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LOUUSAPATZ 919

2012-01-27T23:07:00.002Z

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slaq.am «Արթուր Բոբիկյանի «CD»-ի շնորհանդեսը»

2012-01-27T22:33:00.003Z

Holocaust Memorial Day and "Telling the Story"

2012-01-27T19:04:00.000Z

PRESS RELEASE

Gomidas Institute (London)
27 January 2012

Dedicated to United Kingdom's Holocaust Memorial Day (27 January 2012) and its message "Speak Up, Speak Out"

The Armenian Genocide remains a defining chapter in modern history, as it paved the way to Hitler's Germany and beyond. The Armenian issue has become more complex in over years because of Turkey's continued and forecful denial of the historical record -- threatening to serve as an exemplary case of mass murder and denial as policies of state. On the other hand, more countries recognise the Armenian Genocide than ever before, and ordinary Turks have begun to speak out and bear witness to the wrongs suffered by Armenians.

The Gomidas Institute remains at the forefront of academic research and publications related to the Armenian Genocide. The Institute's Armenian Genocide Documentation Project, as well as other monographs, have had a great impact within academia and politics.We hope to continue working in this direction.

The Gomidas Institute is an independent academic institution dedicated to modern Armenian and Regional Studies. For more details about our work please write toinfo@gomidas.org. For our publications please visit www.gomidas.org

________________________

NEW PUBLICATION
Telling the Story
The Armenian Genocide in The New York Times
and Missionary Herald 1914-1918

by Anne Elizabeth Elbrecht

with a foreword by Dickran Kouymjian

Telling the Story focuses on two leading journals, The New York Times and Missionary Herald, to see how news of the Armenian Genocide filtered through to the United States between 1914-18. It also looks at how the American public reacted to such news with a humanitarian intervention program. There were undoubted differences between the two journals, as The New York Times was a leading news organization while Missionary Herald was part of an institution with vested interests in Turkey. However, the flow of information to the outside world was clear and compelling, especially as many reports were actually written by United States officials in Turkey and leaked to the press by the State Department in Washington DC.
Telling the Story is an invaluable addition to our understanding of the Armenian Genocide and United States policy in the Near East.

BIBLIOINFO: Anne Elbrecht, Telling the Story: The Armenian Genocide in The New York Times and Missionary Herald 1914-1918, London: Gomidas Institute, 2012. 254 pages, map, pb., US$28.00 /

£18.00. To order please contact info@gomidas.org

TURKISH RESPONSE TO FRANCE'S FORMAL RECOGNITION OF THE GENOCIDE

2012-01-25T23:42:00.006Z

For a report on this important milestone and Turkey's inevitable response, please follow this link:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-16695133

Please use your Browser's Back button to return here when you have finished.

French Senate: Armenian Genocide Denial Crime - Reply

2012-01-25T02:32:00.003Z

Dear Seta

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-16695133

Having to re-learn some pretty basic things so be patient!

Wanted you to know about this straight away.

MORE TO COME

French Vote:

I too have family on both sides and friends, my grandparents and (All four of them) spoke Turkish, Arabic, Greek and my parents spoke Turkish, we share almost the same culture as the Muslim, Islam and Jews before Armenian's became Christians in 301. Even our food is similar… with variations. The point I am trying to make is that Armenian’s are passive, we have been passively fighting for the recognition of the Armenian Genocide for almost one hundred years, and we still are. Even Turks making comments on this site, admit or agree it was genocide and so much pain still exists in our hearts! But why deny the Genocide? We know it happened! We also know the Turkish government, ploy to keep it from new generations by destroying vital historic facts from Schools, Colleges and Universities! They must not be allowed to change Armenian History and more over Turkish history too! Masses are under the illusion it was because of the transitional period, the Young Turks of the day would tell you otherwise. And what’s more, your forefathers do not like talking about it! Why not set their souls and minds free, by allowing them to admit to it and enter heaven with a clear conscience.

Turkey, take the initiative, if you think this is just political, then don’t just say it. Do something about it! We cannot make you! It has to come from the Turkish side. So many of our Armenian women and girls were raped, don’t you think you have Armenian blood with-in you? Or will you deny that too?

I love my fellow humans! This denial only serves to destroy humanities love for each other, be it for family or for all humanity!

Seta

FATHER FRANK’S RANTS Rant Number 474 24 January 2012 New Era Dawns

2012-01-25T02:26:00.002Z

‘I saw humanity was on the verge of a new era, like those started by Christ and Muhammad. I also understood such a new era demanded a new type of man.’ Thus speaks a man about to be executed, Otto Dietrich Zur Linde, in J.L. Borges’ Deutsches Requiem. He meant Nazism. If Hitler had overcome, if his millenarian Reich had got going, then indeed a new, fearful kind of human being, a putative ubermensch, would have arisen to rule reality.

The Third Reich’s ghost has vanished forever but...is it possible a new epoch, a novel, indeed better type of human being might actually be in gestation? The Occupy movement, the anti-capitalist rebels, the Arab spring, the desperate youth all over the West protesting against the stifling austerities the old seek to impose on them, the Islamists rising into power in the Middle East, even the rioters and looters hitting England’s cities last Summer – are they perhaps, absurd though it may seem, the signs, the harbingers of a new era?

Consider Christianity. Christian man and pagan man are anthropologically antithetical. Tertullian, a radical theologian from North Africa, chided the dying pagan world about its many crimes and perversions: ‘We are not like you. We do not fight each other in the arena, like wild beasts. We do not abort our unwanted children. We shun adultery, incest and fornications. We do not kill our disabled babies. We do not lust unlawfully after the flesh. We do not torture. We do not covet the wealth of others. We do not persecute the innocent. Instead, when we are unjustly attacked we do not revile but we bless our enemies...’

Tertullian’s list is also a matter of desiderata, of ideals. Still, the sort of human being commended in Christ’s Sermon on the Mount was totally at odds with pagan behaviour 2000 years ago, as it is today in twilight, post-Christian Europe. The Beatitudes – exalting and blessing the meek, the lowly, the guileless, the simple, the pure in heart, the oppressed, the peacemakers, the non-violent – would have struck even a pious pagan as masochistic, perverse. Yet the same counter-cultural Gospel propelled the servants of the Messiah out among the vast multitudes of the Roman Empire – and converted them to its glorious Easter faith. Christ thus forged extraordinary revolutionary values, values that gave rise to the epoch dated Anno Domini – the Year of the Lord. A new man was born.

About 600 years later, with the Hijra, another human type arose in Arabia. Islam also inaugurated an epoch. Thomas Carlyle, that eminent Victorian critic and radical, was correct in including the Prophet Muhammad amongst humanity’s heroes. The dynamic force unleashed by the Qur’an and by Muhammad’s polity empowered desert tribesmen to overturn kingdoms and conquer half the ancient world. A force, note, that does not seem extinguished yet.

The 1978 Iranian revolution of Ayatollah Khomeini illustrates the point. As I just told Sahar TV in an interview at lunchtime, it was a shockingly surprising kind of revolution. A revolt against ‘the modern world’ – the world of secular modernity. Khomeini’s political ideas inspired Muslims everywhere – and scared the living daylights out of corrupt oil sheiks and smug Western liberals alike. They still do.

Muslim man is not the same as Christian man. The two types, the ideals are different. The kind of human being created by the Islamic revelation has his distinctive features and characteristics, setting him aside from other types. That entails conflict. Inevitably so. I am not being polemical. Christianity posits a similar, necessary antagonism to any resurgent paganism. Between Christ and Belial there can be no fellowship.

Zur Linde was perhaps selective in his examples. Pity he did not mention the lofty Siddhartha Gautama, the Buddha. On the non-theist side – fair is fair – some would instance Soviet man. Lenin too attempted to found a brave new world. Bolshevism energised the ragged and the wretched of the earth into formidable militants under the red flag. Communist man, homo sovieticus, was to be as distant from bourgeois types as Neanderthal hominids were from homo sapiens. The new humanity would renounce alienation and exploitation of man by man in favour of utopian social virtues lived out in a socialist paradise. Alas, well before the disintegration of the USSR wondrous communitarian Soviet man had degenerated into a morose, sullen creature, sans autonomy and sans personality. His passing is generally unlamented. RIP.

What might a new, future type of human being look like? The priest can only gesture towards possibilities. Oddly enough, a cue comes from Empire, a ranting text by the Italian intellectual & former terrorist Toni Negri (co-authored with Michael Hardt). He concludes his far-left diatribe against imperialism by praising St Francis of Assisi. Francis, the son of a rich merchant in Umbria, gave out his wealth and even his clothes to the poor and created a radical community of propertyless brothers. Negri perceives a canny strategy at work: to redeem the poverty of the masses Francis embraced their condition, became himself poor and so ‘discovered there the ontological power of a new society’. Francis’ canticles revel in a joyous existence, inclusive of all beings of the natural world, a sort of sacred cosmic ecology: beasts, the birds of the air, the lilies of the field, the oppressed and the exploited, brother sun, sister moon, even sister death...Negri sees parallels with our time: we need to posit against the arrogance of power ‘the joy of being’.

Post-Marxist, Heideggerian ravings, perhaps. The Franciscan way, its revolutionary poverty, did critically challenge nascent capitalism, true. (Today it would terrify the banks!) And Francis’ ode to life appeals to the young. He himself, like Christ, was a young man followed around by a bunch of young people. Francis is thus a hero for our time. However, he was rooted in transcendence. His ethics included explosive values like selflessness, virginity, celibacy and chastity – as popular as the plague today, it appears. Hence, a no-no?

Not necessarily. Just like the pagans denounced the early Christians as freaks, as anti-social subversives and ‘haters of the human race’ and yet later succumbed to the new era, so...geddit? If God wills it...He is god of surprises, after all.

St Francis’ tremendous prayer, ‘Make me an instrument of thy Peace’, was once notoriously and blasphemously recited by former PM Maggie Thatcher, that fiendish apostle of greed. A hypocrite, she never meant it. But what if good people were really to pray that prayer? And if God truly heard it? Would a new era then dawn?

Revd Frank Julian Gelli

FATHER FRANK’S RANTS Rant Number 474 24 January 2012 New Era Dawns

2012-01-25T02:26:00.000Z

FATHER FRANK’S RANTS

Rant Number 474 24 January 2012

New Era Dawns

Revd Frank Julian Gelli

French Senate: Armenian Genocide Denial Crime

2012-01-25T02:03:00.000Z

http://www.keghart.com/FrenchSenate-GBill

January 23, 2012

The international community and particularly Armenians, Turks and citizens of France were closely following the French Senate's day-long debate on whether to criminalize the denial, in France, of the Genocide of Armenians. Immediately prior to the debate, the prime minister and foreign minister of Turkey threatened France with severe diplomatic and economic repercussions if the Senate affirmed the proposal.

The French Senate voted 127 for to 86 against. Following President Sarkozy's signature, it becomes law, criminalizing the denial of the Genocide of Armenians.

Note: Watch two short video-clips

French vote

2012-01-25T01:53:00.000Z

Dear Seta

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-16695133

Having to re-learn some pretty basic things so be patient!

Wanted you to know about this straight away.

MORE TO COME

Kersam Aharonian-ue Tbrots, Huenots, Tarpnots By Barouyr Aghbashian

2012-01-25T01:46:00.002Z

ARTICLE BY BAROUYR AGHBASHIAN

BEIRUT, LEBANON

ՅՕԴՈՒԱԾ ՊԱՐՈՅՐ ԱՂՊԱՇԵԱՆԷՆ

ՊԷՅՐՈՒԹ, ԼԻԲԱՆԱՆ

Sharaganner with duduk

2012-01-25T01:07:00.002Z

Thank you hayr Jirayr

Dear all

You can visit this website to listen and save these sharagans on your PC.

Bonjour,

Vous pouvez accéder aux fichiers des chants liturgiques, pour les écouter et enregister les fichiesr pour vous-même sur le site de l'ACAM, à la page directe suivante :

http://www.acam-france.org/musique/chantsliturgiques.htm

En union de prières,
--------------------------------
Père Jirayr Tashjian

A Powerful Turkish Cinematic Condemnation of State-organized Genocide

2012-01-24T22:17:00.004Z

To read Professor Hovhanness I. Pilikian's detailed description and review of this film, please click here. When you have finished, use your Browser's Back button to return to this page.

Exclusive - New Article for Publication

2012-01-24T02:41:00.009Z

Very Urgent - New Article for immediate Publication

View photos Download all

You are invited to view hovhanness's album. This album has 7 files.


	A Turkish Film on Genocide - Final Draft - II.doc

A Powerful Turkish Cinematic Condemnation of State-organized Genocide

Professor Hovhannes I. Pilikian

Film-Review; Gelecek Uzun Sűrer (2011/Turkey)/ The Future Lasts Forever, Written and directed by Őzcan Alper

British Gala Night; 24^th January, 2011, 7.30 pm. at the Cineworld, Wood Green, London.

Someone high-up at the Turkish Ministry of Culture and Tourism must be an enlightened Soul and more of a Democrat than any of the Eurocrats, having subsidized this film by Őzcan Alper. May that highly evolved Soul become a Prime Minster of a truly democratic Turkey one day, proud of its multi-ethnic constituents rather than the ridiculous ultra-nationalist mantra – “Proud is the Man who is a Turk” nonsense – sang throughout schools in Turkey under the portrait of an Atatűrk framed with Crescent flags.

Whoever is that enlightened Soul, I hope he can free Zarakőglu and Leila Zana and many others from prison, and shield Turkish intellectuals from the evils of Article 301 of the criminal penal code, by abolishing it altogether from the forthcoming new Constitution of Turkey. I hope that the latter shall not be yet another political Ottoman-type trickery to genocide more people.

And, whatever you are up to, dear Reader, do not miss the first five minutes of this masterly film – As if in a live theatre, in the total darkness, a cock crows – a detail suggesting that we are in a village – dogs bark, cows moo, horses neigh, suddenly the unexpected sound of helicopters approaching, women and children shriek, bombs explode, machine-guns shoot, a horrible mixture of the sounds of war, the screen lights up with a most beautiful horse, racing for his life, his breathing cleverly amplified on the microphones (an excellent detail of a sensitive film-director), the target of the mortal hullabaloo, running away like a proud Kurdish peshmerga, a mountain guerilla fighter trying to survive an unfair battle with a US-equipped genocidal State-army.

