YERKRAPAH’S DAY MARKED IN KAPAN

KAPAN, MAY 8, NOYAN TAPAN. On May 8, on the occasion of the
Yerkrapah’s (Defender of the Land) Day, members of the Kapan branch of
the Yerkrapah Volunteers’ Union laid flowers and wreaths to the
Baghaburj memorial complex in memory of their perished friends. Branch
Vice-Chairman Aramayis Haroutiunian said that the yerkrapahs should be
never forgotten and should be always in the center of attention. “If
necessary, it is just the yerkrapahs that will take arms and the
yerkrapahs’ mood and bravery should not be broken,” Aramayis
Haroutiunian emphasized in his interview to Noyan Tapan correspondent.

The End of Genocide
Monthly Review, VA
May 08, 06
by Michael Steinberg
In an age dominated by brute force and overwhelming military power — in
other words, any age at all — it is hard to remember that the simplest addition
to our vocabulary can change the world. This was what Raphael Lemkin
accomplished in 1944, when in a study on the Nazi occupation of Europe he coined
the word “genocide.”
Just four years later, the concept entered international law in _the
Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide_
() , passed by the General Assembly of the
United Nations on December 9, 1948. That Convention gives the following
definition:

[G]enocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy,
in whole or in part, a national, ethnical [sic], racial or religious group,
as such:
(a) Killing members of the group;
(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
(c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to
bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
(d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
(e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group (Article 2).

This makes “genocide” a peculiar type of crime. It is what lawyers call a
mens rea offense, one which encompasses a wide range of conduct whenever it is
done with a specific intention. Mass killing is what genocide calls to
mind, of course, but the prohibited acts include mass maiming, reducing the
living standards of people below the level needed to maintain the population,
forced sterilization and probably forced contraception, and the mandatory
surrender of parental rights.
Lawyers could go further. They know that “calculated” is a legal term of
art which refers to an objective standard of conduct. An act is calculated to
bring about a result if a reasonable person would know that the result was
likely to follow. Throwing someone overboard in the middle of Lake Superior is
calculated to kill the victim even if the person doing the throwing intends
nothing more than a harmless prank.
Put this way, there are a great many countries which have committed genocide.
Was apartheid not the imposition of serious mental harm on Black South
Africans, even those who never got in trouble with the police or the army? Didn’t
_Canada_ ( nts.html) take
First Nations children from their parents well into the twentieth century? How
about the 500,000 Iraqi children whose deaths due to _sanctions_
( ) was considered a price worth paying
by that gentle liberal _Madeleine Albright_
() ? And might not neoliberal “shock treatment” qualify under subhead
(c), considering that living standards in the former Soviet Union were brought
so low as a result that _the population declined dramatically_
() ?
These are all highly debatable questions, of course, and I don’t plan to
debate them. They’re offered only to show that the specific definition of
genocide to which the world community adheres makes sense only within the context
of its birth. Genocide, as a crime, is a generalized description of Nazi
race policy. Each of the subheads was derived from a specific practice: (a)
from the death camps, (b) slave labor, (c) confinement in ghettos, (d) the
forced sterilization program, and (e) a little-known but real program to “rescue”
Aryan children from less suitable parents.
That’s not all. Lemkin (or the UN) did more than allow the Nazis to define
the physical acts constituting genocide. In a way which is proving far more
troubling, they also let the Nazi paradigm define the other part of the
offense, the intent or mental state required. The new crime was limited to acts
intended to harm not specific, concrete human beings but “a national, ethnical
[sic], racial or religious group, as such.” It is a crime which combines
violence with categorization. Given the breadth of the definition, in fact, it
is the categorization itself which stands at the heart of the offense.
Genocide is thus a crime of the imagination. It is harm with the belief
that every individual act of violence is a step towards the elimination of a
group. But this raises a question. Why does this intent convert murder into
something worse than murder?
The question is most horrifyingly pressing in contemporary Africa. The
victims in Darfur are described as Africans and the perpetrators as Arabs.
Genetically these two “groups” are identical, and there are reasons to believe that
the underlying conflict is one between farmers and pastoralists, but that is
irrelevant; what counts is the construction of group identity which allows
the killing and the burning of villages to be seen as the destruction of one
group by another. It is a murderous and largely — though not entirely —
one-sided struggle, and it has produced hundreds of thousands of victims. The
heart-wrenching TV footage and the finger-pointing editorials may all be
merited. Yet while the “genocide” label makes Darfur the object of humanitarian
concern — or at least the simulacrum of concern, aid budgets still not being
increased — _the far vaster, longer, more horrendous slaughter in the Congo_
( main657774.shtml) goes on
with hardly a mention even on the inner pages of our newspapers of record. To
what point is one classified as genocide and the other as a mere civil war?
Is blood redder in Darfur?
Nor does the elimination of every sort of group fall within the definition of
genocide. In 1965 and 1966, for example, hundreds of thousands — _perhaps
more than a million_ () — people were
murdered in _Indonesia_ () ,
mostly because of their real or rumored membership in the Communist Party.
Entire villages were wiped out. It was a slaughter that in its scope, its low-tech
brutality, and the resigned acquiescence of most of its victims seems an
eerie presage of Rwanda. But it was not genocide, because political groups are
not entitled to the protection of the convention. (Neither was _Stalin’s
liquidation of the kulaks_ () ,
because “social class” doesn’t make the list either.) To hack a Communist to
pieces with a machete is only murder; to hack a Tutsi to death in the same way
is something else
And the mens rea of genocide is also a delusion, a delusion which seems to
have the power of contagion. Its almost inevitable failure is not due to the
technical difficulty of killing large numbers of people. It is the group
itself which slips away. Individuals may or may not escape; but the boundaries
of the category are certain to blur. The problem with the concept of
genocide is that, like the crime itself, it insists that things are otherwise.
Categories are always artificial, provisional, inaccurate, misleading. You
can group people any way you wish, but nothing will assure you that every
person so categorized will act the same as any other or that those uncategorized
will not turn out to be fifth columnists. The unitary organism that the
Nazis called “World Jewry” never existed. This was part of the insanity of the
theory. It insisted that a merchant banker from Hamburg, a Talmudist from
Vilna, and a dock worker from Salonika were identical for all important
purposes. And it was part of the special horror of the Holocaust that everything
about its victims but the bare datum of their Jewishness was obliterated before
the actual living Jews, personal lives and family histories stripped away
with their clothing, were obliterated themselves.
This is the other problem with the concept of genocide. The Nazi world view
was fundamentally racist, and the essentialism built into that world view is
impossible to remove from its afterlife in the newly-minted crime of
genocide. It has merely been reversed. To the Nazis the SS were heroes and the
Jews sub-human vermin. In today’s discourse the killers are killers, which is
usually fair enough; but the victims are granted a kind of plenary indulgence
and appear to us as helpless innocents. One can kill in self-defense and
wars are routinely fought between equally guilty parties. Only in situations of
genocide are good and evil so clearly drawn.
That moral clarity — to use a Bushism that seems to have fallen from favor
— is genocide’s public relations strength, but it is the concept’s undoing as
a tool of analysis. The price for that clarity is the same obliteration of
personal, family, and social history perpetrated by the Nazis. The victims
have no identity but their group membership.
For example, suggest some human sympathy towards _a Serb household in Kosovo_
( tm) , and you’re treated as
if you were Slobodan Milosevic himself. It is all but impossible to discuss
the possibility that _the 1994 plane crash which killed the then-president of
Rwanda_ ( m) and served as
the excuse for the slaughter there was the work of _Paul Kagame’s Tutsi
rebels_ ( m) — though some
students of the events believe that this was the case. It is just as difficult to
point to _the Rwandan army’s later incursions into the Congo_
( ry.cfm?story_id=3446358) _and its hold on
some of the area’s mines_
( idx.htm) . Having been victims of genocide, the sins of Kosovars and Tutsis both
past and present are washed as white as snow. The same is true of rebels in
Darfur after the savage repression licensed by the Sudanese government; only
now, and only in a few places, does one hear that not all of the atrocities
were the work of the Janjaweed.
We do not need a concept that simplifies political struggles beyond
recognition or gives preferential attention to those calamities where leaders of one
side happen to claim that their enemy is a specific ethnic, racial or
religious group. Lemkin and the UN were not to blame; none of this was likely to
have been foreseen in 1948. The notion of genocide emerged from an
understandable sense that Nazi crimes were somehow unlike the crimes of the past and
must never be repeated. But it remains too closely tied to those crimes, and to
a particular explanation of them, to be of any use in today’s world. There
is no such thing as genocide. There are cruelty, oppression, murder, and
torture. Those are real, and they need to be stopped. Genocide is imaginary.
It is time we did away with it.
_Michael Steinberg_ () is the author
of _The Fiction of a Thinkable World: Body, Meaning, and the Culture of
Capitalism_ () published this year by
Monthly Review Press and essays in professional journals in history, music, and
law. He is a member of the literature collective _Cat’s out of the Bag._
() He and his wife _Loret_
( einberg-1.html) , _a photographer and professor of
documentary photography_ () , live in
Rochester, New York, under the supervision of two domestic medium-hair cats.

