The ‘apology’ quoting America’s Ambassador to Armenia John Evans for saying he shouldn’t have referred to the Armenian genocide as such, turns out, was a fabrication by the State Department.

As the U.S. ambassador to Armenia, and a career diplomat, Evans knew the uses of circumlocution. Some words, he understood, must be avoided. But then, speaking in Fresno, Los Angeles and Berkeley, Calif., two years ago, Evans violated U.S. policy by declaring that Armenians were the victims of a genocide from 1915 to 1923.  

When his comments became widely known, the State Department issued apologies. The statements included made-up quotes that Evans now says others crafted and attributed to him.

“Let’s put it this way: I had no role in it,” he said of the statements.

LINK

According to the Russian-language “Real Azerbaijan,” Iranian citizens are fleeing to bordering Azerbaijan with a fear of U.S. attack against the Islamic Republic.

The report says local Azerbaijani authorities in the Nakhichevan region have searched the basements of multi-story buildings where Iranian escapees find refuge.  After confirming that there are Iranian citizens in these basements, local authorities have decided to help refugees by making the basements more “comfortable.”

Colorado’s paradoxically progressive and also unprogressive history includes a governor in the 1920s who was a member of the Ku Klux Klan (KKK).  

With an enormous white population, Colorado is not famous for racial hatred today and it seems the Klansmen are long gone in the centennial state.  But with anti-illegal-immigration politicians like Tom Tancredo (R-Littleton), it is not difficult to find reasons for hate.

My friend Daryl Davis, an African-American musician who has written one of the most famous books on the Klan, sent me the following update on April 22, 2007 about the current situation of the KKK in Colorado:

Colorado is beginning to pick up a little with their KKK and White Supremacist activity.  They had been very cautious lately because they were infiltrated a while back and almost wiped out.  So they’ve gone more underground lately.  However there’s a group of Klan operating out of Olathe, Colorado and they are growing in numbers around the state, capitalizing on their stand against illegal immigration.

How the arrest of a journalist leaks to the infamous agenda of an ultranationalist

Pictured: Hasan Zeynalov, member of Azerbaijan’s “Sicilian” mafia who is more famous for persecuting Azerbaijani journalists and less famous for his sinister agenda in Turkey to keep the Armenian-Turkish border closed.I hope that after the murder of Turkish-Armenian editor Hrant Dink there is more appreciation for the work of journalists among Armenians.

I am not sure that my optimism is applicable to the case for Armenia’s journalists yet, who are usually beaten, threatened and harassed in Armenia. Speaking of torture against journalists, I want to continue telling the underreported story of one journalist who was placed in jail yesterday, with the hope that there will be transnational outcry for persecution of journalists worldwide in general, and in Azerbaijan in particular. And not only because persecution of Azerbaijani journalists is too alarming (deaths, unbelievable high fines, regular beatings), but also because it is in the interest of everybody in the Caucasus – Armenia, Azerbaijan and the rest – to have democracy and freedom of speech. Journalists are the only ones in those isolated conflicts that can bring the rails to the truth on the table. They are the ones who can de-demonize “the other” by showing how much common all people have among each other.This is exactly why Eynulla Fatullayev was placed in jail for 2 ½ years yesterday. “Why do you interview Armenians?” This is the question that Fatullayev, in his own words, is being asked.

In his “last words” (before the court decision), published at Fatullayev’s founded Russian-language Realniy Azerbaijan website, the Azerbaijani journalist ridicules the fact that in the twenty-first century people ask him why he interviews Armenians.

“It is my duty to do so,” has uttered Fatullayev, “After I am free again, I will be occupied with the same exact work.”

Fatullayev is not playing games. He knows how serious it is to challenge Azerbaijani authorities. Before establishing his own newspaper, Fatullayev worked with editor Elmar Huseynov. Huseynov was an Azerbaijani journalist who was murdered in March of 2005 after having written “The Godfather,” an article that accused the labeled Azerbaijani authorities “Sicilian mafia.” Before his murder, Huseynov, along with Fatullayev, was taken to the court by an Azeri ultranationalist – Hasan Zeynalov, Nakhichevan’s permanent representative in Baku since at least 1998.  This is the same Zeynalov who made news in 1998 when talking to the BBC he denied state-sponsored vandalism against Armenian monuments – especially the now-gone-to-dust Djulfa cemetery – in Nakhichevan by saying, “Armenians have never lived in Nakhichevan, which has been Azerbaijani land from time immemorial, and that’s why there are no Armenian cemeteries and monuments and have never been any.”

In my research about the Djulfa vandalism – the annihilation of several thousand hand-crafted medieval Armenian monuments called khachkars – I have seen pattern between persecution against journalists in Azerbaijan and destruction of Armenian monuments in Azerbaijan. It is interesting how Zeynalov himself has been apparently involved in both, but there is more to come – something hard to believe.

Zeynalov is now the Azerbaijani Consul General to Kars (unless there are two Hasan Zeynalovs – which would prove my speculation wrong), where he is involved in “proving” that there is no Armenian heritage there (just like Armenians have never lived in Nakhichevan).  For example, only last month Zeynalov alarmed to the Azerbaijani press that an Armenian delegation had visited Kars and “By the study of some historical sites, the delegation tries to prove the relation of these areas to Armenians. During the visit the Armenian representatives discussed the opening of the state border.” In August of 2006, the mayor of Turkey’s Kars city – across the Armenian border – was attacked by Zeynalov for having advocated for the opening of the Armenian-Turkish border.  

I don’t know when Zeynalov transferred to Kars, but I can’t help to speculate that his mission is to stop the border from opening (why would Azerbaijan need a representative in Kars in any way?).  He is further busy organizing a commemoration for “Azerbaijani genocide” in Kars.

I don’t think the line of anti-democracy and anti-“otherness” has ever been this bold in Azerbaijan before. And the bottom line is – ultranationalist Azerbaijanis are not only danger to ordinary Azerbaijanis, but to ordinary Armenians and ordinary Turks likewise and vice-versa.

The international media is finally reporting the trial of an Azeri journalist who is accussed for “insulting” some Azeri refugees for having challenged Azerbaijan’s official claim that Armenian forces have killed up to 600 civilians in the 1990s during the Karakabh war.

The Associated Press informs

Eynulla Fatullayev, editor and founder of newspapers Real Azerbaijan and Everyday Azerbaijan, was found guilty of disseminating false information about a 1992 attack during the country’s six-year war with Armenia.

He was sentenced to 2 1/2 years in prison.

Many of you perhaps know that three Christians were slain in Turkey this week for publishing Bibles.  They were murdered in Malatya, the city where assassinated Turkish-Armenian journalist Hrant Dink was from.

Hearing about “Christian Turks” one automotically speculates whether these are hidden Armenian converts who are returning to their roots through Christianity, even though not through the Armenian church.

Speculation is speculation, but an Associated Press photograph testifies that one of the slain Turks was burried today in an Armenian cemetery in Malatya.

Moreover, the New York Times had alluded to the indirect connection of the Armenian genocide to the killings:

The recent nationalist attacks are ghosts from Turkey’s past. Malatya once had a heavy Armenian population. But in eastern Turkey, Armenians were driven out or killed in a series of purges culminating in the 1915 genocide, in which 1.5 million Armenians died. Subsequently, nationalists were urged to settle in the area to preserve a Turkish identity there.

I noticed that only media in Azerbaijan have been reporting the trial against Eynulla Fatullayev for questioning what happened in an Azeri village – Khojaly (Khojalu) – when Armenian forces occupied it during the Karabakh war of the 1990s.  Even the few reports are difficult to follow and understand (the word, “Armenian” for example, is not mentioned in any article perhaps to avoid attracting attention on the trial through popular “Armenian” keyword searches).  Here is a summary of Azerbaijani sources (in Russian and English) with a background on the journalist’s involvement.

An Azeri journalist, who has challenged the official Azerbaijan’s rhetoric that Armenian forces have massacred between 200-600 Azeri civilians in the 1990s, is facing charges for insulting Khojaly village refugees in an Azerbaijani district court, reports Azerbaijan’s Trend News Agency.

Photo source

Eynulla Fatullayev, editor-in-chief and founder of the Russian language Realni Azerbaijan and Azeri language Gundeliik newspapers, has reportedly accused the Azeri government for perpetrating the killings of Khojaly civilians – an event that Azeri officials and pro-government media refer to as “Khojaly genocide perpetrated by Armenians” – often denounced as “anti-Armenian propaganda” by others.

In 2006, Fatullayev visited Nagorno Karabakh – an Armenian enclave within Soviet Azerbaijan that proclaimed independence in 1991 and provoked war between Armenia and Azerbaijan – and wrote a long article in Russian called “Karabakh diary.” Fatullayev recalled in the diary of interviewing Azeri refugees from Khojaly in the 1990s who said that Armenian forces had warned the civilians several days before the attack about the upcoming operation and offered the civilians to leave the village through a humanitarian corridor along the river Kar-Kar (the exact scenario of the pre-operation presented by Armenian officials). Visiting Khojaly in 2006 and putting the account of some Azeri refugees with the geography of the village, Fatullayev concluded that “It seems that the battalions of Azerbaijani Popular Front strove not for the salvation of the Khojalies, but for a big blood.”

According to the March 1, 2007 issue of Today.az, a news website from Azerbaijan, “[a] group of [former] Khojaly residents held a protest action outside Gundelik Azerbaijan paper editorial office… and raised posters ‘Eynulla Fattulayev is dashnak’s (Armenian) agent.” They demanded depriving the journalist of citizenship and broke two windows of the office by throwing eggs.

A letter from Human Rights Watch to Azerbaijan’s president Illham Aliyev (dated February 9, 2007) accused the authorities for suppressing freedom of speech and persecuting journalists in the country. According to the letter, “Eynulla Fatullayev, editor-in-chief of Realny Azerbaijan and Gundelik Azerbaijan, was forced to suspend publication of both papers on October 1, 2006, after his father was kidnapped. The kidnappers threatened to kill Fatullayev, as well as his father, if Fatullayev continued to publish the papers. The kidnapping had been preceded by numerous phone threats against Fatullayev and his family.” The letter also denounced Azerbaijani courts for fining high amounts to journalists, including Fatullayev.

The Armenian government has long denied responsiblity for the massacre of between 200-600 Azeri civilians in Khojaly, charging one fraction of Azeri military – a political opposition group in Azerbaijan at the time- for orchestrating the event for anti-Armenian propaganda and domestic political purposes. They often recall the footage of Azerbaijani cameraman Chingiz Mustafayev, who shot footage of killed Azeri civilian corps from Khojaly – under Azeri control – both on February 29 and on March 2. The same corpses were mutilated on March 2, 2007 but not on February 29 – an incident that led Mustafayev to accuse Azerbaijani forces for orchestrating the mutilation of Azeri bodies. The footage was shown in the Azerbaijani parliament, followed by Mustafayev’s murder during filming military units of the Azerbaijani Popular Front.

Nobel Prize winner Thomas Eliot has called April “the cruelest month.”

I live three miles away from Columbine, the High School in the United States were a massacre of a dozen took place on April 20, 2007.

I am Armenian, whose extended family was destroyed in the WWI genocide that started in April of 1915.

I am a board director of the Colorado Coalition for Genocide Awareness and Action that tomorrow will applaud a Holocaust commemoration resolution at the Colorado State Capitol tomorrow and will be present at the singing ceremony of the Sudan divestment bill – to help stop the genocide in Darfur – coming Thursday.

I am a friend of Tutsi survivors, whose families were killed in April of 1994 in the Rwandan genocide,

I am preparing a group presentation for tomorrow on comfort women based on the account of Maria Rosa Henson, a 15-year old child during WWII who was captured by the Japanese army in April of 1943 to become a sex slave (there were 200,000 women and children like her),

I fear April. I fear it a lot. On Saturday I told some friends I hope Turkish military units don’t attack Northern Iraq and start butchering Kurds. It’s April, after all. The month when Hitler was born, the month that has so much injustice to remember and commemorate. And the month of, “never again.”

It was also several hours ago, in April, that over 30 students were massacred in Virginia Tech university. It is still April.

But is it April that makes humans inhuman or humans that make April inhuman? Is April more powerful than all of us? Are guns more powerful in America than Americans to regulate its use and easily prevent massacres like the Michigan Tech? Are we, humans, free? Are we free of ourselves, from our history of demonizing April?

Can we start with gun control in April and continue by stopping denial of historical injustices, like the sexual slavery of WWII women by the Japanese army? Why are YouTube videos about WWII “comfort women” being removed in April, such as a photo presentation at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9yc18Wx-txE.

So many questions and no answers. I am just tired. Tired of our cover-up of April. Tired of making April the cruelest month of the year. Tired of making ourselves fear April.

Editorial

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/13/opinion/13fri2.html?_r=1&oref=slogin 

Turkey and the U.N.’s Cover-Up

Published: April 13, 2007

More than 90 years ago, when Turkey was still part of the Ottoman Empire, Turkish nationalists launched an extermination campaign there that killed 1.5 million Armenians. It was the 20th century’s first genocide. The world noticed, but did nothing, setting an example that surely emboldened such later practitioners as Hitler, the Hutu leaders of Rwanda in 1994 and today’s Sudanese president, Omar Hassan al-Bashir.

Turkey has long tried to deny the Armenian genocide. Even in the modern-day Turkish republic, which was not a party to the killings, using the word genocide in reference to these events is prosecuted as a serious crime. Which makes it all the more disgraceful that United Nations officials are bowing to Turkey’s demands and blocking this week’s scheduled opening of an exhibit at U.N. headquarters commemorating the 13th anniversary of the Rwandan genocide because it mentions the mass murder of the Armenians.

Ankara was offended by a sentence that explained how genocide came to be recognized as a crime under international law: “Following World War I, during which one million Armenians were murdered in Turkey, Polish lawyer Raphael Lemkin urged the League of Nations to recognize crimes of barbarity as international crimes.” The exhibit’s organizer, a British-based antigenocide group, was willing to omit the words “in Turkey.” But that was not enough for the U.N.’s craven new leadership, and the exhibit has been indefinitely postponed.

It’s odd that Turkey’s leaders have not figured out by now that every time they try to censor discussion of the Armenian genocide, they only bring wider attention to the subject and link today’s democratic Turkey with the now distant crime. As for Secretary General Ban Ki-moon and his inexperienced new leadership team, they have once again shown how much they have to learn if they are to honorably and effectively serve the United Nations, which is supposed to be the embodiment of international law and a leading voice against genocide.

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: