(New York, May 22, 2008) – As part of their investigation into yesterday’s assault of a leading human rights defender, the Armenian authorities should investigate the extent to which the victim’s human rights work was a motive for the attack, Human Rights Watch said today. Mikael Danielian, the Chairman of the Armenian Helsinki Association, was wounded by an air gun on May 21, 2008 in Yerevan, the country’s capital. Danielian was not seriously wounded.
“The circumstances of the attack on Mikael Danielian suggest that his prominence as a human rights defender was a motive,” said Holly Cartner, Europe and Central Asia director at Human Rights Watch. “Given this, the Armenian authorities must consider it as part of a thorough and objective investigation into the attack.”
Danielian told Human Rights Watch that at approximately 3 p.m. on May 21, in the afternoon he was riding in a taxi in downtown Yerevan with two of his colleagues. When the taxi stopped at a traffic light, a car pulled up behind the taxi and started to vigorously honk. A young man, Tigran Urikhanian, the former leader of the Armenian Progressive Party, got out of the honking car and approached the taxi. When Urikhanian recognized Danielian, he began swearing at him and allegedly punched him through the open car window. Danielian then got out of the taxi and he and Urikhanian engaged in a serious argument. Danielian then claims that, without warning, Urikhanian shot him with an air gun that fires highly compressed air and is sometimes carried for self defense in Armenia and other countries. Danielian sustained light wounds on his chest and neck, and was treated for a sharp increase in his blood pressure by an ambulance arriving on the scene.
Artur Sakunts, another human rights defender who arrived a few minutes after the altercation began, told Human Rights Watch that he witnessed Urikhanian verbally assault Danielian, calling him a spy and a “shame to Armenia,” because of his human rights work. Sakunts also witnessed Urikhanian and another man slap Danielian in the face again.
Following the incident, Danielian was immediately taken to the central police station, where he gave a statement. The investigator in the case ordered a medical forensic examination of Danielian, which was carried out on May 22.
Armenia faced a serious political and human rights crisis after the presidential elections of February 19, 2008. Armenian police used excessive force and violence to disperse peaceful demonstrators on Freedom Square in Yerevan in the early hours of March 1, while a violent clash between protesters and security forces later that evening left at least 10 people dead, including two security officials.
The Economist has an interesting article on an effort to push for a four-way, Armenian-Azeri-Georgian-Turkish dialogue, in the South Caucasus.
ON AN icy February morning a clutch of Turks and Armenians huddled in a hotel in Kars, with Turkish intelligence officials looking on. On May 14th their secret, a giant round of cheese, was unveiled in Gyumri, over the sealed border in Armenia. Under the label of “Caucasian cheese”, the yellow slab symbolises reconciliation between Turkey and Armenia, and across the Caucasus.
The idea of a regional “peace” cheese (Georgia and Azerbaijan are involved too) met suspicion when mooted a year ago, says Alin Ozinian of the Turkish Armenian Business Development Council. “We didn’t know how the authorities would react,” said Zeki Aydin, a Turkish cheese producer, who made the ten-hour trip from Kars to Gyumri via Georgia. “We want our borders to be reopened, good neighbourly ties, so we took a chance,” said Ilhan Koculu, a fellow cheesemaker.
Vefa Ferejova, an Azeri campaigning to bury the hatchet with Armenia, was also there, saying “We are told to hate Armenians: I will not.” Armenia and Azerbaijan are at loggerheads over Nagorno-Karabakh, a patch of land that Armenia wrested from Azerbaijan in the early 1990s. This prompted Turkey to seal its border (but not air links) with Armenia in 1993. American-brokered peace talks have failed, and Azerbaijan now threatens to resort to force.
Yet there are hopeful signs that Turkey and Armenia may make up. Turkey’s president, Abdullah Gul, was among the first to congratulate Serzh Sarkisian, who became Armenia’s president in a tainted election in February. Unofficial talks to establish diplomatic ties could resume at any time. Indeed, there is a whiff of desperation in the air. Turkey’s ruling Justice and Development (AK) Party is under threat of closure by the constitutional court for allegedly wanting to bring in sharia law. AK‘s overtures to Armenia may be aimed at garnering some Western support.
Mr Sarkisian’s government is heading for trouble when gas prices double this winter. An end to Turkey’s blockade could temper popular unrest. But hawks in Turkey and Armenia can still count on Azerbaijan. Allegations that Armenia is sheltering Kurdish rebels have stirred anger in Turkey. Where did they come from? “The Azeri press,” snorts Mr Aydin. Even the best cheese cannot change everybody’s attitudes overnight.
A commentary in Guardian discusses European Union’s recent refusal to refer to the Armenian genocide as such.
This week the European parliament will seek to introduce a new euphemism for genocide into the lexicon of international relations. Diplomats who follow MEPs’ advice will no longer have to run the risk of offending countries with a dishonourable history by uttering the ‘g’ word. They can, instead, refer to the most egregious crimes against humanity as “past events”.
That is the phrase our fearless elected representatives use in a report they are about to formally endorse on Turkey’s efforts to join the European Union. Although it advocates a “frank and open discussion” between Turkey and Armenia about “past events”, the report is anything but frank and open about what those events could be.
In the absence of more explicit guidance, I can only assume the “events” in question were the slaughter of some 1.5 million Armenians by Ottoman forces in 1915. There is ample evidence to suggest that this was the 20th century’s first holocaust and that it partly inspired the efforts to exterminate Europe’s Jews that Hitler initiated two decades later. No less a personage than Winston Churchill described the “massacring of uncounted thousands of helpless Armenians, men, women and children together, whole districts blotted out in one administrative holocaust”. Political bodies across the world have passed resolutions recognising that a genocide occurred, including the European parliament itself back in 1987 (a fact conveniently omitted from the new report).
[…]
And is it too much to ask from our elected representatives that they call a spade a spade and a genocide a genocide?
In a private communication with a YouTube member from Baku, who originally contacted me asking why Armenians like Azeri music, I discussed nationalism suggesting that fascism hurts – and doesn’t help – Azerbaijan. Interestingly, the user invited me to meet with him (not even bothering to tell me his name after I introduced myself) but changed the subject when I asked why. As further communication revealed my pen pal’s ultra-nationalism, although he (unlike official Azerbaijan) didn’t deny the destruction of Djulfa, I told him that nationalists are not true patriots to any country.
After the YouTube member (whom I will keep anonymous out of respect of privacy) said he was not xenophobic but feared that “in the next 20 years my country will cease to exsist” because of Armenian territorial claims, I compared his analysis to Russian skinheads who kill Azeris and Armenians in Moscow in the name of patriotism.
In his next e-mail, he became inconsistent and said that if “Armenian Dashnaks” try to attack Azerbaijan “Turkey will be on [Armenia] like there is no tomorrow, and iam sure you know that the Turks are very infamous 🙂 .”
This is at least the second time when in private communication an Armenian-hater (who’d conventionally deny the Armenian Genocide) is indirectly recognizing the Genocide. That “recognition” is usually in the form of threats reminding what has happened before.
This indirect “recognition” by ultra-nationalists shows that not every denier of the Armenian Genocide truly believes that it never happened.
Ara Sanjian has an interesting summary analysis of Azerbaijan’s growing denial of the Armenian Genocide and the misuse of the word “genocide” in many aspects of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict by both Armenia and Azerbaijan.
While the continuing struggle between Armenian and Turkish officials and activists for or against the international recognition of the Armenian Genocide of 1915 shows no sign of abating, and while its dynamics are becoming largely predictable, a new actor is increasingly attracting attention for its willingness to join this “game.” It is Azerbaijan, which has—since 1988—been engaged in at times lethal conflict with Armenians over Mountainous Karabagh.
In modern times, Armenians have often found it difficult to decide whether they should view the Turks (of Turkey) and the Azerbaijanis as two separate ethnic groups—and thus apply two mutually independent policies towards them—or whether they should approach them as only two of the many branches of a single, pan-Turkic entity, pursuing a common, long-term political objective, which would—if successful—end up with the annihilation of Armenians in their historical homeland.
Indeed, almost at the same time that the Armenian Question in the Ottoman Empire was attracting worldwide attention, extensive clashes between Armenians and Azerbaijanis first occurred in Transcaucasia in 1905. Clashes—accompanied, on this occasion, with attempts at ethnic cleansing—resumed with heightened intensity after the collapse of tsarism in 1917. They were suppressed only in 1921, by the Russian-dominated communist regime, which reasserted control over Transaucasia, forced Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia to join the Soviet Union, and imposed itself as the judge in the territorial disputes that had plagued these nations. The communists eventually endorsed Zangezur as part of Armenia, while allocating Nakhichevan and Mountainous Karabagh to Azerbaijan. This arrangement satisfied neither side. A low-intensity Armenian-Azerbaijani struggle persisted during the next decades within the limits permitted by the Soviet system. Repeated Armenian attempts to detach Mountainous Karabagh from Azerbaijan were its most visible manifestation.
[…]
Hence, it is still difficult to know what Soviet Azerbaijani historians thought about the Armenian Genocide of 1915: Were they more sympathetic to arguments produced by Soviet Armenian historians or those who had the blessing of the authorities in Ankara? The polemic between Soviet Armenian and Soviet Azerbaijani historians centered from the mid-1960’s on the legacy of Caucasian Albania. A theory developed in Soviet Azerbaijan assumed that the once Christian Caucasian Albanians were the ancestors of the modern-day Muslim Azerbaijanis. Thereafter, all Christian monuments in Soviet Azerbaijan and Nakhichevan (including all medieval Armenian churches, monasteries and cross-stones, which constituted the vast majority of these monuments) were declared to be Caucasian Albanian and, hence, Azerbaijani. Medieval Armenians were openly accused of forcibly assimilating the Caucasian Albanians and laying claim to their architectural monuments and works of literature. This was probably the closest that Soviet Azerbaijanis came—in print—to formally accusing the Armenians of committing genocide against their (Caucasian Albanian) ancestors.
Since 1988, however, as the Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict over Mountainous Karabagh has gotten bloodier and increasingly intractable, the Azerbaijani positions on both negating the Armenian Genocide of 1915 and accusing Armenians of having themselves committed a genocide against the Azerbaijanis have become more pronounced and now receive full backing from all state institutions, including the country’s last two presidents, Heydar and Ilham Aliyev. Azerbaijani officials, politicians, and wide sections of civil society, including the head of the Spiritual Board of Muslims of the Caucasus, Sheikh ul-Islam Haji Allahshukur Pashazada, as well as numerous associations in the Azerbaijani diaspora, now fully identify themselves with Turkey’s official position that the Armenian Genocide is simply a lie, intentionally fabricated in pursuit of sinister political goals. Even representatives of the Georgian, Jewish, and Udi ethnic communities in Azerbaijan have joined the effort. Unlike in Turkey, there is not yet a visible minority in Azerbaijan that openly disagrees with their government’s stand on this issue. This probably explains the absence of the Azerbaijani judiciary in the campaign to deny the 1915 genocide. If there are officials or intellectuals who remain unconvinced with this theory propagated by their government, it seems that they still prefer to keep a very low profile.
[…]
Turkish-Azerbaijani cooperation against the Armenian Genocide recognition campaign is also evident among the Turkish and Azerbaijani expatriate communities in Europe and the United States. Indeed, some of the demonstrations mentioned above as the activities of the Azerbaijani diaspora were organized in conjunction with local Turkish organizations. Within Turkey, among the Igdir, Kars, and Erzerum residents, who consider themselves victims of an Armenian-perpetrated genocide, and who filed a lawsuit against the novelist Orhan Pamuk in June 2006, were also ethnic Azerbaijanis; their ancestors had moved from territories now part of Armenia.
Azerbaijanis, like Turks, are very interested in having the Jews as allies in their struggle against the Armenian Genocide recognition campaign. Like Turks, Azerbaijanis do not question the Holocaust. However, they liken the Armenians to its perpetrators—the Nazis—and not its victims—the Jews—as is the case among Holocaust and genocide scholars. The Azerbaijanis argue that Jews should join their efforts to foil Armenian attempts at genocide recognition because there was also a genocide perpetrated by Armenians against Jews in Azerbaijan, at the time of the genocide against Azerbaijanis in the early 20th century. They repeatedly state that several thousand Jews died then because of Armenian cruelty. The support of Jewish residents of Ujun (Germany) to public events organized by the local Azerbaijanis was attributed to their being provided with documents that listed 87 Jews murdered by Armenians in Guba (Azerbaijan) in 1918.(7)
Yevda Abramov, currently the only Jewish member of the Azerbaijani parliament, is prominent in pushing for such joint Azerbaijani-Jewish efforts. He consistently seeks to show to his ethnic Azerbaijani compatriots that Israel and Jews worldwide share their viewpoint regarding the Armenian Genocide claims. In August 2007, he commented that “one or two Jews can recognize [the] Armenian genocide. That will be the result of Armenian lobby’s impact. However, that does not mean that Jews residing in the United States and the organizations functioning there also recognize the genocide.” He explained that because expenditures for election to the U.S. Congress are high, some Jewish candidates receive contributions from the Armenian lobby and, in return, have to meet the interests of this lobby. According to Abramov, “except [for the] Holocaust, Jews do not recognize any [other] event as genocide.”(8)
Azerbaijani arguments that Armenians perpetrated a genocide against Azerbaijanis and Jews in the early 20th century have received little attention outside Azerbaijani circles. However, when the issue was touched upon in a contribution to the Jerusalem Post by Lenny Ben-David, a former Israeli adviser to the Turkish Embassy in Washington, D.C. on Sept. 4, 2007, his article was also quickly distributed by the Azeri Press Agency. Ben-David called on Israel and Jewish-Americans to be careful regarding Armenian claims against Turkey. He listed a number of instances when—he believed—Armenians had massacred hundreds of thousands of Turkish Muslims and thousands of Jews. “Recently, Mountain Jews in Azerbaijan requested assistance in building a monument to 3,000 Azeri Jews killed by Armenians in 1918 in a pogrom about which little is known,” he wrote.(9)
[…]
However, mutual accusations of the destruction of monuments are just the tip of the iceberg in a larger interpretation of demographic processes in Transcaucasia in the last 200 years as one, continual process of ethnic cleansing. Within this context, the term “genocide” is often used as shorthand to indicate slow, but continuing ethnic cleansing, punctuated with moments of heightened violence also serving the same purpose. Indeed, where the contemporary Azerbaijani attitude toward Armenia departs from Turkey’s is now the official standpoint in Baku that the Armenians have pursued a policy of genocide against the Azerbaijanis during the past two centuries.
While the Turkish state and dominant Turkish elites vehemently object to the use of the term “genocide” to describe the Armenian deportations of 1915, and while some Turkish historians, politicians, and a few municipal authorities have accused the Armenians themselves of having committed genocide against the Ottoman Muslims/Turks—in their replies to what they say are Armenian “allegations”—this line of accusation has never been officially adopted, to date at least, by the highest authorities. It has not become a part of state-sponsored lobbying in foreign countries.
The Memorial to the Armenians Genocide victims was desecrated in Valence, France, on May 15 [2008] night. The vandals painted an illegible inscription on the monument base, independent French journalist Jean Eckian told PanARMENIAN.Net.
The Coordination Council of the French Armenian Organizations from Drome-Ardeche area’s (COADA) deposited a complaint to the Police office of Valence.
7 Armenian memorials – in Saint-Chamond, Creteil, Lyon, Valence (France), Cardiff (UK), Budapest (Hungary) and Lviv (Ukraine) – have been desecrated since January 2008.
Globe and Mail from Canada reports that a nationalist Turkish group has succeeded in banning a recommended High School book on Genocide. The banned book, which included a chapter on the WWI extermination of Ottoman Armenians, has been replaced by works of two genocide deniers.
A book about genocide has been pulled from the recommended reading list of a new Toronto public school course because of objections from the Turkish-Canadian community, the author says.
Barbara Coloroso’s Extraordinary Evil: A Brief History of Genocide was originally part of a resource list for the Grade 11 history course, Genocide and Crimes Against Humanity, set to launch across the Toronto District School Board this fall.
The book examines the Holocaust, which exterminated six million Jews in the Second World War; the Rwandan slaughter of nearly one million Tutsis and moderate Hutus in 1994, and the massacres of more than a million Armenians in 1895, 1909 and 1915.
[…]
Ms. Coloroso, a best-selling author of parenting books, said she wasn’t surprised her work was removed, given that “ever since the book came out, the Turks have mounted a worldwide campaign objecting to it, which is not surprising because of the denial of the genocide.”
She said what upset her was not so much that her book had been pulled, but that it was replaced by works by Bernard Lewis and Guenter Lewy, whom she refers to as deniers of the Armenian genocide.
“I knew when I wrote Extraordinary Evil that I would anger some genocide deniers,” she wrote to Ms. Connelly. “I am disappointed that a small group of people can bully an entire committee. …”
My cousin Arman from Souterhn California is visiting me and I am giving him a tour of Blogian at this minute. We’ve been exploring the secret pockets of Denver and still are not too drunk. My graduation is on Saturday!
Map: Compared to Nagorno-Karabakh (left), the breakaway indigenous Armenian region, areas where Lezgins reside (right) in Azerbaijan is pretty small. Yet indigenous Lezgins’ growing movement doesn’t only seek self-determination but indirectly challenges Azerbaijan’s official identity that links the predominantly Turkic country to an extinct culture in the South Caucasus.
While Azerbaijan, an ex-Soviet country with a Turkic majority, hopes to restore its ‘territorial integrity’ by getting the indigenous Armenian region of Nagorno-Karabakh back, another native population is voicing desires for self-determination.
Some leaders of ethnic Lezgins – Islamized descendants of the now extinct Caucasian Albanian nation (that was the first country, along with its stronger ally Armenia, to officially adopt Christianity in 301 A.D.) – are quoted as saying that their only dream is “to unite the entire Lezgin people in one state.”
While Lezgins are not the only ethnic group in Azerbaijan to consider themselves descendants of the ancient Albanians, this new indigenous movement is a blow to Azerbaijan’s official claim that Azeris are native to the South Caucasus.
Although Azerbaijan’s is ethnically heterogeneous, the Turkic culture is dominant (and originates in Central Asia). Yet Azerbaijan has countered Armenians’ indigenous claim, which Armenians consider a boost for legitimacy for Nagorno-Karabakh’s independence, claiming that Azerbaijan is a direct heir of Caucasian Albania and, thus, native to the region. So indigenous Lezgins’ claim of ethnocide in Azerbaijan is not only a long-term territorial claim to the Turkic country, but also disqualifies Azerbaijan’s official myth of Caucasian Albanian origins.
Libertarian politician Bob Barr, who is featured in the mockumentary Borat as eating cheese made of the Kazakhstani journalist’s wife’s breast milk, is running for president.
