nixon could go to China” logic. The problem is that despite being in power for the past 10 years, Kocharian and Sarkissian have done little to move the negotiating process forward. More important, any leader who must make consequential and difficult choices must have the trust of his people. Sarkissian does not have that trust. After what he and Kocharian did on March 1, he will not be able to govern here, let alone make difficult choices.

So what should be done? What do the people of Armenia expect from the West, and the United States in particular? At the very least, we expect a strong and unequivocal condemnation of the violence that occurred March 1 and a recognition that the government, not the opposition, bears responsibility. This condemnation should accompany a stern warning against continued persecution of the opposition and its leaders — mistreatment that is reaching unprecedented levels — as well as a demand to lift the restrictions on the media and restore the people’s rights to free assembly and unbiased information. We also expect a reassessment of the conduct of the election. Any serious reassessment will inevitably lead to the conclusion that a new election must be held.

If these steps are not taken, Armenians will draw two very undesirable conclusions: that peaceful and lawful means of political struggle are ineffective and pointless, and that the West cares about democracy only when it is politically expedient to do so. The West must do everything possible to dissuade Armenia’s citizens from reaching those conclusions.

Ditord, a tireless blog from Armenia that has been gaining record visits and comments, posts the names of all eight who were killed in the post-election clashes in Armenia. The blogger goes ahead to say that both the current administration and the opposition leader, former president Levon Ter-Petrosyan, are to blame for the dead.

If you have noticed, in the last several days I have simply shared information on the political unrest in Armenia – in an attempt to provide objective information in a very polarized environment. This has made people on both sides angry – including some friends. I have family members and friends who were protesting the elections but I also have friends who are government employees – making for me impossible to choose sides when the father and mother are fighting.

Nonetheless, I must say that I support the Armenian people’s strive for justice and liberty – values that are largely denied by the government and were exploited by the opposition leader – someone who I see as part of the same establishment in charge that needs a radical change. In other words, I do join Ditord in holding both the government and opposition leaders responsible for the violent clashes.

Having said this, we shouldn’t idealize the ordinary people on either side of the issue. Armenians need to start respecting each other – starting from the street. While the strive for justice should be legalized in a better legitimate and democratic government, such revolution should start in Armenian communities with mutual respect and tolerance for different views. 

One pro-Levon blogger left a comment at this blog suggesting that Armenians from Nagorno-Karabakh are not Armenians. Until this kind of thinking is radically diminished in our society, justice is a target too far from our path. So before changing Armenia, let’s start changing ourselves. One nation under one sky.

The BBC reports on a skirmish in the indigenous Armenian enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh, a de jureregion of Azerbaijan, that has left at least two Azeri soldiers dead after the latter, according to the Armenian side as reported by the Associated Press, captured an Armenian post and were soon kicked out.

Unfortunately, there is only one side of the story for the BBC which reports that “Azeri authorities told the BBC Armenia had provoked the clashes to divert attention from its domestic problems. ”

Whatever the case, there is no independent Azeri sources to read about the news – one of them, www.realazer.net being terminated and its editor sentenced to over ten years in jail, and most Armenian news websites still limited to providing official government information due to the temporary state of emergency.

Nonetheless, Day.az from Azerbaijan reports in Russian in its latest updateon the fight that Azeri authorities state they have “eliminated” 12 Armenian soldiers while only three Azeri soldiers became “martyrs.” The website of Armenia’s Foreign Ministry quotes Cabinet Minister Vartan Oskanyan as saying, “There are casualties. As of this moment, there is one injured from the Armenian side, and as the Azerbaijani press reported, two deaths from their side, and injuries too. These we can obviously not confirm.” Some Azeri users of a Day.az’s Russian-language Forum have suggested that Armenians may in fact have more casualties. Oskanyan, they suggest, may not release the information given the recent violent protests in the country.

Some of the Turkish media, including the nationalist Sabah and Hurriyet, have criticized yesterday’s celebration of the 90th anniversary of the Turkish “liberation” of the Armenian city of Erzurum. (An important part of Armenia’s historic homeland until the 1915 Genocide, there is not a single Armenian left in the city.)

The main part of the celebration includes a play in which drunken ‘Armenian bandits’ fire at a mosque, kill the Muslim leader and massacre women and children. Then, the Turkish army rescues the city and hangs the Armenians.

“Another important problem in these performances is casting. Nobody wants to be Armenian,” writes a Turkish acquaintance who shared the news in a mass e-mail. 

A column by Lisa Karpova in the Russian Pravda newspaper writes about the post-election protests in Armenia accusing “the empire” – an apparent reference to the United States – for the unrest in the tiny Republic and for supporting former president Levon Ter-Petrosyan:

Perhaps the empire just doesn’t get it. They need to re-examine their despicable, foolish and devious scheme to bring an orange scenario to an embattled, besieged Armenia. Under blockade by neighboring Turkey and Azerbaijan, Armenia continues to prosper despite some instances of corruption and economic isolation. Armenia is not fertile ground for any sort of orange scenario. Armenians are generally politically astute, pro-Russian and not easily swayed. They are also acutely aware of the fact that there is no future for them as vassals of the empire.

Armenian history is said to be 12,000 years old, and Mt. Ararat is the historic scene where Noah‘s Ark is said to have rested, a revered and treasured Armenian landmark. An archeologist’s dream come true, Armenia is a land of quaint churches and elaborately and meticulously carved khatchkars (Orthodox crosses).

Constant and reliable, the centuries old friendship and alliance with Russia is unshakable. Most Armenians are aware of the fact that there probably would be no Armenia if not for Russia. No plots or schemes by the empire are going to change that reality.

The empire also wins no friends among Armenians for its consistent policy of [Armenian] Genocide denial. These policies go beyond the geo-political considerations given as an excuse, such as the US base in occupied Western Armenia, under control of Turkey and their alliances with Armenian enemies Turkey, Israel and Azerbaijan. And then there are the oil pipelines…constructed to bypass Armenia, a country in a strategic position between east and west, a crossroads as it were.

As a result of the Armenian Genocide of 1894-1923, Armenians lost most of their homeland and over 1.5 million Armenians were murdered in the most horrendous and brutal fashion imaginable and unimaginable. To this day, no Nuremberg trials, no compensation or apology have occurred. Therefore, the memory of this tragedy in an ongoing issue of importance to Armenians.

In Armenia, Levon Ter-Petrosian is generally despised for his corrupt ruinous policies while President of Armenia. He is also despised for proffering the notion that the recently liberated Armenian land of Artsakh (Nagorno-Karabakh) should be returned to Azerbaijan. Artsakh is now an independent country. The US regime is financially backing Ter-Petrosian and causing trouble in the background. Ter-Petrosian had the strange idea that he had a snowball’s chance in hell of winning an election to be President. Fat chance. Now he sends agitators to do his bidding, a la Soros funding, all the best agitators money and the empire can buy.

[…] 

On March 1, 2008, Armenia’s President Robert Kocharian declared a 2-day state of emergency [not 2 but 20-day – Blogian] in compliance of article 55.6 of the RA (Republic of Armenia) Constitution (threat to state and population security). Fortunately, anti-terrorist, anti-orange scenario joint exercises were held by Armenia and Russia in anticipation of such occurrences. Meanwhile the empire is mouthing duplicitous, hypocritical words about “excessive use of force.”

[…]

Kocharian, throughout his term as President, has had a warm, brotherly relationship with his counterpart in Russia, Vladimir Putin. Like the outgoing president, Robert Kocharian, Mr. Sarkisyan is from Artsakh (Nagorno-Karabakh). Both men were commanders in the war.

Many people I have talked to believe the number of those killed in the post-election protests in Armenia is much higher than the reported nine.

And while police have released the names of only four who were killed, the list doesn’t include women. This is not in line with the widely-circulated rumor, and the photograph below, that a woman was run over by a police car.

Image: A woman, run over by the police, is said to have died while the incomplete list of the killed, released by the police, has only males. Photo from Fotolure via AlPlus’ Blog.

In the meantime, an announcement on the official website of Armenia’s police– summarizing a video appearance – claims that the first shots were fired by some of the protesters. Chief Gegham Petrosyan’s announcement in Armenian states in part:

[…]

As soldiers of the Armenian army approached the barricades, stones and sharp metals were thrown on them – gun was fired [on the soldiers].As a servant of the Armenian army it was impossible for me to imagine that an Armenian would shoot on an Armenian soldier…

We ended up with a pretty large number of wounded and stepped back. It was only at this time that it was ordered to arm the personnel with numbered weaponry.

[…] 

Interestingly, “the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) lays the blame for Saturday’s violence on the streets of Yerevan with both the authorities and supporters of the former president, Levon Ter-Petrossian.”  Neither the authorities nor the opposition agree with the statement – both blaming the other for unrest and illegal behavior.

And according to another rumor, Armenia’s spiritual leader – the Catholicos – has attempted to visit the former president to ask for reconciliation with the authorities. The Catholicos was, reportedly, turned away at Levon Ter-Petrosyan’s door.

Image: Soldiers shave in front an armored vehicle’s mirror in central Yerevan on March 3, 2008 as they patrol Armenia’s capital amid declared state of emergency after post-election protests left nine people dead. REUTERS/David Mdzinarishvili