()
(javascript:HaloScanTB(‘steinberg080506’);) ()
() ()

Power games in the Caucasus

By Kieran Cooke
In Dgvari village, Georgia

BBC News
8 May 2006

Roman Gogoladze, a farmer living in the village of Dgvari, high up in the
mountains of Georgia in the Caucasus, points at the foot wide cracks in the
walls of his house.
The whole structure looks as though it will soon collapse and slide down the
valley.

“Big powers – the oil companies and the government – are destroying our
homes and our land,” he says.

“They are playing their money games and ignore people like us.”

The anger of Mr Gogoladze and other villagers in Dgvari is mainly directed
at BP, the energy giant leading a consortium which recently completed the
world’s longest pipeline project, stretching 1,767kms from Baku in
Azerbaijan via Tbilisi in Georgia to the port of Ceyhan on Turkey’s
Mediterranean coast.

The Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) pipeline and an associated South Caucasus gas
supply line are sunk into the mountainside less than one kilometre above
Dgvari.

Villagers say pipeline excavations have seriously destabilised surrounding
lands and allege that promised amounts of compensation have not been paid.

BP insists work on the BTC is not to blame for Dgvari’s landslide problems.

It says it has offered $1m (£550,000) of humanitarian aid to the government
to help resettle the villagers elsewhere.

Foreign investment

Georgia, one of the richest republics in the old USSR, went into sharp
economic decline following the collapse of the Soviet Union and the
country’s independence in the early 1990s.

As Russia’s economy went into free-fall, Georgia lost its key export market,
particularly for its food produce and wine.

More than a million of the country’s 5m people were forced to emigrate in
search of jobs.

Though there have been limited signs of economic improvement recently, the
country – with much of its infrastructure in a state of near collapse, most
of its industry at a standstill and estimates of unemployment varying
between 30% and 50% – is in desperate need of investment.

The Georgian government says the BTC project will play a central role in
rejuvenating the country’s economy.

According to government statistics, more than 60% of total foreign
investment over the past two years has been associated with the project.

“I have no illusions that this pipeline will solve all our problems, but
this is a start,” says Georgia’s president, Mikhail Saakashvili.

Seismic zone

However, many farmers along the route of the BTC, plus local environmental
groups, have voiced strong opposition.

The oil and gas pipelines go near the source of the country’s famed Borjumi
spring water, a principal export.
Georgia is in a seismic zone: the BTC’s critics say any earthquake activity
could cause massive environmental and economic damage.

The $3.6bn BTC project, strongly backed by the US and British governments,
plays a key role in an increasingly frenzied battle for control of vital
energy sources in the Caspian region and Central Asia, with Washington and
London viewing the presence of the pipeline as a vital counterbalance to
Russia’s growing control over the area’s energy supplies.

The Georgian government not only hopes to gain much needed funds from
charging for the transit of oil and gas through its territory.

With much of its own energy sources, including a network of hydro stations,
in a state of severe disrepair, the country is heavily dependent on imports,
particularly of gas, supplied by Russia.

Moscow, which has military bases in Georgia, has watched with concern as its
former republic has turned to the West: US military advisors are training
the Georgian army – President Bush visited Tbilisi last year, describing the
country as “a beacon of freedom.”

At the beginning of this year Russia doubled the price of gas it supplies to
Georgia.

In late January, in the middle of one of the coldest winters on record, an
as yet unexplained explosion severed the pipeline carrying Russian gas to
Georgia, leaving a large part of the country without power for a week.

President Saakashvili was quick to point the finger at Moscow, alleging his
country was the victim of “outrageous blackmail.”

Power and influence

Georgia is seeking to diversify energy supplies, though a gas import
agreement with Iran met with Washington’s disapproval and was quickly
terminated.

The government is now negotiating terms for a gas supply from the BTC
associated South Caucasus Pipeline project.

Yet while the government says it’s trying to escape from Moscow’s shadow,
there are indications powerful political factions are pressing for the
sell-off of the country’s power sector to Russian interests.

“Strange games are going on here,” says Mrs Salome Zourabichvili, the
country’s former foreign minister, sacked by Mr Saakashvili last year.

“There’s a lot of infighting in government with a pro-Moscow faction seeming
to get the upper hand.

“What is white is black and vice versa. As everywhere else in the
territories of the old Soviet Union, Russia is using its power as an energy
producer to further its influence.”

Empty promises

The complexities of local politics, big power rivalries and the energy
business mean little to Roman Gogoladze and his fellow farmers in the
village of Dgvari.

The government says there’s a growing danger of landslides and has told the
village’s 500 inhabitants they must leave.

“The Russians, BP, the government – they’re all the same,” says Mr
Gogoladze.

“All sorts of promises are made but nothing ever happens.

“When we protested against the pipelines, the police came and beat people
up. Not one person in the village was given work on the project. Indians and
Columbians were brought in instead and we were left with nothing – but we
are never going to leave our lands.”

AREA STUDIES MUSEUM OF GEGHARKUNIK MARZ NEEDS URGENT FUNDAMENTAL
REPAIR

GAVAR, MAY 8, NOYAN TAPAN. No repair works were ever held at the
Gegharkunik marz Area Studies Museum which was founded in 1953: only
the building roof “was patched up” in 1993. But, as Byureghik Hoveyan,
the museum Director informed the Noyan Tapan correspondent, during the
rains it drips in all rooms of the museum what is negatively reflected
on exhibition models of great historic-cultural value kept in the
museum. It was also mentioned that the museum is not heated and the
sanitary system does not function. According to B.Hoveyan, two former
Ministers of Culture, Tamar Poghosian and Hovik Hoveyan, promised to
assist the museum during their visits paid to the marz. But, because
of the short terms of their officiating, those promises left
imperfect. As a result, the museum building appeared in a sad state
and needs urgent repair. “Though there are many problems, we do our
best to keep the museum models. We take care of every exhibit to pass
them to generations.” B.Hoveyan said. More than 9000 exhibits are at
preset kept and exhibited at the Gegharkunik marz Area Studies
Museum. According to the Director, the most ancient of them are of the
second century B.C. Pupils of education institutions and tourists
visiting the marz are main visitors of the museum.

OTHER 15 SCHOOL BUILDINGS TO BE REPAIRED IN KOTAYK MARZ THIS YEAR

HRAZDAN, MAY 8, NOYAN TAPAN. 103 secondary schools, 3 special
secondary (2 of them boarding schools), 4 private schools, 6 state and
1 non-state (Hrazdan College of the European Regional Academy) middle
professional educational institutions, 2 non-state institutions of
higher education function in the Kotayk marz at present. 41388 pupils
study at schools of the marz, 3336 teachers work, with middle loading
of 22 academic hours weekly. Schools of distant settlements of the
marz were completed with 16 specialists teachers the last year. Almost
all the schools has computers, computer rooms have been opened in 85
of them, and 26 schools have joined the Internet connection. On the
account of the 2005 state budget resources, 15 schools were repaired
in the Kotayk marz, and one new school building in the rural community
of Geghard and one in the rural community of Hatsavan were put into
operation. Other 5 schools were repaired by the program of social
investments. It is envisaged to repair other 15 schools in different
communities of the marz during this year. 35 schools of the marz has
local heating.

LEVEL OF SEVAN LAKE RISES BY 25 SM IN APRIL

SEVAN, MAY 8, NOYAN TAPAN. The level of the Sevan Lake rose by 25 sm
in April and made 1898.42 metres what is higher by 42 sm compared with
the 2005 same month index. As the Noyan Tapan correspondent was
informed by the “Hayhidromet” Gegharkunik marz department, the reason
of such a great index is the fixed heavy rains and snows and partly
overflows of rivers streaming into Sevan. Taking into account, that
overflows of rivers streaming into Sevan are expected in May as well
as the size of the water moving to the lake from the Arpa-Sevan
tunnel, it is supposed that the level of Sevan will significantly rise
up to the first half of June. In parallel to rising the level of water
in the lake, a problem arose connected with coastal territories and
constructions: in consequence of rise of the lake level, they remain
under water and start to putrefy. As a result, lack of oxygen is felt
in the lake, what has a negative influence on vital activity flora and
fauna existing in it.

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

SOME SETTLEMENTS OF VAYOTS DZOR AND LORI MARZ SUFFER IN CONSEQUENCE OF
HEAVY RAINS

YEREVAN, MAY 8, NOYAN TAPAN. In consequence of May 4 heavy rains in
the territory of the village of Azatek, Vayots Dzor marz, the Arpa
river went out of its banks and covered about 3 hectares of melon
sowing areas. And in consequence of overflow of the Debed river in the
territory near the Akhtala railway station of the Lori marz, the
territory adjacent to the station and ground floors of some houses and
constructions were covered with water. As Noyan Tapan was informed by
the Rescue Service of the RA Ministry of Territorial Administration,
collapse of the road took place at the 8th km of the Vanadzor-Alaverdi
railway on the same day. Rescuers arrived at the place of the accident
found out that a dam was breached with 15-20 metres length at the
above-mentioned place. An alarm was got at about 11:05, May 4, that a
partly collapse took place in the building of the Gyumri Branch of the
Yerevan State Economy Institute. It was found out that the
three-storied building is of the 3rd degree unsafety and from the
total 3150 square metres surface, concrete covers of 300 square metres
surface were ruined. There are no suffered people.

PanARMENIAN.Net

May 9 – Victory Day and Shushi Liberation Day

08.05.2006 21:09 GMT+04:00

/PanARMENIAN.Net/ May 9 Armenia is celebrating the Victory Day and the
Yerkrapah (Union of Volunteers) Day. As RA Defense Minister’s
Spokesman, Colonel Seyran Shahsuraryan told PanARMENIAN.Net, the
Yerablur pantheon will be attended and a solemn sitting will be held
in the Sports and Concert Complex after K. Demirchyan. May 9 wreaths
will be laid to the monument to the Unknown Soldier in the Victory
Park. A military parade will take place in the Republic Square in
Yerevan. In the evening a holiday concert will be finished with
fireworks in the Victory Park.

To note, May 9 is also celebrated as the Day of Liberation of
Shushi. Attendance of the Stepanakert Memorial Complex, meetings with
the veterans of the Great Patriotic War and the Karabakh war as well
as concerts are scheduled. Besides, League of War Reporters NGO will
organize a photo exhibition dedicated to the period of the
Azeri-Karabakh war.

From: Sebouh Z Tashjian <[email protected]>
Subject: Azeris Do Not Condole With Armenians

PanARMENIAN.Net

Azeris Do Not Condole With Armenians

Azerbaijan did not even condole with Russia on the
tragic airplane crash.

06.05.2006 GMT+04:00

The crash of Armenian plane was used in Azerbaijan as a means of
political propaganda. While Yerevan and Moscow and the whole world are
mourning, Azeris are trying to benefit by discrediting Armenia and
bringing senseless accusations towards Russia. This is another proof
of the anti-Armenian hysteria in the neighbor country.

/PanARMENIAN.Net/ It should be admitted that this time in Azerbaijan
there were no such disgraceful phenomena like in December 1988 when
Yerevan received congratulating telegrams after the devastating
earthquake in Spitak. Celebrations on the occasion of “punishment
of Armenians” by Allakh did not take place in Baku. Azeri mass
media did not gloat over our tragedy. The majority of Azeri newspapers
made casual mentions about the accident, without any comments. (The
death of 113 Armenians does not deserve the attention of Baku press.)
However there were some newspapers, which expressed their anger on the
fact that President Putin announced a national mourning day in Russia
because of the Armenian plane crash. Azeris call this an application
of double standards by Russian leaders. Newspapers remind that, on
February 23rd, 2006 when the roof of Basman market in Mocow fell down
and killed about 40 Azeris, Putin did not announce mourning and
celebrations of the Soldier’s Day were organized with usual
pomposity. In Baku they suppose that the two tragedies mentioned above
are equal though the number of victims is not. Meanwhile, it is worth
mentioning that after the incident in Basman market Azerbaijan did not
announce mourning day too. Taking into account this, it is not clear
why do they demand that from Moscow.

Baku newspapers made use of the slightly tactless statement of the
head of Moscow Helsinki Group Ludmila Alekseeva who recently said that
announcement of national mourning bore political coloring and was a
political curtsey towards Armenia – the only country with which Russia
has not quarreled with yet. Azeri journalists quote this phrase of
Alekseeva with special pleasure. According to the representatives of
the political elite of Azerbaijan, Vladimir Putin’s decision
testifies to the fact that he is not impartial to
Armenians. “Kremlin’s attitude towards Azerbaijan significantly
differs from that towards our western neighbors”, Majlis deputy
Panakh Hussein said on Thursday. Similar to this was the announcement
of his colleague Elmira Akhundova: “Russians do not like Azeris and
Armenians know how to make a big show of any tragedy and turn that to
their own advantage”, she said. Thus, there can be one conclusion
– Russia cannot be an objective mediator in Karabakh conflict
settlement…

No one expected official organs of Azerbaijan to condole Armenia. But
Aliev could at least condole Russia, since there are 24 Russian
citizens among plane crash victims. Meanwhile, the Minister of Foreign
Affairs of Turkey Abdullah Gul addressed official condolences to his
Armenian colleague. On Friday the document was to be delivered to
Armenia. By the way many Turks came to the Armenian diplomatic
representation in Istanbul and expressed their pain in the condolence
book. Nothing of the kind could happen in Baku. However, for the sake
of justice, it should be noted that several Azeri deputies told local
journalists that maybe it was worth condoling Armenia. After all,
Armenians are also people… «PanARMENIAN.Net» analytical
department

A1+

MEMORY OF THE VICRIMS WAS HONORED

[08:12 pm] 06 May, 2006

Today at 06:00 PM a minute of mourning was declared in Armenia and
Artsakh. May 5 and 6 were declared mourning days in all the foreign
diplomatic representatives of Armenia, the RA state flag was lowered
and books of condolence were opened.

High officials of the countries, heads of diplomatic missions,
representative of regional organizations and parties, and
representatives of the Armenian Church visited the Armenian Embassies
located there in order to express their condolences in connection with
the A-320 crash.

RA diplomatic representatives continue to get condoling messages from
different organizations and individuals.