Elsewhere Today 433

Aljazeera:
Gul elected as Turkish president

TUESDAY, AUGUST 28, 2007
16:28 MECCA TIME, 13:28 GMT

The Turkish parliament has elected Abdullah Gul, the current foreign minister, as president after a third round of voting.

However, political analysts said that Gul faces an important test in allaying fears that his term will raise the role of religion in public life.

Voting began at 3pm (12:00 GMT), and the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP), which holds 341 seats in the 550-member parliament, had no trouble in installing Gul, 56, as president.

The AKP only needed an absolute majority to secure the post. In the previous two rounds in the chamber they failed because a two-thirds majority was required.

Two other candidatesa also stood for president.

'Fear-mongering'

General Yasar Buyukanit, Turkey's armed forces chief, said on Monday he saw "centres of evil" seeking to undermine the secular republic, a statement suggesting the army would not stand on the sidelines if it saw the separation between mosque and state threatened.

"The Turkish Armed Forces will not make any concessions ... in its duty of guarding the Turkish Republic, a secular and social state based on the rule of law," Buyukanit said in a written message.

Barnaby Philips, Al Jazeera's correspondent in Ankara, said: "The army sees itself as the guardian of the secular constitution [but] Gul laughs off suggestions that he harbours a secret Islamist agenda."

Turkish Milliyet newspaper said: "Gul's election will be a turning point in our political history that could draw us one step closer to democratic maturity."

Liberals dismiss concerns over the secular system - a defining feature of the Turkish republic - as "fear-mongering" undertaken by political rivals unable to match the AKP's rising popularity.

They see Gul's presidency as symbolic of the rise of the conservative and impoverished masses who form the backbone of the AKP - people who have long been kept at the margins of politics by the army-backed secularist elite, critics argue.

Turkey's popular Vatan newspaper said: "Gul will not have an easy start. His every step ... will be under scrutiny by institutions and sections of society who are sensitive on secularism.

"Gul will neeed to be careful and make efforts to calm them."

'Secret agenda'

When Gul first stood for the presidency in April, the opposition blocked his election by boycotting parliament, while the army, which has ousted four governments since 1960, warned the government that it was "ready to defend" the secular order.

The crisis forced Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the Turkish prime minister, to call early general elections on July 22, from which the AKP emerged with a huge victory, hailing it as popular support to re-nominate Gul.

Opponents charge that the AKP has a secret agenda to replace Turkey's secular order with a regime more akin to an an Islamic republic.

Hardline secularists are also irritated by the fact that Gul's wife wears the Islamic headscarf, which they see as a symbol of defiance of the secular system.

But a survey published in Milliyet on Tuesday showed that the majority of Turks - 72.6 per cent - have no objections to a first lady with a headscarf, while 19.8 per cent said they would be annoyed if she covers up.

Source: Agencies

http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/CB8BCB17-4BB5-43EC-A04F-43CA26F4ECFC.htm

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AllAfrica:
President Threatens to Declare Emergency

allAfrica.com NEWS
28 August 2007

President Ahmad Tejan Kabbah of Sierra Leone, whose ruling Sierra Leone People's Party (SLPP) faces the prospect of losing power in the second round of a presidential election, is threatening to impose a state of emergency, news agencies report.

The BBC reported today that Kabbah warned, in a television address made yesterday, that he might declare an emergency after two days of clashes between rival parties.

His warning came as the SLPP issued a statement complaining that supporters of the main opposition party, the All People's Congress (APC), had "brutally assaulted" SLPP supporters.

Kabbah was quoted as saying that "The government shall not hesitate for one moment to declare a state of public emergency if the current state of intimidation, molestation and violent acts is not stopped immediately."

The APC has already won a majority of seats in parliament. Its presidential candidate, Ernest Koroma, drew the most votes in the first round of voting for the presidency, and he now faces a run-off with the SLPP's candidate, and Kabbah's vice-president, Solomon Berewa.

The SLPP's statement, carried on its website, said that the "political situation in Sierra Leone is getting grave." It recounted details of a clash on Sunday in which it said APC supporters had initiated violence and later attacked security guards at SLPP offices. On Monday, it added, two SLPP supporters arrived at the office with "serious stab wounds all over their heads."

The SLPP also accused the APC and "so-called independent newspapers" of blaming it for starting violence. The APC, the statement said, "should... not be given the impression that any one of the candidates will be the next President irrespective of the outcome of the result. We all must, as a matter of duty, stop those who are threatening the state with brutal and murderous war and genocide."

Copyright © 2007 allAfrica.com. All rights reserved.

http://allafrica.com/stories/200708280582.html

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AllAfrica:
Yar'Adua - Why We're Backward

By Olatubosun Sowemimo and Michael Olanrewaju
Daily Champion (Lagos) NEWS
28 August 2007

PRESIDENT Umaru Musa Yar'Adua yesterday bemoaned the various problems confronting the country, attributing them to disrespect for the rule of law.

He identified unbriddled corruption, endemic crime, violence, infrastructural deficit and general malaise in the polity as some of the factors responsible for the backwardness of the country.

Yar'Adua, who stated these while declaring open this year's annual general conference of the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA) in Ilorin, the Kwara State capital, reiterated Federal Government's commitment to zero tolerance for corruption, the promotion of rule of law and the enthronement of due process.

In another development, Yar'Adua has suspended all allocation of land in Federal Capital Territory (FCT), Abuja till January 2008.

According to Nigerian Television Authority (NTA) news monitored last night in Lagos, the the president said the suspension of land allocation was to allow the FCT authorities to take inventory of all allocations within Abuja.

The president stated that within the period, the FCT will also review the usage of allocated plots in the FCT.

Still on the problem with Nigeria, the President said that his administration would rule thecountry with a particular focus to attain virtue of stability, progress, justice, and the fear of God.

"I have consistently told members of my government the imperatives to conduct ourselves with the highest degree of integrity that we should have zero tolerance for corruption and high regard for due process and procedure.

"Human history from time immemorial has explicitly reflected that there cannot be progress and human survival where there is no peace. The preeminence of law and order is borne out of the fact that all human religions espouse it. No human nation would attain any meaningful development in a sustainable manner without an entrenched culture of rule of law and due process and constitutionalism," he added.

Yar'Adua, who was the first elected Nigerian President to attend the NBA general conference, however, said that these noble objectives would be difficult to achieve without the collaboration of other stakeholders, particularly the NBA.

He, however, condemned the culture of impunity and disobedience to rule of law which characterized the previous administrations, saying that his administration would reverse the ugly trend in order to put the country on the path of constitutionality and sincere governance.

He urged the judiciary, police, democratic institutions and media, to examine and rededicate themselves to the rule of law.

"I must make a point that the judiciary, especially in the recent times, has acted with utmost courage to the extent that it is lauded both locally and internationally. It is my hope that this momentum will be sustained. "That is not to say that we have crossed the rubicon of social order and justice. A lot still need to be done, especially in the area of endemic delay in the administration of justice, limited access to justice by the poor and ineffectiveness of our prison system," he said.

Yar'Adua assured NBA of his support, saying he was willing and committed to be the NBA's partner.

The Attorney General of the Federation (AGF), Mr. Michael Aondoakaa, earlier in his speech supported the president, saying that he would give professional advice and support to all government agencies in the fight against corruption and all forms of crime.

He added that the Federal Government would constantly advise criminal justice agencies- Police, EFCC, ICPC, NDLEA, NCC, CCB and others to ensure that Nigerians were not detained beyond the constitutional 48-hour without trial.

He however said he would seek the permission of the President to host an inter-ministerial summit with a view to achieving a common platform for action with ministries, departments, agencies and institutions which works relate to criminal justice system.

Lagos state governor, Mr Babatunde Raji Fashola (SAN) who spoke on behalf of other governors, also said that justice could only be attained if each of tiers of government recognized and kept to its own constitutional limit even as he lauded Yar 'Adua for releasing the seized Lagos state council funds.

The NBA President, Mr Olisa Agbakoba (SAN) in his welcome address, reminded the President to consider a five, action points to strengthen the rule of law. These are: The creation for frameworks for electoral and constitutional reforms, establishment of a law and economy committee to examine how law and its institutions can promote economic reforms and development and the authorization of the AGF to draw up legal transformation strategy paper, revitalizing the moribund administration of Justice Commission, kick starting the prison eecongestion scheme and creating the anti-corruption strategy development.

This year's conference has the theme: "How law can promote economic development"

Yesterday's opening ceremony was attended by over 5,000 lawyers drawn from all the 88 branches of the association.

Prominent Nigerians in the legal profession and other dignitaries in attendance were four governors- Dr Bukola Saraki (Kwara), Mr Babatunde Fashola (SAN) (Lagos), Mr Gabriel Suswan (Benue), Mr. Celestine Omehia (Rivers), the Emir of Ilorin, Alhaji Ibrahim Zulu-Gambari, past presidents of the NBA - Mrs. Priscilla Kuye, Chief Onueze Okocha (SAN), Chief Wole Olanipekun (SAN) and Mr Lanke Odogiyan.

Others were the former Chief Justice of Nigeria, Justice Alfa Belgore, Justices of Supreme Court, Judges of the ECOWAS Court of justice, and traditional rulers, among others.

Copyright © 2007 Daily Champion. All rights reserved.

http://allafrica.com/stories/200708280328.html

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AlterNet:
Why Gonzales' Resignation Won't Restore Justice

By Aziz Huq, The Nation
Posted on August 28, 2007

The resignation of Alberto Gonzales has brought a smile to the faces of many Bush Administration critics, but will it bring real change? Unless the Senate Judiciary Committee seizes its chance in a new Attorney General's confirmation hearings, the danger is that Gonzales's exit won't just leave Justice tarnished - it will also mean justice denied.

Denial of justice is a theme for this Administration, as illustrated by some very strange bedfellows. Take Jose Padilla, originally accused of a plot to explode a dirty bomb but convicted two weeks ago of being a third-tier member of a fourth-tier conspiracy to aid foreign fighters. Or Scooter Libby, convicted and then pardoned of perjury and obstruction of justice before any full accounting of how the decision to leak Valerie Plame's identity was taken, and what role partisan politics may have played.

Then there's George Tenet: As the CIA's own Inspector General made clear, Tenet "did not use" the resources he had to head off the attacks of 9/11. Yet rather than explore what went wrong or require Tenet to account for himself in ways that clarify the ongoing management and policy weaknesses of the intelligence community, CIA director Michael Hayden has rejected any accountability or even discussion, claiming these would "distract" the nation. (The suggestion is demeaning: Does Hayden think we are all 5-year-olds? It is also perverse: How can any government agency get better at its job if it says that understanding its past mistakes is a "distraction"?)

In each case there are serious allegations of criminal wrongdoing or shameful negligence. In each case, accountability has been stymied. The public rightfully resents the official obfuscation as to whether the government is using its awesome security powers responsibly, and whether legitimate fears of terrorist attack are being twisted into grist for a partisan political mill.

Will Gonzales's departure leave the nation permanently in the dark? Will the rule of law be further undermined?

Gonzales leaves the Justice Department tarnished in two ways. First are the allegations of politically motivated firings of US Attorneys and concerns that criminal prosecutions and dubious charges of "voter fraud" have been timed to influence the results of close federal and state elections.

Second, less noticed and perhaps more serious, Gonzales has presided over a wrecking of the rule of law. The Gonzales Justice Department has consistently taken the position that bedrock laws enacted to protect Americans' liberty and constitutional rights - and the nation's standing in the world - can be shrugged off at a moment's notice - in secret and without public debate or even notice to Congress.

Thanks to Gonzales and his allies, too many citizens of the world know America as a country that treats international law as "quaint," that recklessly and lawlessly spies on its own citizens and that engages in torture. If we are lucky, that is the America of yesterday; it need not be the America of tomorrow.

Yet, Gonzales's resignation will do nothing to repair the deep wounds inflicted on the Justice Department: It will not repair the harm done by politicization. It will not undo the wildly flawed legal opinions licensing torture and warrantless spying. It will not restore the rule of law.

Solicitor General Paul Clement, who has become Acting Attorney General, is a very fine courtroom advocate, but he is unlikely to linger in that managerial post. And speculation about Michael Chertoff, who presided over the Katrina catastrophe and has overseen a sinister growth in the intelligence activities of the Homeland Security Department, hardly inspires confidence.

Like Libby and Tenet, Alberto Gonzales rides off into the sunset just in time to evade a full accounting for his actions. Like Libby and Tenet, he leaves behind a government that knows how to scare Americans by invoking the threat of a dirty bomb or a mushroom cloud, but that seems to possess insufficient capacity to accurately target those who present a real threat. What remains in place is a government good at fostering the impression of toughness but dangerously incompetent at delivering the goods, as the failure even to prosecute Padilla for his alleged conspiracy shows.

The Senate Judiciary Committee can use the confirmation process for a new Attorney General to force disclosure of the legal opinions and mandates by which law has been distorted and justice turned from its proper course. It should make plain for the public record what, we hope, has been a low watermark for Justice.

But that is only a beginning. The Gonzales resignation can mark a rising tide for the rule of law. For that to occur, the next Attorney General - and the next President - must vigilantly repair the corrosion of, and the disrespect for, the rule of law, that Gonzales leaves behind.

In November 2008, let the people choose accordingly.

Aziz Huq is co-writing a book on national security and the separation of powers called Unchecked and Unbalanced, to be published by the New Press.

© 2007 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.
View this story online at:
http://www.alternet.org/story/60865/

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Arab News:
Fire at Jebel Ali Port in Dubai

K.T. Abdurabb, Arab News
Tuesday, 28, August, 2007 (15, Sha`ban, 1428)

DUBAI, 28 August 2007 — Firefighters managed to bring under control within three hours a blaze that ravaged a chemical storage depot at Jebel Ali Port in Dubai early yesterday. Although the fire triggered explosions and sent thick smoke billowing into the sky, there were no casualties.

The fire did not disrupt shipping because it was not near the quays of the port. A police officer at the port said the cause of the fire was not immediately known and the extent of the damage was currently being investigated. Brig. Rashid Thani Al-Matroushi, director of Dubai Civil Defense Department, said the fire erupted at the chemical storage facility spanning 8,000 square meters.

“The firefighting teams doused the flames after the fire began in the center of the store,” he said. “Nearby fire hydrants helped in extinguishing the fire. There were explosions, sending debris up to 300 meters in the air. The depot stored about 25,000 barrels of combustible material and bags of chemical powder.”

A statement from the Civil Defense Department said the central operations room was alerted about the fire at around 4 a.m. “Firefighters from the centers of Al-Quz, Karama and Jumeira managed to contain the blaze and prevented it from spreading to nearby sites by 7.15 a.m.,” the statement explained.

Eyewitnesses said that firefighters were trying to put out the blaze until midday yesterday. “I work in the Jebel Ali Free Zone and on my way to the office around 7 a.m. I saw thick smoke,” said A.A. Rahman.

“My office is at one-and-a-half kilometers to this site in Jebel Ali and we had a clear view through our office window. We could see thick black smoke coming from the site until 11.30 a.m. But by around 1 p.m. it was clear,” said Abdul Nasir, an employee at Jebel Ali Port.

The Jebel Ali Free Zone provides warehousing and distribution facilities to thousands of international and local companies. The port has the UAE’s second biggest oil refinery. “The refinery operations were not affected,” said a spokesman for Emirates National Oil Company, which runs the 120,000-barrels per day facility.

Meanwhile, Ahmed Abdul Hussain, the director of Dubai’s Environment, Health and Safety Regulatory Authority said there was no noticeable environmental damage. “The air quality and toxicity levels are being monitored. There is no cause for alarm,” Hussain said.

After a thorough analysis of samples from plumes of thick black smoke sent into the sky following the fire outbreak, no noxious elements were found and work resumed in the afternoon. The suspension of the operations did not affect cargo handling services at the port.

This is the second fire to hit a UAE port in recent weeks. On Aug. 18, Sharjah’s Port Khalid was closed for seven hours after a fire at a lubricants warehouse. The Emirates Lube Oil Company whose warehouse was reduced to ashes at Port Khalid on that day, lost over 300 million dirhams. There were no casualties.

After the Port Khalid fire, the UAE Interior Ministry had announced that businesses in the country which do not maintain adequate fire safety standards would be forced to pay the cost of putting out any blazes that occur on their premises.

— With input from agencies

Copyright: Arab News © 2003 All rights reserved.

http://www.arabnews.com/?page=4§ion=0&article=100527&d=28&m=8&y=2007

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Clarín: Según el creador de Internet,
el formato actual de televisión está llegando a su fin

Vint Cerf pronosticó que los canales tradicionales serán reemplazados por nuevos servicios interactivos a través de la Web. De acuerdo con el científico, que hace 30 años participó en la invención de la Red, la TV se aproxima a un momento crítico similar al que atravesó la industria musical con la aparición del reproductor de MP3.

27.08.2007 | Clarín.com

Vint Cerf, uno de los científicos que hace treinta años crearon Internet, cree que los días de la televisión actual están contados. En una intervención en el Festival Internacional de Televisión en Edimburgo, el experto predijo que la TV se aproxima al mismo momento crítico al que tuvo que hacer frente la industria musical con la llegada del reproductor de MP3.

"El 85% de todo el material de video que vemos está pregrabado, por lo que uno puede preparar el propio sistema para hacer las oportunas descargas a voluntad", explicó Cerf, actual vicepresidente de Google y presidente de la organización que administra Internet. "Va a seguir necesitándose la televisión para ciertas cosas, como las noticias, los acontecimientos deportivos y las emergencias, pero será cada vez más como con el iPod, en el que puede descargarse el contenido para verlo más tarde", señaló.

Cerf predijo que pronto la mayoría verá la televisión a través de Internet, revolución que puede significar la muerte de los canales tradicionales en favor de nuevos servicios interactivos. Dirigiéndose a los ejecutivos de la industria de la televisión, los animó a que dejasen de ver a la Red como una amenaza a la supervivencia de aquel medio en lugar de una gran oportunidad.

"Ya estamos empezando a ver la forma de mezclar y combinar informaciones. Imagínense la posibilidad de hacer una pausa en un programa de TV y utilizar el ratón para hacer clic en cualquiera de los diferentes elementos que aparecen en la pantalla y averiguar más cosas al respecto", comentó

Por otro lado, Cerf aseguró que no hay que creer a quienes advierten que el incremento del video en la red podría causar su colapso y dijo que "estamos todavía lejos de agotar su capacidad".

Además, reveló que actualmente trabaja para llevar Internet más allá de los límites de la Tierra y utilizarla en las comunicaciones con los vehículos espaciales, incluidos los interplanetarios que se envíen a explorar la superficie de Marte. "Hasta ahora venimos utilizando la llamada Red del Espacio Profundo para comunicarnos por el espacio mediante señales de radio. Lo que nos gustaría a mis colegas y a mí sería utilizar para ello una versión de Internet", señaló.

Fuente: EFE

Copyright 1996-2007 Clarín.com - All rights reserved

http://www.clarin.com/diario/2007/08/27/um/m-01486700.htm

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Guardian:
UN horrified by surge in opium trade in Helmand

Despite 7,000 UK troops, Taliban-backed production up 48%

Declan Walsh
Tuesday August 28, 2007

Britain's drug policy in Afghanistan's Helmand province lay in tatters yesterday as the UN declared a "frightening" explosion in opium production across the country, led by Taliban-backed farmers in the volatile south. Opium production soared by 34% to 8,200 tonnes, accounting for 93% of world supply and most of the heroin sold in Britain and Europe, the UN Office on Drugs and Crime reported.

The record crop was fuelled by Helmand, where, despite the deployment of 7,000 British soldiers and millions of pounds in development spending, opium cultivation surged by 48%.

The sprawling and violent province is now the world's single largest source of illegal drugs - greater than coca from Colombia, cannabis from Morocco or heroin from Burma, countries with populations up to 20 times greater.

A despondent UNODC noted that no other country has produced illegal narcotics on such a scale since China in the 19th century. "The situation is dramatic and getting worse by the day," said its director general, Antonio Maria Costa.

The sole bright spot was a sharp fall in poppy cultivation in the north, where the number of drug-free provinces doubled from six to 13. Balkh province, which produced 7,200 tonnes last year, eliminated poppy cultivation entirely. The disparity highlights a widening gap between relatively stable northern Afghanistan, where the Kabul government enjoys some authority, and the insurgency-racked south, where it has virtually none.

Favourable weather, Taliban insurgents and corrupt government officials all contributed to this year's record poppy haul, which has edged Afghanistan perilously close to becoming a full narco-state. The opium trade involves 3.3 million of Afghanistan's 23 million population, according to the UNODC, and accounts for more than half of its estimated $7.5bn (£3.7bn) gross domestic product.

Western countries, led by the US, have spent several billion pounds trying to eradicate the trade since 2001. But it has only grown stronger, and this year's dismal results are likely to revive a controversial debate on aerial crop spraying that pits America against the UK.

The US ambassador, William Wood, who was previously posted to Colombia, advocates dispatching squadrons of pesticide-filled crop duster planes to spray the poppy fields. Ground-based eradication destroyed 19,000 hectares this year, or one tenth of the total crop. But British and Afghan officials are trenchantly opposed to aerial spraying, arguing that it would only anger Afghan farmers and drive their families into the arms of the Taliban.

The Taliban have firmly entrenched themselves in the trade. Having vehemently opposed opium as "un-Islamic" in 2000, when the crop was virtually eliminated, the insurgents are now among its greatest champions. In Helmand, Taliban fighters protect poppy-growing farmers in exchange for a slice of their profits, and some commanders help to smuggle drugs. Their profits pay for arms, logistics and militia wages, the UN said.

Embarrassingly for the British, the Taliban have also linked poppy growing with military strategy. The town of Musa Qala, which the British military ceded to Taliban control last February, has become a major drugs hub. Opium is traded openly in the town bazaar and heroin processing labs have moved to the area.

The drug barons run little risk of being caught. No major smuggler has been arrested in Afghanistan since 2001. Yesterday Mr Costa urged President Hamid Karzai to submit a dozen major traffickers - whom he did not name - to the UN Security Council for inclusion on a Taliban sanctions list.

Frustrated western anti-narcotics specialists are also searching for fresh ideas that work. A senior British official said the UK will spend £10m on development projects in Helmand and contribute to a £13m "good performance" fund that rewards drug-free provinces.

Nato may also take a more aggressive role. Although western soldiers will not slash through fields of poppy - something British soldiers have always avoided - their commanders may start to target insurgents who double as drug smugglers. "There will be an overlap between counter-narcotics and counter-insurgency targets. We want people who are big in the insurgency and drugs to realise they don't enjoy impunity," said the British official.

But, he admitted, there was no silver bullet to kill the trade: "I expect it will be a long time before this problem is solved."

Guardian Unlimited © Guardian News and Media Limited 2007

http://www.guardian.co.uk/afghanistan/story/0,,2157313,00.html

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Jeune Afrique: Affaire Borrel:
deux hauts responsables djiboutiens devant la justice française

DJIBOUTI - 27 août 2007 - par AFP

Deux hauts responsables djiboutiens, proches du président Ismaël Omar Guelleh, sont renvoyés pour la première fois devant la justice française dans le cadre du dossier de l'assassinat du juge Borrel en 1995 à Djibouti qui empoisonne les relations franco-djiboutiennes.

Le procureur général de Djibouti Djama Souleiman et le chef des services secrets Hassan Saïd sont renvoyés pour le délit de "subornation de témoins" devant le tribunal correctionnel de Versailles par une ordonnance du juge Magali Tabareau, datée du 20 août, a-t-on appris lundi de source judiciaire.

Cette magistrate de Versailles est chargée de l'information judiciaire ouverte pour "subornation de témoins" le 5 mai 2003.

Des mandats d'arrêt internationaux, valant mises en examen, avaient été délivrés le 27 septembre 2006 par la justice française contre ces deux responsables, soupçonnés d'avoir exercé des pressions et des menaces sur deux témoins djiboutiens.

Des témoins ont en effet mis en cause dans la mort du juge Borrel le président et des dignitaires du régime de Djibouti, ex-colonie française qui abrite la principale base militaire française en Afrique.

Le corps en partie carbonisé du juge Bernard Borrel avait été retrouvé le 19 octobre 1995 en contrebas d'un ravin à 80 km de Djibouti. Il travaillait, dans la cadre de la coopération, auprès du ministre de la Justice de Djibouti.

Le premier témoin, visé par ces pressions, est un ex-membre de la garde présidentielle djiboutienne, Mohamed Saleh Alhoumekani, exilé en Belgique. Il avait affirmé en décembre 1996 avoir entendu, le jour de la mort du juge, cinq hommes déclarer à l'actuel président djiboutien Ismaël Omar Guelleh, alors directeur de cabinet de son prédécesseur, que le "juge fouineur est mort" et qu'"il n'y a pas de trace".

Le second témoin, menacé de représailles sur sa famille, est Ali Iftin, l'ex-chef de la garde présidentielle. Egalement réfugié à Bruxelles, il avait affirmé que le chef des services secrets djiboutiens l'avait obligé à mentir.

Interrogés par l'AFP, Me Olivier Morice et Laurent de Caunes, avocats de la veuve du juge Bernard Borrel ont salué "cette première victoire judiciaire" puisque "la justice française renvoie devant le tribunal deux proches de l'actuel président djiboutien".

Ce dossier de subornation de témoins est l'un des volets de l'affaire Borrel.

Le dossier d'assassinat est instruit par la juge parisienne Sophie Clément qui avait délivré en octobre 2006 des mandats d'arrêt internationaux à l'encontre des deux principaux suspects, deux repris de justice en fuite, Awalleh Guelleh et Hamouda Hassan Adouani, considérés comme de possibles exécutants de cet assassinat.

Il y a deux mois, un ex-membre du renseignement militaire français a déclaré devant la magistrate que le juge Borrel avait été chargé avant sa mort par le ministre djiboutien de la Justice d'enquêter sur "des trafics" auxquels Ismaël Omar Guelleh aurait alors été mêlé.

Parallèlement à l'instruction de Sophie Clément, deux autres magistrates parisiennes, Fabienne Pous et Michèle Ganascia, enquêtent sur d'éventuelles pressions politiques sur la justice française.

Elles avaient vainement tenté le 2 mai de mener une perquisition à l'Elysée, sous la présidence de Jacques Chirac, après avoir saisi, deux semaines auparavant de nombreux documents aux ministères des Affaires étrangères et de la Justice.

http://www.jeuneafrique.com/jeune_afrique/article_
depeche.asp?art_cle=AFP23317affaiesiana0#

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Mail & Guardian:
'It is as if Chávez is Allende'

John Pilger
27 August 2007

I walked with Roberto Navarrete into the national stadium in Santiago, Chile. With the southern winter’s wind skating down from the Andes, it was empty and ghostly. Little had changed, he said: the chicken wire, the broken seats, the tunnel to the changing rooms from which the screams echoed. We stopped at a large number 28. “This is where I was, facing the scoreboard. This is where I was called to be tortured.”

Thousands of “the detained and the disappeared” were imprisoned in the stadium following the Washington -backed coup by General Pinochet against the democracy of Salvador Allende on September 11 1973. For the majority people of Latin America, the abandonados, the infamy and historical lesson of the first “9/11” have never been forgotten. “In the Allende years, we had a hope the human spirit would triumph,” said Roberto. “But in Latin America those believing they are born to rule behave with such brutality to defend their rights, their property, their hold over society that they approach true fascism. People who are well dressed, whose houses are full of food, bang pots in the streets in protest as though they don’t have anything. This is what we had in Chile 36 years ago. This is what we see in Venezuela today. It is as if Chávez is Allende. It is so evocative for me.”

In making my film, The War on Democracy, I sought the help of Chileans such as Roberto and his family, and Sara de Witt, who courageously returned with me to the torture chambers at Villa Grimaldi, which she somehow survived. Together with other Latin Americans who knew the tyrannies, they bear witness to the pattern and meaning of the propaganda and lies now aimed at undermining another epic bid to renew both democracy and freedom on the continent. Ironically, in Chile, said to be Washington’s “model democracy”, freedom waits. The Constitution, the system of electoral control and the designer inequality are all Pinochet’s gifts from the grave.

The disinformation that helped destroy Allende and give rise to Pinochet’s horrors worked the same way in Nicaragua, where the Sandinistas had the temerity to implement modest, popular reforms based largely on the English cooperative movement. In both countries the CIA funded the leading opposition media, although they need not have bothered. In Nicaragua, the fake martyrdom of the “opposition” newspaper, La Prensa, became a cause for North America’s leading liberal journalists, who seriously debated whether a poverty-stricken country of three million peasants posed a “threat” to the United States. Ronald Reagan agreed and declared a state of emergency to combat the monster at the gates. In Britain, whose Thatcher government “absolutely endorsed” US policy, the standard censorship by omission applied. In examining 500 articles that dealt with Nicaragua in the early 1980s, the historian Mark Curtis found an almost universal suppression of the achievements of the Sandinista government - “remarkable by any standards” - in favour of the falsehood of “the threat of a communist takeover”.

The similarities in the campaign against the phenomenal rise of popular democratic movements today are striking. Aimed principally at Venezuela, especially Hugo Chávez, the virulence of the attacks suggests that something exciting is taking place; and it is. Thousands of poor Venezuelans are seeing a doctor for the first time in their lives, their children immunised and drinking clean water. On July 26 Chávez announced the construction of 15 new hospitals; more than 60 public hospitals are currently being modernised and re-equipped. New universities have opened their doors to the poor, breaking the privilege of competitive institutions effectively controlled by a “middle class” in a country where there is no middle. In Barrio La Linea, Beatrice Balazo told me her children were the first generation of the poor to attend a full day’s school and to be given a hot meal and to learn music, art and dance. “I have seen their confidence blossom like flowers,” she said. One night in barrio La Vega, in a bare room beneath a single light bulb, I watched Mavis Mendez, aged 94, learn to write her own name for the first time.

More than 25 000 communal councils have been set up in parallel to the old, corrupt local bureaucracies. Many are spectacles of raw grassroots democracy. Spokespeople are elected, yet all decisions, ideas and spending have to be approved by a community assembly. In towns long controlled by oligarchs and their servile media, this explosion of popular power has begun to change lives in the way Beatrice described. It is this new confidence of Venezuela’s “invisible people” that has so enflamed those who live in suburbs called Country Club. Behind their walls and dogs they remind me of white South Africans. Venezuela’s wild west media is mostly theirs; 80% of broadcasting and almost all the 118 newspaper companies are privately owned. Until recently one television shock jock liked to call Chávez, who is mixed race, a “monkey”. Front pages depict the president as Hitler, or as Stalin (the connection being that both like babies). Among broadcasters crying censorship loudest are those bankrolled by the National Endowment for Democracy, the CIA in spirit if not name. “We had a deadly weapon, the media,” said an admiral who was one of the coup plotters in 2002. The television station, RCTV, never prosecuted for its part in the attempt to overthrow the elected government, lost only its terrestrial licence and is still broadcasting on satellite and cable.

Yet, as in Nicaragua, the “treatment” of RCTV has been a cause celèbre for those in Britain and the US affronted by the sheer audacity and popularity of Chávez, whom they smear as “power crazed” and a “tyrant”. That he is the authentic product of a popular awakening is suppressed. Even the description of him as a “radical socialist”, usually in the pejorative, wilfully ignores that he is actually a nationalist and a social democrat, a label many in the British Labour Party were once proud to wear. In Washington, the old Iran-Contra death squad gang, back in power under Bush, fear the economic bridges Chávez is building in the region, such as the use of Venezuela’s oil revenue to end IMF slavery. That he maintains a neo- liberal economy with a growth rate of more than 10%, allowing the rich to grow richer, and described by the American Banker magazine as “the envy of the banking world” is seldom raised as valid criticism of his limited reforms. These days, of course, any true reforms are exotic. And as liberal elites under Blair and Bush fail to defend their own democracies and basic liberties, they watch the very concept of democracy as a top-down liberal preserve challenged on a continent about which Richard Nixon once said “people don’t give a shit”. However much they play the man, Chávez, their arrogance cannot accept that the seed of Rousseau’s idea of direct popular sovereignty may have been planted among the poorest, yet again, and “the hope of the human spirit”, of which Roberto spoke in the stadium, has returned. - © John Pilger

Venezuela disowns provocative quake aid
Peru’s earthquake relief effort was shaken by a political row this week over food aid with labels bearing an image of Venezuela’s President Hugo Chávez and criticism of Peru’s government, writes Rory Carroll.

The cans of tuna, with labels lauding Chávez and condemning Peruvian authorities as “slow, inefficient and heartless”, were distributed to survivors of a quake that destroyed several towns and killed more than 500 people last week.

Peruvian President Alan Garcia expressed dismay. “One has to ask who is behind this. This is not the moment to take advantage of the circumstances to make electoral propaganda.” Garcia, who has been under fire for delays in getting food, blankets and other aid to stricken areas, has a tetchy relationship with the Venezuelan leader.

But Venezuela issued a forceful denial of any links to the polemical aid and said it might be an attempt to smear Chávez as a cynical opportunist. “This is a damaging manipulation, a vile manipulation because Venezuela has brought humanitarian aid, not party politics,” the country’s ambassador, Jose Armando Laguna, told CPN Radio in Lima. “If they want, they can go and open all the bags that [Venezuela] brought and verify there is no political propaganda.

Venezuela has sent two military aircraft with 25 tonnes of food over the Andes to Peru. Venezuela’s information minister, Willian Lara, said “hidden” forces were trying to make it appear that Chávez was manipulating the tragedy.

The cans were distributed in Chincha, the province south of Lima which bore the brunt of the 8,0 magnitude quake, but it has not been established by whom. The story broke in the Lima daily Expresso, a newspaper hostile to Chávez.