The Horse successfully avoids the first shot, but on the second he finally falls, blood down his beautiful belly, like a pregnant woman, struggles to get up to fight another day, but sadly it cannot because of a third shot from an invisible sniper, and gradually, slowly with his back turned to the viewer as if in deep shame that he could not survive, stretches his legs and dies like a Swan, like a Tchaikovsky-ballerina in a most beautiful breathtaking posture … the film-director has succeeded in a most remarkable way to instantly create an immediate emotional bond between his film and the viewer, something Anglo-Saxon film-directors have yet to learn to achieve in Hollywood!

Alper’s Horse is as much a classical symbol and the metaphor for human freedom. As my psychologist wife, Clare Pilikian confirms; you can lasso a wild horse to tame it, but kill it? Never! To kill a horse is the lowest point of barbarism and criminal depravity … only inhuman wretches of genocidal intent are capable of such an atrocity.

And you would not be wrong to presume as much, as during the film you will soon discover through the eyewitness accounts that such a genocidal crime was indeed committed by the Turkish army, during the 1990’s, under the very filthy noses of our Western imperialist governments tacitly encouraging the Turkish State, arming it to the teeth to wipe off 8 thousand Kurdish villages off the map of central Anatolia, once the lands of very ancient Armenia … where the horse was first ‘domesticated’ historically. Rock-carvings, archeological bones-evidence, backed by classical literary reference (Xenophon’s Anabasis) prove the existence of horse-cults in the Armenian Anatolian Highlands, precisely where the Kurdish horses are being slaughtered in this film today.

The greatest single obscenity of modern imperialist history is the fact that the Kurdish people, a huge majority of perhaps 60 million, spread through several countries of the Middle East, still lack a homeland.

The Ottoman Young Turks that attempted to genocide the Armenians in 1915 intended to do the same to the Kurds (they said so to Morgenthau, the American Ambassador in Ottoman Turkey), after abusing their unsophisticated, un-educated, illiterate tribal leaders to do their genocidal dirty job. The present-day enlightened Kurdish leadership (their Parliament-in-exile) has already apologized profusely and profoundly to the Armenian people for their earlier leaders’ ignorant participation in the Young Turk crime, having understood today that the Turkish state did finally come round to doing the same to them in our own days, when Kurds were arrested and tortured and killed in prisons for merely speaking Kurdish at home – Leila Zana, a Kurdish MP is back in prison today, having already been there for a decade previously … And the first national hero of the Kurds who could transcend tribalism and medieval Sharia laws against women, Abdullah Őcalan, who could bring total peace and democratic federalism to Turkey has been in solitary incarceration on the Imrali island in the Sea of Marmara since 1999 … hilariously, 1000 military personnel guard him – How more ridiculous the Turkish State-genocidal madness can be! Őcalan’s first Islamic name in Arabic means God’s slave, not Mr. Erdogan’s slave … unless of course the latter thinks he is Allah himself, which is not unlikely.

The Turkish State has this strange Sado-Masochist habit of killing their friends … it is what the Young Turk Leaders did to their Armenian Masonic bosom friends, ignoring and betraying their Masonic obligation to protect them at all costs from such violence! They killed Hrant Dink, their greatest Armenian friend trying to forge a brotherhood with the Turks! They made a song and dance for decades about Kurds being “Mountain Turks”, only to kill even their … horses! What if the Turks were … field-Kurds thus murdering their own brothers!

Sitting before a wall of thousands of passport-sized photographs of victims, the survivors tell the camera of their true experience of the Turkish soldiery invading their villages, separating men from women and children, and simply massacring them for absolutely no reason… when all alive are dead, they attack the stables, their horses!

The Turkish army would enter a Kurdish village; give the inhabitants an hour to desert their homes, before they burn down the lot, thus creating 4 million refugees of Kurds within their own homelands, anciently of Armenia.

In a blue-tinged documentary film within the film, you witness tanks with Polis (in Turkish) inscribed on them, stopping in a village, soldiers jumping out of their tank-holes with machine guns, tearing boys from their screaming mothers and beating them to a pulp before your very eyes! “By 1992, a way of killing people was found fit for Kurds, called murder by unknown assailants” … I could ‘see’ my very own maternal grandmother named Isgouhi (= the true one) Der-Arsenian (= of the Male God) sitting there with the same black scarf covering her head, looking like a raven, telling us how the Turkish gendarmes came to their village Khassgal-Izmit searching for … weapons. They dragged out her teenage sons, beat them mercilessly and pointlessly … My grandparents later had to buy some rusted gun-bits from some bashibozuks to hand them over to the Ottoman cut-throats in case they returned for future inspections.

And my grandmother Isgouhi Der -Arsenian used to sing those heart-braking laments and lullabies, which did not sound like true lullabies, but more like goodbyes to the dead children … from murdered mothers – precisely what the Kurdish women do in this film in front of walls covered with a thousand faces …

And Sumru (played Oscar-winningly by Gaye Gűrsel), a shapely young university post-graduate from Istanbul, records them with shocked intensity, although she is a kind of Turk, and does not know Kurdish. She is shown with her boyfriend (Harun) on a bus full of Kurdish students amidst … Turkish Crescent-flags, but singing Vinceremos = we shall be victorious – and here is an unpredictable eye-catching detail – the students sing not sitting-down in the bus (as you would expect), but standing-up and applauding … it proves an original directorial mind at work.

Cut to a scene on a train, the window imprinted heavily with the nationalist Crescent silhouetted through a succession of mountainous landscapes and a lake (Van?) The Crescent finally disappears – we are traveling through (Armenian) Kurdistan – while Sumru reads a sweet sad letter from Harun informing her that he had to go … he knows he is not coming back because he will be killed – the violence of the state is always incomparably greater than that of the rebels – nevertheless, he hopes, just hopes against hope that perhaps … he’ll see her again one day, perhaps in another world, and signs “your lover from the Mountains”!

Sumru (whose name means Summit!) gets out at Diyarbakir, today the capital city of the non-existent Kurdistan, yesterday’s Tigranagert (= build by Tigran) the Great, the capital city built by the Armenian King whose empire in 180 BC stretched down to Palestine, from where King Tigran had transported a whole community of Jews to enliven with trade the very life of his brand-new city … The speakers announce that trains have arrived from Istanbul, Ankara and Malatya, establishing Diyarbakir as the multi-ethnic hub joining major sections of the Turkish map. Yet, the camera pulls back to show you a blue-uniformed Turkish policeman on the platform watching the crowds intently … Such telling details are abundant in this film – Alper, like all great creative artists, couples with his perfect grasp of the overall image, a masterly eye for the constituent detail.

Sumru reassures her mother by mobile that Diyarbakir is not as dangerous as the Istanbulis think it is … no bombs exploding in the streets, even though her own heart is shattered by the absence of her Kurdish boy-friend who had left her three years ago to join the PKK guerillas in the mountains. She has had no news from him since.

As if to avenge herself on the people, Sumru goes around with her tape-recorder documenting the sounds of the city, holding her high-tech microphones at waist-level pushing it forward like a small machine-gun startling the war-worn inhabitants … the city with its famous black basalt walls can suddenly throw up a Roman ruin still habitable. Sumru finds the film-maker Ahmet (played perfectly by Durukan Ordu), who fancies himself as the ‘Turkish’ Al Pacino, but instead has been documenting the eyewitness accounts of the current genocide his people are undergoing by the post-modern Turkish state. The Turkish state can deny the genocide of the Armenians in 1915 all they want, argue that it could have been a massacre – as if a massacre being less than a genocide were permissible … but surely, no sane person could deny that the Kurds today, on the watch of the Anglo-American imperialists are being massacred only and only for the sole reason of being … Kurds! If that is not genocide, then Turkey’s Prime Minister Mr. Erdogan is the … Vatican Pope – Hear ye, Dan Brown, a new international bestseller for thee about a crypto-Turk as a Catholic Pope, shot by an ASALA crypto-Armenian as a Mountain-Turk terrorist!

Love Impossible

There is an intense attraction between Sumru and Ahmet, but the genocidal context of their relationship is such that the two can never develop any natural human warmth into any form of sexuality. This secondary theme of the film is developed so skillfully and sensitively as to be one of its most original aspects – the impossibility of love developing let alone blossoming, even though the desire is there all along haunting their every waking moment. I shall be seventy soon, and have seen a thousand films, but have not seen yet another film on the subject, tackled with such intense humanity, sadness and compassion for the young potential lovers.

Sumru decides to exorcise the ghost of her boyfriend, by a final search, and asks Ahmet touchingly to drive her to a very dangerous area of high genocidal activity. Ahmet refuses point blank. Sumru has even a telephone conversation with Ahmet to thank him for his intellectual help and to say goodbye. But a jump cut suddenly shows us an endless seeming road, a close up on Sumru as the passenger in the front seat, and finally a camera shift to the driver being … Ahmet. We now hear that Ahmet’s Dad was a truck-driver working on the roads to Iran, one of the countries that harbor a considerable population of Kurds (the film is dedicated to two Iranian film-makers in-prison). As a child, Ahmet had witnessed the death of his father shot from behind in the public square of their village – obviously another peshmerga-victim by unknown assailants...

More than a genocide-film – Lighting Lessons for film-industry

On his blue tinged TV screen, Ahmet had watched one of his archival films of a boat carrying a gigantic statue of Lenin … reclined – No Soviet sculptor would dare portray Lenin as anything but a stand-up god! Now, under the moonlight, unable to sleep, having just enjoyed the hospitality of a Kurdish peasant family, Ahmet and Sumru talk of their dreams for the future – through this dialogue, half-lit like a painting in dark-orange moonlight, the film-director suddenly effectively and affectively emotionally uplifts his film into the noble heights of humanity and dreamy Socialist compassion. No Hollywood film-director is capable of displaying such emotional-intellectual cinematic depth, imparting to the film further complexities of immense significance.

In Hollywood, believe it or not, they do not know yet how to light night-scenes … because they are concerned that their film-goers are so dumb as to want to see everything all the time on the screen. Turkish film-directors have no such inhibitions – they are not frightened of leaving dark-black sections in their night-time scenes – as in the lighting technique of the German Expressionist black-and-white Cinema. Thus the superbly beautiful, Rembrandt-esque creative lighting of pitch-black night-scenes in Turkish films contains lessons for the international film-industry. Alper’s night-scenes in this film are a case in point.

Ahmet dreams of a true-socialist future (the film’s title translated into English is The Future Lasts Forever), which he defines poetically as being able to ride his … bicycle one day with Sumru skirting the coastline of the Black Sea stretching through several countries and their borders, reaching the city of Varna, in Bulgaria … when people everywhere would work no more than 5 hours a day … something the British imperialists are desperate to destroy throughout the European community, adopting the Nazi ideal of raping populations to death by slave-work, to merely fatten the capitalist Fat Cat Bankers and swine! Alper’s film thus achieves instantly a universalism beyond its immediate theme of state-organized genocides.

O-ro-ro-tsa-yin – the Armenian Lullaby

The socialism-dreaming Ahmet drives Sumru at dawn to the local cemetery covered in snow and romantic mist (for which the climate in the Rize district of Hamshen is famous). Ahmet, in deep sensitivity gives Sumru space to look for Harun’s grave, while he like the mountain-Kurd that he is wanders off into the beautiful landscape. Sumru, skillfully underplayed by the actress, goes from grave to grave, almost (you feel palpably) hoping that she would not find it … and alas, alack unfortunately she suddenly hits upon it … a gradual sob bursts on her face, pulling her up and pushing her into the opposite direction Ahmet had taken … You know that their love shall be even more impossible now … a wild black horse on white snow wanders aimlessly …

And what a creative originality of conception; you would think that Harun’s now proven ‘disappearance’ would be the open door through which the potential lovers could find the happiness they deserved as a couple, so well-suited to one another … instead, even the potential of such a joy of future life is destroyed as a direct result of the ongoing genocide. On a long shot, the couple getting gradually more lost in the mountain fog and mist developing, the film soundtrack plays a most beautiful Armenian lullaby, accompanied on saz (recorded by Ludvig Durian, music by Khatchatur Avetissian) orchestrated with a haunting melisma (sang majestically by the Chamber Music Choir of Radio Yerevan), rendering the last five minutes of the film as un-missable as its first five minutes … and the gems in between.

And the greatest of these gems is the one, right in the mid-stream of the film-flow, transforming it into a most complex and skillfully constructed film-script of immense depth and historical significance – and here is how;

Sumru, whether by luck or by design, playing as intelligently ambiguous as possible, comes across the ruins of a dilapidated Armenian church, Sourp Giragos, Ermeni Kilisesi, Dyarbakir in the care of an old Armenian (played by Sarkis Seropyan, a colleague of the murdered Hrant Dink). His script-name Antranig in Armenian has several semantic referents, most importantly meaning the First-born … (here) of Anatolia.

The people of Turkey do know that the Armenians were the very first people in Anatolia, and they were there as late as in 1915, and they are still there as crypto-Turks, born of the thousands of the stolen young girls during the genocide … Talaat, the great genocider and the grand Vizier of the Young Turks wanted only a single Armenian left on this planet, to be skinned and stuffed as a Museum piece! Today, there are 10 million the world over, plus perhaps 3 million as crypto-Turks, the Turks of Hamshen all being such …

Antranig was also the famous guerilla commander, the Őcalan of the Armenian people fighting for survival. The bekji (= caretaker) Antranig of the Diyarbakir-church has daughters in Switzerland, but refuses to join them for a comfortable old age, and tells Sumru precisely what … Hrant Dink himself told me once in Istanbul explaining why, oblivious for his own personal safety, he would never leave Turkey; “anonts vosgornereh ais hoghin dag en” = their bones (implying the bones of our ancestors, let alone the massacred ones) are under this earth (buried in this land). The Turkish Deep-State made sure that Hrant Dink’s bones joins them!

Antranig says to Sumru in Turkish, “you look like our girls”. And in an absolutely masterly coup de theatre, the film-director suddenly lets Antranig ask in Armenian, “Haieren kidess? = Do you know Armenian?”, and Sumru answers in (I don’t know if you guessed it, yes!) in fluent … Armenian, to tell us that she is actually – a second lightening! – Hamshentsi … a crypto-Turkish Armenian.

The genius of this film-director shines brilliantly in the skill of inventing meaningful and conceptually original complexities with minimal means; suddenly, the present genocide attempted on the Kurds is superimposed on the genocide of the Armenians, the first-borns of Anatolia, of which the Armenian-speaking Hamshentsis are a living proof of the plan’s total failure. Genocides in history have never succeeded, and will never! The Kurds will have their country in the end. The pity of it is the waste of priceless human blood spilt, and precious human beings – god’s children all – swallowed up by Satan, the military junk-heads of this world.

There is a clever third strike of a cinematic lightening in the above scenes – Sumru pleads with Antranig to look for and find for her his mother’s recorded voice singing a mournful Elegy … Antranig is reluctant initially, but eventually, on Sumru’s third visit, plays the tape for her, on the porch, as rain falls heavily everywhere like the tears of all the Armenian and Kurdish mothers lamenting for their murdered children, while Antranig explains in Armenian that his own singing-mother was sacrificed during the 1915 chart … subtitled as genocide in English, the exact translation of which in Turkish would have been soykιrιm – the most dreaded and denied word of the post-modern Turkish state-vocabulary.

For this fact alone, this film can be regarded as the most aesthetically satisfying political art-film of the last two decades of world-cinema, which brings me to the beginning of the film, on a par with perhaps the greatest political film of all time, Sergei Eisenstein’s Battleship Potemkin (1925).

Alper’s sequence on a par with Eisenstein’s

Its world famous sequence of sheer genius and total originality is the five minute sequence of The Odessa Steps; the Tsar’s soldiery, in their light white summer tunics march down seemingly endless stone-steps rhythmically, robotically, with their bayonets stuck out like their penises, massacring the revolutionary demonstrators … a jump cut on a close-up of a mother pushing a baby in a pram, falls to the ground shot dead. The pram then rolls down the steps into the scattering panicked crowd!

The incident historically never took place (although The Times of the day reported government firing on the demonstrators in the streets, never from the steps) – it was the unique invention of Eisenstein’s genius. The second’s appearance of the actress of Italian parentage, Beatrice Vitoldi made her so famous in the Soviet Union, that in 1931, she was appointed as the first Permanent Soviet Ambassador in Italy … Sadly she was recalled to Moscow in 1937, arrested and tried during Stalin’s Great Purge.

Alper’s horse-genocide sequence goes one better; although the scene is staged – I am certain no horse was killed for the filming – on a closer observation, one can detect a paucity of theatrical blood on the belly of the downed horse – in Hollywood they would have loved to have poured buckets of blood on the tranquillized animal!

Although Alper’s sequence is based on a factual story told by an eyewitness in the documentary section of the film, nevertheless the cinematic realization is entirely his own.

And finally, fully conscious of the new found pride of the Hamshentsi Turks in their Armenian parentage, I can insist that the film-maker’s surname Alper is a version of the Armenian word akhper = brother, very common in Eastern Armenian, in the neighborhood of Hamshen. His first name, Özcan (in Turkish = pure blood, a shameful racist term), in form I think is the Armenian word Vorskan = Hunter. Thus, Özcan Alper is the Turkicized Armenian Vorskan Akhper = Hunter-Brother, which is an extremely ancient character preserved in Armenian folklore, as a linguistic fossil denoting the pre-historical times of hunter-gatherers roaming the lands of Armenian Anatolian Highlands.

Armenian communities throughout the world should make an urgent effort to see this most beautiful, politically powerful, educationally visceral, aesthetically sensational great film in local cinemas – For all enquires to organize a local /community showing, see Contact below;

Contact

Caferağa Mah. Sarraf Ali Sok.
Kaan Apt. No:25 / 3
Kadıköy / İST / TR

T (+90) 216 418 42 06
F (+90) 216 336 26 34
E info@narfilm.com

Armenian Church E-Newsletter, Issue 3, Volume 3

2012-01-22T22:09:00.002Z

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A Time to Act: What will become of Varak Monastery after the recent earthquake in Van?

2012-01-21T14:34:00.002Z

SPECIAL REPORT
Gomidas Institute, 42 Blythe Rd., London W14 0HA, United Kingdom

A Time to Act: What will become of Varak Monastery after the recent earthquake in Van?

by Ara Sarafian (Gomidas Institute, London)

Varak Monastery, near Van, was one of the great monastic centres of the Armenian church. Its main structure was built at the end of the 10th century. Much of the monastery was destroyed in 1915, a significant part was destroyed in the 1960s, while good sections have just barely survived until our days. In recent years, busloads of tourists have visited Varak as a place of historic interest. Many have been Armenian, but also Germans, Japanese, Italians and Americans.

The 2011 earthquake in Van hit Varak Monastery badly. Parts of the main church collapsed, while other parts were significantly weakened. Old cracks got bigger, new ones appeared. It is too early to state if the monastery can be made safe for visitors again. In the opinion of this writer, who hopes to be wrong, what remains of the monastery of Varak may well be doomed. However, according to one report, a team of Turkish engineers recently inspected the monastery and claimed they can save it. They hope to start restoration work as early as this spring. Such promises have been made in the past and one needs to be a little sceptical. The current state of the church makes such work much harder than at any time in the past. If the monastery is saved, then all credit will be due to the Turkish authorities.

The local Kurdish village at Varak is also in a terrible state. Its 600 inhabitants (65 families) are mostly farmers, though many of them are simply unemployed. The earthquake hit the villagers hard and they now live in tents and containers supplied by the Turkish government. Most of their houses are unsafe for habitation. There is talk of relocating the village, but in this writer’s opinion, such a move will be unfortunate. These villagers have guarded much of Varak over the years. During the last five years, Mehmet Coban was even appointed as an official guard at the main church, with a small government stipend, but little else. Fortunately, he excelled in his work, putting a makeshift wall around the monastery, covering the openings in the roof with plastic, and making sure that all visitors were supervised. In short, he took care of the place. He has proven to be a kind and considerate man, but his future is also now uncertain.

What will become of Varak? The local population supports the preservation, and hopefully the restoration, of the monastery. The local government in Van, both at city and provincial levels, also wants to preserve Van's culture and heritage. There is even talk of inviting Armenians to participate in the future development of this region with educational events, civil society projects and economic ventures. Varak's future, as well as the future of other similar sites, may be linked to such positive contacts--and a lot more can be done if diaspora Armenians were more actively involved in the development of this region.

* The author is a historian and director of the Gomidas Institute. He is a frequent visitor to Eastern Turkey, especially the Van region, where he organises specialised academic tours. For more information please contact info@gomidas.org.uk

Varaka Monastic complex.
Pictures from left to right : Porch to zhamadoun of St. George (2010); Serious damage outside porch evident (2010); Collapse of entire porch (2011, after earthquake).

LOUSSAPATZ 918

2012-01-21T01:26:00.003Z

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Forum for Stateless Nations and Other Minorities

2012-01-20T14:16:00.001Z

eilian@talktalk.net

07588256783

Hrant Dink Commemorations in London, 2012

The 5th anniversary of Hrant Dink's martyrdom was marked in London with a meeting in the House of Lords on the 18th January and a silent Vigil outside the Turkish Embassy the following day. The meeting was sponsored by Baroness Randerson, and Desmond Fernandes delivered a speech on the current persecution in Turkey. A speech by Dr Suran Cam on the crypto-Armenians in Turkey was read. Hyrbair Mari spoke on the persecution of Baluchis in Occuppied Baluchistan and Wilson Choudry spoke on the abuses of Christians in Pakistan

Eilian Williams quoted from Rakel Dink to show the experience of those Armenians who reside in the Turkish interior:"All the time up to today, we Armenians were humiliated, insulted for being Armenians;we heard people use the term Armenian as a curse. We heard it and we still keep hearing it as such in the newspapers, TV,birth registration offices.;we hear it from public servants all the way to the highest authorities. "

He pointed out that Rakel did not find Justice in the conclusion of the trial this week, with those of the deep state who were implicated in the terrble crime against Hrant's life protected.

Crypto Armenians in Turkey by Dr Surhan Cam

In 1974, Hrant Dink ‘discovered’ a lost tribe of Armenians in Varto, Kurdistan. The tribe members did not know that they were Armenian. Nor did anyone else know it. They were mostly Alevi Muslims and spoke only Kurdish. Hrant taught Armenian to some of them and married to one of them. This was the first of such discoveries. But it was also the last one.

Currently, we know very little about crypto Armenians. There is no reliable figure about the size of their population. Estimated numbers vary wildly, from few hundred thousand to millions. Not least for this reason, it is a politically challenging task to talk about crypto Armenians. The issue is perceived as ‘Pandora’s box’ by various commentators both in Armenian and Turkey.

It is argued that crypto Armenians can be used by the Turkish government to undermine the credibility of, what the Turkish officials derogatively call, ‘genocide merchants’. It is feared that if a high number of crypto Armenians is reliably established, then the Turkish government would purport that ‘we did not exterminate them. They are living among us’. Arguably, these sorts of ploys would do no good for the Turkish government rather than undermining its own credibility further. However, the potential implications of such a debate for crypto Armenians are worth a careful examination.

Some discussants expressed concerns over the possibility of a danger that this issue can be exaggerated by ‘fascistic forces’ in Turkey to use crypto Armenians as a scapegoat for the troubles of Turkey in political (and economic) terms. It would be unwise to underestimate such worries, provided that even some heavy-weight intellectuals within Turkey’s left-wing circles proactively take part in never-ending campaigns against ethnic and religious minorities such as Jewish, Kurdish, Alevi and Assyrian, as well as Armenian, communities. They propagate, for example, that such minority groups secretly retain the command of economic and political powers/affairs in Turkey, pretending to be Turks.

Recently, there has also been an upward trend in nationalistic tides. Among others, especially three international events have much contributed to this. One is the recent outlawing of genocide denials in France. Turkish reaction went as far as freezing diplomatic ties with Paris in addition to discouraging domestic consumers from using French goods. Also, the departure of US troops from Iraq and the rise of tensions in Washington-Tehran relations over the Hormuz strait have reputedly boosted the geopolitical importance of Turkey’s cooperation with the West. These incidents are considered by hawkish intelligence and military personnel to be ‘an opportunity for freehand to vanquish rogue Kurds’: On new year’s eve, more than thirty Kurdish smugglers crossing Turkey-Iraq border were opened fire at and killed by the Turkish security forces with no warning or call for surrender. In doing so, the critics say, the Turkish state terrorised civilians in an attempt to deter Kurdish independence movements. No one has been held responsible for the ‘accident’ so far. In the light of these developments, some columnists postulated that the ruling AK Party is moving away from (mildly) Islamist tendencies to nationalism. However, such a conclusion reflects only one side of the coin.

Paradoxically, there is also a widening understanding in Turkey that appreciates the importance of democracy and respect for human rights. When Abdullah Gul, the president of Turkey paid a first-ever visit to Armenia for a friendly football match between both countries in 2008, many commentators interpreted this as a manoeuvre to avert the recognition of genocide by the US Congress. Probably such scepticism was understandable to certain degree. However, there was also a deep-down wave sweeping across the country. This wave surfaced up during a historic demonstration in 2007 when hundreds of thousands of Turks took the streets in order to protest the killing of Hrant Dink. They chanted that ‘all we are Armenian, all we are Hrants’. Likewise, in a different setting, Tayip Erdogan, the Turkish Prime Minister denounced the long history of assimilation policies in Turkey. And no less significantly, he had done this as part of the last election campaign with an accurate anticipation that such a strategy would increase his popularity among the electorate. After a landslide victory, he also apologised for the Dersim massacre that claimed the lives of thousands of Zazas in 1937/8.

The Turkish premier makes no word of apology to Armenians. And chattering classes are not holding their breath for such a gesture given that the word ‘genocide’ is still a taboo in Turkey. However, a closer scrutiny of political events would further reveal the deep-down tide. There is a rise in what one might call ‘non-Turkist nationalisms’. As opposed to conventional nationalism, non-Turkist nationalists claim that there is a tension between Turkism and national interests. Intellectuals in this vein, for example, are of the view that it would be in Turkey’s best interest to face its history with downsides as well as upsides, like that of many other countries. Such interlockers argue that ‘we should start to talk about apologising to Armenians’. A leading columnist on this front recently contended that ‘regardless of what or how happened, millions of Armenians disappeared, and this disappearance per se amounts to genocide’. To the surprise of many observers, he was not arrested for his remark. Such commentators have also begun to criticise the official sentiment that accepting the genocide would trigger property/land claims by Armenians. They pragmatically underline potential opportunities for new investments by the Armenian Diaspora, especially in the economically deprived provinces of Eastern Anatolia.

History is a burden on Turkey’s politics but the social realities of present times also add further layers. The issue of crypto Armenians raises questions about the fabric of ‘Turkish’ society. Kemalism takes pride in the inclusiveness of its mantra that ‘What happiness to the one who can say I am Turk’. The pride, however, has begun to give way to fear for not knowing who would or would not wish to disclaim Turkishness, once people are given the chance to opt out. It is virtually impossible to know even whether or not the Turks themselves would become a new minority group among the populaces. Most of the policy makers, however, appear to have made their mind that ‘genuinely Turkish people would become marginalised’. They also whisper about ‘the reversal of ethnic cleansing’ in the shape of the return of expats. Indeed, several thousand Assyrians, for example, have already returned in recent years. One of these returnees was quoted with large fonts in the headlines: ‘I am home!’

There is a need to promote an understanding that human rights and democracy are not just for the majority but for the minorities as well. This, inter alia, requires the scarping of Article 301 which arbitrarily criminalise intellectuals and journalist through a mischievous excuse of ‘insulting Turkishness’. The code essentially serves for muzzling up multi-culturalist voices. Other sorts of limitations on freedom of thought should also be abolished by the new constitution which is expected to replace the present one in 2012. Above all, the rights of minorities to exist without having to deny their identity can no longer be disputed. For this reason, it is essential that the Turkish government ensure ethnic and religious minorities that they would be secure when they live up to their own culture, language, religion or sects.

Nevertheless, no one would remain grateful forever for not being killed for who they are. The Turkish state needs to fulfil its cultural responsibilities. To start with, the government officials should share ancestral information with the members of public other than keeping it behind closed doors. They ought to be transparent to people in terms of what they know about the ethnic backgrounds of local communities. Individuals should also be assisted to find out such information when it is not readily available. Moreover, populations need to be provided with financial and institutional support to practice their cultures. The government still fails, for example, to supply urban spaces to Alevi populations for their cemevi (worship houses). Christian communities feel lucky when they are simply allowed to use their own churches, let alone getting financial support for renovations or building new ones.

As the centenary of 1915 tragedy draws closer, it is possible to work toward the beginning of a forward-looking era marked by trust-building initiatives and debunking of prejudices between Armenian and Turkish people. For example, Hrant Dink case which is one of the high profile lawsuits in Turkey can be used to foster the trust of public in judiciary system among both Armenians and Turks. The trial is now interwoven with an on-going war within the Turkish state through a series of court cases against some military coup plotters, far-right gangs and Mafia. The reason for this is because the murderer is believed to be part of nationalistic paramilitaries. All these legal investigations should immediately be finalised for justice.

In addition, restrictions on Ottoman archives should be lifted for national and international researchers. In particular, Armenian government should capitalise on a recent call by the Turkish government to do this mutually as well as trying to convince third-part countries.

Finally, special funds should be allocated, especially by the European Commission, to explore crypto Armenians for the restoration and revival of their cultures which are under the threat of extinction

The targeting of the "Other" in Turkey. By Desmond Fernandes.[i]

As we come to mark the 5^th anniversary of Hrant Dink’s assassination, it becomes important to recognize that the “Other” continues to be targeted in Turkey: The right to life, protection from the state, to associate freely, express oneself and assert one’s cultural, religious and political identity remains under threat, just as it did at the time of Hrant Dink’s assassination.

In some respects, the targeting of the “Other” has intensified, despite the rhetoric of so-called “Kurdish opening” by the Justice and Development Party (AKP) ruling government and moves to draft a new constitution.

As Charlie Pottins has observed:

Hrant Dink often spoke and wrote about the problems of democratisation in Turkey, defending other authors [and writers] … who came under criticism and prosecution for their opinions … Dink hoped his questioning would pave the way for peace between the two [indeed, all] peoples:

“If I write about the [Armenian] genocide, [he noted], it angers the Turkish generals. I want to write and ask how we can change this historical conflict into peace. They don’t know how to solve the Armenian problem” [i.e. in a democratic, non-violent, non-repressive manner]. Active in various democratic platforms and civil society organisations, Hrant Dink emphasised the need for democratisation in Turkey and focused on the issues of free speech, minority rights, civic rights and issues pertaining to the Armenian community in Turkey …

[Targeted under Article 301, Hrant had stated of the targeting of Armenians]: “Of course I'm saying it's a genocide, because its consequences show it to be true and label it so. We see that people who had lived on this soil for 4,000 years were exterminated by these events”.[ii]

Unfortunately, since that statement by Hrant, little has changed concerning the Turkish government’s stance on the Armenian genocide. Genocide denial persists and there have been few, if any, significant improvements in terms of free speech, minority rights, civic rights and issues pertaining to the targeting of the ‘Other’. Concerning restrictions on free speech and freedom of expression, journalists, students, trade unionists, academics, members of the public opposed to government and state policies, lawyers, poets, artists, singers, members of opposition parties and particularly the ‘pro-Kurdish’ party, the Peace and Democracy Party (BDP), have all been targeted.

Those active in various democratic platforms and civil society organisations are being detained and subjected to various forms of targeting, not least by the ‘anti-terror’ squads. Anything perceived to be critical of government positions can now constitute a ‘terrorist’ offence. As the Turkish Interior Minister recently warned:

How are they [i.e. the ‘Other’] supporting terrorism? Maybe by reflecting it in their paintings. They write poems and reflect it in their poems. They write daily articles and columns about it. Not content with that, they are trying to demoralize the soldiers and police who fight against terrorism by making them the subjects of their artworks.[iii]

Indeed, he suggested that “there was no distinction between legal Kurdish politicians and terrorists and claimed that artistic activities could constitute terrorism”.[iv]

Writing from his prison cell, having recently been detained in one of the many raids happening almost daily in the country now,[v] Ragip Zarakolu, the director of Belge Publishing House, Honorary Board member of the Human Rights Association (IHD), the Chair of Turkey’s Publishers Association Freedom to Publish Committee,[vi] and the recipient of Turkey’s Journalist’s Society’s Press Freedom Prize in 2007 (alongside the late Hrant Dink and Gulcin Cayligil), noted the way that people who have a conscience, and voice concerns about what they see/have learnt and/or witnessed, are subject to ‘anti-terror’ targeting:

“If conscience now serves as a justification for unfair arrests in this country, the gravity of the point we have reached makes itself felt once more. If lies pass as the truth, and denials have replaced apologies, then everything is rotten”.[vii]

Indeed, with the ruling of the Istanbul 14^th High Criminal Court yesterday, which only charged one person with life imprisonment for the assassination of Hrant Dink, and absurdly saw no “deep state” role in his murder:

Dink family's lawyer, Fethiye Çetin, slammed the ruling, saying it meant that a “state tradition of political murders” was deliberately left intactbecause it did not deal with accusations of state involvement in the 2007 murder.

“They made fun of us throughout the five-year trial process. We did not know they saved the biggest joke to the very end … This ruling means a tradition was left untouched. The state tradition of political murders. The tradition of state discriminating against some of its citizens and turning them into enemies”, she said.[viii]

The group, Hrant’s Friends, which includes his widow Rakel, made the following statement:

The ruling is the state’s decision. The ones who decided to take Hrant from us five years ago - the security forces, gendarmerie, intelligence, judiciary, media, government, opposition - will once again make a decision in the courthouse. They will say that the murder is the job of two or three hitmen. They will try to hide in their dark world. But we know them”.[ix]

Even as Turkey continues to be touted as a “model democracy” by deep political forces and governing elites in the US,[x] UK and many NATO countries, the targeting of the “Other” continues in intensified mode. As Ozgur Gundem, the newspaper, recently noted over its targeting alongside ‘Others’:

On 20 December, 49 journalists and media workers were taken into custody within the context of the so-called KCK (Kurdish Communities Union) operation. Thirty seven journalists have been remanded in custody. The raids and arrests that have been committed towards our newspaper, Dicle News Agency (DİHA), Gün Printing House, Etik News Agency and Democratic Modernity magazine are the summit of the “intellectual and political genocide” policy coordinated by the political government, Fethullah Gülen’s movement followers, the Police, and the Judiciary institutions, which is publicly confessed by Besir Atalay. The "air vessel" of the Kurdish people and the democratic public is the Kurdish media, and now with this attack, Kurdish people and the democratic public are left breathless and it is aimed to … drown [it]. We are working under an undeclared "coup d'état" situation … [The] Turkish Republic has become a police state …

Everybody should raise their voice to defend the rights of the people against the attacks of the police state … The military forces that are under the government’s command, are actually carrying out a bloody massacre through air strikes over the hills of Amed [Diyarbakir]. The attack towards the 'free press' aims to hide the war crimes of the Turkish army.[xi] The government has been attacking everything that is Kurdish. The state declared war on the entire Kurdish public that wants to live freely with its own identity and language, including those with and without weapons, those belonging to PKK and not …The Turkish government is not aware that it is actually undermining its own colonialist goal when it is destroying people that support the policy of living together … The AKP needs to understand that the possibility of ways of peace, living and wanting to live under the same roof is actually being destroyed by the continuous war of 30 years … It is now targeting peaceful civilian actors …

We are calling all the media and all the actors of the democratic field: Don’t be silent. Since you have been silent, the government, Fethullah Gülen’s movement followers, the police, and the judicial authorities are talking to us with the language of fascists and attacking with their methods. Do not be an accomplice! Because, this fire will burn you too![xii]

On 13^th January, the Peace and Democracy Party (BDP) made the following appeal:

It is a well-known fact that nearly 5000 Kurdish politicians including 6 parliamentarians, 27 mayors, dozens of members of city council and executive members of BDP (the Peace and Democracy Party) have been arrested… Police operations are continuing since 14 April 2009. These coordinated operations are transformed to political genocide against Kurds … The police operations have been widened to Kurdish lawyers and journalists. 41 lawyers have been held in prison since 25/11/2011. Following this another police operation was launched against Kurdish journalists … 36 journalists have been held in prison along with the lawyers. In total more than 70 Kurdish journalists have been in prison since April 2009.

It is abundantly clear that these police operations against Kurds are being orchestrated by the AKP Government. All the police raids were launched immediately after Prime Minister Erdoğan made inflammatory speeches attacking Kurdish politicians. In particular, after the last amendments to the judicial system under the name of “judicial reforms”, judges and prosecutors have followed the lead of the AKP Government. Despite the fact that this has been heavily criticized by numerous observers, the AKP Government has increased its pressure step by step against media executives. In fact the majority of media organizations in Turkey are now under the control of AKP Government.[xiii]

We have experienced this new reality in connection with the Uludere Massacre of 28 December 2011 when 35 Kurdish villagers [i.e. civilians, many of them children] were killed by the Turkish F-16 bombardment even though the true identity of the victims had been confirmed by border security units before the bombardment took place. The AKP Government is continuing to shield those responsible for the massacre. Furthermore, the government is preventing any detailed news appearing on TV or in the newspapers about the Uludere Massacre …

New police operation[s] ha[ve also] been launched against the Peace and Democracy Party and civil society organisations such as the Human Rights Association (IHD), the Trade Union of Public Workers (KESK) … It is not only Kurdish politicians, but also Turkish democrats, lawyers, journalists, thousands of students and civil society organization members who are now jailed without any legitimate basis by the AKP Government. It is especially the Anti-Terror Law, Turkish Criminal Code and Law of Criminal Procedure that allow prosecutors to arrest Kurds and opposition activists without bringing forward any evidence …

Delivering speeches on the theme of Kurdish Identity and attending legitimate open meetings are defined as terrorist actions by the Turkish judicial system ... The AKP Government is trying to criminalize the BDP and its members by these arrests. Nevertheless, the AKP Government continues to receive very strong support from member states of the European Union and the United States.[xiv]

This scandalous situation should be challenged and reversed. It should also be emphasized that many ‘Others’ are being targeted throughout Turkey.According to the worldwide writers association PEN, Turkish authorities have arrested up to 1,000 scholars, writers, publishers and rights advocates alone during a two-year crackdown. The Human Rights Association (İHD), the Education and Science Workers' [and teachers] Union (Eğitim-Sen) and the Health and Social Service Workers Union (SES), amongst others have been targeted. “According to a report prepared by the Progressive Lawyers' Association of Turkey, there are around 500 university students who are currently under arrest and charged with terrorism. Evidence? Public prosecutors' indictments are full of symptoms of terrorism: [peacefully] participating in May Day celebrations, protesting the government[‘s policies] on various occasions, and, worst of all, keeping the books of Lenin, Stalin, and Che Guevara at home”.[xv]

In November 2011, “police forces raided the houses of more than 40 members of [the Progressive Lawyers'] association and the court said it suspected that 33 of its lawyers might be infected with terrorism. They were arrested. The International Association of Democratic Lawyers and the European Association of Lawyers for Democracy and World Human Rights condemned their arrests. It was the biggest wave of arrests of lawyers in the history of the Republic of Turkey. Even in the years of military coups, in 1971 and 1980, we didn't face anything comparable”, notes Mubarakby Eren Buğlalılar.[xvi]

Furthermore, “8,190 people are under arrest [under] allegation[s] of ‘terrorism’ according to data released on November 31 by the Ministry of Justice. According to th[is] data, even children are easily accused for being involved in ‘terrorism’ under the Turkish Criminal Code (TMK), legislated by the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) administration”.[xvii] “’There is no press day to celebrate and there is no Day of Journalists worthy to be commemorated any more’, the steering board of the Contemporary Journalists Association (ÇGD) announced on 10 January 2012, the Day of Working Journalists…’The month of January was nothing else but obliterating [ie covering up] the murders of [journalists] Uğur Mumcu, Metin Göktepe and Hrant Dink, their murderers and the instigators in the deepness of the state’, the journalists' organization stated”.[xviii]

According to Mehmet Bozgeyik, the General Secretary of EGITIM SEN (the teachers’ trade union):

Any opposition which does not share the AKP’s viewpoint or acts in line with their political programme are considered enemies and are targeted by the AKP. Elected officials, university lecturers, journalists, political party representatives, NGO representatives, lawyers, youth, non-AKP municipalities, in short all opposition forces, are now falling within the AKP’s target …

Our houses, telephones, organisations, publishing and political party offices, unions, and even our private lives, are now under the surveillance of the cemaat-controlled police.

We want to state clearly and issue a strong warning that this is the way to fascism. The aim is to create a society silent and [silenced] into subservience. The organised democratic forces including members of the union movement are facing an unprecedented wave of attacks and pressure. The fascist tendencies at work in the country are now being institutionalised. These tendencies are led from the centre and according to a specific programme.[xix]

Martin Dolzer, the author of a key 2010 Report of the Human Rights Delegation from Brussels, Berlin, North Rhine-Westphalia and Hamburg (based on a visit between 15 October-25 October 2010 by lawyers, human rights observers, an MEP, a member of the German Bundestag, the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe and the Land Parliament of North Rhine-Westphalia) confirms that:

Furthermore, the systematic harassment and rape of women by the security forces is a major problem in small towns … Generally, it is evident that ... the Turkish government has been resorting to a worrying degree to methods that involve the criminalisation of functioning local political structures, the detention of politicians and activists who have an impact on international public opinion or, in the provinces that are increasingly affected by military operations, even attacks on the right to life.

Anyone associated with human, cultural, political and ‘minority’ rights protection work, alongside work exposing the anti-democratic policies and practices of the state as it applies to prisons, the ‘disappeared’ and the targeting of political prisoners, mass graves and the neoliberal framework (even within the educational sphere) faces targeting under the anti-terror laws, in the name of catch-all “anti-KCK [Kurdistan Communities Union] operations”. Even Kemal Aydin, Executive of the Association for Solidarity and Support of Relatives of Disappeared People (YAKAY-DER), for example, was taken into custody after a raid on 4 October 2011.

The Turkish government, moreover, continues to engage in Armenian, Assyrian, Syriac, Greek, Greek Cypriot, Kurdish and 'Other' genocide denialism even as ‘minorities’ continue to face discrimination and targeting of various kinds. As the distinguished academic Tove Skutnabb-Kangas, amongst many others clarifies, Turkey still remains in breach of at least two articles of the UN Genocide Convention.[xx] Chemical weapons continue to be used by the state against targeted ‘Others’ and war crimes continue to be perpetrated. The report by a Human Rights Delegation from Hamburgand Stuttgart (based upon a 21-day Human Rights Delegation visit in September 2011) concluded that “the number of war crimes committed by the Turkish military has risen sharply again since 2009. These crimes include torture and the mutilation of dead guerrillas, extra-judicial executions of civilians and captured guerrillas, and the use of chemical weapons … Since the parliamentary elections of June 2011, the Erdoğan Government has been seeking a ‘Tamil solution’ to the Kurdish question, and is implementing a modified form of this … The fact that the Turkish Government describes peace endeavours by the Kurdish side and commitment to human rights as terror represents a barrier to any political solution … The detention of two [of our] delegation members clearly shows that the raising of human rights violations is not tolerated under the AKP Government … The AKP is evidently keen to do all it can to prevent this kind of publicity and anything that might foster the possibility of peace talks … [Even] in Istanbul, people speak of a radical gentrification programme in the city areas around Taksim Square. For at least three years now the Kurdish population, along with Sinti and Roma, have been systematically driven out of these areas. Mafia-style methods are routinely used in this exercise”.[xxi]

For Janet Levy: “Discriminatory practices against minorities continue unabated. Full political participation, equal rights and freedom of expression and religion are curtailed” by the government. “The denial of the well-documented historical truth and the memorializing of its murderers perpetuate[s] the crime of genocide and is an affront to its victims, families and survivors. The descendants of the Armenian, Assyrian and Greek victims deserve nothing less than full recognition of this atrocity and a full apology by the Turkish government” (Levy, American Thinker, August 2011).

Many “representatives of Turkey’s various minority communities have”, indeed, “expressed skepticism regarding ongoing efforts to draft a new constitution for the country. ‘Considering the current political conditions in Turkey, I do not believe the new constitution will be an egalitarian one that embraces all sections of society,” [said] Arev Cebeci, a Turkish-Armenian …. Turgut Alaca, the president of Turkey’s Mesopotamia Culture and Solidarity Association (Mezo-Der), a Syriac association, also rebuffed claims about the new constitution’s benefits, [saying]: “We cannot make use of our rights, either as normal citizens or as members of a minority. We cannot teach our language to our children. Who are we? And what will change with the new constitution, I would like to ask? … The current constitution states that all citizens of the Turkish Republic are equal, but that is not what we see in practice”.[xxii]

[i] Desmond Fernandes is a former Senior Lecturer in Human Geography at De Montfort University, UK. He specializes in Genocide Studies, Human Geography and Criminalisation and has published widely on the subject.

[ii] Pottins, C. (2011) ‘Remembering a Murdered Editor’, Random Pottins, 9 January 2011 (Accessed at: http://randompottins.blogspot.com/2011/01/hrant-dink-murdered-four-years-ago-in.html).

[iii] Buğlalılar, M. E. (2012) ‘The Epidemic of Terrorism’, 31 December 31, 2011 (Accessed at: mrzine.monthlyreview.org; http://www.info-turk.be/401.htm#people).

[iv] Hürriyet Daily News (2011) ‘Interior minister under fire over terror charges’, Hürriyet Daily News, 28 December, 2011 (Accessed at: http://www.info-turk.be/401.htm#people).

[v] On Friday 28 October 2011, Info-Turk confirms that “a large-scale manhunt in Istanbul against Kurdish and human rights activists” took place in which Ragip Zarakolu (director of Belge Publishing House and Chair of the Publishers Association's Freedom to Publish Committee of Turkey) and Professor Busra Ersanli (Faculty of Economic and Administrative Sciences, Marmara University, a constitutional analyst and a member of the Peace and Democracy Party’s/BDP’s intra-party constitutional commission) were detained. In his first letter from prison, sent through his lawyer Özcan Kiliç, Ragip has stated that: “My arrest and the accusation of membership of an illegal organization are parts of a campaign aiming to intimidate all intellectuals and democrats of Turkey and particularly to deprive the Kurds of any support”. The International Publishers Association is also concerned that Ragıp Zarakolu’s imprisonment, alongside several other writers and intellectuals like Professor Büşra Ersanlı, is in violation of Turkey’s obligations under Article 19 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) and Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR). Indeed, under the guise of ‘anti-terrorism’ initiatives, no one is safe any longer. The Turkish Prime Minister’s warning to those protesting against Zarakolu’s and Ersanlı’s detention merely highlights the extent to which matters have reached crisis point. As European Federation of Journalists President, Arne König, clarifies: “The arrest of a journalist and well-known intellectual under the pretext of terroristic activities is clearly arbitrary and abusive ... It shows how eager the government is to muzzle any critical voice by using anti-democratic methods”.

[vi] As the Director of Belge, Ragip has published key path-breaking books on the Armenian, Assyrian-Syriac, Greek, Kurdish and ‘Other’ genocides and the nature of Turkish state terror. He is the recipient of Turkey’s Journalist’s Society’s (2007) Press Freedom Prize, the International Association of Genocide Scholar’s (2007) Award for Outstanding Contributions to the Battle Against Deniers of the Armenian Genocide and All Denials of Genocides, the International Publishers Association’s (2008) Freedom to Publish Prize and the Hakop Meghapart Medal of Honour Lifetime Achievement Award (2011) from the Armenian Human Rights Association. He is currently a nominee for the Martin Ennals Award for Human Rights Defenders.

[vii] Ziflioğlu, V. (2011) ‘Zarakolu to be reunited with son behind bars’, Hürriyet Daily News (Accessed at: http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/zarakolu-to-be-reunited-with-son-behind-bars.aspx?pageID=238&nID=10402&NewsCatID=339).

[viii] Today’s Zaman (2012) ‘Suspect gets life in Dink Murder Case, Court sees No Deep State Role’, Today’s Zaman, 17 January 2012 (Accessed at: http://www.todayszaman.com/news-268795-suspect-gets-life-in-dink-murder-case-court-sees-no-deep-state-role.html).

[ix] Today’s Zaman (2012) ‘Suspect gets life in Dink Murder Case, Court sees No Deep State Role’, Today’s Zaman, 17 January 2012 (Accessed at: http://www.todayszaman.com/news-268795-suspect-gets-life-in-dink-murder-case-court-sees-no-deep-state-role.html).

[x] The European Union-Turkey Civic Commission (EUTCC) notes that: “Morton Abramowitz, the former US ambassador to Turkey from 1989 to 1991, recently published an article in The National Interest (27.12.11) praising Turkish Prime Minister Recip Tayyip Erdogan as ‘the world’s most dynamic and impressive Muslim leader’ … Indeed, Ambassador Abramowitz even praises Erdogan for being ‘the voice of the oppressed’ … Pardon us, but there are many who would strongly disagree with this assessment” (EUTCC, ‘EUTCC response to article by Morton Abramowitz - Year of Erdogan’, EUTCC, 9 January 2012. Accessed at: http://www.rojhelat.info/english/perspectives/1961-eutcc-response-to-article-by-morton-abramowitz-year-of-erdogan).

[xi] A report by the Human Rights Delegation from Hamburg and Stuttgart recently concluded that “the number of war crimes committed by the Turkish military has risen sharply again since 2009. These crimes include torture and the mutilation of dead guerrillas, extra-judicial executions of civilians and captured guerrillas, and the use of chemical weapons ... We condemn in the strongest terms the repeated and targeted killing of civilians and BDP officials by Turkish security forces”. Other human rights reports have arrived at similar conclusions, even as the British, German, French and US governments have continued to extend diplomatic and even military/psychological warfare oriented support to the Turkish state in its highly questionable ‘anti-terrorism’ drives.

[xii] Özgür Gündem (2012)‘This fire will burn you as well’. Translated by ANF, ANF, 6 January 2012 (Accessed at: http://www.info-turk.be/401.htm#people).

[xiii] Several Turkish journalist organisations have concluded that the repressive atmosphere has intensified since the Prime Minister’s meeting with national media owners and executives on 21 October 2011, in which he “urged journalists to show restraint in their coverage of the conflict” (reported by Info-Turk, 30 October). Following government pressure, on 24 October, five leading Turkish state agencies issued a communique which, disturbingly for freedom of expression advocates, announced that: “Common principles have been adopted concerning the coverage of terrorist incidents”. These included sweeping agreements to engage in censorship of news and to “comply with the publication bans issued by the competent authorities” (reported byInfo-Turk, 30 October). For Reporters Without Borders: “Minimising the scale of human losses or choosing not to report certain operations will just increase mistrust of the media. Complete and objective coverage of developments in eastern Turkey is an essential precondition for reaching a peaceful solution to the Kurdish issue” (reported by Info-Turk, 30 October).

[xiv] Demirtas, S. and Kisanak, G. (2012) ‘Appeal from BDP to International Public Opinion’, Info Turk, 13 January 2012 (Accessed at: http://www.info-turk.be/401.htm#people).

[xv] Buğlalılar, M. E. (2012) ‘The Epidemic of Terrorism’, 31 December 31, 2011 (Accessed at: mrzine.monthlyreview.org; http://www.info-turk.be/401.htm#people).

[xvi] Buğlalılar, M. E. (2012) ‘The Epidemic of Terrorism’, 31 December 31, 2011 (Accessed at: mrzine.monthlyreview.org; http://www.info-turk.be/401.htm#people).

[xvii] DIHA (2012) ‘Eight thousand 190 people under arrest for “terrorism”’, DIHA, 13 January 2012 (Accessed at: http://www.diclehaber.com/2/22/1/viewNews/289864).

[xviii] DIHA (2012) ‘Nothing to celebrate for press members in Turkey’, DIHA, 13 January 2012.

[xix] Quoted in Peace in Kurdistan (2011) ‘Mass arrests of trade unionists in Turkey’, PIK, 4 December 2011.

[xx] Tove Skutnabb-Kangas’ 10October 2010 presentation at the Frankfurt Book Fair, 'Kurdish as a mother tongue: No linguistic human rights, and linguistic genocide in education', clarifies that “Kurdish is not allowed to be used as the medium of education (the language of teaching, Unterrichtssprache) in any [public] school in Turkey ... Subtractive submersion education with Turkish as the teaching language for Kurds (and other minorities) is the main educational problem … Education offered to Kurdish children in Turkey is [also] specifically guilty of genocide according to the following two definitions: Article II(e): 'forcibly transferring children of the group to another group'; and Article II(b): 'causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group'. Our conclusion is also that subtractive education [of this kind] fulfills legally the criteria for a crime against humanity. This should be tried in courts”.

[xxi] Report of a Human Rights Delegation from Hamburg and Stuttgart – By Britta Eder, Gül Güzel and Martin Dolzer

[xxii] Ziflioglu, V., Hürriyet Daily News, 8 November 2011.

The Situation in Baluchistan by Hyrbair Marri

Thank you for inviting me to speak here today

The situation of Balochistan has worsened since our last year meeting. During the year of 2011 Pakistan’s security agencies have not only continued abducting Baloch activists but they also started to kill enforced-disappeared Baloch under-custody. The military offensives against civilians also continue till this day.

The data collected by our sources in Balochistan confirms that over 365 abducted Baloch have been killed by Pakistan’s military in captivity. According to the families of victims and post-mortem reports the bodies of Baloch activists are tortured to the extent that it shames humanity. Bones of Baloch youth and Intelligentsia have been broken, eyes have been plucked, bodies dishonoured, and some killed with hunger and thirst. The torture marks on the bodies of killed Baloch or those who survived and were found in badly injured condition give the glimpse of brutalities the detained Baloch go under in Pakistani detention centers.

The information we have collected from Balochistan is as follows: January 2011: 18 Baloch activists were killed under-custody. IFebruary 11 Baloch were killed and dumped. In March 16 innocent Baloch had been brutally killed by the Pakistani military. In April 11 Balochs' bodies were recovered. In May 16 Baloch political activists were killed. In June: 5 political activists had become prey of Pakistani security forces barbarism. In July 25, enforced-disappeared Baloch's bodies were found in Balochsitan. August 23, abducted Baloch were killed. In September 4 Baloch subjected brutal torture and killed under-custody. In October 14, Baloch students and activists were killed. In November Pakistani security forces killed 16 Baloch activists and in December 8 Baloch political activists were killed.

Among the above mentioned numbers at least 106 victims were members of Baloch students Organization – most of them under 20 years of age – two of the youngest student Majeed Baloch 14 and Waheed Baloch 13 were also among them. At least ten Baloch journalist were also abducted and killed. Their only fault was that they were doing their duty, just like Hrant Dink, to expose the state brutalities against Baloch people. Today as we remember the Arminian journalist for his bravery and objective reporting, I would also like to pay tributes to those Baloch journalists who had been subject to brutal torture and killed by the state of Pakistan.

The rest of the victims include Baloch poets, lawyers, and intellectual and other conscience members of society. Pakistan is systematically wiping out the most educated and politically aware Baloch activists because it knows that these are the people who have been spreading awareness among Baloch masses and have been educating Baloch nation of their political, cultural and economic rights.

Reputable human rights organisations including Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and Asian Human Rights Commission have released extensive and comprehensive reports on Human rights abuses in Balochistan. They clearly stated in their findings that Pakistani security forces were involved in abductions and killed and dump policy of Baloch activists.

We are however, disappointed to note that the international democratic powers have remained silent on the Pakistani atrocities against the Baloch people. Last Friday the US state department has shown their concern on enforced-disappearances and other human right violation when they answered a Baloch tweeter question but their statement escalated Pakistani atrocities and scores of killings have been reported since then. Fresh military operations have been started in Balochistan as reaction to the US state department’s statement. On Monday Pakistan military bombed Baloch villages in Chamalang and surrounding areas in Balochistan. At least 10 people including women and children were killed due to indiscriminate bombardment. This has been a fashion by Pakistani security that whenever an International Human Rights organisation or a foreign country has shown concern about Balochistan situation they have reacted more severely and barbarically.

