Amnesty International has finally taken note of discriminatory treatment of Azeri refugees from Armenia and Nagorno-Karabakh by the Azerbaijani government.

In a press release and a study released today, Amnesty International summarizes the state of Azeri refugees as followed:

• Internally displaced people are restricted by the internal residence registration system to a fixed address in order to receive aid and social services, despite the de jure abolition of this system in the Azerbaijani Constitution. Residence permits in prosperous urban centres are difficult to obtain without the payment of bribes.
• New settlements for the internally displaced have been constructed in geographically remote, economically unviable and otherwise unsuitable locations, leading to isolation and segregation.
• The internally displaced have not been consulted on decision-making processes with direct impact on their lives, for example, the location of new settlements built to house them.
• The internally displaced are consistently encouraged to see their situation as temporary, discouraging them to seek integration or permanent resettlement in another part of the country.

Interestingly, Armenia has long accused Azerbaijan for deliberating worsening the lives of Azeri refugees in order to receive international support and sympathy in the Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict over Nagorno-Karabakh.

An Azeri refugee is quoted by Amnesty International as saying, “We are ready to live with the Armenians of Karabakh and we have not forgotten our historical home there. But we won’t see peace for at least ten years, that’s why we want decent living conditions now.”

One of my acquaintances in Armenia – only 19 years old – has been acquitted from the army after having a heart attack. This was after several months of service during which he was apparently tortured. The army has forbidden him from being treated in a hospital perhaps fearing that could initiate a charge against his superiors. I have never heard of a teenager having heart attack, especially that the particular person used to be a hard worker and did everything to support his single mother and two sisters from a young age. Oppressed people are often triple persecuted almost anywhere (this is why you have poor kids from America fighting in Iraq)…

Media violence and real life tragedies – such as the ongoing genocide in Darfur – may have desensitized us all. I remember telling my class earlier this year that I felt horrible for having become desensitized.

I guess stories like the following have “contributed” to my desensitization (after having heard this one, I became “immune” to other stories):

During the genocide in Rwanda, one way of killing women was throwing them down the toilet. How? Well, the “toilets” were actually wells in the rural areas used as restrooms. There was no sanitary or water system at some places. Some Tutsi women, after they saw their family killed, were thrown down these wells. But before that, there fingers were chopped off so that they could not climb up and would drown in the toilet. This particular incident has really stayed in my mind from my 2005 genocide studies course where one of the witnesses to the Genocide shared the story with us.

Yesterday, nevertheless, I was told of another particular crime against humanity that shocked my conscience. An American colleague told me that her step-grandfather had participated in Operation Phoenix in the Vietnam war and used small Vietnamese children as protection. I was not sure what she meant so I had her to explain it to me again. Apparently, the American soldier tied live Vietnamese children to his chest so that when he was shot at the kids would get shot instead and he would survive. I was too disgusted to ask more particulars (such as how many kids he had killed this way), but I managed to find out that he has not been charged for these crimes against humanity.

No wonder why the U.S. did not sign on to the 1948 U.N. genocide convention until the late 1980s. I also remember that America refused to sign it until it was guaranteed that no American would be charged under that! What the…

Anyhow, I had changed my mind and was not planning to share this story at Blogian until a few minutes ago until I heard of a similarly disgusting and largely unreported crime that happened in Armenia a few days ago.

A young soldier of the Armenian army was shot to death on his forehead after laughing at one of his superiors in Karabakh. The teen was from the Republic of Armenia and was transferred to serve in the Republic of Nagorno Karabakh – a de jure part of Azerbaijan and a de facto part of Armenia. In case you didn’t know, largely sons of poor families in the Republic of Armenia get to serve in Karabakh because their parents cannot bribe the officials to have their children assigned to nearby bases.

This particular family is even poorer – to the extent that they cannot travel to Karabakh for the trial. Having left with no choice, now they are saying that their son is not a citizen of Karabakh and he should not have been taken to Karabakh in the first place. This is an argument used by the Azerbaijani government and they will most likely take a note of this incident to their propaganda. Unfortunately, Azerbaijani soldiers are treated no better – if not worse – in their own army to the extent that some of them choose to stay in Armenian prisons (after being captured for crossing the border) than to go back to the Azerbaijani army. One reason is perhaps Azerbaijani soldiers tend to get a long jail time after being turned back to Azerbaijan from Armenia. The xenophobic conspiracy theory says they must have cooperated with Armenians otherwise they wouldn’t be arrested in the first place. An Azerbaijani journalist was similarly placed to jail for traveling Karabakh and talking to Armenians.

I guess the bottom line is that both Azeri and Armenian soldiers are facing torture in their own armies. This is really scary and sad and makes one wondering of the crimes they would commit against each other if the war restarted.

This is a poorly organized entry with few transformations… I guess I just tried to share feelings and thoughts that had been bothering me in the last few days.

Today, in 2007, there are more slaves in the world than 200 years ago. Modern slavery is known as human trafficking and it is the fastest growing global crime.

Produced by two other University of Colorado students and myself in Spring 2007, “Rocky Mountain Slavery: The Story of Human Trafficking in Colorado” gives the picture of sex trade in the Centennial State.

An undercover investigator, an elected official and other community members share with us information about this heinous crime that most Coloradoans are not aware of.

An ordinary citizen in downtown Denver thinks human trafficking means “lots of people walking on the street.” We find out that there are, indeed, “lost of people” in trafficking, but they are not walking on the street at all. They are isolated, beaten, raped and dehumanized in the most unimaginable ways.

To watch the film at YouTube.com, go to http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xSpQxvtTbFU. 

© Blogian 2007 – Pow Wow Native American Festival in Denver

In July 2006 an Alaska Native woman in Fairbanks reported to the police that she had been raped by a non-Native man. She gave a description of the alleged perpetrator and city police officers told her that they were going to look for him. She waited for the police to return and when they failed to do so, she went to the emergency room for treatment. A support worker told Amnesty International that the woman had bruises all over her body and was so traumatized that she was talking very quickly. She said that, although the woman was not drunk, the Sexual Assault Response Team nevertheless “treated her like a drunk Native woman first and a rape victim second”. The support worker described how the woman was given some painkillers and some money to go to a non-Native shelter, which turned her away because they also assumed that she was drunk: “This is why Native women don’t report. It’s creating a breeding ground for sexual predators.”

The paragraph above is from a study by Amnesty International, released on April 24, 2007, that has concluded, “One in three Native American or Alaska Native women will be raped at some point in their lives. Most do not seek justice because they know they will be met with inaction or indifference.”

© Blogian 2007 – Pow Wow Native American Festival in Denver

According to the report, Native American women are about 3 times more likely to be raped in America than other women.  Moreover,

According to the US Department of Justice, in at least 86 per cent of reported cases of rape or sexual assault against American Indian and Alaska Native women, survivors report that the perpetrators are non-Native men. (This is in the case when most rapes in America are perpetrated by the same racial group – Blogian.)

The violation against Native American women is shocking and reminds of all the trouble and suffering that these people have been going through for hundreds of years.  Reading Lakota Woman earlier this year – a book by Mary Crow Dog about her experience as a Native American woman – I could not believe that even in the 1970s there was cultural genocide going on against the Natives.   But it turns out it is going on today, in 2007.

© Blogian 2007 – Pow Wow Native American Festival in Denver

I think the rape of Native American women is continuation of the cultural genocide.  But whatever you name it, it is happening and needs immediate reaction, especially given the Amnesty International charge that the US government is to blame for not protecting these women and children.

Interestingly, I brought similar topic up with my Native American studies professor Glenn Morris two weeks ago when I asked him what was the situation with human trafficking among Native American reservations (having found out about domestic human trafficking in the US, I had figured out that most vulnerable of US communities – the “Indian” reservations – would be a source for violating women and children).  Prof. Morris didn’t know whether there was human trafficking, but he said there were lots of rape.

The full study is available at http://web.amnesty.org/library/Index/ENGAMR510352007.

A simple legislation can save lives

As unholy campaign of parliamentary elections has started in Armenia, all voters get is either a bribe or promise for justice. If they don’t get the first, the second one is absolutely guaranteed. A promise for justice has sort of become a fundamental right in Armenia.

Are you aware that most “travelers” to UAE from Armenia are women and children tricked and sold to sexual slavery (human trafficking)?

If yes, what steps are you taking to make sure you do not transfer trafficking victims?

I received a fast response from an Air Arabia representative arguing that not all passengers will be trafficking victims and that they can’t do anything about it:

So I thought a few days for a way to help Air Arabia to fight human trafficking. I wrote in my second letter:

If you have noticed, most of my posts deal with Armenian issues.  But in this entry I would like to invite my readers’ attention to injustice against the Roma (the “gypsies”) .  The letter below says it all with specific examples.  If you remember, Roma were also victims of the Holocaust in Nazi Germany, and there is still lots of prejudice and hatred against this people.  Now I can go to see my emergency doctor.  Thank you, Borat for making me more human.

http://www.romea.cz/english/index.php?id=detail&detail=2007_181

An exhibition “Watch out, gypsies!
Luxembourg, 26.3.2007, 16:04, (Roma network) The European Roma and Travellers Forum recently expressed its dissent with the organisation of an exhibition “Watch out, gypsies! The story of a misunderstanding” by the Luxembourg-City History Museum in cooperation with the Museum Astra in Sibiu/Romania. This exhibition is currently shown at the Luxembourg-City Museum in the context of “Luxembourg: European Capital of culture 2007” and will, later this year, be presented in Sibiu/Romania, Luxembourg’s partner city for this year.

The European Roma and Travellers Forum which represents Romani interests at European level criticises the fact that the exhibition has been conceived and implemented without participation of Roma organisations and their representatives.

The mere choice of the title and the use of the word “gypsies” throughout the whole exhibition constitute a provocation against Romani people who in 1971 at their first World Congress after WWII expressed their wish to be called Roma.

I have complained in the past about conferences on Roma which have taken place without any Roma participating or helping organize; most recently Alena Aissing ([email protected]) of the University of Florida has created such an event — a week long — consisting almost entirely of song and dance performances by non-Roma. The programme is reproduced below, and the promotional poster is attached.This kind of exploitation for academic gain has to stop. I urge all Romani organizations to e-mail your protests to the persons ultimately responsible: Amie Kreppel, Founding Director of the Center for European Studies ([email protected]) and in particular Jean Monnet, who is Chairman of the Miami European Union Center (reachable through [email protected]). Both of these individuals should know better, given the reality of the Romani experience. A conference to discuss Africans, or Jews, or Armenians, or Native Americans without their active participation would be unthinkable in this day and age; the same respect should apply. To promote racist stereotypes and inaccuracies (“Irish Gypsy Kelts”, “American Tribal Gypsy”) is a shameful reflection upon the institution of higher learning it represents.

I am behind at my work, in my classes, in updating Blogian! I don’t know why, but I am trying to catch up with everything. So my apologies for not updating Blogian for a few days. I was so out of mind that wrote a post titled “It was not genocide” referring to the UN court decision that Serbia was not guilty of genocide. As one reader pointed out, the court did not say that a genocide was not committed against Bosnian Muslims, but that the country of Serbia could not be held responsible for the actions of Serbian militias in Bosnia. These are different entities, with a reference to a new theory that not only states can violate human rights, but also non-governmental groups.

via ArmeniaNow.com (June 2004)

Human rights violation or not, the deforestation in Armenia’s capital Yerevan is becoming more and more alarming day by day. My sister says she is unhappy that the cold is gone, because the construction has started again and it is sometimes impossible to breath in the streets. But her five-year-old daugther has been having trouble breathing during the winter too. She is young and doesn’t have the immunity to fight pollution. 🙁 Bear in mind that this climate change+construction dust just became this intolerable in the last 3.5 years, because 3.5 years ago I was in Armenia and the problem was not this tangible.

The title of this post is from an Agence France-Presse article that appeared at YahooNews several hours ago. I hope you will read this having in mind that this happens all around the world. If you care about Yerevan, maybe you should do something about it. I should take my own advice, but I don’t really know what to do at this time apart from the 9-minute film that I produced and posted at YouTube.com.

Crazy Horse, a Native American leader, has said that we have not inherited the land from our ancestors but borrowed it from our grandchildren. We had borrowed the land for thousands of years from today’s 5-year-olds in Yerevan who have trouble breathing. Will we have 5-year-olds in 25 years who will breath at all?

As an economy blossoms an ancient capital suffocates

 

by Mariam HarutunianThu Mar 1, 11:10 AM ET

Waking one cold winter morning, Yerevan resident Susanna Pogosian drew back the curtains and got a shock: workmen had razed the trees opposite her home, literally overnight.

“Trees that had stood there for decades were lying on the ground. We were all in shock. It happened right in front of the eyes of the police, who didn’t lift a finger,” said Pogosian, recalling the day last month when the trees in the nearby playground were cut down.

Residents of this ex-Soviet republic are finding that after the dire economic straits they experienced in the 1990s, the runaway growth they now enjoy also has a downside: destruction of greenery and creeping desertification.

The Soviet Union’s 1991 collapse brought this country a war with neighbouring Azerbaijan and the shut-down of factories, but also the destruction of thousands of trees as energy supplies failed and people scoured the hills for fuel.

The war has since been replaced by an uneasy ceasefire and despite closed borders with both Azerbaijan and Turkey, the economy is on the rise, thanks partly to investment by emigres from Russia and the United States.

Economic growth in Armenia has averaged 10 percent annually for the last 10 years, according to the World Bank, and last year’s growth rate was 13.4 percent, according to official statistics.

But this upswing has not been matched by improved governance in the Armenian capital, where poor oversight means that the land is drying up in and around this city of some 1.2 million people.

Yerevan, famous for the pink colouring of city centre buildings, dates from before the eighth century BC and, like many Soviet urban centres, has since seen a sprawl of high-rise apartment blocks on the outskirts.

Residents take pride in the lush city centre parks and in Yerevan’s unique position, within sight of nearby Mount Ararat, a revered national symbol that actually lies in Turkey.

But now they find desert animals such as snakes and scorpions increasingly turning up in their apartment blocks located in the valley in which Yerevan was built.

Pogosian says she and others fought a legal battle to prevent the development near her house, but to no avail and the foundations are now being dug.

“A well-known businessman caught sight of the land, and wants to build a hotel complex… Eventually, as he had a permit from the ministry for nature protection, they decided to carry out their barbaric plans at night,” she said.

Ecologist Karine Danielian, of Yerevan’s State University, says the city has lost 12 percent of its green space in recent years.

“Big businesses have built on any large or small space between buildings,” said Danielian.

“The capital is reverting to semi-desert with all the climatic characteristics, flora and fauna that implies…. The tall buildings appearing in the centre reduce air circulation. The city is being suffocated,” she said.

The head of the city’s environmental protection department, Avet Martirosian, says he is concerned by the loss of green space and developers are now required to plant additional trees and grass when they build.

City authorities also plan an ambitious “re-greening” programme.

This will include planting 50,000 trees and 30,000 shrubs, with special attention paid to restoring vines and creepers that once covered many buildings, shielding them from noise, dust and the sun, says Martirosian.

He says 150,000 dollars (114,000 euros) has been allocated to growing saplings at a nearby nursery, including varieties that can cope with pollution.

Under the plans, the amount of green territory in the city will increase by 4,500 hectares (11,000 acres) by 2020, he says.

This does not satisfy ecologists or sceptical local residents in a country where corruption and poor governance are serious problems however.

Danielian says that the new saplings will be no replacement for the mature trees that are being lost. “Why should we repeat the mistakes other cities have made?” she queried.

Local resident Aik Bersegian, a 60-year-old mechanic, is also distrustful: “These plans only exist on paper. The authorities adopted a law on protecting the environment but themselves don’t respect it. It’s happening in front of our eyes.”

LINK

An unseen footage of Hrant Dink, the Armenian journalist whose funeral was attended by over 100,000 people in Turkey, shows the journalist saying in November of 2006 he would rather die on feet than in bed.  He smiled while talking about his possible death.

Prof. Levon Marashlian has prepared a short video, posted at YouTube, in Dink’s memory.

Some of the video (seems has not been shown anywhere before) is from November, 2006 in Glendale, California.  As Prof. Marashlian likes videodocumenting almost everything, I believe this was shot by him.

Dink speaks Armenian, but there is English subtitle too.  With his wonderful smile, Dink adds, “If something is going to happen, I’d rather struggle on feet, and die on feet, and not in bed.”

Interestingly, Dink doesn’t pronounce the word “death/die” but Marashlian still puts it in the subtitle, because no other word could fit in the sentence.

Dink didn’t fear death and smiled while talking about it.

Rest in peace, Dink pasha.

According to the International Herald Tribune, “One of the suspects [in Hrant Dink’s assasination], Yasin Hayal, an alleged Islamic militant who learned to make bombs from Chechen militants at a camp in Azerbaijan and who served 11 months in jail for the bombing of a McDonalds restaurant in Trabzon in 2004, is suspected of masterminding the attacks on both Dink and Father Santaro.”

The Turkish Haber Vitrini has an article on Yasin Hayal and a photo of him.

Ayse Gunaysu, a Turkish human rights champion and a contributor to Blogian, has written an angry article about shameless Turkish officials’ self-victimization in Hrant Dink’s death. The original was written in Turkish; this is a translation by another Turkish fellow.  Ayse’s article is especially interesting given the fact that the nationalist Turkish media has now overcome its self-victimization stage and is now comparing Hrant Dink’s murder to the assasination of the main organizer of the Armenian Genocide – Talaat Pasha.

HRANT IS KILLED, LET ALL LIARS SHUT-UP

Everyone who says that this was an attack on Turkey, everyone who talks about the sinister games played on Turkey, everyone who talks about the timing of this attack coinciding with foreign parliaments’ making decisions on the “alleged” genocide, and thus trying to disguise the fact that Hrant Dink was being tried because he said “genocide” and was receiving threats because of this, and everyone who is protecting the real murderer, that is the ones who are allowing Union and Progress’ covert operator, lyncher, rabid spirit to still live on, has a share of responsibility.

The Justice Minister Hikmet Sami Turk, who yelled from the podiums of the congress that the ones who were organizing the Armenian conference were stabbing the Turkish people in the back, President Ahmet Necdet Sezer who vetoed the law proposal dealing with minority foundations on the grounds that it would strengthen minorities, the district attorneys who turn a blind eye on thousands of cases of torture, convictions without trial, unknown culprits taken into custody and lost, but processed and tried the alleged “notices of guilt” that are devoid of the most elementary notions of universal law, the newspaper Hurriyet that in the days Hrant Dink declared he was going to look for justice in the European Human Rights Courts, made front page news with the head of the Greek foundations who said he wouldn’t go to European Human Rights Courts as he trusted the Turkish Justice system, called him a true citizen, and therefore whomever tried to look for justice in the European H.R. Courts was shown as a target, branded as “so-called/pseudo” citizen, and, before Hrant’s blood was even dry, the Turkish Television stations that for hours debated a litany of provocation by relating it to the law proposal pending in the United States Congress, are all a part of this murder, they have a responsibility.

Everybody who says that this was an attack on Turkey is lying. Because this attack was made possible by Turkey herself therefore, Turkey is responsible. This attack was made possible by the government that has implemented article 301, as protection against only the denigration of Turkishness, not of all identities, thus providing a legal basis for aggression, and it was made possible by an entire population of Turkey who didn’t reject this article.

Everybody who, instead of feeling shame faced with the murder of Hrant Dink, instead of saying “we are all guilty”, worried about Turkey’s dignity, from the officials to the opinion leaders, they are all lying, they are trying to disguise their guilt. Let all the liars shut up.

And you shut up too please, democratic journalists like Altan Oymen. If you are not refusing to answer questions that link the murder of Hrant to the genocide recognition proposal in the US Congress, and do not see a problem replying to them, if you are not refusing to be disrespectful to the pain of the Armenian people by making such connections, if you are not rejecting to thus support the ones who are trying to fool people with conspiracy theories by foreign influences aimed at the Turkish people, just to exonerate our own murderers, shut up, all of you shut up.

LET ALL LIARS SHUT UP. HRANT’S WOUNDS ARE STILL BLEEDING.

Original source in Turkish

AYSE GUNALSU