The label on the cans reads: “In the face of the natural disaster ... the Peruvian Nationalist party, along with our sister Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, its leader Hugo Chávez and our leader Ollanta Humala, makes itself present because the Peruvian government acts in a slow, inefficient and heartless manner, not caring about the pain of the victims and leaving them suffering from hunger, thirst and theft.”

Humala is a leftwing opposition leader who was backed by Chávez in last year’s presidential election but lost to Garcia. He has been attempting to mount a new challenge on the back of the president’s sliding approval ratings. A spokesperson for Humala’s party denied any links to the controversial aid.

© Guardian News & Media Ltd 2007

http://www.mg.co.za/articlePage.aspx?articleid=317578&area=/insight/insight__international/#

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Página/12:
“Que el tribunal le pregunte dónde están”

VELASCO, ACUSO A VON WERNICH Y EL CURA CONTRAATACO CON ETCHECOLATZ

Un testigo clave en el juicio al ex capellán de la Policía Bonaerense contó que le decía: “Hijo mío, la vida de los hombres la decide Dios y tu colaboración”. El cura lo señaló como colaboracionista.

Por Irina Hauser
Martes, 28 de Agosto de 2007

Era el día de Luis Velasco, un testigo primordial en el juicio contra el ex capellán de la Policía Bonaerense Christian Von Wernich. Era una audiencia esperada por los querellantes por ser un sobreviviente que recibió las visitas siniestras del cura en centros de exterminio y que presenció sus diálogos con otros detenidos que siguen desaparecidos. Ayer reprodujo algunas de las frases que solía decirles, como “hijo mío, la vida de los hombres la deciden Dios y tu colaboración”; “los hijos deben pagar la culpa de los padres” y “ustedes no tienen que odiar cuando los torturan”. Velasco vive en España y viajó especialmente para declarar. Pero Von Wernich hizo todo para pelearle el papel protagónico: pidió hablar por primera vez ante el tribunal y lo acusó de haber sido un agente de inteligencia del Batallón 601 que colaboró con la última dictadura. Imperturbable, se jactó de saberlo por una conversación reciente con el represor Miguel Etchecolatz, con quien compartió tareas en el terrorismo de Estado y ahora comparte pabellón en Marcos Paz.

Para los familiares, las víctimas presentes y los organismos de derechos humanos no fue sorpresivo lo que dijo Von Wernich. Ya lo había publicado en el blog de ultraderecha “Cristiandad y Justicia”. Pero pocos esperaban que apareciera en el recinto y pidiera “ampliar” su declaración “indagatoria”. Había concurrido el primer día del juicio a comienzos de julio, se negó a declarar y tuvo que ir una vez para ser reconocido por un testigo.

Velasco aguardaba en un despacho contiguo y no escuchó nada. Su reacción ante la presencia del cura fue un pedido a los jueces. “Aprovechando que el señor Von Wernich está presente, quisiera que el tribunal le pregunte dónde están...”, y ahí se trabó en un sollozo hasta que pudo reponerse y nombrar a varios de sus compañeros de celda que están desaparecidos: Gustavo Pérez Monçalves, Marcelino Pérez Roi, Jorge Andreani, Ricardo San Martín, Héctor Baratti, Ricardo Bonín, Néstor Bozzi, Humberto Fraccaroli. “Todos ellos fueron visitados por el sacerdote Von Wernich y están desaparecidos”, afirmó. “Que diga cuál fue el destino de Ana Libertad Baratti”, reclamó también en alusión a una beba nacida en cautiverio que no recuperó su identidad.

Alguien entre el público inició un aplauso y atinaron a sumarse otros tantos, pero enseguida el presidente del tribunal, Carlos Rozanski, pidió evitar cualquier tipo de “expresiones”. En primera y segunda fila había Madres de Plaza de Mayo visiblemente conmovidas. También estaba, adelante, Alicia “Licha” Zubasnabald de De la Cuadra, la abuela de Ana Libertad.

A la provocación de Von Wernich la abogada que representa a Velasco, Guadalupe Godoy, retrucó: “Es un deseo de los organismos de derechos humanos obtener la lista” de todos los agentes que formaban parte del “Batallón 601”, una nómina que nunca fue reconstruida. Lo mismo pidió el letrado de la APDH, Marcelo Ponce Núñez, quien agregó que se cite al juicio a Etchecolatz para que ratifique (o no) los dichos de Von Wernich. El ex comisario, condenado el año pasado a cadena perpetua, está acusado en otra causa por el secuestro de Velasco. El tribunal aún no resolvió.

Contraataque

La sala de audiencias estaba repleta. Había un bullicio permanente en todo el lugar que transmitía un clima de efervescencia.

Velasco ya declaró en distintas oportunidades sobre sus circunstancias de detención y el papel de Von Wernich como hombre de la policía de Ramón Camps. Ayer volvió a detallar las tres veces que recuerda haberlo visto en centros clandestinos y otras dos después que lo liberaron. “En medio de todo ese horror” donde “nos torturaban, pateaban y tiraban pastillas de gamexane para matar los piojos”, “que llegara una persona y te hablara bien podía inducir a ciertos compañeros a pensar que había una vía de escape”, explicó el testigo. El cura “defendía la tortura y decía que teníamos que pagar porque le habíamos hecho daño a la patria”, añadió.

Von Wernich estaba enfundado en un chaleco antibalas y un pulóver oscuro. Pidió la palabra para “hacer una ampliación sobre una sola persona, Luis Velasco Blake”, a quien acusa de “difamarlo”.

“Para mí, sacando cuentas, dos veces lo vi: una en la Brigada (de La Plata) y otra en la casa de sus tíos, los Blake Von Wernich, en Carlos Casares, porque su tío está casado con una Von Wernich”, dijo el represor. “¿Qué otra vez podría ser?”, insistió, monocorde. Se acordó, dijo en pose de desentendido, que un día que estando preso le llevaron quesos de regalo de los monjes benedictinos. “Porque una mañana yo le llevaba quesos al general Camps y cuando entro a la secretaría privada estaba el coronel Rospide (que murió), un señor de civil y Luis Velasco Blake”, dijo. Sostuvo que Camps le preguntó si la Iglesia tenía residencia para estudiantes universitarios en Madrid, que él quedó en averiguar y que Etchecolatz estaba al tanto. “Al final Camps me dijo: ‘Ya no lo necesito, su pariente prestó un gran servicio a la policía’. En el momento no le di importancia. Pero ahora que estoy alojado con Etchecolatz, le pregunté ¿qué servicio prestó Velasco a la policía?”, recapituló. La respuesta, dijo, fue que pertenecía al Batallón 601 y que “gracias a sus informes se produjeron allanamientos importantes en el área de La Plata”.

Von Wernich no quiso contestar preguntas, se sentó junto a su abogado, se puso anteojos y escuchó a Velasco. Anotó todo lo que decía.

Testimonio

Velasco usa barba candado, anteojos de marco gris, tiene el pelo cortito y entrecano, y la voz áspera. Empezó por describir su secuestro, el 7 de julio de 1977 en un operativo “que abarcaba toda la cuadra”. Al reconstruir su recorrido por distintos campos de concentración de la Bonaerense, que duró un mes fue intercalando sus encuentros con Von Wernich. “Iba a la celda a hablar de lo que los prisioneros quisieran”, dijo. “Jamás lo vi repartir ningún sacramento”, aseguró. Entraba sin custodia y, contra lo habitual, les hacía quitar la venda a los detenidos. No le pudo ver el rostro, dijo, a ningún otro carcelero.

- La primera vez que se topó con él estando detenido fue en la Brigada de Investigaciones de La Plata. “Me dijo ‘sacate la remera’. Me tocó los pelitos del pecho y me empezó a hacer bromas porque me los habían quemado en la tortura”, contó. En Arana, retrocedió, había sido torturado con picana eléctrica, también en los genitales. “Como había militado en el Partido Comunista Revolucionario me preguntaban por caras y dirigentes del partido”. En aquella misma conversación con el párroco, “Néstor Bozzi se arrodilló y le dijo ‘padre no quiero morir’. El le contestó: ‘Hijo mío, la vida de los hombres la deciden Dios y tu colaboración”, relató el testigo.

- Volvió a ver al represor en la Comisaría quinta. El cura empezó a hablarle de su familia con “datos concretos”. “Me dijo: ‘tranquilo, yo soy primo de Monona”, en alusión una tía suya. Le pregunté por la salud de mi mamá, quise avanzar más y me dijo basta”, repasó Velasco. “Efectivamente Von Wernich estaba emparentado con mi tía Monona. Ella incluso le llevó una foto mía, pero en todo el mes que estuve desaparecido él no pasó ningún dato sobre mí”, sostuvo.

- Otra vez en la comisaría quinta, Velasco escuchó un nuevo sermón de Von Wernich, algo que le parecía su “obsesión”: “Ustedes no tienen que odiar cuando los torturan”, les insistía.

–¿Qué culpa tiene mi hija que nació en cautiverio? –contó que le replicó su compañero Baratti, quien acaba de enterarse de que su mujer, Elena de la Cuadra, acaba de dar a luz en cautiverio.

–Los hijos deben pagar la culpa de los padres –fue la respuesta.

- Velasco fue liberado el 8 de agosto y se fue transitoriamente a vivir con sus tíos. Mientras se recuperaba de una operación de apendicitis, estando solo en la casa apareció Von Wernich. “Me corrió un frío por la espalda (...) Me dijo vos sos un boludo, te hiciste mierda en la parrilla y en la celda nombraste gente. Yo le dije que no, entonces contestó, ‘o sea que no cantaste todo”. Velasco le preguntó qué tuvo que ver con su liberación. “Lo único que les dije es que a éste lárguenlo o mátenlo, porque sino nos mata a nosotros”, dice que contestó el cura. “Le pregunté qué se siente al ver torturar gente y me contestó que nada”, narró. Ahí mismo, admitió, Von Wernich le ofreció un contacto para obtener los documentos e irse. El se fue a Perú por dos años y luego a España.

- La última vez que se vieron fue en una cena familiar. Nadie tocó el tema.

“Declaré muchas veces y espero que ésta sea la última”, dijo Velasco cerca de terminar. Y volvió a conmoverse: “Para el testimoniante es muy difícil. Cada vez se recuerda, se revive el dolor, espero que esto termine, se juzgue a los culpables, y a seguir viviendo”.

© 2000-2007 www.pagina12.com.ar|Todos los Derechos Reservados

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The Independent:
The forgotten holocaust

The killing of 1.5 million Armenians by the Ottoman Turks during the First World War remains one of the bloodiest and most contentious episodes of the 20th century. Robert Fisk visits Yerevan, and unearths hitherto unpublished images of the first modern genocide

Robert Fisk
Published: 28 August 2007

The photographs, never before published, capture the horrors of the first Holocaust of the 20th century. They show a frightened people on the move – men, women and children, some with animals, others on foot, walking over open ground outside the city of Erzerum in 1915, at the beginning of their death march. We know that none of the Armenians sent from Erzerum – in what is today north-eastern Turkey – survived. Most of the men were shot, the children – including, no doubt, the young boy or girl with a headscarf in the close-up photograph – died of starvation or disease. The young women were almost all raped, the older women beaten to death, the sick and babies left by the road to die.

The unique photographs are a stunning witness to one of the most terrible events of our times. Their poor quality – the failure of the camera to cope with the swirl and movement of the Armenian deportees in the close-up picture, the fingerprint on the top of the second – lend them an undeniable authenticity. They come from the archives of the German Deutsche Bank, which was in 1915 providing finance for the maintenance and extension of the Turkish railway system. One incredible photograph – so far published in only two specialist magazines, in Germany and in modern-day Armenia – actually shows dozens of doomed Armenians, including children, crammed into cattle trucks for their deportation. The Turks stuffed 90 Armenians into each of these wagons – the same average the Nazis achieved in their transports to the death camps of Eastern Europe during the Jewish Holocaust.

Hayk Demoyan, director of the grey-stone Museum of the Armenian Genocide in the foothills just outside Yerevan, the capital of present-day Armenia, stares at the photographs on his computer screen in bleak silence. A university lecturer in modern Turkish history, he is one of the most dynamic Armenian genocide researchers inside the remains of Armenia, which is all that was left after the Turkish slaughter; it suffered a further 70 years of terror as part of the Soviet Union. "Yes, you can have these pictures, he says. "We are still discovering more. The Germans took photographs and these pictures even survived the Second World War. Today, we want our museum to be a place of collective memory, a memorisation of trauma. Our museum is for Turks as well as Armenians. This is also [the Turks'] history."

The story of the last century's first Holocaust – Winston Churchill used this very word about the Armenian genocide years before the Nazi murder of six million Jews – is well known, despite the refusal of modern-day Turkey to acknowledge the facts. Nor are the parallels with Nazi Germany's persecution of the Jews idle ones. Turkey's reign of terror against the Armenian people was an attempt to destroy the Armenian race. While the Turks spoke publicly of the need to "resettle" their Armenian population – as the Germans were to speak later of the Jews of Europe – the true intentions of Enver Pasha's Committee of Union and Progress in Constantinople were quite

clear. On 15 September 1915, for example (and a carbon of this document exists) Talaat Pasha, the Turkish Interior minister, cabled an instruction to his prefect in Aleppo about what he should do with the tens of thousands of Armenians in his city. "You have already been informed that the government... has decided to destroy completely all the indicated persons living in Turkey... Their existence must be terminated, however tragic the measures taken may be, and no regard must be paid to either age or sex, or to any scruples of conscience." These words are almost identical to those used by Himmler to his SS killers in 1941.

Taner Akcam, a prominent – and extremely brave – Turkish scholar who has visited the Yerevan museum, has used original Ottoman Turkish documents to authenticate the act of genocide. Now under fierce attack for doing so from his own government, he discovered in Turkish archives that individual Turkish officers often wrote "doubles" of their mass death-sentence orders, telegrams sent at precisely the same time that asked their subordinates to ensure there was sufficient protection and food for the Armenians during their "resettlement". This weirdly parallels the bureaucracy of Nazi Germany, where officials were dispatching hundreds of thousands of Jews to the gas chambers while assuring International Red Cross officials in Geneva that they were being well cared for and well fed.

Ottoman Turkey's attempt to exterminate an entire Christian race in the Middle East – the Armenians, descended from the residents of ancient Urartu, became the first Christian nation when their king Drtad converted from paganism in AD301 – is a history of almost unrelieved horror at the hands of Turkish policemen and soldiers, and Kurdish tribesmen.

In 1915, Turkey claimed that its Armenian population was supporting Turkey's Christian enemies in Britain, France and Russia. Several historians – including Churchill, who was responsible for the doomed venture at Gallipoli – have asked whether the Turkish victory there did not give them the excuse to turn against the Christian Armenians of Asia Minor, a people of mixed Persian, Roman and Byzantine blood, with what Churchill called "merciless fury". Armenian scholars have compiled a map of their people's persecution and deportation, a document that is as detailed as the maps of Europe that show the railway lines to Auschwitz and Treblinka; the Armenians of Erzerum, for example, were sent on their death march to Terjan and then to Erzinjan and on to Sivas province. The men would be executed by firing squad or hacked to death with axes outside villages, the women and children then driven on into the desert to die of thirst or disease or exhaustion or gang-rape. In one mass grave I myself discovered on a hillside at Hurgada in present-day Syria, there were thousands of skeletons, mostly of young people – their teeth were perfect. I even found a 100-year-old Armenian woman who had escaped the slaughter there and identified the hillside for me.

Hayk Demoyan sits in his air-conditioned museum office, his computer purring softly on the desk, and talks of the need to memorialise this huge suffering. "You can see it in the writing of each survivor," he says. "When visitors come here from the diaspora – from America and Europe, Lebanon and Syria, people whose parents or grandparents died in our genocide – our staff feel with these people. They see these people become very upset, there are tears and some get a bit crazy after seeing the exhibition. This can be very difficult for us, psychologically. The stance of the current Turkish government [in denying the genocide] is proving they are proud of what their ancestors did. They are saying they are pleased with what the Ottomans did. Yet today, we are hearing that a lot of places in the world are like goldmines of archive materials to continue our work – even here in Yerevan. Every day, we are coming across new photographs or documents."

The pictures Demoyan gives to The Independent were taken by employees of Deutsche Bank in 1915 to send to their head office in Berlin as proof of their claims that the Turks were massacring their Armenian population. They can be found in the Deutsche Bank Historical Institute – Oriental Section (the photograph of the Armenian deportees across the desert published in The Independent today, for example, is registered photo number 1704 and the 1915 caption reads: "Deportation Camp near Erzerum.")

A German engineer in Kharput sent back a now-famous photogaph of Armenian men being led to their execution by armed Turkish police officers. The banking officials were appalled that the Ottoman Turks were using – in effect – German money to send Armenians to their death by rail. The new transportation system was supposed to be used for military purposes, not for genocide.

German soldiers sent to Turkey to reorganise the Ottoman army also witnessed these atrocities. Armin Wegner, an especially courageous German second lieutenant in the retinue of Field Marshal von der Goltz, took a series of photographs of dead and dying Armenian women and children. Other German officers regarded the genocide with more sinister interest. Some of these men, as Armenian scholar Vahakn Dadrian discovered, turn up 26 years later as more senior officers conducting the mass killing of Jews in German-occupied Russia.

Computers have transformed the research of institutions like the Yerevan museum. Poorly funded scholarship has been replaced by a treasure-house of information that Demoyan is going to publish in scholarly magazines. "We have information that some Germans who were in Armenia in 1915 started selling genocide pictures for personal collections when they returned home... In Russia, a man from St Petersburg also informed us that he had seen handwritten memoirs from 1940 in which the writer spoke of Russian photographs of Armenian bodies in Van and Marash in 1915 and 1916." Russian Tsarist troops marched into the eastern Turkish city of Van and briefly liberated its doomed Armenian inhabitants. Then the Russians retreated after apparently taking these pictures of dead Armenians in outlying villages.

Stalin also did his bit to erase the memory of the massacres. The Armenian Tashnag party, so prominent in Armenian politics in the Ottoman empire, was banned by the Soviets. "In the 1930s," Demoyan says, "everyone destroyed handwritten memoirs of the genocide, photographs, land deeds – otherwise they could have been associated by the Soviet secret police with Tashnag material." He shakes his head at this immeasurable loss. "But now we are finding new material in France and new pictures taken by humanitarian workers of the time. We know there were two or three documentary films from 1915, one shot approvingly by a Kurdish leader to show how the Turks "dealt" with Armenians. There is huge new material in Norway of the deportations in Mush from a Norwegian missionary who was there in 1915."

There is, too, a need to archive memoirs and books that were published in the aftermath of the genocide but discarded or forgotten in the decades that followed. In 1929, for example, a small-circulation book was published in Boston entitled From Dardanelles to Palestine by Captain Sarkis Torossian. The author was a highly decorated officer in the Turkish army who fought with distinction and was wounded at Gallipoli. He went on to fight the Allies in Palestine but was appalled to find thousands of dying Armenian refugees in the deserts of northern Syria. In passages of great pain, he discovers his sister living in rags and tells how his fiancée Jemileh died in his arms. "I raised Jemileh in my arms, the pain and terror in her eyes melted until they were bright as stars again, stars in an oriental night... and so she died, as a dream passing." Torossian changed sides, fought with the Arabs, and even briefly met Lawrence of Arabia – who did not impress him.

"The day following my entry into Damascus, the remainder of the Arab army entered along with their loads and behind them on a camel came one they called... the paymaster. This camel rider I learned was Captain Lawrence... Captain Lawrence to my knowledge did nothing to foment the Arab revolution, nor did he play any part in the Arab military tactics. When first I heard of him he was a paymaster, nothing more. And so he was to Prince Emir Abdulah (sic), brother of King Feisal, whom I knew. I do not write in disparagement. I write as a fighting man. Some must fight and others pay." Bitterness, it seems, runs deep. Torossian eventually re-entered Ottoman Turkey as an Armenian officer with the French army of occupation in the Cilicia region. But Kemalist guerrillas attacked the French, who then, Torossian suspects, gave weapons and ammunition to the Turks to allow the French army safe passage out of Cilicia. Betrayed, Torossian fled to relatives in America.

There is debate in Yerevan today as to why the diaspora Armenians appea r to care more about the genocide than the citizens of modern-day Armenia. Indeed, the Foreign minister of Armenia, Vardan Oskanian, actually told me that "days, weeks, even months go by" when he does not think of the genocide. One powerful argument put to me by an Armenian friend is that 70 years of Stalinism and official Soviet silence on the genocide deleted the historical memory in eastern Armenia – the present-day state of Armenia. Another argument suggests that the survivors of western Armenia – in what is now Turkey – lost their families and lands and still seek acknowledgement and maybe even restitution, while eastern Armenians did not lose their lands. Demoyan disputes all this.

"The fundamental problem, I think, is that in the diaspora many don't want to recognise our statehood," he says. "We are surrounded by two countries – Turkey and Azerbaijan – and we have to take our security into account; but not to the extent of damaging memory. Here we must be accurate. I have changed things in this museum. There were inappropriate things, comments about 'hot-bloodied'people, all the old clichés about Turks – they have now gone. The diaspora want to be the holders of our memories – but 60 per cent of the citizens of the Armenian state are "repatriates" – Armenians originally from the diaspora, people whose grandparents originally came from western Armenia. And remember that Turkish forces swept though part of Armenia after the 1915 genocide – right through Yerevan on their way to Baku. According to Soviet documentation in 1920, 200,000 Armenians died in this part of Armenia, 180,000 of them between 1918 and 1920." Indeed, there were further mass executions by the Turks in what is now the Armenian state. At Ghumri – near the centre of the devastating earthquake that preceded final liberation from the Soviet Union – there is a place known as the "Gorge of Slaughter", where in 1918 a whole village was massacred.

But I sensed some political problems up at the Yerevan museum – international as well as internal. While many Armenians acknowledge that their countrymen did commit individual revenge atrocities – around Van, for example – at the time of the genocide, a heavy burden of more modern responsibility lies with those who fought for Armenia against the Azeris in Nagorno-Karabakh in the early 1990s. This mountainous region east of the Armenian state saw fierce and sometimes cruel fighting in which Armenians massacred Turkish Azeri villagers. The Independent was one of the newspapers that exposed this.

Yet when I arrive at the massive genocide memorial next to the museum, I find the graves of five "heroes" of the Karabakh war. Here lies, for instance, Musher "Vosht" Mikhoyan, who was killed in 1991, and the remains of Samuel "Samo" Kevorkian, who died in action in 1992. However upright these warriors may have been, should those involved in the ghastly war in Kharabakh be associated with the integrity and truth of 1915? Do they not demean the history of Armenia's greatest suffering? Or were they – as I suspect – intended to suggest that the Karabakh war, which Armenia won, was revenge for the 1915 genocide? It's as if the Israelis placed the graves of the 1948 Irgun fighters – responsible for the massacres of Palestinians at Deir Yassin and other Arab villages – outside the Jewish Holocaust memorial at Yad Vashem near Jerusalem.

Officials later explain to me that these Kharabakh grave-sites were established at a moment of great emotion after the war and that today – while they might be inappropriate – it is difficult to ask the families of "Vosht" and "Samo" and the others to remove them to a more suitable location. Once buried, it is difficult to dig up the dead. Similarly, among the memorials left in a small park by visiting statesmen and politicians, there is a distinct difference in tone. Arab leaders have placed plaques in memory of the "genocide". Less courageous American congressman – who do not want to offend their Turkish allies – have placed plaques stating merely that they "planted this tree". The pro-American Lebanese Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri left his own memorial less than a year before he was assassinated in 2005. "Tree of Peace," it says. Which rather misses the point.

And yet it is the work of archivists that will continue to establish the truth. In Yerevan you can now buy excellent witness testimonies of the genocide by Westerners who were present during the Armenian Holocaust. One of them is by Tacy Atkinson, an American missionary who witnessed the deportation of her Armenian friends from the town of Kharput. On 16 July 1915, she recorded in her secret diary how "a boy has arrived in Mezreh in a bad state nervously. As I understand it he was with a crowd of women and children from some village... who joined our prisoners who went out June 23... The boy says that in the gorge this side of Bakir Maden the men and women were all shot and the leading men had their heads cut off afterwards... He escaped... and came here. His own mother was stripped and robbed and then shot... He says the valley smells so awful that one can hardly pass by now."

For fear the Turkish authorities might discover her diaries, Atkinson sometimes omitted events. In 1924 – when her diary, enclosed in a sealed trunk, at last returned to the United States, she wrote about a trip made to Kharput by her fellow missionaries. "The story of this trip I did not dare write," she scribbled in the margin. "They saw about 10,000 bodies."

Anatomy of a massacre: How the genocide unfolded

By Simon Usborne

An estimated 1.5 million Armenians died between 1915 and 1917, either at the hands of Turkish forces or of starvation. Exact figures are unknown, but each larger blob – at the site of a concentration camp or massacre – potentially represents the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people.

The trail of extermination, and dispute about exactly what happened, stretches back more than 90 years to the opening months of the First World War, when some of the Armenian minority in the east of the beleaguered Ottoman Empire enraged the ruling Young Turks coalition by siding with Russia.

On 24 April 1915, Turkish troops rounded up and killed hundreds of Armenian intellectuals. Weeks later, three million Armenians were marched from their homes – the majority towards Syria and modern-day Iraq – via an estimated 25 concentration camps.

In 1915, The New York Times reported that "the roads and the Euphrates are strewn with corpses of exiles... It is a plan to exterminate the whole Armenian people." Winston Churchill would later call the forced exodus an "administrative holocaust".

Yet Turkey, while acknowledging that many Armenians died, disputes the 1.5 million toll and insists that the acts of 1915-17 did not constitute what is now termed genocide – defined by the UN as a state-sponsored attempt to "destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group". Instead, Ankara claims the deaths were part of the wider war, and that massacres were committed by both sides.

Several countries have formally recognised genocide against the Armenians (and, in the case of France, outlawed its denial), but it remains illegal in Turkey to call for recognition. As recently as last year, the Turkish foreign ministry dismissed genocide allegations as "unfounded".

One authority on extermination who did recognise the Armenian genocide was Adolf Hitler. In a 1939 speech, in which he ordered the killing, "mercilessly and without compassion", of Polish men, women and children, he concluded: "Who, after all, speaks today of the annihilation of the Armenians?"

http://news.independent.co.uk/fisk/article2901136.ece

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ZNet | Israel/Palestine
What do Palestinians really think?

by Ali Abunimah;
Electronic Intifada; August 28, 2007

"Palestinian poll finds support for Fatah government over Hamas." That headline from the International Herald Tribune, one of many similar ones last week, must have warmed the hearts of supporters of the illegal, unelected and Israeli-backed Ramallah "government" of Salam Fayyad. Last June Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas dismissed Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh of Hamas and the national unity government he headed, and appointed Fayyad without the legally required endorsement of the Palestinian legislative council. This followed Hamas' rout of the US and Israeli-backed militias of Fatah warlord Mohammed Dahlan in the Gaza Strip.

Does this poll vindicate the US and Israeli strategy of funding and arming Palestinian collaborator leaders in Ramallah, and Abbas' strategy of embracing Israel, cracking down on the resistance, colluding in a cruel siege on his people in Gaza, and refusing all dialogue with Hamas? A closer look at the poll results as well as the context suggests the opposite.

The poll's publisher, the Jerusalem Media and Communications Centre (JMCC), trumpeted that a "majority" of Palestinians "said the performance of Fayyad's government is better" than that of the democratically-elected government of Haniyeh who is still the de facto prime minister despite Abbas' dismissal order.

In fact the results claim 46.5 percent preferring Fayyad's performance (a plurality not a majority) as against 24.4 percent preferring Haniyeh's performance since the events in June. (See JMCC poll number 62, August 2007 [http://www.jmcc.org/new/07/aug/poll.htm])

Still, if true, that would be an impressive achievement for Abbas and Fayyad. The poll also states that were new legislative elections held, 38 percent would vote for Fatah, while just 24 percent would vote for Hamas - with Fatah retaining a lead in both the West Bank and Gaza.

Yet there are good reasons to believe that this poll, like all previous polls taken by JMCC and other organizations, overestimates support for Fatah and understates support for Hamas by a wide margin. (Recall that all the polls erroneously predicted a comfortable win for Fatah in the January 2006 legislative election, and the 2005 municipal elections).

According to its methodology, this poll included face-to-face interviews with 1,199 Palestinians in randomly selected households throughout the West Bank and Gaza. Let us suppose that is the case.

Abbas has effectively declared Hamas illegal and his Israeli-backed security forces are working alongside Israeli occupation troops to carry out mass arrests of its supporters. Israel continues to carry out mass kidnappings and extrajudicial executions of Hamas members and other Palestinian resistance activists, aided by an extensive network of collaborators working inside and outside Palestinian official institutions, and some non-governmental organizations. Under such circumstances it is not surprising that true support for Hamas (as measured by secret ballots in elections) has always been much higher than that to which people are willing to admit in face-to-face interviews with strangers whose affiliations they cannot easily assess.

Second, when Palestinians are being asked to evaluate "performance" it is not clear what they are being asked to assess. Does the question take into account the fact that the democratically-elected Hamas government was barely able to function from the time it took office in March 2006 due to the kidnapping of half its cabinet by Israel, the US-EU-Israeli siege which deprived it of its rightful revenues even to pay salaries, sabotage by Dahlan's gangs, and since June the total blockade of Gaza that has virtually shut down its economy? (The latest ploy was the apparent collusion by Israel, the European Union and Abbas advisors to cut off Gaza's electricity on the basis of accusations, denied by a Gaza electricity company official, that Hamas was siphoning off revenues).

At the same time, Abbas and Fayyad are receiving hundreds of millions of dollars from their foreign patrons. Not really a fair comparison. But given their advantages Abbas and Fayyad are doing remarkably poorly even as measured by the poll.

While 44 percent of Gaza residents polled said their own security situation has improved since Hamas took over (and 31 percent said it had gotten worse), only 17 percent of West Bank residents polled say their security situation has improved living under Abbas and Fayyad, while 36.5 percent said it had deteriorated.

More than half of those polled were "dissatisfied" with Abbas' performance, while just a fifth were "very satisfied."

Overall, 26 percent of Palestinians under occupation said the Fayyad government should be "canceled" and the national unity government (which had been headed by Haniyeh) restored to office (21 percent in the West Bank and 34 percent in Gaza). Only 17 percent thought the Haniyeh government should be "canceled" so that Fayyad could rule over the West Bank and Gaza (18 percent in the West Bank, 16 percent in Gaza). Read another way this suggests that just 17 percent of Palestinians under occupation view the Fayyad government as being the legitimate authority.

A majority of Palestinians wanted to see a return to dialogue and national unity - a rejection of Abbas' intransigent refusal to talk to Hamas.

Asked which leaders they trust most, Abbas came highest with 18 percent (17 percent in the West Bank, 20 percent in Gaza). Haniyeh came a close second at 16 percent (11 percent in West Bank, 25 percent in Gaza). Salam Fayyad came in fifth at just 3.5 percent, scoring the same in both territories. Almost a third of Palestinians said they didn't trust anyone.

Asked who they would vote for in a presidential election, those polled gave statistically equal support to both Abbas and Haniyeh (21 percent and 19 percent), while Fayyad got five percent.

If the poll shows weak support for Abbas and Fayyad (and great disaffection with all political factions), it shows outright rejection of Abbas' capitulationist approach to peace negotiations with Israel. Canceling the right of return, allowing Israeli settlements to stay, and giving up most of Jerusalem in exchange for a Palestinian statelet on a fraction of the West Bank are reportedly at the heart of the "agreement of principles" that Abbas is negotiating with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert.

Almost 70 percent of Palestinians under occupation, according to the poll, adhere to the right of "return of all refugees to their original land." Another 12 percent envisage the return of only some refugees to their original lands. Just seven percent of those polled agreed with the position that no refugees should return home at all.

Eighty-two percent opposed allowing Israel to retain control of "major settlement blocs inside the West Bank in exchange for equal Israeli land," and 94 percent rejected "keeping Israel's authority in the area of Al-Aqsa mosque" in Jerusalem.

Peace process industry propagandists routinely claim that a two-state solution is overwhelmingly supported by the vast majority of Palestinians. This has never been true (millions of Palestinian refugees and exiles outside the country have never been included in elections, and are not regularly polled). This poll indicates that among Palestinians under occupation, support for a two-state solution is at just 51 percent (49 percent in the West Bank and 54 percent in Gaza). At the same time support for "a binational state in all of Palestine where Palestinians and Israeli [sic] enjoy equal representation and rights" is now supported by 30 percent (roughly similar in both territories).

Support for a two-state solution remains remarkably anemic, given the massive efforts invested in promoting it, while support for a one-state solution is impressively high and continues to creep upwards despite the fact that no major political faction or leader has openly endorsed it and so much effort is invested in discrediting it.

There are legitimate concerns about the methodology of the JMCC poll, the phrasing of questions and the context. At least one blogger cast doubt on it because the pollster, Ghassan Khatib, has served numerous times as a minister in the Fatah-led Palestinian Authority.
[http://palestinianpundit.blogspot.com/2007/08/fabricating-palestinian-public-opinion.html]

Nevertheless, whatever doubts there are, this poll merely confirms that Palestinians under occupation remain united on the fundamentals of their cause. Despite the conspiracy they face to starve and brutalize them into giving up their rights, the Palestinian people are steadfast in defending them.

Ali Abunimah is co-founder of The Electronic Intifada and author of One Country: A Bold Proposal to End the Israeli-Palestinian Impasse.

http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=107&ItemID=13633