The Baloch freedom movement is much older than the current Arab spring and we noted that the US, UK and other power with permission of UN have immediately intervened practically and assisted the revolutionaries in all possible ways but in case of Baloch liberation struggle against illegal occupation of their land there has been no such International support. Such double standards and selective humanity of International powers is alienating the Baloch Nation and pushing them against the wall, Baloch are now increasingly complaining that the international community do not even consider them human beings and have no values for innocent Baloch lives.

The Pakistan military generals who committed crimes against humanity in Balochistan are living and roaming in Western countries with full impunity. In Pakistan they are untouchable but now seem they consider themselves unchallenged even in foreign countries.

Whereas, we are still being stopped and singled out at port and airports on our return whenever we travel abroad and asked pathetic questions like where did we go, in which hotel we stayed in and did we meet any Baloch? Such behaviour of UK’s security forces prove that they are still in collusion with Pakistan and it still pulls the strings when it comes to Baloch living abroad. We are also receiving indirect threats that if we continue to “defame” Pakistan then the consequences will be severe. They are threatening us that we should not think we will be safe in foreign countries.

The western powers and International democracies must help the Baloch in just struggle for National liberation. If they failed to do so the entire Balochistan will be turned into a base for religious extremism by Pakistan and if this happens then no power in world can defeat the global extremism.

POLITICIANS WORLD-WIDE CHALLENGED ABOUT ATTITUDES ON PAKISTAN
Government Aid under Scrutiny over Freedom of Religion Concerns

An Early Day Motion on Pakistan drafted for the House of Commons is set to be heard globally on March 2nd 2012, the first anniversary of the assassination of Shahbaz Bhatti, who was the only Christian Federal Government Minister in Pakistan, and an outspoken advocate of the rights of minorities and opponent of Pakistan’s notorious blasphemy laws.
So far, parliamentarians from the nations of Canada, USA, UK, Ireland and India are set to raise the issue in their respective national assemblies. Press conferences and candlelit vigils are planned in all these nations outside their respective national assembly’s on the anniversary of Bhatti’s violent martyrdom. In the UK, the Motion is set to be read in Parliament by MP Andrew Stephenson (Tory, for Pendle, Lancashire). In the USA, an adapted version will be read in the US Capitol by Congressman Trent Franks (Arizona Representative, Republican).
In addition to pointing out that blasphemy laws are in direct violation of International Human rights of freedom of speech and religion, the motion also notes that aid from Western taxpayers goes to Pakistan with very few precautions, and calls on governments to make sure that such aid is not used to perpetuate the second class status of religious minorities, especially via educational material that demonizes and misrepresents them. The original idea came out of discussion between Wilson Chowdhry of the British Pakistani Christian Association (BPCA) and Jason Campbell of Christian Action Network (CAN) in the US. Wilson Chowdhry stated :
‘We wanted to both honour the sacrifice of Minister Shahbaz Bhatti, who boldly challenged the iniquitous blasphemy laws, knowing full well it would likely lead to his violent death, and raise the profile of Asia Bibi, a Christian mother of five who has been imprisoned under a death sentence for over two years for a false blasphemy charge. Asia has become something of a cause celebre, but many more cases go unreported. The problem is endemic, and we wanted to raise the wider issue, not just Asia Bibi’s terrible situation. False blasphemy charges are raised on at least a weekly basis across every area of Pakistan, and Christians are disproportionately targeted. The threat of such false charges is used to oppress minorities such as Christians, especially when disputes and vendettas are launched against them. Some Muslim landowners and businessmen regularly use these tactics to gain poor Christians land and property.’
Whilst Asia Bibi achieved iconic status as the only woman to be ‘lawfully’ sentenced to death for blasphemy, there are hundreds more victims, some of whom have died, either by beatings and poor conditions in prisons, or at the hands of Muslim extremists when they have been acquitted in the courts. On occasion even the Muslim lawyers and judges involved in such acquittals have been assassinated. For those victims who do survive, the BPCA and other campaigners say that a nomadic life of fear, hiding in safe houses and inability to earn money awaits, or a struggle to claim asylum in Western nations.
As well as the BPCA in the UK, other campaigners involved include Watson Gill, President of Global Christian Voice of Holland. Along with a press conference, he will submit the Motion through a Canadian parliamentarian. In the USA, the groups ‘Voice of the Martyrs’ and CAN are leading efforts. Revised copies of the Motion are also being championed by Dr John Dayal, a member of the National Integration Council, Government of India and Secretary General of the All India Christian Council, via an Indian parliamentarian, and by David Turner, President of ‘Church in Chains’ in Ireland. In Canada one Sam Lal Din is involved.
For interviews, contact Wilson Chowdhry :
Email Wilson@aasecurity.co.uk
Phone 0208 5140861

Notes for Editors
1). The British Pakistani Christian Association was founded in the wake of the Gojra incident, when a Christian family was burned alive after false blasphemy charges that some Christians had burned papers with Quranic verses at a wedding. Many houses were burned by militant mobs, while the police stood by and did nothing. As well as highlighting the suffering and persecution of Christians in Pakistan, the BPCA also works for inter-faith harmony in the UK, mainly around its base in Ilford. They also give help to Christian Pakistani asylum seekers whose requests have been unjustly denied, and arrange petitions and protests on a regular basis. To see more about their work, visit their blog at http://britishpakistanichristian.blogspot.com/
2) The blasphemy laws in Pakistan are one strand of a complex of social, religious and legal factors that keep Christians and other minorities in a position of inferiority and fearfulness. Frequently the worst jobs are reserved for Christians only, they are denied rights that they should get as citizens, and would otherwise get if they were Muslims. For instance, Christian sanitation works should get basic rights as civil servants such as paid holidays, pensions and health care, but via the strategy of firing and then immediately re-hiring them every 90 days, these rights are denied them, even though they work for the same employer for many decades.
3) The following patterns are repeated across all areas of Pakistan
a) Christians are pressured, through harassment, bribery and threats, to become Muslims by their employers and landlords. In addition, if they go to the police, they are often told no action will be taken - for instance to restore raped and kidnapped daughters – unless they convert to Islam. In addition, Christians are routinely treated as legally inferior in court, their testimony counting for less than that of Muslims, in accordance with Sharia principles.
b) Muslim clerics will stir up mobs against churches to enforce their inferior status, and will then use ‘reconciliation meetings’ with the Christian victims to enforce the measures they caused the riots to in the first place
c) Whenever Christians are deemed to have ‘got above themselves’ or are doing well, they run the grave risk of a false blasphemy charge against them. If there is a dispute or an attempt to infringe on the rights of a Christian and the Christian resists, then the prospect of false blasphemy charges are used to intimidate them. The whole Christian community is held accountable by raging mobs for the ‘blasphemy’, buildings burnt and people attacked. In a number of recent cases, Muslims have been discovered desecrating Quran’s themselves and then placing them outside Christian churches and homes to incriminate Christians. These perpetrators are often treated differently to alleged Christian ‘blasphemers’ who are usually imprisoned and can often languish for months to years without trial. Thus making an accusation, however groundless, is used as a way to incarcerate victims for a long period of time.
d) So called ‘Muslim land mafia’ – local businessmen, politicians and landowners – will often intimidate poor Christians to get their houses or land when values rise. Whole communities can be uprooted, especially in slum areas. Even government allocated land is not safe. In one recent case, a Christian village acquired land to build an orphanage, and the local ‘Muslim mafia’ sent a convey of trucks loaded with armed thugs to seize the land, and when the unarmed Christian villagers rushed to defend the orphanage land, the thugs opened fire, killing one man and injuring many others, including women and children.
e) Another very common event is that Muslim extremists or Muslims from influential families kidnap and rape Christian girls, then force them to convert to Islam and marry their abusers. Frequently Christian school girls are snatched on their way to school. Such incidents are occurring at the rate of at least 1 a day, and probably more like 2 a day in Pakistan. Often such rapes are videoed in an attempt to shame and blackmail both the victims and their families into ‘voluntarily’ converting to Islam. Even worse, Pakistani courts often side with the abusers against the victims, declaring the marriages ‘valid’ because they were witnessed by an Islamic cleric, and denying the families of the victims access to their abused and kidnapped relatives. Just in the last few months, a Christian woman factory worker was murdered after resisting rape by her Muslim employer, and a teenage girl who was snatched from the motorbike she was riding with her mother, and was shot dead as she resisted abduction and rape.
4) In addition to the kind of incidents above, the following recent incidents (only a very small selection) give a flavour of life for Christians in Pakistan :
An elderly Christian man and his wife severely beaten by Islamic extremists after he refused their offer of a prostitute in an attempt to convert him to Islam.
A young Christian maid (pre-teen) was prevented from seeing her family, and raped and tortured to death by her employer, a senior Muslim lawyer. His colleagues in the local bar Association forbade any lawyers to represent the victims family and boycotted the courts. The lawyers also beat up TV cameramen trying to video aspects of the case. Christians were banned from the courtroom. After intense infighting and disputed interactions, the prosecution did not present the original autopsy report that detailed her injuries, but rather a medical report that echoed the claims of the lawyer that she had a fatal skin disease, resulting in his acquittal.
After rejecting his employers invitation to embrace Islam, a Christian farm workers’ 2 year old daughter was taken out into the fields and raped so brutally that even after extensive surgery, doctors had to cut a hole in her stomach for her to urinate out of. The family eventually fled to Canada. For a video of their situation and their escape, see http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=StSbvmoXlus&feature=player_embedded
A Christian maid left valuable jewellery with her employer for temporary safe keeping. After the employer’s house was robbed and all the jewellery taken, the employer’s family accused the pregnant maid and her husband and had them arrested. The police beat and tortured the woman for 3 days, resulting in severe damage, and her unborn baby in grave danger of death.
The investigation into the assassination of Shahbaz Bhatti was deliberately sidetracked by ridiculous accusations that his murder was due to a family feud, allowing the real perpetrators to flee the country.
A Christian man who refused to convert to Islam was burnt nearly to death by a mob in front of a police station, while police officers looking on raped his wife, while their children were forced to watch.
5) Christians and other religious minorities are routinely denied aid in disaster situations, such as the recent devastating floods. Both government and Mosque distributed aid are for Muslims only, with reports from across Pakistan that Christians and the like were turned away from aid camps, food lines and medical attention, unless they converted to Islam.
6) The blasphemy laws have widespread support in Pakistan and even politicians who might be minded to reform or remove the laws are afraid to be seen as going ‘soft’. After the first assassination of Governer Taseer, one of only two politicians to campaign for the law’s abolishment after Asia Bibi’s death sentence for ‘blasphemy’, 100’s of scholars of the so-called ‘ Islamic moderates’, the Barelvi sect, warned that those who opposed the laws were blasphemers themselves and that their death should not be mourned.
7) A recent report by the US Commission on International Religious Freedom on Education and Religious Discrimination in Pakistan concluded that even in government schools the texts used as well as the teaching was all too often a significant driver in perpetuating religious discrimination and demonization of minorities in Pakistan. You can read the report here : http://www.uscirf.gov/images/Pakistan-ConnectingTheDots-Email(4).pdf
Earlier in the year, David Cameron pledged a significant amount of UK funding for Pakistani education, but with, as far as we can see, very little oversight, conditions or controls.

''Zartonk'' Oratert-i 75 Amyag-ue By Khachig Janoyan

2012-01-19T23:21:00.001Z

ARTICLE BY KHACHIG JANOYAN

LOS ANGELES, U.S.A.

ՅՕԴՈՒԱԾ ԽԱՉԻԿ ՃԱՆՈՅԵԱՆ-ԷՆ

ԼՈՍ ԱՆՃԵԼԸՍ, Մ. ՆԱՀԱՆԳՆԵՐ

Hrant Dink - Film Festival

2012-01-19T23:20:00.000Z

http://www.keghart.com/Dink-FilmFestival

Dear Fellow Armenians...Attention...! Urgent...!

2012-01-18T23:44:00.002Z

Please go to this address and vote.

http://epetitions.direct.gov.uk/petitions/261

Dear fellow Armenians,

I am genuinely perplexed that the signatories to the following UK Gov’t e-petition, seeking recognition of the Armenian Genocide, stands at the pathetic 138!

I would be v grateful if you can circulate/ advertise the following to your circulation; thanks.

And I’d be glad for any insights as to why this doesn’t seem to be eliciting a greater response……is there some politicking that I’m unaware of????

Recognition of the Armenian Genocide

Responsible department: Foreign and Commonwealth Office

I would like HM Government to recognise the events that overtook the Armenian population [of what is now E Turkey] around 1915 as 'genocide'. HM Government to follow the lead of EU partners - such as France & Austria - who already recognise those events as 'genocide'. As part of a parliamentary discussion, MPs should consider whether the terrible Jewish holocaust/genocide differs from that which overtook the Armenia population [of E Turkey] around 1915. Furthermore, why, since the Jewish genocide has been officially recognised by HM Government, is it the case that the Armenian genocide remains unacknowledged - given the criteria set down in the 1942 UN declaration on Genocide?

