It is time for Armenian-American organizations to check with all the U.S. presidential candidates about their views on Armenian issues.  Some things can be negotiated but one thing cannot.

No, not the genocide resolution but Section 907 – the ban of U.S. assistance to Azerbaijan that G.W. Bush has been waiving since 2001.

According to Wikipedia:

Section 907 of the United States Freedom Support Act bans any kind of direct United States aid to the Azerbaijani government. This ban makes Azerbaijan the only exception to the countries of the former Soviet Union, to receive direct aid from United States government under the Freedom Support Act to facilitate economic and political stability.^[1].

The Act was strongly lobbied for by the Armenian American community in the US^[2], and was passed in response to Azerbaijan’s blockade of Armenia. which was at full scale war with Azerbaijan over the predominantly Armenian populated Nagorno Karabakhregion of Azerbaijan. Since 1994 cease-fire agreement Nagorno Karabakh has established a de-facto independent republic, which is not recognized by any country.

On October 24, 2001, the Senate adopted a waiver of section 907 that would provide the President with ability to waiver the Section 07^[3]. He has done so since then.

In a sense, American taxpayers have paid for the destruction of the largest medieval Armenian cemetery in the world.  The destruction of old Djulfa in December of 2005 was carried out by soldiers of the Azerbaijani army, as seen in film, using heavy technology.  This is the same army that the current American administration has been giving money since October of 2001.

Thus, the question posed to all U.S. presidential candidates should be:

Dear candidate, in December of 2005 Azerbaijan’s army reduced to dust world’s largest medieval Armenian cemetery.  Since 2001, the current administration has been waiving Section 907 of the Freedom Support Act, legislation that bans military aid to the Republic of Azerbaijan.  If elected a president, will you or will you not waive Section 907?

The fact that America’s “Holidays” don’t extend to millions of Orthodox Christian Americans who celebrate Christmas in the first week of January is not as disturbing as the fact some of the Orthodox are treated as “non-Christians” in the United States.

According to a local American newspaper, for instance:

Puccini said the Bibles, each worth about $28, were purchased through the Assembles of God program Light for the Lost. Light for the Lost provides funds for missionaries traveling around the nation.

“Our son, Nicholas, is a missionary in Armenia and is working to translate the Bible into Armenian” through Light for the Lost, Puccini added.

Missionary Nicholas is, well,  roughly 1,600 years late because the Bible was translated into Armenian in the 5th century A.D.

But apparently, Armenian immigrants to the United States also get the opportunity to become, hm, Christians. According to Baptist Press, an Armenian immigrant has “surrender[ed] to Jesus.” I thought the Armenians surrendered to Jesus in 301 A.D., or am I missing something?

I realize that many Armenians, especially from the Republic, are not religious and may know little about their centuries-old Christian heritage but it is quite ignorant for the good American people to think that they ought to teach other Christians how to be Christians.

What the good American Christians should do is to keep up the Christmas or whatever tree it is up until January 8 because there are millions of Americans who don’t celebrate Christmas on December 25.  “Happy Holidays” shouldn’t stop on January 2.

Summarizing the death of a 17-year-old Armenian-American girl who was initially refused transplant by her health insurance company, filmmaker Michael Moore states on his website that “justice delayed is justice denied.”

The death of Nataline Sarkisyan from Glendale California has sparked national outrage and the Sarkisyan family’s celebrity lawyer Mark Geragos, another Armenian-American, says he wants the insurance company, Cigna, charged with manslaughter.

According to the Associated Press via Washington Post:

[…] 

They took my daughter away from me,” said Nataline Sarkisyan’s father, Krikor, with tears in his eyes at a news conference at his lawyer’s office.

The Philadelphia-based insurer had initially refused to pay for the procedure, saying it was experimental. The company reversed the decision Thursday as about 150 nurses and community members rallied outside of its office in Glendale in suburban Los Angeles. Nataline died just hours later.

The insurer “maliciously killed” Nataline because it did not want to bear the expense of her transplant and aftercare, said family attorney Mark Geragos. He did not say when or in what court he would file the civil lawsuit.

Geragos also said he would ask the district attorney’s office to press murder or manslaughter charges against Cigna, an allegation that one legal expert described as difficult to prove and “a little bit of grandstanding.”

[…]

Few realize that the United States is the only western country without universalized health coverage.  But even those who have health coverage often become victims of privatized health insurance companies.  Michael Moore argues in his movie Sicko, that I watched last week, that insurance companies are like any other business.  They “lose money” every time they approve a medical procedure.

I myself had to get the approval of my insurance company couple of days ago to get an important health test.  Although the results are not too bad, had the insurance company not approved the test I’d not find out my situation and not get a treatment.  Why should an insurance company approve a medical test assigned by my doctor?

The issue of health care will become a major, if not the major, issue of the presidential elections.  It seems most Americans are over the “communistic” paranoia in regards to reformed health care.  I am not sure if universal health care is the solution, but there must be reforms.

On a not so important note, it is interesting that Moore’s film had a reference to another Armenian-American, Dr. Kevorkian, and that Armenian composer Aram Khachaturian’s famous music was played in the film.

You may never hear this on CNN, but the North American continent doesn’t consist of Canada, Mexico and the U.S. any longer.  You need to add one more country to the list – Lakota.

Yes, the leaders of the Native American Lakota nation have formalized their independence from the United States by dropping from treaties with the United States that they say were never implemented in the first place.

Russel Means talking during Columbus Day protest in Denver

According to Agence France Press:

[…] 

“We are no longer citizens of the United States of America and all those who live in the five-state area that encompasses our country are free to join us,” long-time Indian rights activist Russell Means told a handful of reporters and a delegation from the Bolivian embassy, gathered in a church in a run-down neighborhood of Washington for a news conference.

A delegation of Lakota leaders delivered a message to the State Department on Monday, announcing they were unilaterally withdrawing from treaties they signed with the federal government of the United States, some of them more than 150 years old.

[…]

Lakota country includes parts of the states of Nebraska, South Dakota, North Dakota, Montana and Wyoming.

The new country would issue its own passports and driving licences, and living there would be tax-free — provided residents renounce their US citizenship, Means said.

The declaration of Lakota’s independence was arguably made possible by the recently-adopted United Nations Declaration on Indigenous Rights.  I have commented on the declaration before arguing it lacks condemnation of the worst threat posed to indigenous people – cultural genocide.  But I guess the declaration at least inspires indigenous nations to strive for more rights.

And in case you are thinking “who the hell would want to secede from America” be advised that the Lakota reservation is one of the poorest places in the world.  The Lakota people die the youngest in the entire world, excluding those who die from AIDS in Africa. 

Oppression at the hands of the US government has taken its toll on the Lakota, whose men have one of the shortest life expectancies — less than 44 years — in the world.

Lakota teen suicides are 150 percent above the norm for the United States; infant mortality is five times higher than the US average; and unemployment is rife, according to the Lakota freedom movement’s website.

Rape of Native American women (overwhelmingly by whites) is three times higher in the United States than that of the rape of all other women. 

According to the official website of the Lakota delegates who visited Washington D.C. to drop from the treaties:

We are the freedom loving Lakota from the Sioux Indian reservations of Nebraska, North Dakota, South Dakota and Montana who have suffered from cultural and physical genocide in the colonial apartheid system we have been forced to live under.

We are continuing the work that we were asked to do by the traditional chiefs and treaty councils, and 97 Indian Nations at the first Indian Treaty Council meeting at Standing Rock Sioux Indian Country in 1974.

During the week of December 17-19, 2007, we traveled to Washington DC and withdrew from the constitutionally mandated treaties to become a free and independent country. We are alerting the Family of Nations we have now reassumed our freedom and independence with the backing of Natural, International, and United States law.

We do not represent those BIA or IRA governments beholden to the colonial apartheid system, or those “stay by the fort” Indians who are unwilling claim their freedom.

And  a poem by Dennis Banks quoted in my most favorite book – Mary Crow Dog’s Lakota Woman:

They call us the New Indians

Hell, we are the Old Indians,

the landlords of this continent,

coming to collect the rent.

It turns out that it wasn’t as much the concern for “the safety of American soldiers in Iraq” but  for losing free airfares to Turkey that made some United States lawmakers drop support for commemorating the Armenian Genocide.

New investigation by Politico states that “[o]rganizations promoting Israel, China and Turkey were among the biggest trip sponsors this year” for Congress members.”

According to the report, the trips to Turkey might have paid off.

[…]

Sixteen lawmakers and congressional staffers flew to Istanbul and Ankara on two different trips this year, courtesy of the USAFMC’s “Congressional Study Group on Turkey,” a 2005 creation whose funding includes pro-Turkey interest groups and companies that do business with the country.

Turkey has been in the spotlight this year as it fought a possible congressional recognition of the genocide in Armenia.

The Turkish government mounted a full-court lobbying press against the resolution, which ultimately was defeated.

The nation is also involved in sensitive negotiations over whether it can wage its military battle against the Kurdish Workers Party (PKK) over the border in Iraq.

“There was not a meeting we had where those two things did not come up,” said Marilyn J. Dillihay, the legislative director for Rep. Stephen I. Cohen (D-Tenn.). 

“For somebody who is a new staffer like me, it was a fabulous immersion in those kinds of issues,” she said, especially because the issues “were at the forefront this year.”

The week-long trips occurred in May and August, just when Congress was debating the Armenian resolution.

The new ethics rules say that such trips cannot be planned or arranged by a lobbyist.

That doesn’t mean that lobbyists cannot meet the delegations when they arrive.

While the sponsors are not allowed to explicitly tell lawmakers how to vote on a piece of legislation, there is nothing to prohibit them from making the case for their position.

The talk about the Armenian genocide resolution made a big impact on her, Dillihay said.

What she learned, she said, was that “what seemed like a nonbinding, whoop-de-do resolution, had huge resonance somewhere else.”

“The more I have learned about it, the less I thought it was the proper thing to do,” she said.

The Capitol Hill delegation’s agenda included meetings with Turkey’s prime minister and the ministers of foreign affairs and economic affairs.

The trips were entirely planned by the USAFMC, according to the group’s executive director, Peter Weichlein, who responded to written questions.

“No representatives of the Turkish government have any influence over any aspect of our trips, programming and funding,” he wrote.

During the August trip, the travelers stopped at the home of former U.S. Rep. Stephen Solarz, a longtime lobbyist for Turkey.

Solarz spoke to the group about the Armenian resolution and the PKK issue, Dillihay said.

“He expressed a sense of what kind of effect it could have on Turkey and U.S.-Turkish relationships,” Dillihay said.

“If it was lobbying, it was soft as it could be. It was just like somebody hosting you in their house for lunch,” she said.

The purpose of the meeting with Solarz was refreshments and a discussion of history, Weichlein wrote.

Cohen, who also went on a trip to Turkey, opposes the Armenian resolution, citing Turkey’s strategic importance in the Middle East region and support for the U.S. in the Iraq war.

Bob Livingston, the former congressman whose firm took the lead in lobbying for Turkey on the Armenia issue, told Politico he was not involved in planning the congressional delegation’s visit.

“I had absolutely nothing to do with this trip,” he said.

Livingston said Solarz was working with his firm to lobby for Turkey at the time he met with the congressional delegation, and that he himself is on the USAFMC board.

In fact, even if Solarz did lobby the group, he would have been in compliance, said Jan Baran, an ethics expert at Wiley Rein.

Baran, who has done work for USAFMC on other matters, said the rules prohibit a lobbyist from traveling with a congressional delegation, not from meeting with one once it has arrived.

The ethics rules definition of “a trip” as only applying to the physical movement between locations “is fundamentally absurd,” Baran said.

[…]

America’s public television, PBS, has posted essays written by U.S. High School students dealing with the Armenian Genocide resolution in the Congress.

Erika Martin, for instance, has written in her essay:

The House of Representatives should not pass the resolution acknowledging the Armenian genocide at this point in time.

The genocide occurred form 1915-1917 where approximately 1.5 million Armenians were massacred by the Ottoman Empire. The Armenian Genocide should be recognized, but at the proper time when innocent lives are not in danger by the potential consequences that could occur from passing the resolution.

[…]

Kim Kinden, on the other hand, has argued that moralpolitik is realpolitik:

On October 10, the House Foreign Affairs Committee approved the resolution and around mid-November the House of Representatives will cast their votes and come up with the final verdict. They should pass the resolution because the Turkish government needs to recognize this tragic event as a genocide.

The Armenian Genocide began in 1915, during the Ottoman Empire, and ended in 1917. During that time there was at least 1.5 million Armenians murdered out of 2.5 million.

The House of Representatives should pass this resolution because the Armenian Genocide is not that different from the Holocaust.

The Holocaust had way over 1.5 million victims, but they still died for no real reason, just like the Armenians who were murdered. Also, they were starved and tortured just like the Jewish victims of the Holocaust.

[…]

One wouldn’t expect the webmasters of Yahoo.com’s homepage be academics, but being blatant racists isn’t too helpful either.

Linking to an Associated Press article about business controversy of two Romani “clans,” Yahoo! summarized the news on its homepage several hours ago as “Gypsies’ fortunetelling feud” and that “Gypsy feud gives rare look at hidden culture.” 

From the first look, there is nothing wrong with the title, but consider how we’d feel if it said “Jews’ fortunetelling feud” or for that matter “Jews’ jewelry feud” or “Armenians’ jewelry feud.”  This is in lines with popular stereotype and racism against the Romani people, most of who prefer not to be called Gypsy (one reason the omnipresent racism against them), as seen in American TV icon Judge Judy’s racist comments and her usage of the word “Gypsy” as a derogatory term.

The Associated Press article itself is not free of stereotype; the whole style of the article is somewhat arrogant and presents Gypsies as an essentialist entity.  Although it takes a note that Gypsies faced persecution in Europe after migrating there in the 1300s, there is no reference to the Gypsy Genocide – part of the Holocaust – in which about half million Gypsies were mass murdered, a fact hardly mentioned in the context of Holocaust studies within the popular culture in the United States.  And more importantly, no reference to the unchallenged, blatant, dehumanizing and delegitimazing racism against the “Gypsies” in the United States.

I think Yahoo! the ®acists owe an apology to the Roma people.

Founders of a new, semi-official United States Task Force on Genocide were grilled on official attitude toward the Armenian Genocide during their very first press conference, according to Corporate Crime Reporter and CNN.

An official press release was also issued on the task force on November 13, 2007, making no reference to the Armenian Genocide:

Former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and former Secretary of Defense William Cohen today announced that they will co-chair a Genocide Prevention Task Force jointly convened by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, the American Academy of Diplomacy, and the United States Institute of Peace. The Task Force will generate practical recommendations to enhance the U.S. government’s capacity to respond to emerging threats of genocide and mass atrocities.“The world agrees that genocide is unacceptable and yet genocide and mass killings continue. Our challenge is to match words to deeds and stop allowing the unacceptable. That task, simple on the surface, is in fact one of the most persistent puzzles of our times. We have a duty to find the answer before the vow of ‘never again’ is once again betrayed,” said Secretary Albright.“We are convinced that the U.S. government can and must do better in preventing genocide—a crime that threatens not only our values but our national interests,” said Secretary Cohen.[…]“The Task Force will harness tremendous expertise from across the spectrum and include distinguished Americans with experience in politics, diplomacy, economics, humanitarian and military affairs,” said Ambassador Brandon Grove, Executive Director of the Genocide Prevention Task Force. “It is a unique partnership of organizations and individuals that care deeply about preventing genocide.”The Task Force will issue a report in December 2008. Continue Reading »

In its second report (since the Djulfa destruction) on religous freedom in Azerbaijan, the U.S. State Department has failed again to mention the wipe out of the world’s largest Armenian Christian cemetery by the Azeri authorities in December of 2005.

Released on September 14, 2007, the International Religious Freedom Report on Azerbaijan is a copy-past of at least 6-year-old reports in regards to the condition of Armenian churches in Azerbaijan stating that “all Armenian churches, many of which were damaged in ethnic riots that took place more than a decade ago, remained closed.”

Even outside the Azeri exclave of Nakhichevan, where the Djulfa cemetery existed, the statement did not reflect actuality. A church in central Azerbaijan’s Nizh village, for instance, was reopened in early 2006 for the Udi Christian minority after a publicized restoration eliminated the Armenian letters on church walls and nearby tombstones.

What’s the purpose of the report?

The report is available at http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/irf/2007/90164.htm.

In a move that indigenous rights magazine Cultural Survival calls a “victory for indigenous people,” the General Assembly adopted the U.N. Declaration on Rights of Indigenous Peoples on September 13, with only 4 countries – you can most likely guess which ones – casting against the document.

An e-mail from Cultural Survival (www.cs.org) reads:

The declaration spells out the fundamental rights of indigenous peoples including their right to their traditional lands and resources; their right to give their free, prior, and informed consent before governments take actions that negatively affect them; their right to be free from genocide and forced relocation; and their rights to their languages, cultures and spiritual beliefs. At long last the world’s native peoples have a valuable tool for regaining some of the cultural and physical ground they have lost over the past 500 years.

According to the official U.N. website:

The General Assembly today adopted a landmark declaration outlining the rights of the world’s estimated 370 million indigenous people and outlawing discrimination against them – a move that followed more than two decades of debate.

[…]
Ambassador John McNee of Canada said his country was disappointed to have to vote against the Declaration, but it had “significant concerns” about the language in the document.

The provisions on lands, territories and resources “are overly broad, unclear and capable of a wide variety of interpretations” and could put into question matters that have been settled by treaty, he said. source: http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=23794&Cr=indigenous&Cr1=

In addition to Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the United States voted against the declaration. These countries have long been against indigenous activists and are among the main target countries of the activists who started the idea of the declaration. In my own city of Denver, the Police Department has in the past profiled indigenous activists as “terrorists.”

I think the Internet has contributed to the developing solidarity of the struggles of indigenous people around the world. For little or no cost they are able to communicate, share their problems and ask for advice.

Indeed, this is a great success for indigenous people and their long activism. But an old wound is opened in the declaration that nobody talks about. It’s a wound that dates back to 1948 and is actually the essential threat to indigenous peoples’ survival.

My reference is to the dissaperance of the term “cultural genocide” from the final draft of the declaration (http://daccessdds.un.org/doc/UNDOC/LTD/N07/498/30/PDF/N0749830.pdf?OpenElement).

Although earlier drafts for the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples included the phrase “cultural genocide” (http://www.unhchr.ch/huridocda/huridoca.nsf/(Symbol)/E.CN.4.SUB.2.RES.1994.45.En?OpenDocument) the new version has “cultural genocide” changed into “destruction of their [indigenous peoples’] culture.”

History repeats itself? Article III of a Secretariat draft for the United Nations Genocide convention originally defined genocide also as “[d]estroying or preventing the use of libraries, museums, schools, historical monuments, places of worship or other cultural institutions and objects of the group.” But opposition by several states, writes Ana Filipa Vrdoljak, including the argument that “the proposed Genocide Convention would become a tool of political propaganda aimed at their assimilation policies to ‘civilise’ indigenous inhabitants,” excluded cultural elements from the final convention draft that was adopted in 1948.

Interestingly enough, the exclusion of cultural genocide was fundamentally against the idea behind defining genocide.

When in 1933 Polish lawyer Raphael Lemkin first formulated the idea of punishing the crime of the crimes – what he later named genocide – he argued that barbarity (“the premeditated destruction of national, racial, religious and social collectivities”) and vandalism (“destruction of works of art and culture, being the expression of the particular genius of these collectivities”) were of “international danger.”

The crime of “vandalism” was not separate from “barbarity,” but was also “an attack targeting a collectivity.” In 1947 Lemkin clarified that “genocide” is not a synonym for “mass murder” because the latter “does not convey the specific losses to civilization in the form of cultural contributions.”

But even with kicking out “cultural genocide” from the declaration the U.S. was not satisfied enough to vote for the document. Perhaps the declaration of independence, that calls the entire indigenous people ‘savages,’ is truly so deemed in our collective conscience that we Americans are blind toward the oppression of the true owners of this land.

And what made me sick today in George W. Bush’s speech on Iraq was the use of the term “civilized nation.” Although I am sure he didn’t mean to do that, but pronouncing that phrase on the same day of voting against the Declaration on Rights of Indigenous Peoples was quite sinister.

p.s. although Armenia as a nation-state is not traditionally considered “indigenous,” I see the declaration as an indirect victory for Armenia as well given its aboriginal place in history and geography