Go to: http://epetitions.direct.gov.uk/petitions/261

James Derounian BSc (Hons) MPhil MRTPI FHEA FILCM

Principal Lecturer in Community Development and Local Governance,

National Teaching Fellow,

University of Gloucestershire,

Department of Natural & Social Sciences,

Cheltenham

GL50 4AZ

Tel. 01242-714562

jderounian@glos.ac.uk

Ardzagang E. Sheverdnadze-i Haydararoutyan-ue By Vahe Sargsyan

2012-01-18T00:36:00.002Z

ARTICLE BY VAHE SARGSYAN

YEREVAN, ARMENIA

ՅՕԴՈՒԱԾ ՎԱՀԷ ՍԱՐԳՍԵԱՆ-ԷՆ

ԵՐԵՒԱՆ, ՀԱՅԱՍՏԱՆ

Michin Arevelki Hayoutyan Abakan By Hrach Kalsahakian

2012-01-17T00:42:00.003Z

ARTICLE BY HRACH KALSAHAKIAN

DUBAI, UNITED ARAB EMIRATES

ՅՕԴՈՒԱԾ ՀՐԱՉ ՔԱԼՍԱՀԱԿԵԱՆ-ԷՆ

ՏՈՒՊԱՅ, ԱՐԱԲԱԿԱՆ ՄԻԱՑԵԱԼ ԷՄԻՐՈՒԹԻՒՆՆԵՐ

FATHER FRANK’S RANTS - My Life with the Taliban

2012-01-17T00:40:00.001Z

Rant Number 473 16 January 2012

Er...not the priest’s life, actually, but Mullah Abdul Salam Zaeef’s. Former Taliban Ambassador to Pakistan. A chubby, affable, avuncular cove, he was the Taliban’s official voice to the West. Black-turbaned and bearded, he looked the part. After the US onslaught on his country after 9/11 the Pakistanis handed Zaeef over to the Yanks. He spent four years in Guantanamo. ‘Brutalising disrespect’ could sum up his experience there. With pictures now showing laughing US marines peeing over the corpses of Taleban warriors, the saga of own goal-scoring by ‘the West’ appears never-ending.

My Life with the Taliban is Zaeef’s autobiography. Orphaned as a child, from a desperately poor background, the future ambassador is brought up by relatives. Piety is the keynote of his life, so when the Russians invade Afghanistan, he joins the mujahedeen, the Islamic fighters. The holy warriors’ brotherhood when engaged in jihad is his fondest memory. After victory over the Soviets Mullah Omar sends Zaeef, against his wishes, as ambassador to Islamabad. Juicy snippets about his colleagues: the Kuwaiti ambassador, proud and pro-American; the young Saudi, obsessed with Osama bin Laden; the German and Belgian envoys, rude, arrogant and fixated with Muslim women (what’s new?). The nicest diplomat, he says, was the Palestinian ambassador – the moving kindness of the powerless...

The destruction of the Buddha statues in Bamyan, ordered by Abdul Wali, the Taliban minister for the propagation of virtue and the prevention of vice (why, o why can’t I head such ministry here?), is a kind of watershed. Buddhist countries plead to be allowed to remove the statues to safety. The Japanese offer money and argue: ‘You Afghanis were our ancestors, you gave us your religion: we got Buddhism from you’. Unmoved, Zaeef counters that the Japanese should now follow Afghanis into a higher religion, Islam. Besides, the Buddhas are only man-built stones, why make such a fuss? Whereupon the Japanese point out that the Ka’aba is also made of stone and constructed by human hands: why then do Muslims go around it and pray towards it? Zaeef does not record his answer.

Buddha, however, has his revenge. After the statues are blown up everything goes pear-shaped for the Taliban. Watching the attack on the Twin Towers on 9/11, Zaeef’s fellows exult around him but he cries. He knows America’s wrath will spell disaster for his poor country. If true, it shows the ambassador was no fool.

Vengeful US missiles rain down on Afghanistan. Piously, Zaeef combines diplomacy with Islamic counselling. ‘Where is God? Why doesn’t he look after the Taliban? Can’t pray. My faith has gone’ a tearful lady tells him. His response is that ‘God is testing us’. A simple theodicy. Quite right. Invoking, say, Ibn Arabi’s mysteriosophy – even if Zaeef was into that, which he is not – would have been a faux pas. To the simple you should be simple.

It is false, the ambassador claims, that the Taliban encouraged the cultivation of poppies and the production of drugs, quite the contrary. And the Islamic Emirate even offered to have Osama bin Laden put under house arrest, to prevent him from doing any harm. The possibility of sending Osama to the Hague Tribunal was also mooted. Bush would have none of that. The god of war’s votaries would not be placated.

Pakistan, fearful of America, breaks up relations with the Taliban. Still, Zaeef’ status should entitle him to some immunity. Instead, his Muslim brothers betray him. The infamous ISI, the Pakistani Army intelligence, trades him, as a goat, to the Yanks. Hooded, duct tape over his mouth, he is tied up, stripped naked, starved, kicked by the soldiers with their boots, dragged around, sat upon – they even use their rifles to beat him. I’ll spare you the humiliations he and his fellow captives suffer in Guantanamo – the dismal story is all too well-known, anyway.

Of course, if Zaeef’s handlers had been ruthless imperialists like Romans, Mongols or Turks, his ordeal would seem almost like schoolboys rough stuff. After all, they did not cut off his nose and ears, skin him alive or slit is throat. Problems arise when a nation proudly pretends to be on the side of the angels. To embody and uphold universal, high-minded values like democracy (‘democracy by the whip’, Zaeef mocks it), human rights, equality and blah-blah-blah. And signs up to international treaties against torture, mistreatment of prisoners and such trifles. Maybe America is hampered by her own principles? Could be.

Released in 2005, Zaeef is in no forgiving mood. ‘May Allah take revenge for what they did to me in this world and the next’, he says. ‘Barbarous’, ‘beasts’ and ‘Satanic’, he calls his jailers and tormentors. America is ‘a monster’. The UK is labelled ‘diabolical’. Well, now: Tony Blair was indeed that. ‘Stupid’ perhaps fits better Britain’s rulers. What else would you call governments that send their young men to die for a useless, unwinnable war? Moreover, I am naive enough to believe that the Brits would not have been as awful to Zaeef as the Yanks, had the roles been swapped. But, I know, I just am very naive.

The priest also must observe how Zaeef seems to forget that it was thanks to the aid of the ‘Satanic’ Americans that he and his fellow jihadists could beat the Soviets. (On page 47 there is a brief reference to ‘some Western countries’ and their help but none to the US, surely the key supporter.) Americans gave the mujahedeeen modern weapons with which to destroy Russian helicopters and tanks. That way Uncle Sam made a rod for his own back. As Italians say: ben gli sta!

I kind of like Zaeef, though he could hardly be described as progressively-minded. Any hint of concern for females is absent from his narrative (I wonder what the invisible Mrs Zaeef feels about it all) and an agrarian reform implemented by the pro-Soviet regime way back is described as against Islam. However, the Western powers that armed the Taliban against the Russians did not give the status of the poor women a thought either. Power politics is like that: dirty.

Moral? It depends of you, dear reader, but here is the priest’s: beware the Buddha’s revenge!

Revd Frank Julian Gelli

Armenian Church E-Newsletter, Issue 2, Volume 3

2012-01-16T22:52:00.002Z

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Baykar Sivazliyan Academikos By Gegel Khachadourian

2012-01-16T06:48:00.001Z

CORRESPONDENCE FROM GEGEL KHACHADOURIAN

MILAN, ITALY

ԹՂԹԱԿՑՈՒԹԻՒՆ ԿԵԿԷԼ ԽԱՉԱՏՈՒՐԵԱՆ-ԷՆ

ՄԻԼԱՆՕ (ԻՏԱԼԻԱ)

BOLIS: SCREENED IN MEMORY OF HRANT DINK

2012-01-15T22:40:00.004Z

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LOUSSAPATZ 915

2012-01-14T22:57:00.001Z

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Congress Urges Turkey to Return Churches By Harut Sassounian

2012-01-12T10:01:00.003Z

ARTICLE BY HARUT SASSOUNIAN

LOS ANGELES, U.S.A.

ՅՕԴՈՒԱԾ ՅԱՐՈՒԹ ՍԱՍՈՒՆԵԱՆԷՆ

ԼՈՍ ԱՆՃԵԼԸՍ, Մ. ՆԱՀԱՆԳՆԵՐ

RAG 90 Amyagi Donagadaroutioun

2012-01-12T09:54:00.003Z

FROM OUR CORRESPONDENT IN

ALEPPO, SYRIA.

ՀԱԼԷՊԻ (ՍՈՒՐԻԱ)

ՄԵՐ ԹՂԹԱԿԻՑԷՆ

FATHER FRANK’S RANTS - Long Live Justin!

2012-01-12T09:52:00.000Z

Rant Number 472 11 January 2012

The world will be saved by beauty, wrote Dostoevsky. Beautiful thought but...here is a more extreme one. What if, perhaps not quite the whole world but at least a portion the world’s youth was saved by...a pretty boy?

Not a joke. Because ueberpopular teenage singer Justin Bieber believes in God. And in Jesus – he has even had his Saviour’s face tattooed on his calf. And Justin’s theology is not merely theoretical – it has firm, practical implications.

You see, the cute, fresh-faced kid’s fans army is composed of teenage girls. When they behold their idol in the flesh the girls scream, they cry, they convulse, they swoon...you get the picture. A bit like I saw Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s fans act in Tehran way back. The chicks are perhaps a tad nicer to look at but the wild enthusiasm, the emotionalism is not dissimilar. Celebrity cult rules OK. Back to Thomas Carlyle’s Hero and Hero Worship, I feel.

Believing Bieber has clear opinions about love and sex. Sex without love, for example, he does not support. ‘Wait for the person you love’ he said. So simple, so straightforward – and so true. It took a slight, smoothie kiddo like Justin to say something established clergymen lack the guts to preach!

Nor does the lad apparently believe in abortion. In things like ‘killing a baby’. That put the cat among the pigeons. It stirred up the ‘pro-choice’ brigade. I understand them. Because when a hugely admired superboy singer like Justin speaks, fans are bound to pay attention. Teenage girls, especially. They may begin to think twice about indulging in activities like casual sex and promiscuity. That worries, even scares the pro-choicers: good!

Justin’s idea of Christianity may seem rather too personal, individualistic. This young Canadian of Franco-German ancestry prefers focussing on prayer and talking to God to following conventional worship in a public building. ‘I don’t have to go to church’, he stated.

Now, you can’t expect a professional clergyman like the priest to warm to that ex officio but I recognise that Anglican services tend to be so diabolically bland, dull and boring that I cannot blame Justin’s peculiar ecclesiology. The jolly jingles & biblical sermons of a shrine like Holy Trinity Brompton may perhaps incline a youngster to a more lenient view but that’s by the by. The truth is that Bieber’s influence, his outspoken words may actually make a difference, change the lives of a number of young people – save souls, why not? Mock, if you like - it is a genuine spiritual achievement. But the Archbishop of Canterbury? Come on, can you really imagine anyone being saved by His Grace’s tortuous, convoluted, progressive lucubrations? Sorry, I can’t.

Not that the sweet, slightly girlish-looking boy quite fits crude Christian stereotypes. Homosexuality does not affect Justin, he declared. Ahem...I am not so naive to doubt an unseen PR hand behind this. ‘Justin, my lad, you are too nice a kid to ruin your career in this way. Don’t bash gays, OK? Just look after Number One’, someone might have whispered into his ear beforehand. World-wise enough. Still, I ask: why should being a follower of Jesus Christ be necessarily associated with cursing, condemning and hurling anathemas at your neighbour? After all, the Second Vatican Council refused to issue any of those. In the end, it is a matter of setting an example, of teaching by being, like Justin, a role-model, not of slagging off sinners (or whatever), surely. The boy singer was right in being restrained, whatever his true feelings.

When asked whether he would condemn abortion even in a case of rape, Bieber came out with a curious line which, again, annoyed and alarmed some. ‘Everything happens for a reason’. Huh! Don’t figure the youth is a student of Leibniz. The great German thinker who in his system taught the celebrated principle of sufficient reason. For everything that happens there must be a sufficient reason. My scratching my big toe, your dog barking, the sun spots flaring up, an Iranian atomic scientist being murdered by a ‘mysterious’ bomb – those events and indeed all others must be capable of being rationally explained. To the question ‘why?’ a potential answer must in principle be available, the principle has it. But that’s metaphysics – Justin is a bit too callow to know that. Down to brass tacks, what he might have meant, I suppose, was that there is an explanation for a pregnancy arising out of rape. But beware! A reason is not the same as a justification. There is a reason why Jack the Ripper butchered a number of ladies of the night but that ‘reason’ would not have let the monster off, had they caught him. Anyway, a baby born out of atrocious circumstances does not have to be killed – agencies exist more than willing to take care of an unwanted child and give him into adoption later. Pro-choicers have indeed another choice, apart from killing.

‘Who is Justin Bieber?’ inquired Nick, a voluble young atheist I occasionally tweet with on Twitter. Reminiscent of the notorious ‘who are the Beatles?’ a doddering old British judge naively asked long ago about the Fab Four. Which goes to show how hopelessly unaware of current affairs some godless youths are. Maybe I should give Nick my glossy Bieber wall calendar – it might mesmerise him into being a believer in Bieber and also a believer in God – who knows? God can make use of the most unlikely instruments for his saving work...

A to Justin’s music. Frankly, it is not my cup of tea. Johnny Cash, Bob Dylan and Chris de Burgh - groan...guess they date me - were more my ideas of butch singers combining a good voice and, yes, a religious message. Bieber is too saccharine for my taste. De gustibus non est disputandum, however. And the point is not whether the lovely lad is a Mozart or a Sinatra but whether his status plus his views may help in saving souls. I think they might, so...long live Justin!

Revd Frank Julian Gelli

On the Criminalization of the Denial of Genocides By Ara Papian

2012-01-10T19:01:00.002Z

ARTICLE BY ARA PAPIAN

YEREVAN, ARMENIA

ՅՕԴՈՒԱԾ ԱՐԱ ՊԱՊԵԱՆԷՆ

ԵՐԵՒԱՆ, ՀԱՅԱՍՏԱՆ

Engerouhi Sossie Naccashian G'arjanana Mrtsanagi

2012-01-09T21:45:00.001Z

FROM OUR CORRESPONDENT IN

MONTREAL, CANADA

ՄՈՆԹՐԷԱԼ-Ի (ԳԱՆԱՏԱ)

ՄԵՐ ԹՂԹԱԿԻՑԷՆ

Hamajoghovayin Nergayatsoutsichner Irents... Patsagayoutyamp By Barouyr Aghbashian

2012-01-08T22:53:00.002Z

a) ARTICLE BY BAROUYR AGHBASHIAN
BEIRUT, LEBANON

b) ADLP LIFETIME ACHIEVEMENT AWARDS

ա) ՅՕԴՈՒԱԾ ՊԱՐՈՅՐ ԱՂՊԱՇԵԱՆԷՆ
ՊԷՅՐՈՒԹ, ԼԻԲԱՆԱՆ

բ) Ռ.Ա.Կ. ՊԱՏՈՒՈՅ ՅԱՏՈՒԿ ՅԻՇԱՏԱԿՈՒԹԵԱՆ ՄՐՑԱՆԱԿԱԿԻՐՆԵՐ

Շնորհաւոր Նոր Տարի եւ Սուրբ Ծնունդ & FORTHCOMING EVENTS IN HAYASHEN FOR (FREE)

2012-01-08T00:50:00.001Z

Շնորհաւոր Նոր Տարի եւ Սուրբ Ծնունդ
(Shnorhavor Nor Daree yev Soorp Dzuhnoont)
Happy New Year & Armenian Christmas
FROM CAIA

FORTHCOMING EVENTS IN HAYASHEN FOR (FREE)

THURSDAY 26 JANUARY 10.30am – 12.30pm

Come and learn about how to use LOCATA in a friendly relaxed atmosphere about LOCATA.

LOCATA is an internet platform used by local councils to help you to find suitable accommodation. Free refreshments.

For further information contact Scarlet at CAIA 020 8992 4621.

THURSDAY 2 FEBRUARY 10.30am - 12.30pm

Introduction of how to use Public Services website, you will be informed about services offered by NHS, National & Local Government (i.e. how to apply for a passport, tax disc, driving licence etc. also how to make a complaint or complement about services offered by them. Free refreshments.

For further information contact Scarlet at CAIA 020 8992 4621.

FRIDAY 17^th FEBRUARY 11.30-2.30pm

Digital TV is coming to London so get ready for the Switchover!

The existing analogue TV signal is being switched off and replaced with a new, stronger digital TV signal.

If you are currently watching analogue TV through an aerial, and can only watch BBC 1, BBC 2, ITV, Channel 4 and Channel 5 you will need to covert your TV before the switchover dates.

· Stage 1 is happening on the 4th April 2012 and BBC 2 will cease broadcasting in analogue.

· Stage 2 is happening on the 18th April 2012 (two weeks after stage 1), where the remaining analogue channels will be permanently switched off. (but don’t worry, there is plenty of support. Come & find out).

Introduction to Armenian History, Culture & Heritage

6 half day Course

This is a free course in English for anyone. However you must register and provide copy of passport or number. (See form attached)

Refreshments and light lunch provided at 1.30pm before the start of each session.

Registration date & Induction: Sunday 12 February 2012 (1.00-2.00pm)

Venue: Hayashen, 105a Mill Hill Road, Acton, London W3 8JF

Course dates:

Sunday 19 February, 2012, Dr Rouben Galichian - Armenia in Old Maps and Old Armenian Maps

Sunday 26 February, 2012, Dr Hratch Tchilingirian (Cambridge) Armenian Diaspora in the Global Age: Issues and Questions

Sunday 4 March, 2012, Steven Sim – Armenian Architecture – City of AniSunday 11 March, 2012 Shakeh Major Tchilingirian - Armenian Folk Dances

Sunday 18 March, 2012, Dr Raymond Kevorkian - The Armenian Genocide

Sunday 25 March, 2012, Dr Zaven Yegavian - Armenian schools in Ottoman Empire and the post-genocide situation in diaspora

Time: 1.30pm-4.00pm (Light lunch/refreshments 1.30-2.00pm )

--
Misak Ohanian
CEO
Centre for Armenian Information & Advice (CAIA)
Hayashen
105a Mill Hill Road
Acton, London W3 8JF
Tel: 020 8992 4621
Fax: 020 8993 8953
E-mail: info@caia.org.uk
website: www.caia.org.uk
Facebook: www.facebook.com/pages/Centre-for-Armenian-Information-Advice/150069445015045

Registered Charity No.1088534
Limited Company by Guarantee. Registered in England No.4195084. Registered office as above.

Greetings and Messages from His Holiness the Catholicos and His Grace the Primate Date: 6 January 2012 02:16:38 GMT

2012-01-06T20:53:00.002Z

Քրիստոս Ծնաւ եւ Յայտնեցաււ: Օրհնեալ է Յայտնութիւնն Քրիստոսի:
Christ is born and revealed. Blessed is the revelation of Christ.

Below please find links to the following documents from the Primate's Office:

1. The 2012 Nativity Message by His Holiness Karekin II in Armenian

2. The 2012 Nativity Message by His Holiness Karekin II in English

3. The 2012 Nativity Message by His Grace Bishop Vahan Hovhanessian, Primate, in Armenian

4. The 2012 Nativity Message by His Grace Bishop Vahan Hovhanessian, Primate, in English

5. Greeting Card from the Primate

We wish you and your loved ones a blessed, happy, healthy and prosperous New Year!

The Primate's Office volunteer staff
Violetta, Aznive and Hovik

FATHER FRANK’S RANTS - Racism from Mars

2012-01-05T22:50:00.000Z

Rant Number 471 5 January 2012

It is a truth universally acknowledged that racism is a heinous crime. A racism-bearer is an odious, loathsome, monstrous creature. A bit like the repulsive Martian aliens science-fiction used to portray. They disgusted you, they made your flesh creep, they turned your stomach. A racist is like that.

Yet, it was not always so. Martians walked the earth once. They lived in the heart of Europe. In perhaps the most civilised, cultured nation of all. Racism became enshrined in the very laws of Europe. It prospered, it thrived, it conquered – indeed, racism came very close to ruling the world. Prior to that, racism was a book, Mein Kampf. The Martian who wrote that was Adolf Hitler.

Martian Adolf followed almost literally the ideas of another Martian, that eccentric Englishman (groan...why is it at the roots of much mischief you usually find an Englishman?), Houston Steward Chamberlain. (To be fair, Martian Frenchmen like Vacher de Lapouge and Arthur de Gobineau also tilled the racist soil but it is the French’s sad lot to be pipped at the post.)Three races exist: races that create civilisation, races that ‘adopt’ a civilisation and races destructive of civilisation. The first are the Aryans, the second, say, the Japanese and any westernised races, and the third, alas, the Jews. Below that are dark, turbid races and peoples so inferior to escape classification, like the pariahs, the untouchables of Aryan India.

Hitler admitted there were no quite ‘pure’ races. There was a gradation. After the Aryans came alpine races, then ‘dinaric’ races, ‘vestids’, races of ‘redemption’ and some such peculiar taxonomies. Yet, miscegenation, race-mixing, the poisoning of Aryan blood for the Martian mind is the greatest danger. Mixed marriages must be forbidden in the new Martian state. Not national-socialism but national-racism should be properly termed the Martian ideal. The state is like a vessel containing that infinitely precious thing, the Aryan blood. The state is hence to be not an end in itself, Hitler says, but a means to an end: the defence of the Aryan-Martian race.

Martian concept of citizenship is radically at odds with the modern, Western concept. ‘We do not inquire as to a man’s race or religion, but only if he is a good citizen’ said C.M. Doughty to an Arab in answer to a question about the status of Jews in Britain. Hitler perceived that as a scandal. ‘Citizenship is not like membership of the Automobile Club’, he foamed. ‘No bureaucrat can turn a Zulu or a Hottentot into a pure German’, the Martian went on. Only race, birth and blood can give rise to citizenship, followed by an oath of loyalty to the Aryan community and the racist Reich. So, there.

This idolatry of an Aryan Reich based on pure blood annoyed even Martians of different ilk. Baron Julius Evola, for example, was disturbed by the claim in Mein Kampf that ‘to be an Aryan dustman in the racist Reich is a greater honour than to be king of foreign state’. Evola, Italian malgre lui, detected in that a ‘degradation’ of the race ideal. His own racism, like that of de Gobineau, was strictly confined to elites, to aristocratic strata. A snobbish type of racism, huh! Therefore Evola did not scruple to agree with Trotzky in calling national racism a form of ‘zoological materialism’. His own nebulous doctrine of ‘spiritual’ racism was the remedy for that aberration...

Hitler the Martian definitely did not like missionaries. (Muslim friends, pay attention, please!). For him, Christian missionaries neglected their Aryan flocks to convert inferior races in Africa. The result could only be further miscegenation, bastardisation and so on. A bizarre Martian God, however, is invoked to uphold a vision of marriage intended to generate creatures made in the Lord’s image, ‘not abortions half-way between man and monkeys’.

Paragraph 19 of the National-Socialist Party’s programme demanded that ‘Roman Law, servant of a materialistic world conception, should be replaced with German common law’. Yes, the Martians’ demand made sense. Roman Law was in principles universalistic. When Emperor Caracalla in 212 AD widened Roman citizenship to all the free peoples of the Empire, the universal afflatus of Roman jurisprudence was fulfilled. Christianity, a worldwide, non-racial religion open to all, perfected the vision. The Martian mind sought to reverse that. When Hitler came to power the Nuremberg laws on citizenship and race saw to it that the fatal shift from Rome to Mars was indeed implemented.

An indifferent and confused 60’s book, Morning of the Magicians, plugged the claim that Nazism was indeed like an invasion from another planet. Other, shrewder thinkers like George Mosse, drew attentions to many of Hitler’s harbingers and forerunners. They were not extra-terrestrials but men and scholars belonging to distinctly earthly and human cultural traditions. Martian symbolism may be apposite to express contemporary human feelings and emotions about the alienness of racist ideologies but it is intellectually inaccurate and misleading. Racists are not from Mars but from this human, all too human world. Thus, the priest’s use of Martian language is just rhetoric, no more.

Martians are dead. Racism is now universally execrated and illegal. Still, Brendan O’Neill, in a most provocative article in spiked-online, has accused the British indigenous cultural elite of ruthlessly exploiting the tragic case of Stephen Lawrence – the boy murdered 18 years ago in Eltham, a London working class district. The culprits have been sentenced as guilty at the trial’s end but O’Neill says the verdict was not justice but politics. A showtrial, no less. A case of British elites demonising the white working class. A ‘moral crusade against Old Britain and its foul, backward, inhabitants.’

O’Neill and his Spike fellows emanate from the Left of British politics and are hence above suspicion. Maybe there is something in what he writes. Nice white liberals who feels so morally superior to ordinary, grass-roots Brits and their ‘prejudices’ exist. But it is a curious argument. With strange echoes. Count De Gobineau saw a pure Aryan race predominant amongst the French noblemen while the working class descended from inferior strata. The French revolution for him was a racial rebellion of the low against their blood superiors. Racial snobbery ruled OK. Do we perhaps behold now another type of ‘inverted racism’ snobbery against working class Britons?

Domine libera nos! May the Lord save us from that.

Revd Frank Julian Gelli

Kooshesh - Beautiful Song and performance

2012-01-05T22:33:00.003Z

Hello Seta,
On the occasion of the 20th anniversary of Armenia's independance, the armenians in Montréal with the participation of local artists, celebrated together in Place des Arts.

The Qubec artists learned some Armenian songs and offered us with the participation of the wonderful artists from Armenia a beautiful concert. Aida and myself were among the spectators.It was touching...

Love, Anita

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Wu7jY_Oagk&

E-NEWSLETTER HH - J:RJIK AArmenian Church of The United Kingdom and The Republic of Ireland 44th January 2012, Issue 1, Volume 3 The Right Revd Bishop

2012-01-04T22:55:00.001Z

E-NEWSLETTER

HH - J:RJIK

AArmenian Church of The United Kingdom and The Republic of Ireland

44th January 2012, Issue 1, Volume 3

The Right Revd Bishop Vahan Hovhanessian, Primate

AARMENIAN CHURCH OF UK & IRELAND

THE PRIMATE’S OFFICE

25 Cheniston Gardens Kensington London W8 6TG Tel: 020 8127 8364 Fax: 0872 111 5548

E-mail:

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THE PRIMATE’S BLOG

SPURK ARMENIAN MAGAZINE 2011

2012-01-03T22:45:00.002Z

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Article by Maitre Kasbar Derderian Worth Reading

2012-01-03T11:09:00.000Z

Ցեղասպանութիւնը՝ Հասկցանք, Բայց...
Ու՞ր Մնաց Տարագրութիւնը

http://www.keghart.com/Derderian-DAHK

Դարադարձի Խոհեր
Մեթր Գ. Տէրտէրեան, Պէյրութ, 20 Նոյեմբեր 2011

Արեւմտահայաստանի իրաւաքաղաքական՝ ՀՈՂԱՅԻՆ, պահանջատիրութիւնն է միայն, որ իր մագնիսական դաշտին մէջ կրնայ համախմբել համահայութիւնը՝ Հայաստան, Արցախ
եւ Տարագիր Արեւմտահայութիւն:

Նայիլ նաեւ անգլերէնով Thank you Nalbandian, Thank you Davutoğlu ակնարկին որ առնչուած է Մեթր Գ. Տէրտէրեանի յօդուածին հետ:

9 տասնամեակներէ ի վեր՝ յետ-Եղեռնի մեր պահանջատիրութիւնը սահմանափակուած կը մնայ, մեր զգացական-ապաքաղաքական մօտեցումին հետեւանքով, Մեծ Եղեռնի երկեակ ոճիրներէն միայն մէկուն՝ Ցեղասպանութեան լոկ բարոյական ճանաչումին հետապնդումով, բարձի թողի ընելով երկեակ ոճիրներէն միւսին՝ Տարագրութեան, այսինքն՝ Արեւմտահայութեան հայրենազրկման եւ Արեւմտահայաստանի հայաթափումին ու զաւթումին, մեզի համար աւելի ճակատագրական ոճիրը...: Մեր այս ��գացական ու ապաքաղաքական մօտեցումը չփոխուեցավ նոյնիսկ՝ երբ Մեծ Եղեռնի 50-ամեակին առիթով 1965 թ., Երեւանի մէջ կազմակերպուած վիթխարի ցոյցին ընթացքին, պաստառներն ու վանկարկումները կը պահանջէին “ Մեր Հողերը, Մեր Հողերը”... շեշտը դնելով Տարագրութեան եւ անոր հետեւանքներուն վրայ, աւելի քան՝ մեր նահատակներուն ու կորուսեալ “գոյքերուն” վրայ: Կէս դարով յապաղած ենք արդէն՝ այդ օրէն: