tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21819134866369188692024-02-19T02:07:03.955-08:00IPenKhatchig Mouradianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06586890931026647735noreply@blogger.comBlogger47125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2181913486636918869.post-60510787158147252812008-11-07T18:45:00.000-08:002008-11-07T18:46:32.747-08:00Keeping the Eye on the Ball, not EmanuelBy Khatchig Mouradian<br /><br />The selection of Rahm Emanuel as chief of staff—the first major appointment by President-elect Barack Obama—did not fare well with many Armenian-Americans who supported the Illinois Senator’s bid for presidency. While the Armenian-Americans who overwhelmingly voted for Obama showed signs of unease, those who supported the McCain-Palin ticket were quick to exclaim, I told you so!<br /><br />The concerns of Armenian-Americans are understandable. Beginning with his days in the Clinton Administration through his years in Congress, Emanuel’s support has been mixed. It appears—if we are to take Robert Novak’s word for it—Emanuel opposed Clinton Administration affirmation of the Armenian Genocide. And yet, in his first term in Congress in 2003, he cosponsored Armenian Genocide legislation (H.Res.193) and urged President Bush in 2003, 2004 and 2005 to properly characterize the events from 1915-1923 as genocide.<br /><br />Back then, Emanuel wasn’t afraid to question U.S. assistance to Turkey. In fact, in February 2003, when Congress was considering a $24 billion aid package to Turkey in return for allowing U.S. troops to open up a northern front to battle Iraqi insurgents, Emanuel was positively poetic in listing the myriad of domestic uses for those funds—from “no child left behind programs,” to college tuition assistance. Turkey eventually blocked U.S. troops from setting up the northern front.<br /><br />Since 2006, it appears Emanuel has gone back to his Clinton-Administration days, counseling Speaker Pelosi not to place the Armenian Genocide resolution on the House agenda—advice that Pelosi and the House leadership did not heed.<br /><br />So, again, that Armenian-Americans are concerned is understandable. What is not understandable, however, is the leap that many Armenian-Americans are making—concluding that the appointment of Emanuel is proof that Obama is somehow on the road to reneging on his election pledge even before taking his oath of office.<br /><br />Such thinking comes off to be a bit naive. If the criteria for appointing a presidential chief of staff were for him to agree with the President on every single issue, no one would ever serve in that post. The President will have points of agreement and disagreement with his chief of staff—and all members of his Administration, for that matter—with the final word being that of the President, himself. Not to mention the fact that it is foolhardy to think that the President’s choice of a chief of staff would be decided on a single human rights issue—however just.<br /><br />Armenian-American critics of the Emanuel pick ought to keep in mind the impressive record of President-elect Obama and—perhaps even more importantly—that of vice President-elect Biden, when it comes to issues of concern to Armenian-Americans. Although their record does not guarantee their support of Genocide recognition now that they have assumed the highest office of the country, it should, at least, make one think twice before jumping to conclusions.<br />Concentrating on the Emanuel pick is a distraction. Regardless of who the chief of staff is, immense pressure is going to be exerted on Obama—by some Washington elites, the Turkish state and U.S.-based lobby groups working openly or silently for the Turkish government—to dissuade him from recognizing the Armenian Genocide.<br /><br />Given that reality, Armenian-Americans have two clear choices. To sit on their hands, thinking that they already did their part by voting for Obama and now it is his turn to deliver, or to struggle more fiercely than ever for truth and justice, knowing well that they have in the highest office of their country, a President who understands their struggle for truth and justice—certainly more than his predecessors.<br /><br /><br /><em>Khatchig Mouradian is a writer, translator and journalist. He is the editor of the Armenian Weekly. He can be contacted at khatchigm@hotmail.com.</em>Khatchig Mouradianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06586890931026647735noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2181913486636918869.post-82910615304628884172008-11-05T19:34:00.000-08:002008-11-05T19:35:37.177-08:00Lettre à un militant Américano-ArménienPar Khatchig Mouradian<br />Traduction Louise Kiffer<br /><br />Dans des années à partir d'aujourd'hui, vous vous rappellerez le 4 novembre 2008<br />comme le jour du point final où la reconnaissance du génocide arménien a commencé dans ce pays.<br /><br />Ou vous allez vous en souvenir comme encore un autre jour d'élection, où encore un autre président a été élu, mais malgré tous les espoirs, les efforts et les promesses, peu de choses ont changé.<br /><br />Et ce ne sera pas le Président Barack Obama à lui tout seul qui décidera de la route à suivre.<br /><br />Ce sera aussi vous.<br /><br />Ne dites pas: "j'ai soutenu Barack Obama pendant les élections, j'ai fait campagne pour lui, de porte en porte et par téléphone, j'ai voté pour lui, et maintenant, c'est son tour".<br /><br />"Je vous demande de croire, a dit votre Président, non seulement en ma capacité d'apporter un changement réel à Washington…Je vous demande de croire en la vôtre".<br /><br />Et aujourd'hui, avant de lui demander d'apporter un changement réel, croyez en votre capacité à le faire.<br /><br />Et mettez-vous au travail.<br /><br />Car les ennemis de la vérité, les adversaires de la justice les maîtres du statu quo, et ceux qui sont sur la liste du personnel du déni et de la falsification vont continuer à travailler contre vous de toutes leurs forces.<br /><br />Mais n'oubliez pas que la question arménienne a commencé en Turquie, et c'est là qu'elle doit être résolue. N'oubliez pas que les cendres des victimes, dispersées à travers l'Anatolie et les déserts de Syrie, ne trouveront pas la paix même dans tous les pays qui auront reconnu leurs souffrances.<br /><br />Leurs âmes ne trouveront le repos que lorsque la Turquie ornera ses cités de mémoriaux pour les victimes et de statues de Siamanto et de Varoujan.<br /><br />Et seulement quand les chants de Komitas résonneront de nouveau dans les villes et villages d'Anatolie.<br /><br />N'oubliez pas que votre militantisme ici aux Etats-Unis n'est qu'un moyen d'exercer une pression sur l'Etat turc et d'aider à éduquer le peuple.<br /><br />Ce n'est pas une fin en soi.<br /><br />N'oubliez pas que même si votre Président reconnaît le génocide arménien, vous aurez encore un long chemin à parcourir.<br /><br />Vous aurez encore à lutter et à éduquer. Vous aurez encore des millions de cœurs et d'esprits à convaincre; les cœurs et les esprits du peuple qui a hérité – de gré ou de force – du patrimoine d'un régime génocidaire.<br /><br />Et, ce qui est le plus important, ne soyez pas découragés par les déclarations de ceux qui pensent qu'ils peuvent résoudre aujourd'hui ou demain les problèmes entre l'Etat turc et les Arméniens.<br /><br />La route vers la vérité et de la justice est une longue route.<br /><br />Elle n'a pas commencé avec vous. Et ne finira pas forcément de votre temps.<br /><br />Mais elle exige sûrement votre dévouement.<br /><br />Donc, relevez vos manches et mettez-vous au travail.<br /><br />Si vous luttez incessamment, vos efforts porteront leurs fruits: votre Président, vos représentants et vos concitoyens et amis joindront leurs mains aux vôtres.<br /><br />Et quand vous aurez réussi à apporter un changement dans votre pays, rappelez-vous que votre génération n'est pas la seule victorieuse.<br /><br />Cette victoire appartient à tous les survivants du génocide, autant qu'à leurs descendants, qui ont continué à croire en la vérité et la justice.<br /><br />Aussi, quand votre militantisme finalement rapportera la reconnaissance, nous aimerions tous voir dans ce pays, avant les feux d'artifice et les célébrations, allumer un cierge à la mémoire de ces victimes et des survivants.<br /><br />Et n'oubliez jamais que vous n'aurez pas honoré les victimes de Turquie de 1915, si vous n'avez pas lutté pour mettre fin aux génocides partout et en tous les temps.<br /><br />C'est maintenant – plus que jamais auparavant – qu'il est temps pour vous d'effectuer un changement.<br /><br />Et, oui, vous le pouvez.<br /><br />4 novembre 2008<br />Boston, Mass.<br /><br />Khatchig Mouradian est écrivain, traducteur et journaliste. Il est rédacteur en chef d'Armenian Weekly. On peut le contacter à: <a href="mailto:khatchigm@hotmail.com">khatchigm@hotmail.com</a>Khatchig Mouradianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06586890931026647735noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2181913486636918869.post-78039834707295026242008-11-05T05:13:00.000-08:002008-11-05T13:56:32.505-08:00Letter to an Armenian-American ActivistBy Khatchig Mouradian<br /><br />Nov. 4, 2008<br />Boston, Mass.<br /><br />Years from now, you will remember Nov. 4, 2008 as the day on which the final dash to acknowledge the Armenian Genocide began in this country.<br /><br />Or you will remember it as yet another election day, when yet another president was elected, but despite all hopes, efforts and promises, little changed.<br /><br />And it won’t be President Barack Obama alone who will determine the road taken.<br /><br />It will also be you.<br /><br />Do not say, I supported Barack Obama during the elections, I canvassed for him, I made phone calls, I knocked on doors, I voted for him, and now, it is his turn.<br /><br />“I’m asking you to believe. Not just in my ability to bring about real change to Washington... I’m asking you to believe in yours,” said your President.<br /><br />And today, before asking him to bring about real change, believe in your ability to do so.<br /><br />And get to work.<br /><br />Because the enemies of truth, the adversaries of justice, the masters of the status quo, and those who are on the payroll of denial and falsification will continue working against you in full-force.<br /><br />But do not forget that the Armenian issue started in Turkey, and that’s where it will be resolved.<br /><br />Do not forget that the ashes of the victims, scattered across Anatolia and the deserts of Syria, will not find peace even if all countries recognize their suffering.<br /><br />Their souls will rest only when Turkey itself recognizes the genocide.<br /><br />Their souls will rest only when Turkey adorns its cities with memorials for the victims and with statues of Siamanto and Varoujan.<br /><br />And only when the songs of Komitas echo again in the cities and villages of Anatolia.<br /><br />Do not forget that all your activism here in the U.S. is just a means to exert pressure on the Turkish state and help educate the public.<br /><br />It is not an end in itself.<br /><br />Do not forget that, even when your President acknowledges the Armenian Genocide, you will still have a long way to go.<br /><br />You will still have to struggle and educate. You will still have millions of hearts and minds to win over; the hearts and minds of the people who inherited—willingly or not—the legacy of a genocidal regime.<br /><br />And, most importantly, do not be discouraged by the pronouncements of those who think they can resolve today or tomorrow the problems between the Turkish state and the Armenians.<br /><br />The road to truth and justice is a long one.<br /><br />It did not start with you. And it will not necessarily end in your day.<br /><br />But it sure requires your dedication.<br /><br />So roll up your sleeves and get to work.<br /><br />If you struggle tirelessly, your efforts will bear fruit: Your President, your representatives and your fellow citizens will join hands with you.<br /><br />And when you succeed in bringing about change in your country, remember that you generation is not the sole victor.<br /><br />That victory belongs to all the survivors of the Genocide as well as their descendents, who continued to believe in truth and justice.<br /><br />So when your activism finally brings about the recognition we all would like to see in this country, before the fireworks and celebrations, light a candle in memory of those victims and survivors.<br /><br />And never forget that you will not have honored the victims of Turkey in 1915, if you do not struggle to end genocides everywhere and at all times.<br /><br />Now—more than ever before—is your time to effect change.<br /><br />And, yes, you can.<br /><br /><br /><em>Khatchig Mouradian is a writer, translator and journalist. He is the editor of the Armenian Weekly. He can be contacted at khatchigm@hotmail.com.</em>Khatchig Mouradianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06586890931026647735noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2181913486636918869.post-66923380246957429852008-04-05T06:17:00.000-07:002008-05-17T06:20:45.319-07:00An Interview with Nicholas D. KristofBy Khatchig Mouradian<br />The Armenian Weekly<br />Volume 74, No. 13<br />April 5, 2008<br /><br />NEW YORK (A.W.)—Nicholas Kristof has been an Op-Ed columnist for the New York Times since November 2001. In his weekly columns, he often tackles issues of human rights abuses and genocide, and has been instrumental in creating awareness on the situation in Darfur.<br /><br />A two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, he has lived on four continents, reported on six, and traveled to 140 countries. (He is at least a two-time visitor to every member of the Axis of Evil.)<br /><br />Nicholas Donabet Kristof is the son of Ladis Kristof, a Transylvanian-born Armenian who immigrated to the United States after World War II.<br /><br /><br />In this interview, conducted in his office at the New York Times on March 28, we talk about the genocide in Darfur.<br /><br />***<br /><br />Khatchig Mouradian—You’ve been covering the genocide in Darfur for four years now. What has changed over this time in both public awareness and the situation on the ground?<br /><br />Nicholas Kristof—There’s certainly more attention to Darfur now. And it really is heartening, for example, how many university students all across the country have been willing to campaign for Darfur. So in my more hopeful moments, I think about the hundreds of thousands of college students who are protesting on behalf of people of a different religion, different skin color, who they will never meet, and I think, “Wow, we are really making some progress.”<br /><br />But then at the end of the day, on the ground in Darfur, the situation is as messy now as it was four years ago. If you had told me four years ago when I first went there that in 2008, people would know what Darfur is, they would know what is going on there, that the president would have called it “genocide,” I would have been surprised. But if you told me that people would know what’s going on and yet still we wouldn’t do anything, then I would have been even more stunned and depressed.<br /><br />K.M.—In the past, governments were careful not to invoke the term “genocide” because then they would have to act. Now, President Bush used the word when referring to Darfur, but nothing happened. Has the word “genocide” lost its meaning?<br /><br />N.K.—I don’t think it ever really had a lot of meaning to inspire action. However, it does make people feel guilty. The reason you do have a lot of people protesting on behalf of Darfur is the word “genocide.” If you use the word “ethnic cleansing,” I don’t think it gets people so upset.<br /><br />Look at how in the Congo the death toll has been much greater, but it’s not really a case of genocide; it’s a messy difficult case of rival militias and that has attracted much less attention than Darfur. What has made a difference is that in Darfur the death toll is smaller, but it is genocide. So I do think that genocide as a reality and as a term does make a difference—but just not nearly enough.<br /><br />K.M.—In your columns, you’ve mentioned that you’ve received emails from people saying, Yes, the situation in Darfur is bad, but we have other priorities. How do you feel about this kind of reaction, be it from ordinary people or government officials?<br /><br />N.K.—I think that one of the basic mistakes that Western governments make is that while they think that it’s unfortunate what is happening in Darfur, that there are a lot of unfortunate things going on in a lot of places around the world. And Darfur is their number 38th priority.<br /><br />In fact, I think it’s one of the lessons of history that over time genocide really does rise to the very top of the priority list. The Armenian genocide is a perfect example of that. When it was going on, the Wilson administration certainly thought that it was unfortunate; they didn’t want Armenians killed, but they had huge challenges with Europe, with the Ottoman Empire, and so it just never rose very high on the priority list. The same is true with the Holocaust, Rwanda, and Bosnia. Yet, each of those has had a staying power, a resonance throughout history precisely because it was genocide. I think that the mistake that the administration has made, the State Department has made, and a lot of us in the media have made is that we don’t appreciate that there really is something different about a government choosing a people based on race, color, religion, or whatever, and deciding to kill them.<br /><br />K.M.—Do you think there will be any drastic changes in the U.S. policy on Darfur when there’s a new president in the Oval Office next year?<br /><br />N.K.—There is some reason to believe that the next president will be modestly more active on Darfur. Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama have both been very active on the issue. John McCain had been earlier on; he has slowed down a little bit on Darfur more recently. But all of them have been, at one time or the other, real leaders on it. So yes, there is hope that if they were in the White House, they would be more active on it.<br /><br />But at the end of the day, I think that one of the things we see from history is that the president is never going to really lead in a case of genocide because there tends not to be a national interest involved, and there tends to be a lot of uncertainty about the right thing to do, and there are a lot of other priorities. When there has been some kind of response, it has been because you just had a lot of Americans shaming their president to act. Kosovo is a good example of that. There, we had the Clinton administration that really didn’t want to do very much, but they had just been tormented over a combination of Rwanda and Bosnia and, finally, they felt they had to do something and they did the right thing. Ultimately, I think it is going to be the same in the case of Darfur. The shaming of the U.S., Europe, China is going to actually make a difference.<br /><br />K.M.—So you believe that the movement to change the situation is going to be from the bottom-up…<br /><br />N.K.—It would be great if there were more change at the top, but the reality is that Mia Farrow has done more good for the people of Darfur diplomatically than Condi Rice has. And to the extent that China is now paying attention to Darfur, and is being somewhat helpful, that’s really because of Mia Farrow, not because of Condi Rice.<br /><br />That said, I hope that we’re going to see more rigorous action by government officials, and Sarcozy, I think, is going to be more helpful in Chad especially. But fundamentally, political leaders are going to be reactive rather than proactive. So it’s going to be the grassroots activists who are going to be the ones bringing about that change, whether it’s in our government or in the Chinese government.<br /><br />K.M.—What are your thoughts about the way Muslim countries have been reacting to the crisis in Darfur? They point out the double standards of the U.S., but they also uphold similar double standards by speaking about human rights violations in Israel and the Palestinian territories, while ignoring the genocide in Darfur.<br /><br />N.K.—Everybody has double standards and we always tend to be more shocked about everybody else’s double standards. Look at Zimbabwe, for example. The world was horrified when you had white Rhodesians doing terrible things to blacks there, but when it’s Zimbabwe president Robert Mugabe, then it tends to be more accepted by everybody. Likewise, Sudan can get away with doing things to its own people that no outsider could get away with.<br /><br />I do think that there have been double standards in the Egyptian news media, in particular. I really had hoped that the Egyptian news media, because it’s so important in the region, could have done more with Darfur. Instead, there is this reflexive sense that those Yankee imperialists went after Iraqi oil and neutralized Iraq on behalf of Israel and now they’re going to do the same thing to Sudan. I think that’s very unfortunate, but, I must say, we suffer from double standards all the time as well.<br /><br />K.M.—And U.S. foreign policy in recent years has aggravated the situation…<br /><br />N.K.—Absolutely. I think that our Middle Eastern policy—the Arab-Israeli conflict and Iraq—has left us in a situation where everything we do is viewed through an incredible prism of suspicion. That makes it very difficult for us to do anything about an Arab country, especially an Arab country with oil. This is one reason why it would be so helpful if we worked more with European countries and Muslim countries. If Egypt, the Arab League, or other Muslim countries outside the Arab world were to be more concerned about Muslims being slaughtered in Darfur, that would be of huge help.<br /><br />K.M.—How does this affect you on a personal level? Isn’t it very frustrating to see how slowly things change—if they ever do?<br /><br />N.K.—Absolutely. And the most frustrating is the difficulty translating from concern to actually any kind of positive action. I find that incredibly frustrating. I’m quite worried that the next issue is going to be the North-South war in Sudan. And Darfur might just be remembered as the prologue to something much bloodier…<br /><br />One of the lessons that we should have learned is that you can intervene much more easily early on in a conflict. Once Humpty Dumpty has fallen off the wall, then it’s impossible to put him back together again. Right now, everybody is watching south Sudan fall off the ledge. We can still do something, but a year from now it may be utterly too late.<br /><br />K.M.—What do you usually tell people who ask what they can do to help?<br /><br />N.K.—Some of the websites that I recommend people to go to are Save Darfur (www.Save Darfur.org), the Genocide Intervention Network (www.genocide intervention.net) and Dream for Darfur (www.dreamfordarfur.org).<br /><br />I do think that the Armenian community has some special responsibility to lead the way. One of the ways of memorializing the Armenian genocide should be to prevent the next genocide from happening…<br /><br />K.M.—Just like the role the Jewish community is playing…<br /><br />N.K.—Exactly. I think those websites are a good place to start, and some combination of calling the White House and writing member of Congress. There’s a website called Darfurscores.org that shows how each member of Congress has done. I think letters to other governments are helpful, too.<br /><br />K.M.—What about the humanitarian aspect of all this?<br /><br />N.K.—Early on, when people asked me what they could do to help, I would point them to specific humanitarian organizations like Doctors Without Borders (www.doctorswithoutborders.org). I think they do great work and if one donates to them, that’s not money wasted at all.<br /><br />But for four years now I’ve been going and I’ve seen doctors bandage up kids with bullet wounds. That can keep on going for 20 years. So at some point, you begin to think that the real response is not a lot more bandages and more surgeons, but to do something to actually stop the killing. And so for that reason, now when people ask, I tend to emphasize the advocacy organizations.Khatchig Mouradianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06586890931026647735noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2181913486636918869.post-12750903155767002802008-03-22T07:38:00.000-07:002008-03-23T07:42:28.389-07:00The Politics of Official ApologiesAn Interview with Melissa Nobles<br />By Khatchig Mouradian and Melissa Nobles<br /><br />ZNet<br />March, 22 2008<br /><br />Melissa Nobles is Associate Professor of Political Science at MIT. She holds a BA in history from Brown University and an MA and PhD in political science from Yale University. Her research interests include retrospective justice and the comparative study of racial and ethnic politics. She is the author of Shades of Citizenship: Race and the Census in Modern Politics (Stanford University Press, 2000) and The Politics of Official Apologies (Cambridge University Press, 2008).<br /><br />In this interview, conducted in her office at MIT on March 11, we discuss why and how governments apologize—or do not apologize—for crimes committed in their country in the past and what significance apology—or the absence of it—can have on the descendents of the victims and the perpetrators.<br /> <br />Khatchig Mouradian—How did you become interested in the politics of official apologies?<br /><br />Melissa Nobles—I became interested when, in 1998, I read an article in the New York Times about the Canadian government’s apology to indigenous Canadians. I thought that was interesting and unusual, because governments don’t usually apologize. Then I became aware of the Turkish government’s refusal to apologize for the Armenian genocide. That also interested me. I knew that the U.S. government had apologized to Japanese-Americans for their internment during WWII, but also realized that the U.S. had not apologized to Native Americans or to African-Americans for their experiences. So my interest was both in cases where governments did apologize and where governments did not apologize.<br /><br />K.M.—In the book, you make a distinction between apology offered by governments and ones offered by heads of state. Why is this distinction important?<br /><br />M.N.—It is important because government apologies typically require more actors and tend to be the result of more deliberation. The parliament, commissions and historians are involved, so more people are weighing in and it’s more of a collective decision. Moreover, typically government apologies have been accompanied by reparations. Examples of such apologies and reparations are the German government’s apology and ongoing reparations to surviving Jews after WWII and the state of Israel, and U.S. President Ronald Reagan providing $20,000 to surviving Japanese-Americans affected by the internment.<br /><br />Apologies that come from heads of state are important, of course, because the person giving them is either the executive or government official, but they are not necessarily the result of deliberation, so they are more unpredictable and don’t usually come with any kind of compensation. They tend to be more fleeting. I thought that’s the distinction that should be taken into account.<br /><br />K.M.—Speaking of reparations, in the book you write, “For vulnerable and disadvantaged groups, moral appeals are often central to political argument and action. … But at the same time, group members also express skepticism about the ultimate worth of moral appeals because although they may be essential, they are infrequently followed by action.” Do you feel that action is necessary for apologies to have meaning?<br /><br />M.N.—I do. Note that action can be broadly or narrowly defined. We might think about action as an apology that marks the beginnings of a government and citizenry talking more seriously about their own history. Action can be something not regulated by the state or there may be a commission that recommends compensation. But what is the least desirable is an apology that is just said and is followed by nothing—no discussion, or any kind of deliberation or compensation—because then, it falls flat. Action need not be synonymous with reparations as such, but it needs to be something more than a mere utterance, which, once said, dies.<br /><br />K.M.—Have there been cases where an official apology has not been followed by any concrete steps—a sort of “I apologize, now let’s go home”? You mention in the book how some governments have refrained from apologizing mainly because of what might come next…<br /><br />M.N.—In general, the “let’s go home” apologies have been given by heads of state. I haven’t found too many cases of governments giving apologies that haven’t been followed by something. An example would be what’s going on now in Australia, where there’s resistance at least to doing something that would be directly tied to the apology. At the same time they’re saying, We are going to change Aboriginal policy-making, we’re going to take action, but we’re not going to give money to the specific victims of this particular government policy [of forcibly removing Aboriginal children from their parent’s care].<br /><br />Governments are reluctant to apologize precisely because of the concern that there are going to be demands for money. But governments have more power; they decide what they’re going to do. So while there is a tension, I don’t think it’s a tension that’s insurmountable. The issue is framed by political elites. They can decide to give nothing and they often times make this decision.<br /><br />K.M.—Isn’t there also some dominance relation here? After all, it’s the dominant group that is deciding what to say and what to give.<br /><br />M.N.—Absolutely. This is certainly an unequal dynamic. Much of the dissatisfaction with symbolic politics is that it points up the relative powerlessness of the groups that are asking for apologies.<br /><br />If you’re in power and feel that you don’t need anything from the groups that have victimized you, you would not ask for apologies. It is the less powerful that do. The less powerful groups have fewer resources and rely upon moral appeals in order to get what they want. And there’s value, of course, in bringing morality to bear. That’s just the dynamic of the world in which we live.<br /><br />But you’re absolutely right, there is asymmetry here. The powerful can do as little as they want and, many times, they do nothing. They ignore them. They won’t apologize. On the other hand, the group can continue to express their dissatisfaction, and continue to demand it. The demand—just the idea that they’re being asked for it—can be discomforting to the powerful. That may be all that the side demanding apology can do.<br /><br />K.M.—I want to bring democracy into the discussion. It would be easy to argue that democracy should help countries face their past, but there are some very striking examples that show that this is not the case. For example, the United States has not apologized for slavery or the genocide of the Native Americans. What are your thoughts on this?<br /><br />M.N.—Democracy is the rule of the majority and there are inherent disadvantages for minority groups within democracies. (Native Americans, in this example, are less than one percent of the American population; black Americans are 12 percent). And even though democracies allow for an expression of desires and preferences, it doesn’t necessarily mean that you’re going to get what you want. It typically means that minority groups have to get the majority on board. That’s why moral appeal is sometimes what’s needed.<br /><br />The majority decides whether it will pay any attention to the minority. They can choose to ignore the minority, and, as I’ve said, they oftentimes do. So what minorities have to do is try to find a way to make the majority listen. And usually appeals to history, appeals to the conscience are the peaceful ways that are used. There are violent ways, of course, but those haven’t been the avenues chosen by Native Americans or African-Americans for obvious reasons.<br /><br />The hope is that public discourse within democracies will force a discussion. There’s a need for a robust debate in the public arena, which makes freedom of speech, freedom of universities and other freedoms that democracy provides so important. Without those freedoms, change definitely wouldn’t happen.<br /><br />K.M.—In the context of democracy and the minorities within that democracy, do you feel that as long as there has been no apology, the power asymmetry and the domination are still there?<br /><br />M.N.—Yes, it’s kind of unavoidable. Look at the situation of the Native Americans. It’s disgraceful and makes one despair a great deal. It’s our country’s history. We don’t want to talk about it, or we barely talk about it. Even when we do talk, we certainly talk about it incompletely. And more than that, I think many Americans thing that the dispossession of the Native Americans was justified in some way. They think, we certainly are not going to give anything back, we love the U.S. now and the Native American circumstance is just the unfortunate result of history. I think that some dimension of domination will always be there and seems to be unavoidable. It is also, of course, not a thing that anyone who has a conscience would celebrate. It should cause us discomfort at the very least and I think there is no real discussion in the U.S. about Native Americans because of that discomfort and the implications of taking their situation seriously.<br /><br />K.M.—You have written, “Feelings of ‘nonresponsibility’ are powerful constraints against state support for apologies. Feelings of national pride, derived from certain interpretations of national history, also play a role.” What is shocking is that in each and every case that I know of and that you mention in the book, the victimizers or their descendents—the dominant group—deal the exact same way with the victim group and its demands. This issue seems to cut across civilizations.<br /><br />M.N.—It is shocking. There are lots of justifications for not feeling responsible. The most obvious is the argument that “I was not personally responsible.” But, of course, that’s a pretty easy one to challenge. People aren’t responsible for what goes well in their countries, but they claim it, right? So it’s kind of selective claiming: “I like the constitution but I hate slavery.” Being part of a country requires the good and bad, but it is human nature to want to bask in the glory and then ignore the bad. Once I decide that I’m not responsible for the act, why would I apologize for it?<br />Once this particular position takes hold, everything else follows and makes apology impossible. So the point is to always try to deal with that issue of responsibility by telling the person, “You are not individually responsible, we get that, but somehow you are a beneficiary of, or you benefited from, the historical circumstances in which you were born in such a way that you must now think about making amends.”<br /><br />The challenge is to try and get people to see that they are somehow responsible. Not that they themselves are responsible, but that somehow they should accept responsibility, even if they were not personally involved.<br /><br />One thing the research has shown is that feelings of guilt are determined by whether you think you are personally responsible or not. If you recognize that your group, the group with which you are associated, was responsible and you feel guilt about it, then you’re likely to apologize.<br /><br />K.M.—How can the descendants of the victimizers argue for an apology?<br /><br />M.N.—Politicians make it such that the descendents are able to say, “OK, this happened in the past, apologizing is the right thing to do.” It helps to talk about the past but think about the future. So they use the term acknowledgement without necessarily assigning guilt. That’s what Australia’s Prime Minister did. He apologized to Aboriginal Australians straightforwardly. He basically said, “We acknowledge what happened and we are sorry.” But then he said, “Now we’re moving forward. The reason we are apologizing is to make a better community for Australian Aboriginal peoples.” So one approach that politicians use is not to dwell upon the past; even as they acknowledge the past, they quickly move from it. That seems to be the tactic that works best. If you dwell too much on the past, if there’s too much discussion about the past, then it becomes fertile ground for those who oppose giving the apology. The idea is to always keep looking at the big picture, and one useful big picture is the future. I think that’s the way that successful apologies are done and politicians recognize that.<br /><br />K.M.—Countless massacres and crimes against humanity have been committed in the last two centuries alone. At some point, one might argue that everyone has to say sorry to everyone else. Why are some apologies more “important” than others?<br /><br />M.N.—The aggrieved groups themselves must ask for it and others have to see something in it for them. In fact, not everyone is asking for apologies because there’s a certain distrust of apology. Some people ask, “What’s that apology going to do?” They think, “They don’t mean it,” or “If I have to ask for it then it’s not worth getting,” or “They are morally bankrupt and don’t even know that they should apologize,” or “Whatever they could do for me wouldn’t be worth it.” So there are reasons why some people wouldn’t even think about asking for an apology, because they think it would be somehow tainted.<br /><br />Are some apologies more important than others? I don’t think there are absolute measures. But at least in politics, it seems, the ones that are considered worthy are the ones where the people who are giving it stand to gain too.<br /><br />K.M.—If a crime happened in the past but continues to have great implications today and cause great distress, do you think it’s more “worthy” of being addressed? I have in mind the Native Americans, African-Americans…<br /><br />M.N.—I agree with the gist of your argument. But many would argue that what happened in the U.S. happened. That we have found other ways of dealing with African-American and Native American grievances, and apology is kind of beside the point. They would say that an apology would be so polarizing that it will do more harm than good.<br /><br />In general, though, I think that if any party is going to do it, it’s the Democrats, although they haven’t endorsed an apology—not even Bill Clinton.<br /><br />K.M.—What do you think about gestures by ordinary people who apologize despite their government’s reluctance to do so?<br /><br />M.N.—Australia is a good example of that. When former Prime Minister John Howard refused to apologize, he ended up inadvertently fostering what is known as the people’s movement. Australians themselves were signing sorry books. Some critics judged it as political theatre, but I didn’t view it that way. The Australians were telling Aboriginal Australians, “Listening to you makes me think about what happened, makes me think about you as a neighbor that I care about. The government can’t change our attitudes. We’re citizens, and we can apologize.”<br /><br />It seems to me that an official apology accompanied by real, serious engagement by the population—as we’ve seen in Canada, Australia and New Zealand, yet haven’t seen here in the U.S.—makes a big difference in the quality of life in those countries.<br /><br />Khatchig Mouradian is a journalist, writer and translator, based in Boston. He is the editor of the Armenian Weekly. He can be contacted at: <a href="mailto:khatchigm@hotmail.com">khatchigm@hotmail.com</a>.<br /><br />From:<br />Z Net - The Spirit Of Resistance Lives<br />URL:<br /><a href="http://www.zcommunications.org/znet/viewArticle/16943" target="znet">http://www.zcommunications.org/znet/viewArticle/16943</a>Khatchig Mouradianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06586890931026647735noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2181913486636918869.post-60957542213078454832008-03-15T07:44:00.000-07:002008-03-23T07:46:59.403-07:00Complicity with Evil: An Interview with Adam LeBorBy Khatchig Mouradian<br /><br />ZNet<br />March, 15 2008<br /><br />Adam LeBor is an author and journalist based in Budapest, Hungary. He writes for The Times (of London), the Economist, the Jewish Chronicle and the New York Times. He is the author of six non-fiction books, including Milosevic: A Biography, City of Oranges: An Intimate History of Arabs and Jews in Jaffa and Complicity with Evil: The United Nations in the Age of Modern Genocide.<br />In this interview, conducted by phone, we talk about the role the UN played—and oftentimes failed to play—when genocide and crimes against humanity were committed.<br /><br />Khatchig Mouradian—In Complicity with Evil, you call on the UN to return to its founding principles and set the agenda of the Security Council instead of following the lead of the great powers. Do you think such a drastic shift in the UN’s approach would be possible under current circumstances?<br />Adam LeBor—It would be difficult, that’s for sure. That’s the ideal that I think should happen. The problem with the UN is that the powers on the Security Council follow their own national interests more than the interests of the UN, but one place where there is room to maneuver is within the Secretariat. And if the Secretary General and other Secretariat officials don’t just follow the whims of the great powers but actually say, “Look, the UN is here to safeguard human rights, prevent genocide, that’s why it was founded, not to be used to pursue your national interests,” if the Secretariat kept making that point, it could, perhaps, have an effect.<br />This sounds very general, but let’s look at, for example, what happened in Bosnia. Many UN officials focused primarily on preserving the UN’s impartiality and also following the interests of the great powers. Those UN officials did have an effect on the ground, but it wasn’t a good effect.<br /><br />K.M.—You mentioned the issue of UN impartiality. In the book you highlight the UN’s “reluctance to distinguish victim from aggressor” and “continued equal treatment of the parties” as the biggest blows to the credibility of UN peacekeeping. Can you explain?<br />A.L.—We saw that in Bosnia, we saw it in Rwanda, and we are still seeing it in Darfur. In Bosnia, at the Sarajevo airport, UN soldiers were shining spotlights on people who were trying to run across the airfield to get out of the besieged city, and the Serbs would fire on them. The airport was controlled by the UN, and the UN believed it had to be neutral.<br />You have this obsession with neutrality. You have the main UN political official, Yakushi Akashi, who refuses to authorize air strikes against the Bosnian Serbs because he believes that it would weaken Slobodan Milosevic—and the latter was needed to make a peace deal.<br />You see the same thing in Rwanda, where the UN, under pressure by the Clinton Administration—in what was surely one of the Administration’s most shameful moments—actually pulled out 90 percent of the troops that were there.<br />You see the same situation now in Darfur. Sudan is treated as an honored partner in negotiations. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon meets the Sudanese president and talks about how he believes the Sudanese president is committed to ending the carnage in Darfur, and then, a few weeks later, another 12,000 people are displaced and hundreds of more people are killed. All this is because no one seems to be willing to say that the UN is not founded to give a platform of membership to regimes carrying out genocide.<br />There’s a mentality that we can’t get involved in what’s going on. We just have to always be these impartial arbiters. But there comes a point when impartiality means siding with the aggressor.<br /><br />K.M.—How do you think this false notion of impartiality can be changed? After all, some would argue that the UN is the organization that brings all countries together and once the concept of impartiality is left open to different interpretations, member states could raise the argument that the UN is, in fact, taking sides.<br />A.L.—This is the great question: How can the organization protect human rights when the people carrying out the human rights abuses are members of the UN? I would argue there are means and methods by which UN member states that carry out egregious violations can be suspended or expelled—there’s a provision for that in the UN Charter. Also, the agenda can be set. Look at what’s happening now on the new Human Rights Council. We have a spectacle of countries refusing to take any action against Sudan and Zimbabwe, obsessing about what Israel is doing. Now, to be sure, there are human rights issues in Israel and Palestine, but there are also many other human rights issues going on in the world. But you have member states of these organizations focusing only on their own interests, rather than having any actual interests in human rights violations. That’s one area that needs a lot of attention.<br /><br />K.M.—This is also a problem in the media. How do you feel about bringing up human rights violations elsewhere to “justify” or divert attention from other human rights abuses? Wouldn’t a universal approach to human rights help all sides?<br />A.L.—The media in countries often reflects their country’s interests, especially in non-democratic regimes. For example, most Arab regimes and much of the Arab media hasn’t engaged over Darfur. Some of them don’t believe it’s happening, some of them say it’s another Western plot to dismember another Arab country, same as in Iraq. You see a kind of selective judgment. But until there are absolute standards applied, it weakens the whole cause of human rights. If, for example, the Arab media is always talking about Gaza and the West Bank—and of course, I say again, there are human rights violations that need to be addressed there—but the same media never says anything about what’s happening in Darfur or refugees in the Western Sahara or the lack of human rights in most Arab countries or the fact that there’s no free press and bloggers are arrested, then it becomes very difficult to share outrage over other issues. We need less selective judgment, and clearer, absolute judgments over what’s wrong, whether or not it is convenient to look at a certain issue.<br /><br />K.M.—I want to return to the issue of the Secretariat. Wouldn’t you agree that the hands of the Secretariat are tied when it comes to setting the agenda as long as members of the Security Council are not willing to make concessions?<br />A.L.—I think it would demand a concession by the countries on the Security Council, especially the five permanent members, to accept that Secretariat officials should have more power and should be able to set the agenda of the UN. But at the moment, it just doesn’t seem to be happening. Look at how the political establishment in the U.S., for example, views the UN. They see it as an anti-Western organization, and so why would we hand over any diplomatic power to an organization like this? We go back to the problem of selective judgment here. The General Assembly and the new Human Rights Council are refusing to engage on Zimbabwe or on Sudan but only engages on things that interest it. This actually helps the people who want to keep the UN weak. The Republicans can say, look at these people, they are not concerned about human rights, they are concerned about their own short-term politically expedient interests. So, that selective judgment does a lot of damage.<br /><br />K.M.—Talk about why the UN is, as you say, “passively complicit with evil.”<br />A.L.—The reason I called my book “Complicity with Evil” is because it’s actually the UN’s own words. In 2000, the UN released its report on peacekeeping failures in Bosnia, Rwanda and some other places. The UN’s own words were that its continued obsession with impartiality, with not engaging while human rights abuses were going on in front of UN peacekeepers, has arguably made the organization guilty of being “complicit with evil.” And it has been. There are people in the organization that realize this and want to change it.<br /><br />K.M.—What role do you see for the UN today in Darfur?<br />A.L.—When people talk about Darfur, especially the U.S and Britain, they say that we can’t do anything in Darfur because of Iraq. But there are many things that can be done without sending the 101st Airborne Division in. You can have serious, meaningful sanctions on the Sudanese government, on the president and the people organizing the genocide and the human rights abuses. You can have sanctions on the oil industry. You can have a more active International Criminal Court (ICC). You can see the contempt Sudan holds the UN in when one of the four people indicted by the ICC is actually promoted after the indictment and made the minister in charge of refugee affairs. You can see that a country like Sudan has no fear of the UN whatsoever, couldn’t care less what it does. The way to address that is also to start focusing on the individuals that are actually running these regimes and to seriously target them in terms of sanctions, travel bans and freezing their assets. This had quite strong effects during the Milosevic regime, when the genocide was going on in Bosnia, because people started to get nervous that they’d never get their money or be able to leave the country. They started to turn on each other and started to reach out to the ICC saying that they had information and were ready to make a deal. All this makes the regime crack.<br /><br />K.M.—Do you think the U.S.’s use of the term “genocide” to describe the killings in Darfur has helped in any way?<br />A.L.—I thought the whole U.S. position on the use of the term “genocide” in Darfur was completely bizarre. Clearly, it is genocide. Genocide does not necessarily mean mass extermination, as it happened in the Holocaust or Rwanda. It means the intention to destroy a group. And that is exactly what is happening in Darfur in terms of the communities that are being targeted and destroyed as a group. There’s a lot of furor over the use of the word and this furor distracts from what’s going on. America says it is genocide, but then refuses to take any action to stop this genocide. The UN says it’s not a genocide, although some acts have been committed that resemble genocide. You have this, in some way, irrelevant debate over the word, while the slaughter continues.<br /><br />K.M.—How do you see the future of UN peacekeeping?<br />A.L.—I think a lot of lessons have been learned from Rwanda, where UN troops evacuated places and left the Tutsis there to be slaughtered by the Hutus who were waiting outside the front door. And from what happened in Srebrenica, where Dutch peacekeepers literally forced Muslim men and boys into the arms of the Bosnian Serbs who then took them away and slaughtered them. I think important lessons have been learned, unfortunately at the cost of a lot of human lives and suffering.<br />Now, where there is a meaningful peacekeeping force, like in Congo and Liberia, it is more robust and muscular. The department of peacekeeping operations has a sub-department called Best Practices, which looks at each mission and works out how to make it work better.<br />But the problem is when the troops aren’t there. If you look in Darfur, there’s supposed to be 26,000 troops, but there’s only a fraction of them there. Sudan is insisting that only peacekeepers from African countries be deployed. It is doing that because African countries don’t have the experience and the logistics to mount effective peacekeeping operations. They simply don’t have the capability that Western countries have. So it’s all very clever, very convenient.<br />I would say that where peacekeepers are properly deployed, they are making a difference. But they need to get there.<br /><br />Khatchig Mouradian is a journalist, writer and translator, based in Boston. He is the editor of the Armenian Weekly. He can be contacted at: khatchigm@hotmail.com.<br /><br />From:<br />Z Net - The Spirit Of Resistance Lives<br />URL:<br /><a href="http://www.zcommunications.org/znet/viewArticle/16876" target="znet">http://www.zcommunications.org/znet/viewArticle/16876</a>Khatchig Mouradianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06586890931026647735noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2181913486636918869.post-9663422898982672722008-03-08T08:01:00.000-08:002008-03-13T08:07:33.872-07:00An Interview with Hilmar KaiserBy Khatchig Mouradian<br /><br />The Armenian Weekly<br />March 8, 2008<br /><br />Hilmar Kaiser is a scholar of the Armenian genocide who is also known in scholarly circles and the Armenian community for the controversy he generates with some of his lectures and interviews. We first sat down at the editorial offices of the Aztag Daily in Beirut on Sept. 22, 2005, for a fascinating interview about the Ottoman archives and the Armenian genocide.<br />Kaiser received his PhD from the European University Institute in Florence, Italy. He specializes in Ottoman social and economic history as well as the Armenian genocide. He has done research in more than 60 archives worldwide, including the Ottoman Archives in Istanbul.<br /><br />His published works—monographs, edited volumes and articles—include “Imperialism, Racism, and Development Theories: The Construction of a Dominant Paradigm on Ottoman Armenians,” “At the Crossroads of Der Zor: Death Survival and Humanitarian Resistance in Aleppo, 1915-1917,” “The Baghdad Railway and the Armenian Genocide, 1915-1916: A Case Study in German Resistance and Complicity,” “1915-1916 Ermeni Soykirimi Sirasinda Ermeni Mulkleri, Osmanli Hukuku ve Milliyet Politikalari,” “Le genocide armenien: negation a ‘l’allemande’” and “From Empire to Republic: The Continuities for Turkish Denial.”<br /><br />In this interview, conducted in Boston in Dec. 2007, Kaiser discusses the archives and speaks about his views on Turkish scholars—both the liberals and state-sponsored genocide deniers.<br /><br />Khatchig Mouradian—Let’s talk about your Turkish colleagues and how they approach the Armenian issue.<br /><br />Hilmar Kaiser—When I looked in Turkey over the past year for organized “academic” treatment of the Armenian issue, I could identify at least eight centers, which are in competition with each other; and then, within the centers there is competition. What you have there is a flourishing chaos. This is also understandable because the Turkish government puts money into it. The government puts money into the project without having a right assessment, so they burn a lot of money on staff that has zero impact.<br /><br />There has to be a realization in certain circles—especially at the Turkish Historical Society—that this level doesn’t suffice. Some people claim “our product is inefficient because it’s only in Turkish and no one can read it.” They should understand that it is good that no one can read it, because once it is translated, it will do more damage than anything else. Some authors areas if talking in their own bathroom.<br /><br />But now within the Turkish Historical Society and among some others there is agreement that production has to meet U.S. University press standards and anything else is a total waste of time.<br /><br />We agreed that we disagree, and then we had discussions about the concept of genocide, we have now discussed joint projects. It’s something else if that will happen or not, but we at least explored what can be done together, in areas where basically you wouldn’t burn the house. After two and a half years in the Turkish archives, they got used to me being in Turkey, there was no scandal, slowly they got used that I am a reality and they get more comfortable and confident about the situation.<br /><br />Personally, I have no problem talking to official historians or genocide deniers because these guys have the nationalist credentials. They don’t have to prove that they’re not Armenian spies so they are very cool about it. They are very surprised that I don’t talk to the “liberals” about it, and I tell them very clearly that it is, in my view, a self-deception to think that a few Turkish scholars—regardless of how good or how bad their work is, how respectable or unrespectable they are—who represent a very small layer, a very privileged layer of Turkish society, the société, the upper one percent, will change the country.<br /><br />These people teach at very few places where very few students go to and they basically dismiss a whole state university system with tens of thousands of history students. So I just ignore them. If you want to talk to people who train the teachers in Turkey, who go to countrywide universities, you have to talk to other people.<br /><br />From a German perspective—I am German and it inspires me given the dialogue of the 1970s and 1980s between east and west—it was always clear that engaging the other side is inevitable and you make them part of the solution. We can’t get rid of all of those we don’t like and then start everything from the beginning, because these people will fight to the end if they have nothing to lose. Respectable scholarship has nothing to do with the name of the person who has written it—it is assessed on its own merit. So people might change and agreements might replace disagreements. Never give up too easy.<br /><br />There’s a substance on which you can move on and I have been involved in it during the last few years. There are hopeless cases among historians in Turkey, of course. At one dinner, one outed himself as a fan of Adolf Hitler. In Germany, I would report him to the police and he wouldn’t leave the country for what he said. This was, at the same time, Holocaust denial, racism and a call for inter-ethnic violence. You don’t have to deal with those guys. There are clear standards. These standards are not to be compromised. But the other guys, I don’t boycott them, clearly.<br /><br />K.M.—You criticize the liberal scholars. But most of the decent scholarship by Turks on the Armenian genocide is done by the liberal scholars and not the ones on the state’s payroll, am I wrong?<br /><br />H.K.—You have to look at the footnotes. Every book tells you what you have done, at least what you claim to have done. Much of it is based on published resources. It shows that they are not at the cutting edge. If you want original research on a certain issue, given the low state of our knowledge because of archival issues and other issues, you have to put in the time. All these concepts about the Armenian genocide are developed on generalization of a very narrow source basis. We have developed a lot of Holy Grail items that we hear over and over again, but these are generalizations of local events that didn’t necessarily spread. There is a lot of crap that we have to throw out, and we have the documents to make that point. One has to be more humble and more relaxed about it and be careful about one’s findings.<br /><br />K.M.—Talk about your relation with the head of the Turkish Historical Society Yusuf Halacoglu.<br /><br />H.K.—I met him at the Istanbul conference almost two years ago. Then I visited him at the Historical Society’s conference about a year ago, where he received me in a very friendly manner. Then we had little contact and I visited him in June and in November again. Halacoglu is the only Turkish historian who has put material on the table I cannot reconcile with my current knowledge. He is an extremely smart guy, very professional. He is ahead of me in some regards.<br /><br />K.M.—Why do you say that?<br /><br />H.K.—He has the material on the prosecution of war criminals during the war. Meanwhile, I have obtained my own copy of the material, but there has to be academic respect—it means, he has the right to publish it first.<br /><br />According to this material, people who stole money, killed etc., were punished. The list identifies the perpetrators, what they did and what their punishment was. We know, for example, that the murderers of Zohrab and Vartkes Effendi were executed by Djemal, and there were other executions. People who stole money from the Armenian population and put it in their own pocket instead of transferring it to the government got punished. We know this but we need a careful analysis of it. We have no decisive answer yet.<br /><br />K.M.—But they aren’t punishing them for stealing from the Armenians, are they?<br /><br />H.K.—We haven’t researched that. This element is surely part of it, but do we really fully account for it?<br /><br />K.M.—How would you qualify Halacoglu’s scholarship…<br /><br />H.K.—The book on the 16th century is very good…<br /><br />K.M.—No, I mean his scholarship on the Armenian genocide…<br /><br />H.K.—This is not so easy, you have to see who is he. He is the representative of the Turkish state. If there is a real debate between persons with intellect and command of sources, Halacoglu leads the Turkish team.<br /><br />Dismissing him for past weak scholarship or political fanaticism—or whatever argument you want to bring up and you may even have something in support of your point—will not necessarily be productive. Don’t underestimate Yusuf Halacoglu. I respect him. I might disagree with him emphatically but I’m comfortable that I don’t have a fight with him at this point. The academic resources of an entire state converge on this one person. The Armenians have nobody coming even close to the shadow of him.<br /><br />On the other hand, he is not antagonistic like the fascist I just mentioned. Halacoglu is interested in dialogue, the question is on what terms. He has no problem to talk with me, to talk with others…<br /><br />K.M.—The way you are describing a notorious genocide denier might come as a surprise to many…<br /><br />H.K.—First of all, the description of deniers as a group is false. You have people who are fully paid talking heads who have nothing to offer; they are, unfortunately, the people who write the briefs for Erdogan when he goes abroad. Then you have the kind of politically well-connected third-rate academic creatures who are only interested in escalating the situation because they can only live on escalation, because they have nothing to offer. And then you have people who have serious disagreements with you.<br /><br />The way Turkish materials have been used in one recent English-language publication in this country—which is celebrated as great research—is totally unscholarly. The celebration is there because no one is able to check the sources. If that publication had been an Armenian genocide denial publication, there would have been an outcry. Same methods of misrepresentation of sources, speculation, you name it. It’s all there.<br /><br />K.M.—Can you give a concrete example?<br /><br />H.K.—For example, one scholar claims that the president of the Ottoman Chamber was going to Germany in March 1915 to coordinate the decision of the Armenian genocide, and he gives the source. The source says exactly the opposite. I don’t want to go now into detail because I am publishing it.<br /><br />K.M.—Talk about the Ottoman archives. What has changed in the past couple of years?<br /><br />H.K.—The Directorate for Demography in the Ministry of the Interior was reopened. This collection was open for some time in the 1990s and was closed for at least two years since 2005. This was a reopening, not a new opening of collections.<br /><br />The opening of other files is rapid, tremendous. They have opened the Ministry of the Interior files for the Abdul-Hamidian period until the second constitutional period. This is massive.<br />They have also opened the files of the Paris embassy and they are opening more embassy files now. This is at a pace that has never been there.<br /><br />However, there are still files—collections we spoke of in our previous interview, like the files of the so-called abandoned property commissions—that are not made available. We also don’t have possibly the most crucial files on WWI concerning the Armenians, because they were removed in 1919 from the files that were opened so far and have been put in a new collection for the purposes of the government. So this is not—as some people now claim—a cleansing of archives. This is just that certain files were carried from one office to another office in the context of administrative organization. This stuff, from what I understand, is not going to be opened soon, not because the archivists are not motivated, not because they are not interested, but simply because you have so many people and so much work. There is a lack of resources.<br /><br />There is no political opposition now towards declassification and processing. What they simply don’t have is sufficient resources, which is regrettable.<br /><br />K.M.—What is the significance of the embassy files regarding the Armenian issue?<br /><br />H.K.—I haven’t worked with this, but, for example, the catalogs indicate that the embassy files of London, St. Petersburg, Paris provide a lot of insight into the massacres of the 1890s. Also, the embassies were spying outposts. They were spying on the Armenian diaspora communities and the spying was directed by the Ministry of the Interior through the embassies. So you find a lot of Ministry of the Interior material in embassy files and you find embassy reports to the Ministry of the Interior. This is very important because we might have lost some material—physically totally rotten—because of maintenance problems. So you might lose the draft in the Ministry of Interior file but since the letter went out to the embassy, you can have it in the embassy file, because the Paris embassy had a better storage facility. Some of these files have been very recently repatriated, which is exciting.<br /><br />K.M.—You are talking about hundreds of thousands of files, and among them, thousands of files might have relevance regarding the Armenian issue. How many people are actually involved in researching these files?<br /><br />H.K.—There is increasing interest among Turkish historians in Istanbul and the provinces who have not been involved in organized campaigns so far against Turkish “traitors” who say it was a genocide or against “Armenian allegations.” But what has transpired now during my talks is that the Armenians have become a topic. One scholar is publishing 16th-century tax registers from Yerevan—in Istanbul, not Yerevan. This has nothing to do with the genocide but is very important for Armenian history. We have 19th-century income tax registers, 1840s, very important again. So where we are going right now is a periodization of the Armenian cause/issue/problem, as it is called in Turkey. The people no longer mix together the Tanzimat era, Abdul-Hamid era, second constitutional period with the genocide and then the occupation period. We see now increasingly very well-respected and motivated scholars working on it not just because they want to prove or disprove something—that might be just one aspect in it—but because there is interest in the material.<br /><br />From the outside, Dr. Taner Akcam was there some time ago for three weeks, and now he lectures us on the Ottoman archives, for which I’m very thankful. Then, Garabed Moumdjian was there with me in 2006 for two weeks working on the Young Turks on the ARF. He has sent shock waves through the whole establishment. Every time I think about it I’m laughing. An Armenian walked in, he spoke better Turkish than the Turks, he read Ottoman, handwritten documents like we read the New York Times, he talked to the archival staff in Arabic... The idea of the ARF, fanatic, blood-drinking killer and so on got a devastating blow. There’s no one else. He’s the only Armenian who went there possibly in decades (before, only Ara Sarafian went). Which shows that these programs, whatever they do, don’t do one thing: They don’t bring people to that point where many people had hoped they would bring them. So we’re at that point and, this year, it seems I was alone.<br /><br />K.M.—There’s so much research that needs to be done in these archives. Why is the interest by scholars from outside Turkey so little?<br /><br />H.K.—I was criticized by some less-informed elements in the Armenian diaspora for going to the archives because now they cannot say it’s closed anymore. Why did we push for having it open if we don’t want it open? For some people, this was obviously just political talk. I have to be very critical about this. All these donations the community put into research, obviously none of it is coming there. So when I am going there, people should not think that I am going on an Armenian ticket. If there was five percent Armenian money in it, it would be nice.<br /><br />My colleagues ask me in Turkey where all these Armenians are. They feared that the moment they opened the door, a mob would raid their place. So you had basically the cavalry waiting for the Indians to attack and in four to five years one lone Indian has showed up. And so they understand that their projections of a big Armenian conspiracy is just a formulation of their own fears that has relatively little to do with reality.<br /><br />When I say the archives are open, it’s limited, clear, but there certainly is no excuse not to do it. It’s a very simple thing. Crucial evidence, about whose existence we know, is not available at this time. But there is no excuse not to exhaust what they have made available, because this has to be done anyhow. If people say, Well we want to see the rest and then we’ll do something, well that is unprofessional. One has to be at the cutting edge of research. I think this kind of concept is not present.<br /><br />K.M.—What do you think about Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan’s proposal for a joint historical commission?<br /><br />H.K.—A commission would have little to do. We have gone pretty well through the Ottoman archives and not much is left on World War I. So what should a commission do? Xerox the documents a second time? That would be perfect nonsense. The cataloging of WWI files has to make rapid progress to provide an archival basis for a commission. The issue is an illustration that Erdogan does not have the best advisors when it comes to the Armenian genocide. These people develop ideas without checking first whether the pre-conditions for their own proposal exist within their own institutions.<br /><br />Another matter is getting rid of such obstacles as Article 301. I cannot expect anyone to agree with me when that would mean he would be regarded as a criminal for doing so. The AKP government in Ankara has inherited a mess created by its predecessors over decades. So it is small steps for the time being, while hoping that the AKP does its homework and continues its overall positive course.Khatchig Mouradianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06586890931026647735noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2181913486636918869.post-72694565102046229252008-02-09T14:45:00.000-08:002008-02-07T14:50:02.147-08:00Of Grasshoppers and MenAn Interview with Arundhati Roy<br />By Khatchig Mouradian<br /><br />The Armenian Weekly<br />Feb. 9, 2008<br /><br />Arundhati Roy was born in 1959 in Shillong, India. She studied architecture in New Delhi, where she now lives, and has worked as a film designer, actor, and screenplay writer in India. Roy is the author of the novel The God of Small Things, (Random House/HarperPerennial) for which she received the 1997 Booker Prize. The novel has been translated into dozens of languages worldwide. She has written several non-fiction books: The Cost of Living (Random House/Modern Library), Power Politics (South End Press), War Talk (South End Press), An Ordinary Person’s Guide to Empire (South End Press) and Public Power in the Age of Empire (Seven Stories/Open Media).<br /><br />Roy was featured in the BBC television documentary, “Dam/age,” which chronicles her work in support of the struggle against big dams in India and the contempt of court case that led to a prolonged legal case against her and eventually a one-day jail sentence in spring 2002. A collection of interviews with Arundhati Roy by David Barsamian was published as The Checkbook and the Cruise Missile (South End Press). Roy is the recipient of the 2002 Lannan Foundation Cultural Freedom Prize.<br /><br />On Jan. 18, 2008, Roy delivered the Hrant Dink memorial lecture at Bosphorus University in Istanbul. In her lecture, titled “Listening to Grasshoppers: Genocide, Denial and Celebration,” Roy reflected on the legacy of Hrant Dink and dealt with the history of the “genocidal impulse,” the Armenian genocide of 1915 and the killing of Muslims in Gujarat, India in 2002.<br /><br />Speaking about the slain editor of the Turkish-Armenian newspaper Agos, Roy said, “I never met Hrant Dink, a misfortune that will be mine for time to come. From what I know of him, of what he wrote, what he said and did, how he lived his life, I know that had I been here in Istanbul a year ago I would have been among the one hundred thousand people who walked with his coffin in dead silence through the wintry streets of this city, with banners saying, ‘We are all Armenians,’ ‘We are all Hrant Dink.’ Perhaps I’d have carried the one that said, ‘One and a half million plus one.’”<br /><br />“I wonder what thoughts would have gone through my head as I walked beside his coffin,” she added. “Maybe I would have heard a reprise of the voice of Araxie Barsamian, mother of my friend David Barsamian, telling the story of what happened to her and her family. She was ten years old in 1915. She remembered the swarms of grasshoppers that arrived in her village, Dubne, which was north of the historic city Dikranagert, now Diyarbakir. The village elders were alarmed, she said, because they knew in their bones that the grasshoppers were a bad omen. They were right; the end came in a few months, when the wheat in the fields was ready for harvesting.”<br /><br />In this interview, conducted by phone on Feb. 2, we talk about some of the issues she raised in her lecture and reflect on genocide and resistance.<br /><br />Khatchig Mouradian—What was going through your head when you were writing the speech for the commemoration in Istanbul of Hrant Dink’s assassination?<br /><br />Arundhati Roy—These days, we are going through a kind of psychotic convulsion in India. Genocide and its celebration are in the air. And it’s terrifying for me to watch people celebrating genocide every day. It was at a time when I was very struck by this celebration in India and the denial in Turkey that they asked me to go to Istanbul.<br /><br />When I landed in Istanbul, I realized that there’s a very big difference between what Armenians, Turks and others could say outside Turkey—where everybody could be very direct about the Armenian genocide—and inside Turkey—where, Hrant Dink, for example, was trying to find a way of saying things in order to continue living. His idea was to speak out, but not to die.<br /><br />In Istanbul, I spoke with people and I was very concerned not to give the impression that I flew in, made a speech, and flew out leaving everybody else in trouble. I was interested in helping to create an atmosphere where people could begin to talk about the Armenian genocide to each other. After all, that’s the project of the Armenians who are living in Turkey and trying to survive there.<br /><br />At the same time, I was somebody who is involved quite deeply in issues in India and I didn’t want to be some global intellectual who flies in, makes some superficial statements and then flies out. I wanted to relate the issue to what I knew and what I fought for, and tried to push a little bit more and a little bit more. And this is not a simple thing to do.<br /><br />K.M.—The story that weaves your lecture together is that of your friend, David Barsamian’s mother, Araxie Barsamian. In an interview, you say, “I think that a story is like the surface of water, and you can take whatever you want from it.” What did you take from the story of Araxie Barsamian?<br /><br />A.R.—In fact, David happened to be in India just before I went to Turkey and we talked about the issue. It mattered to me that I knew him. I’m not saying that if I didn’t know him I wouldn’t have spoken, but it suddenly became something that was more personal. I was having the discussion with a friend that there are people who talk about politics that is informative and politics that is transformative. These are such silly separations because in Turkey, for example, everybody knows what happened. It’s just that there’s a silence around it and you’re not allowed to say what happened. And when you say it, it becomes transformative in itself. I made my point through the words of David’s mother instead of going and saying, “Look, that bullet that was meant to silence Hrant Dink actually made someone like myself take the trouble to go and read history. Whether I say it or I don’t say it, you and I know what happened, and if you want to maintain the silence, then people here will have to fight with that, as I will have to fight with the celebration around genocide in India.”<br /><br />This is something that a novel writer does. How you say what you want to say is as important as what you want to say. By telling Araxie Barsamian’s story, the history comes alive. You could say that 1.5 million people were killed or you could say that the grasshoppers arrived in Araxie Barsamian’s village…<br /><br />K.M.—You spoke about the difference between speaking about the Armenian genocide outside and inside Turkey. But in your speech, you are quite bold: You do not come off as trying to imply things rather than stating them outright. You are not trying to avoid using the term genocide…<br /><br />A.R.—When I started speaking about the term “genocide,” defining it, then talking about the history of genocide and what’s happening in India today—how Indian fascists killed Muslim—I wanted to make it clear that that the genocidal impulse has cut across religions and that the same ugly, fascist rhetoric that the Turks used against the Armenians has been used by the Christians against the Indians, has been used by the Nazis against the Jews, and today, it is being used by Hindus against Muslims. Genocide is such a complex process. The genocidal impulse has never been related to just one culture or just one religion. I spoke about the Armenian genocide and its denial openly to the extent that I could without shutting down the audience.<br /><br />I would like to note that in my readings, one problem I realized is that many scholars who have studied the Armenian genocide in detail—almost all of them—keep on insisting that it was the first genocide of the 20th century and, in asserting that, they deny the other genocides that took place—for example, the genocide against the Herrero people in 1904. So I was also trying to talk about the Armenian genocide without giving the impression that some victims are more worthy than others.<br /><br />K.M.—How was your lecture received?<br /><br />A.R.—The important thing was that it was received. It wasn’t blocked out. It wasn’t denied. People didn’t say, “Oh, here’s a person who has come here to tell us about our own past.” That’s because I wasn’t just talking about the past of Turkey. For me, that was the way of guaranteeing that my talk was received.<br /><br />The biggest thing is that it was received. It was taken in and it was thought about. I saw many people in tears in the hall. And I hope that in some tiny, little way, it will change the way this subject is spoken of. I might be presuming too much…<br /><br />K.M.—As you point out in your lecture, genocide and gross human rights violations have plagued us for centuries and they continue to do so. What has changed?<br /><br />A.R.—I don’t think that there’s been that much change in the genocidal impulse. Technology and industrialization have only enabled human beings to kill each other in larger numbers. I talked about the slaughter of 2,000 Muslims in the state of Gujarat in India. It was all on TV.<br /><br />About three months ago, the killers were caught on camera talking about how they decided how to target the Muslim community, how it was all planned, how the police was involved, how the chief ministers were involved, how they murdered, how they raped. It was actually broadcast on TV and it worked in the favor of that party. The people who voted for them said, “This is what they deserve.” So I actually feel that this notion of the liberal conscience, of human conscience, is a fake notion. Today in India we are on the verge of something terrible. Like I say in the article, the grasshoppers have landed, and there is a kind of shutting down and cutting off of the poor from their resources, herding them off their land and rivers. And people are just watching. Their eyes are open but they are looking the other way. And again and again we think of the fact that in Germany when Jews were being exterminated, people must have been taking their children to piano lessons, violin lessons, worrying about their children’s homework. That kind of absolute lack of conscience is still present today. No amount of appeal to conscience can make any change. The only way disaster can be averted is if the people who are on the receiving end of that can resist.<br /><br />Khatchig Mouradian is a journalist, writer and translator, currently based in Boston. He is the editor of the Armenian Weekly. He can be contacted at: khatchigm@hotmail.com.Khatchig Mouradianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06586890931026647735noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2181913486636918869.post-38150933297004434382008-02-05T07:43:00.000-08:002008-02-05T07:45:52.166-08:00An invitation to Musa DaghBy Khatchig Mouradian<br /><br />The Jewish Advocate<br />December 2007<br /><br />Franz Werfel, an Austrian-Jewish writer, became an international literary figure with his 1933 novel, “Die vierzig Tage des Musa Dagh,” originally written in German and published a year later in English under the title “The Forty Days of Musa Dagh.” The novel tells the story of the heroic self-defense of the Armenians of Musa Dagh during the Armenian genocide of 1915. Werfel decided to write the novel after witnessing the plight of Armenian refugee children in Damascus in 1929. Little did he know that his novel would not only become a classic and an inspiration for generations of Armenians, but would also serve as a model of survival and resistance for his own people during the Holocaust.<br /><br />After the 1938 Anschluss, Werfel left Austria to take refuge in France. And with the occupation of France by the Nazis, he narrowly escaped to the U.S. He thus avoided the concentration camps, where a generation of Jewish leaders and youth found solace, inspiration and a call to uprising in his novel.“Momentous moral questions arise from Werfel’s book,” said Prof. Yair Auron. “The story of the defense of Musa Dagh became, indeed, a source of inspiration, an example for the underground members to learn, a model to imitate. They equated their fate with that of the Armenians.” He continued: “In both cases, murderous evil empires conspired to uproot entire communities, to bring about their total physical extinction. In both cases, resistance embodied the concept of death and national honor on the one hand, and the chance of being saved as individuals and as a nation on the other.”<br /><br />Auron noted that “reading the book strengthens the spirit of the members of the youth movements, the future fighters, as Mordechai Tannenbaum and other underground leaders suggested.”Werfel’s novel had a great influence on Antek (Yitzhak Zuckerman), the deputy commander of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising and the author of “A Surplus of Memory: Chronicle of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising.” When talking about the Holocaust and what books to read on the issue, Antek would say that “the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising could not be understood without reading ‘The Forty days of Musa Dagh.’”<br /><br />In an introduction to the French edition of the book, Holocaust survivor and winner of the Nobel Peace Prize Elie Wiesel writes, “The novel is a masterpiece. … This Armenian community became very close to me. Written before the coming of Hitler, this novel seems to foretell the future. How did Franz Werfel know the vocabulary and the mechanism of the Holocaust before the Holocaust – artistic intuition or historic memory?” He continues, “The novel is precisely about this memory. The besieged Armenians feared not death but being forgotten.”In a time when the memory of genocide victims – from the Armenian genocide to the Holocaust – is under attack by genocide deniers, this article is an invitation to read Werfel’s novel and honor the memory of the heroes of Musa Dagh and the Warsaw Ghetto.<br /><br /><em>Khatchig Mouradian is a journalist, poet and translator based in Boston. He is the editor of the Armenian Weekly.</em><br /><br /><a href="http://www.thejewishadvocate.com/this_weeks_issue/opinions/?content_id=4201">http://www.thejewishadvocate.com/this_weeks_issue/opinions/?content_id=4201</a>Khatchig Mouradianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06586890931026647735noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2181913486636918869.post-75802898873978286372008-02-02T07:48:00.000-08:002008-02-05T07:50:31.941-08:00Olives and HorizonsThe Melkonian Class of 1968 Reunites On Board the AHC<br />By Khatchig Mouradian<br /><br />The Armenian Weekly<br />Feb. 2, 2008<br /> <br />“All the support I have provided to Melkonian—whether moral or financial—does not even pay for the olives we ate there,” says Vahe Soudjian, an import/export negotiator from France, who was on board the Costa Fortuna from Jan. 12-20 to participate in the Melkonian Class of 1968 reunion. “I owe all my successes in life to the Melkonian Educational Institution.”<br /><br />Twenty-one graduates of the class of 1968 (65 percent of the entire class) and three teachers participated in the 40th anniversary reunion with their spouses and family members. They came from Australia, Greece, Lebanon, Cyprus, France, Abu Dhabi, the U.S. and Canada to see with their classmates and talk about memories of a boarding school which they say gave them everything one needs to lead a fulfilling life.<br /><br />“Melkonian was a fascinating educational institute that has always fulfilled the responsibility it was entrusted with. The graduates who are gathered here 40 years later are living proof of that,” says Sarkis Hamboyan of Toronto, who taught history, geography and educational psychology at Melkonian from 1965-68. “These responsibilities go beyond teaching into hayetsi tasdiyaragutyoun. These men and women are dedicated Armenians, actively involved in community life.”<br /><br />I ask him what it feels like to be surrounded by his students again. “I am feeling at home. It’s like finding a long-lost brother or sister,” he says.<br /><br />Businessman Vahe Halajian from New York, who currently works in Qatar, says the reunion gave him an opportunity to reflect on the role Melkonian played in his life. “We did not know at the time what a great place Melkonian was. It created an environment for us to learn and, yes, to do mischievous things.” He pauses, then adds, “Melkonian was invaluable nutrition for our minds and souls.”<br /><br />While several Melkoniantsis had not been in touch with their classmates, Chahe Bardakjian, a marketing and sales director from Greece, maintained contact. “I always look for Melkoniantsis,” he said.<br /><br />Mihran Jizmejian from Toronto taught at Melkonian from 1965-73 and was also responsible for the discipline of the educational institute. He recounts how the students who had discipline problems are the closest to him today. According to him, the Armenian community is orphaned with the closing of Melkonian.<br /><br />The institute might have closed its doors, but the spirit of Melkonian is alive and well. “I, as a Melkoniantsi, together with two dedicated Armenians, started a Saturday school in Sydney,” says Boghos Mikaelian, a mortgage broker from Australia. “Melkonian might have closed its doors, but it opened so many new horizons.”Khatchig Mouradianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06586890931026647735noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2181913486636918869.post-7121463848292800802008-02-02T07:45:00.000-08:002008-02-05T07:48:43.943-08:00America DeservesBy Khatchig Mouradian<br /><br />The Armenian Weekly<br />Feb. 2, 2008<br /><br />“I know I haven’t spent a long time to learn the ways of Washington, but I’ve been there long enough to know that the ways of Washington must change.”—Barack Obama<br /><br />The ANCA this week decided to endorse Barack Obama as the Democratic Presidential candidate who can change “the ways of Washington” when it comes to issues of concern for Armenian-Americans and the anti-genocide community in the U.S. The decision was made because the ANCA, and the Armenian-American community on the whole, are sick and tired of the ways of Washington—the way continuous administrations have insulted the memory of the victims of the genocide and the ever-dwindling numbers of genocide survivors by trivializing their suffering. These survivors have since become citizens of this country, have fought and struggled for this nation, while their presidents—leaders of the free world—have yet to validate their history.<br /><br />The Armenian-American community—and, we believe, every informed and concerned citizen of this country—cannot help but be sick and tired of how the ways of Washington and the ways of Ankara merge when it comes to denial, the falsification and complete disregard to the suffering of an entire people.<br /><br />The Armenian-American community is also sick and tired of the way the Bush Administration has treated Armenia and the Karabakh question, succumbing more often than not to policies dictated by a country considered to be America’s ally—Turkey.<br /><br />For all these, and many other reasons, America deserves a leader…America deserves a leader who will not say, “It is not the right time” when it comes to recognizing genocide.America deserves a leader who will not say that there’s “more important work to do” for Congress than setting the historical record straight.<br /><br />America deserves a leader who will stand up against human rights violations, atrocities and genocide, whether past or present, whether committed by allies on enemies.<br /><br />America deserves a leader who says, “I’m asking you to believe. Not just in my ability to bring about real change in Washington… I’m asking you to believe in yours.”<br /><br />And, finally, America deserves a leader who says, “America deserves a leader who speaks truthfully about the Armenian Genocide and responds forcefully to all genocides. I intend to be that President.” And stands by what s/he says. We look to Barack Obama to be that leader.Khatchig Mouradianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06586890931026647735noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2181913486636918869.post-63757957705277988432007-12-23T07:37:00.000-08:002008-02-05T08:14:52.141-08:00Une interview de Chris BohjalianLe romancier acclamé par la critique parle de sa vie et de son œuvre<br /><br />Par Khatchig Mouradian<br /><br />Traduction Louise Kiffer<br /><br />Chris Bohjalian, acclamé par la critique, est l'auteur de 11 romans, dont plusieurs sont devenus des bestsellers du New York Times. Ses romans s'intitulent "Midwives" (Sage-femmes) - une sélection de Publishers Weekly Best Book, et une sélection de Oprah Book Club: "Before you know Kindness"Et "The Double Bind". Ses ouvrages ont été traduits en 20 langues. Bohjalian est diplômé du Armherst College, et habite à Vermont, avec son épouse et sa fille.Les articles de Bohjalian sont parus dans Cosmopolitan, Reader's Digest et "The Boston Globe Sunday Magazine"Il est journaliste pour Gannett's Burlington Free Press depuis 1992.<br />Dans cette interview, menée au début du mois, Bohjalian parle de ses romans et de ses articles, ainsi que de ses passions et de ses souvenirs.<br />* * *<br />Khatchig Mouradian – Vous avez déménagé au Vermont, de New York après une épreuve désagréable avec un taxi. En quoi Chris Bohjalian, romancier de New York serait-il différent du romancier de Vermont en termes d'inspiration et de problèmes que vous soulevez dans vos romans ?<br />Chris Bohjalian – Les romanciers parlent d'un certain nombre de sujets angoissants sur la façon dont ils ont trouvé leur voix. La réalité, cependant, est que j'ai trouvé la mienne dans le Vermont. Le Vermont est un microcosme fascinant pour des questions qui relèvent de partout – l'environnement contre le développement, la médecine alternative et la traditionnelle, tout le bagage que nous amenons sur l'orientation sexuelle, et c'est si petit qu'il est possible d'animer ces problèmes à une échelle humaine, reconnaissable et profondément accessible. Par exemple, je n'aurais jamais écrit un livre sur le lieu de naissance littéral et métaphorique dans notre culture (Midwives), si j'étais resté à Manhattan. Après tout, la maison natale ne fait pas partie du dialogue. Je n'aurais pas non plus écrit un roman vaguement écologique comme Water Witches – et il est intéressant de remarquer que j'ai écrit ce roman en 1993 (il a été publié en 1995) des années avant que nous soyons préoccupés par le changement du climat mondial tel que nous le sommes maintenant. Ce n'est pas que je sois particulièrement prescient, mais en quelque sorte le Vermont l'est.<br />Même un roman tel que "The Double Bind" qui explore des thèmes que je n'aurais probablement pas abordés à New York – y compris naturellement la maladie mentale, et les sans abris – a trouvé son information dans le Vermont. Il était facile de faire des recherches sur le sujet à l'hôpital psychiatrique d'Etat, et dans l'un des établissements correctionnels, de même que pour trouver des thérapeutes et des assistants sociaux capables de m'aider, puisque nous sommes si peu nombreux. Un appel téléphonique ça et là, et je pouvais obtenir les interviews nécessaires.<br />Pourtant, j'aime New York. J'y retourne souvent, et la moitié de "Before you Know Kindness" s'est fait là-bas. Mais je pense que j'ai trouvé au Vermont des sujets plus aptes à renforcer mon style.<br />K.M. – Comment avez-vous décidé des sujets à traiter dans vos romans ? Dites voir comment vous procédez quand vous écrivez un roman.<br />C.B. L'inspiration provient invariablement de ma vie personnelle. Quelqu'un que j'ai rencontré, ou quelque chose dont j'ai entendu parler, ou que j'ai vu.<br />"The Double Bind" peut en être un bon exemple. Le roman a pris naissance en décembre 2003, quand Rita Markley, la directrice administrative du logement des sans abris, a partagé avec moi un box de vieilles photos. Les images en noir et blanc avaient été prises par un photographe qui avait été sans abri et qui était mort dans l'appartement de l'immeuble que son organisation avait trouvé pour lui. Il s'appelait Bob "Soupy" Campbell.<br />Les photos étaient remarquables, à la fois grâce au talent manifeste de Campbell, et à cause du sujet. J'ai reconnu les artistes – musiciens, comédiens, acteurs – et les rédacteurs sur la plupart d'entre elles.<br />J'écris un article hebdomadaire pour le "Burlington free Press" qui explique pourquoi Rita voulait que je voie les photos. Elle pensait que cela pourrait faire une histoire intéressante et elle avait tout à fait raison. J'ai écrit à propos de Campbell en décembre 2003, faisant des recherches sur sa vie et ses réalisations, et les raisons pour lesquelles il s'était retrouvé sans abri, et à ce jour, c'est resté les textes favoris que j'ai écrits pour ce journal. J'avais rendu célèbres les talents de Campbell (qui étaient nombreux) et j'avais rappelé aux lecteurs la ligne très fine qui sépare tant de nous de ceux qui deviennent sans abris. Mais ensuite, j'ai jugé que j'avais épuisé le sujet.<br />Six mois plus tard, en juin 2004, j'ai relu "The Great Gatsby" (Gatsby le Magnifique). J'adore ce roman. Peu d'écrivains ont ciselé des phrases si constamment lumineuses que Fitzerald ou compris la classe et la culture, et le profond désir également.<br />Ensuite, j'ai été faire une promenade en vélo sur une vilaine route profonde sous une canopée dans les bois. Ma femme avait entendu une histoire à la radio ce jour-là, que des parents avaient dit ceci à leurs enfants: si quelqu'un essayait de les enlever alors qu'ils étaient en train de rouler sur leur vélo, ils devraient se cramponner à leur guidon de toutes leurs forces. Il est plus difficile d'enlever quelqu'un et de le jeter à l'arrière d'une voiture ou d'une camionnette, s'il est fermement attaché à son vélo. La géométrie ne fonctionne pas.<br />Comme je roulais, je me suis mis à penser à Bob Campbell pour la première fois depuis des mois, et je pensais à lui relativement à Gatsby le magnifique. Pourquoi ? Peut-être parce que nous voyons toujours Gatsby le magnifique à travers la brume des photos en noir et blanc – le medium de Campbell. Et, naturellement, Gatsby le Magnifique est un roman de l'époque du jazz – or Campbell avait photographié de nombreux musiciens de jazz.<br />Et ainsi l'idée du "Double Bind" (double lien) s'est formée dans mon esprit, sur cette vilaine route. Je savais précisément comment un livre allait commencer, et pour la première fois de ma vie - je savais précisément comment il allait finir.<br />Bien sûr, cela voulait dire que je connaissais le A et le Z, mais pas les 24 lettres entre les deux. Cela voulait dire que j'avais une série de problèmes différents à résoudre. J'écrivis quatre brouillons avant même de pouvoir commencer à en publier un sérieusement. Un projet Henry-James-ian à la troisième personne; puis un projet à la première personne raconté par Laurel Estabrook (le personnage principal); ensuite un projet avec plusieurs narrateurs à la première personne; et finalement un projet subjectif à la troisième personne – moins froid et omniscient que la version initiale. Le brouillon a marché dans des chemins que le premier n'avait pas pris. C'est seulement là que j'ai commencé à perfectionner et à resserrer le roman.<br />K.M. – Les femmes figurent éminemment dans plusieurs de vos romans. Parlez-nous du défi d'écrire un roman comme "Sage-Femme" ou "The Double Bind " où fouiller dans le psychisme des comportements est la clé.<br />C.B. –J'aurais souhaité avoir eu un procédé spécifique mais je ne trouve pas qu'écrire sur les femmes soit si différent qu'écrire sur les hommes. Dans chacun des cas, c'est un acte d'imagination. Comment une personne va-t-elle réagir à un événement ou à un moment spécifique ? Qu'est-ce qu'un individu va éprouver ou penser ? Qu'est-ce que les gens voient ou entendent ?<br />Au cours des dix dernières années, j'ai écrit des romans ou décrit des scènes dans des romans en partant du point de vue (entre autres) d'une sage-femme, d'une lesbienne transsexuelle, d'une vigoureuse citoyenne âgée, d'un enfant américano-africain placé dans une famille d'accueil, une fillette de dix ans, une aristocrate prussienne de 18 ans en 1945, un jeune homme juif d'Allemagne qui avait sauté d'un train à destination d'un camp de la mort en 1943, et une variété d'hommes d'âge moyen à demi chauves. J'ai vraiment trouvé cette dernière catégorie – les hommes d'âge moyen à demi chauves comme moi, la moins intéressante.<br />K.M. – Parlez-nous de votre prochain roman Skeletons at the Feast (Squelettes à la fête)<br />C.B.- Ce roman est un départ – et c'est, au point de vue création – la chose la plus satisfaisante que j'ai faite dans ma vie (cela ne veut pas dire que c'est plutôt bien, ou que j'ai fait quelque chose de juste – c'est seulement que cela a été un combat et que c'était réconfortant).<br />En 1999, le père d'une petite fille de la classe du jardin d'enfant de ma fille m'a demandé si je voulais lire le journal inédit que sa grand'mère lui avait laissé. Sa mère venait de le traduire de l'allemand en anglais, et l'avait tapé à la machine. Nous étions de bons amis, je fus donc heureux d'y jeter un coup d'œil.<br />Le journal racontait en détails la vie de cette femme dans une propriété massive et une ferme dans la Prusse orientale, et il y avait un tas de choses qui me fascinaient – principalement les déplacements désespérés des femmes au cours des derniers mois de la seconde guerre mondiale pour atteindre les lignes britanniques et américaines avant l'arrivée de l'armée soviétique. Je l'ai proposé à plusieurs éditeurs, mais aucun n'était preneur.<br />Des années plus tard, en 2005, j'ai lu "Armageddon" de Max Hastings son compte-rendu non romanesque de la dernière année de la Seconde Guerre Mondiale en Allemagne, et je suis tombé sur des références à des scènes qui m'étaient familières. Puis je me suis rendu compte que j'avais lu ces mêmes faits dans ce journal six ans auparavant. J'ai demandé à mon ami si je pouvais le relire. Quand je l'ai revu, j'ai décidé que je voulais écrire un roman situé dans cette période, et c'est ainsi que j'ai commencé une partie de la recherche la plus intense (et l'écriture) de ma carrière professionnelle.<br />Skeletons at the Feast est un roman d'amour, un triangle d'amour, en fait qui se passe en Pologne et en Allemagne dans les six derniers mois de la Seconde Guerre Mondiale.<br />Les personnages ? Il y a Anna Emmerich, 18 ans, une fille d'aristocrates prussiens qui étaient à l'origine satisfaits quand leur propriété massive redevint allemande en 1939, mais qui découvrirent au cours des cinq années suivantes ce que signifiait réellement pour la gestion nazie leur district rural.<br />Il y a son amoureux, Callum Finella, un prisonnier de guerre de 20 ans, qui a été détaché du stalag dans sa ferme familiale comme travailleur forcé. Et il y a un caporal de la Wehrmacht de 26 ans, que les deux autres connaissent sous le nom de Manfred – mais qui est en réalité un chanteur, un Juif allemand qui s'est débrouillé pour oser s'échapper d'un train à destination d'Auschwitz, et qui a depuis lors saboté l'effort de guerre nazi.<br />Le roman raconte la plus longue journée de leur vie. Leur essai de croiser les rescapés du troisième Reich, de Varsovie au Rhin s'il le faut, pour atteindre les lignes britanniques et américaines.<br />K.M.- Nous avons discuté du rôle que le Vermont a joué dans votre œuvre. Qu'en est-il du rôle que vos parents et votre famille élargie ont joué, et de celui que votre épouse et votre fille jouent maintenant ? Comment diffusent-elles votre œuvre ?<br />C.B.- Ma mère s'est éteinte en 1995. Et mes parents – mon père naturellement depuis 1995 – vivent à des milliers de kilomètres depuis 1988. Il est certain que mon père est fier de moi. Ma mère l'était jusqu'à sa mort. Mais je ne dirais pas qu'ils ont influencé ma décision de devenir écrivain. Ils aimaient et soutenaient, et lisaient tout ce qu'un enfant pouvait désirer de ses parents. Mais ils ne furent pas un facteur conscient de ce que je faisais ou des sujets que je choisissais pour mes romans.<br />Ma femme et ma fille, en revanche, on joué un rôle critique dans mon travail. Ma femme est une éditrice merveilleuse et patiente. Elle, et Shaye Areheart (mon éditeur à Random House) sont les deux premiers lecteurs de tout ce que j'écris. J'apprécie énormément le jugement de ma femme.<br />Et le fait d'être parent a considérablement changé ce que j'écris. Voyez les romans tels que "les Sages-Femmes" et "Before you know Kindness", et le "Buffalo Soldier". Etre parent a été très important pour eux. Ils n'existeraient pas si ne n'avais pas eu la chance d'avoir ma fille. Et la petite fille dans "The Law of Similars" ? Mais, c'est ma petite fille quand elle avait trois ou quatre ans.<br />K.M.- Parlez-nous de vos souvenirs de jeunesse qui vous plaisent le plus..<br />C.B. J'ai eu une enfance classique de banlieue des années 60-70. J'ai grandi dans différentes banlieues à problèmes juste à l'extérieur de New York City (avec un détour de trois ans à Miami, Fla). Quand j'ai lu "Le Chien noir du Destin" de Peter Balakian, j'ai perçu les échos de ma propre enfance.<br />Nous avons aussi beaucoup déménagé, cependant, et à une certaine période, j'ai été dans quatre écoles différentes en quatre ans. Et ainsi, bien que mon enfance ne fût pas mauvaise, elle ne rassembla pas autour de moi beaucoup d'amis une fois que j'eus terminé ma 6ème année. Le fait est que mes amis ont changé par nécessité presque chaque année, depuis la 7ème année.<br />Mes souvenirs favoris, dans le désordre, sont:<br />Jouer au baseball dans la Little League de Stamford, Conn.;<br />Lire pour la première fois Johnny Tremain et " To Kill a Mocking Bird" et "April Morning".<br />Rendre visite à mes grands-parents à Tuckhahoe, N.Y. et écouter Léo Bohjalian – mon grand-père jouer du oud, après avoir perdu sa femme dans une piscine. Je peux encore sentir les beureks de ma grand'mère.<br />Organiser des cartes de baseball dans mon salon avant les orages;<br />Voler partout dans des aéroplanes<br />Etre follement effrayé par les films suivants: "The Birds (Les oiseaux) "The Haunting" et "Psycho".<br />K.M. – Vous avez écrit des articles pour Burlington Free Press depuis environ 17 ans maintenant. Parlez-nous de cette expérience.<br />C.B. J'aime bien écrire des articles, sinon je ne le ferais pas. J'écris habituellement à la fin de la semaine, et c'est un charmant répit de mon roman, qui peut être parfois sombre. Cela ne veut pas dire que je n'aborde pas des sujets graves dans mes colonnes à l'occasion. Je le fais. J'ai écrit par exemple, sur la mort de ma mère, sur le changement du climat dans le monde, et sur la guerre en Irak. Mais généralement, c'est une occasion d'explorer quelque chose de personnel, ou quelque chose qui me fait sourire.<br />Et alors que les gens me disent que ça doit être stressant de rédiger un article chaque semaine, ça ne l'est pas vraiment. C'est beaucoup moins stressant qu'un roman. Le secret ? J'essaie de ne jamais perdre de vue le fait que quelques heures après la parution de l'article le dimanche matin, il aide soit à allumer le feu dans le poêle à bois soit à être étalé sous la litière du chat.<br /><br /><a href="http://www.armenweb.org/espaces/louise/reportages/chris-bohjalian.html">http://www.armenweb.org/espaces/louise/reportages/chris-bohjalian.html</a>Khatchig Mouradianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06586890931026647735noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2181913486636918869.post-3163942519715380732007-12-22T07:26:00.000-08:002008-02-05T07:36:42.719-08:00An Interview with Chris BohjalianCritically Acclaimed Novelist Talks about His Life and Work<br />By Khatchig Mouradian<br /><br />The Armeian Weekly<br />December 22-29, 2007<br /><br />Chris Bohjalian is the critically acclaimed author of 11 novels, several of which have become New York Times bestsellers. His novels include Midwives (a Publishers Weekly Best Book and an Oprah’s Book Club selection), Before You Know Kindness and The Double Bind. His work has been translated to 20 languages. Bohjalian graduated from Amherst College, and lives in Vermont with his wife and daughter.<br /><div align="left"><br />Bohjalian’s articles have appeared in Cosmopolitan, Reader’s Digest and the Boston Globe Sunday Magazine. He has been a columnist for Gannett’s Burlington Free Press since 1992.<br />In this interview, conducted earlier this month, Bohjalian talks about his novels and columns, as well as passions and memories.</div><div align="left"><br />* * *</div><div align="left"><br />Khatchig Mouradian—You moved to Vermont from New York after an unpleasant experience involving a taxi. How would Chris Bohjalian the novelist in New York have been different from Chris Bohjalian the novelist in Vermont in terms of inspiration and issues you raise in your novels?</div><div align="left"><br />Chris Bohjalian—Novelists talk with an agonizing amount of hubris about how they found their voice. The reality, however, is that I did indeed find mine in Vermont. Vermont is a fascinating microcosm for issues that have relevance everywhere—the environment vs. development, alternative vs. traditional medicine, all the baggage that we bring to gender and sexual orientation—and it is so small that it is possible to bring these issues to life on a scale that is human, recognizable and profoundly accessible. For instance, I would never have written a book about the literal and metaphoric place of birth in our culture (Midwives), if I had remained in Manhattan. After all, home birth isn’t a part of the dialogue. Nor would have I written a vaguely eco-novel such as Water Witches—and it’s interesting to note that I wrote that novel in 1993 (it was published in 1995), years before we were focused on global climate change the way we are now. It’s not that I am especially prescient —but in some ways Vermont is.</div><div align="left"><br />Even a novel such as The Double Bind, which explores themes that I would have been likely to come across in New York—including, of course, mental illness and homelessness—was informed by Vermont. It was easy to research the subject at the state psychiatric hospital and one of the correctional facilities, as well find therapists and social workers who were available to help me, because we are just so small. A phone call here and a phone call there, and I was able to line up the necessary interviews.</div><div align="left"><br />Now, I love New York. I get back there often, and half of Before You Know Kindness is set there. But I believe I have found subjects in Vermont that are more in keeping with my strengths as a stylist.<br /><br />K.M.—How do you decide what issues to tackle in your novels? Talk about the process of writing a novel.</div><div align="left"><br />C.B.—Invariably the inspiration is something in my personal life: Someone I have met or something I have heard or something I have seen.</div><div align="left"><br />The Double Bind may be as good an example as any. The novel had its origins in December 2003, when Rita Markley, the executive director of Burlington’s homeless shelter, shared with me a box of old photographs. The black-and-white images had been taken by a once-homeless photographer who had died in the apartment building her organization had found for him. His name was Bob “Soupy” Campbell.</div><div align="left"><br />The photos were remarkable, both because of Campbell’s evident talent and because of the subject matter. I recognized the performers—musicians, comedians, actors—and newsmakers in many of them.</div><div align="left"><br />I write a weekly column for the “Burlington Free Press,” which was why Rita wanted me to see the photos. She thought they might make for an interesting story, and she was absolutely right: I wrote about Campbell in December 2003, researching his life and accomplishments and why he might have wound up homeless, and to this day it remains one of my favorite essays I’ve written for the paper. I had celebrated Campbell’s talents (which were extensive) and I had reminded people of the very fine line that separates so many of us from being homeless. But then I thought I was done with the subject.</div><div align="left"><br />Six months later, in June 2004, I reread The Great Gatsby. I love that novel. Few writers crafted sentences as consistently luminescent as Fitzgerald or understood class and culture and longing as well.</div><div align="left"><br />Then I went for a bike ride on a dirt road deep in a canopy of woods. My wife had heard a story on the radio that day that advised parents to tell their children the following: If someone ever tried to abduct them while they were riding their bikes, they should hold onto the handlebars for dear life. It’s more difficult to abduct someone and throw them into the back of a car or a van if they are firmly attached to their bike. The geometry just doesn’t work.</div><div align="left"><br />As I rode, I started thinking about Bob Campbell for the first time in months, and I was thinking about him in regard to The Great Gatsby. Why? Perhaps it’s because we always see The Great Gatsby through a haze of black and white photographs—Campbell’s medium. And, of course, The Great Gatsby is a jazz age novel—and Campbell photographed a lot of jazz musicians.</div><div align="left"><br />And so the idea for The Double Bind formed in my head on that dirt road. I knew precisely how a book would begin and—for the only time in my life—I knew precisely how it would end.</div><div align="left"><br />Of course, this also meant I know A and Z, but not the 24 letters in between. That meant I had a different set of problems to solve. I wrote four drafts before I could even begin to seriously edit it: A Henry James-ian third person draft; then a first person draft narrated by Laurel Estabrook (the main character); then a draft with multiple first person narrators; and, finally, a draft that was third person subjective—less cold and omniscient than that initial version. This draft worked in ways the earlier ones hadn’t. Only then was I able to start refining and tightening the novel.<br /><br />K.M.—Women figure prominently in many of your novels. Talk about the challenge of writing a novel like Midwives or The Double Bind, where delving into the psyche of the characters is key.</div><div align="left"><br />C.B.—I wish I could say there was a specific process, but I don’t find writing about women that different from writing about men. In each case, it’s an act of imagination. How would a person respond to a specific event or moment? What is an individual experiencing or thinking? What are people seeing or hearing?</div><div align="left"><br />In the last decade, I have written novels or scenes within novels from the perspectives of (among others) a midwife, a transsexual lesbian, a vigorous female senior citizen, an African-American foster child, a 10-year-old girl, an 18-year-old female Prussian aristocrat in 1945, a young Jewish man from Germany who has jumped off a train on the way to a death camp in 1943, and a variety of balding middle-aged men. I actually found this last category—the balding middle-aged men who are like me—the least interesting.<br /><br />K.M.—Talk about your upcoming novel, Skeletons at the Feast.</div><div align="left"><br />C.B.—This novel is a departure—and it was creatively the most satisfying thing I have done in my life. (That doesn’t mean it’s any good or I got anything right—just that it was a struggle and it was rewarding.)</div><div align="left"><br />Back in 1999, the father of a girl in my daughter’s kindergarten class asked me if I would read an unpublished diary his grandmother had left behind. His mother had just translated it from German into English and typed it up. We’re good friends, and so I was happy to take a look at it.<br />The diary chronicled this woman’s life on a massive estate and farm in East Prussia, and there was a lot in it that fascinated me—especially the desperate journey the women made in the last months of the Second World War to reach the British and American liners ahead of the Soviet army. I shared it with some editors, but there weren’t any takers.</div><div align="left"><br />Years later, in 2005, I read Max Hastings’ Armageddon, his non-fiction account of the last year of the Second World War in Germany, and I kept coming across references to scenes that were familiar. And then I realized why: I had read of similar occurrences in that diary six years earlier. I asked my friend if I could see it again. When I reread it, I decided I wanted to write a novel set in the period, and thus began some of the most intense research (and writing) of my professional career.</div><div align="left"><br />Skeletons at the Feast is a love story—a love triangle, really, set in Poland and Germany in the last six months of World War Two.</div><div align="left"><br />The characters? There is 18-year-old Anna Emmerich, the daughter of Prussian aristocrats who were originally pleased when their massive estate once more became a part of Germany in 1939, but who discovered over the next five years what Nazi management really meant for their rural district.</div><div align="left"><br />There is her lover, Callum Finella, a 20-year-old prisoner-of-war who was brought from the stalag to her family’s farm as forced labor. And there is a 26-year-old Wehrmacht corporal who the pair know as Manfred—but who is, in reality, Uri Singer, a German Jew who managed a daring escape from a train bound for Auschwitz, and who has been sabotaging the Nazi war effort ever since.</div><div align="left"><br />The novel chronicles the longest journey of their lives: Their attempt to cross the remnants of the Third Reich, from Warsaw to the Rhine if necessary, to reach the British and American lines.<br /><br />K.M.—We discussed the role Vermont played in your work. What about the role your parents and extended family played, and the role your wife and daughter play now? How do they inform your work?</div><div align="left"><br />C.B.—My mother passed away in 1995. And my parents—my father, of course, since 1995— have lived thousands of miles away since 1988. Certainly my father is proud of me. My mother was until she died. But I wouldn’t say they were instrumental in my decision to become a writer. They were loving and supportive and literate —everything a child could want from parents. But they were not a conscious factor in what I do or the subjects I choose for my fiction.</div><div align="left"><br />My wife and my daughter, however, play critical roles in my work. My wife is a wondrous and patient editor: She, along with Shaye Areheart (my editor at Random House), are the first two readers of all that I pen. I value my wife’s judgment enormously.</div><div align="left"><br />And being a parent has monumentally changed what I write. Look at novels such as Midwives and Before You Know Kindness and The Buffalo Soldier. Being a parent was pivotal to them. </div><div align="left">They wouldn’t exist if I hadn’t been blessed with my daughter. And the little girl in The Law of Similars? Well, that is my little girl at three and four.<br /><br />K.M.—Talk about memories from your youth that you cherish most.</div><div align="left"><br />C.B.—I had a classically 1960s/1970s suburban childhood. I grew up in a variety of Cheever-esque dysfunctional suburbs just outside of New York City, (with a three-year detour to Miami, Fla.). When I read Peter Balakian’s Black Dog of Fate, I saw echoes of my own childhood.<br />We also moved a lot, however, and in one period I went to four different schools in four years. And so while my childhood wasn’t bad, it didn’t revolve around great friends once I finished 6th grade. The fact is, my friends changed by necessity almost every year from 7th grade on.</div><div align="left"><br />My favorite memories, in no apparent order, are:<br />Playing Little League baseball in Stamford, Conn.;<br />Reading Johnny Tremain and To Kill a Mockingbird and April Morning for the first time;<br />Visiting my grandparents in Tuckahoe, N.Y., and listening to Leo Bohjalian—my grandfather—play the oud, after losing to his wife in pool. I can still smell my grandmother’s beregs;<br />Organizing baseball cards in my living room before thunderstorms;<br />Flying anywhere on airplanes;<br />Being scared silly by the following movies: “The Birds,” “The Haunting” and “Psycho.”<br /><br />K.M.—You have been writing a column for Burlington Free Press for almost 17 years now. Talk about that experience.</div><div align="left"><br />C.B.—I enjoy writing the column. Otherwise, I wouldn’t do it. I usually write it at the end of the week, and it’s a nice respite from my fiction, which can be rather dark. That doesn’t mean that I don’t address serious issues in my column on occasion: I do. I have, for instance, written about the death of my mother, global climate change and the war in Iraq. But usually it’s an opportunity either to explore something personal or something that makes me smile.</div><div align="left"><br />And while people tell me that it must be a lot of pressure to turn out a column every single week, it really isn’t. It’s a lot less pressure than a novel. The secret? I try never to lose sight of the fact that a few hours after the column runs in the newspaper on Sunday morning, it is either helping to light a fire in a wood stove or lining the bottom of a cat’s litter box.</div>Khatchig Mouradianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06586890931026647735noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2181913486636918869.post-10138829894368965082007-11-15T17:33:00.000-08:002007-11-15T17:35:30.341-08:00The Betrayal of Turkish Jews<a href="http://www.jewcy.com/user/1836/khatchig_mouradian">Khatchig Mouradian</a><br />November 15, 2007<br /><br />For the past several months, the Jews of Turkey have been in <a href="http://news.google.com/news?ie=UTF-8&oe=utf-8&rls=org.mozilla%3Aen-US%3Aofficial&client=firefox-a&um=1&tab=wn&q=%22turkish+jews%22&btnG=Search+News" target="_blank">the international spotlight</a>. As Congress has debated the Armenian Genocide resolution, high-ranking Turkish officials have warned that Turkish Jews will be endangered if the resolution passes. And Jewish-American organizations such as the Anti-Defamation League have<a href="http://www.noplacefordenial.com/"> repeatedly cited</a> the predicament of Turkish Jews as reason to support Turkey's campaign of genocide denial.<br />In an effort to better understand the plight of Turkish Jewry, I interviewed several prominent scholars who have studied the community.<br />To read the entire article, go to:<br /><a href="http://www.jewcy.com/cabal/turkish_jews">http://www.jewcy.com/cabal/turkish_jews</a>Khatchig Mouradianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06586890931026647735noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2181913486636918869.post-85339931509177548132007-11-13T10:52:00.000-08:002007-11-13T10:54:43.143-08:00Une Interview avec Serj Tankianpar Khatchig Mouradian<br /><br />Traduction Valère<br /><br /><a href="http://www.yevrobatsi.org/st/item.php?r=2&id=3799">http://www.yevrobatsi.org/st/item.php?r=2&id=3799</a><br /><br />Cet interview de Serj Tankian, leader de System of a down, a été réalisé le 16 octobre 2007 au Paradise Club à Boston, dans le Massassuchet. Serj est actuellement en tournée pour la promotion de son nouvel album, sorti le 23 octobre, intitulé “Elect the Dead”.<br /><br />Khatchig Mouradian : Parle-moi de ton expérience sur le nouvel opus.<br />Serj Tankian : Faire ce disque a été une expérience très enrichissante, une expérience vraiment positive pour moi, et très organique. J’ai mon propre studio d’enregistrement, j’y vais et j’y enregistre comme cela me plaît. Parmi la centaine de chansons que j’ai écrites, j’ai pris celles qui se prêtaient bien à ma voix pour ce projet particulier. J’ai enregistré tous les pianos et la plupart des cordes ( j’ai intégré deux guitaristes mais j’ai écrit toutes les pièces à cordes), j’ai programmé tous les jeux de batterie que j’ai réintroduis plus tard pour les jouer en live, arrangé la plupart des guitares, la plupart des basses et des voix. L’essentiel est produit et enregistré par moi sur mon propre label, et distribué par Warner.<br /><br />K.M. : Tu as déclaré : « Avec ce disque, j’assume le succès ou l’échec. Ca m’a fait comprendre que j’ai une vie étonnante et je fais tout pour que mes rêves deviennent réalité”. Parle-moi de ces rêves.<br />S.T. : En fait, je rêve chaque nuit. [rire]. J’adore faire de la musique et c’est devenu mon travail. C’était ma passion et maintenant c’est aussi mon travail. J’ai aussi consacré une partie de ma vie à apprendre d’autres choses autour de moi. Que ce soit spirituel, politique ou écologique. Et, tu vois, il y a beaucoup de choses que je veux accomplir.<br />Mais, pour moi, l’accomplissement n’est pas vraiment important. Ce n’est pas seulement le fait de sortir un album qui m’intéresse, mais le processus qui te fait rencontrer des gens différents, différents vidéastes, différents artistes, webdesigners et journalistes, de profiter et d’apprendre ce que ce processus génère.<br /><br />K.M. . : Concernant ta chanson “The Unthinking Majority” (La majorité silencieuse), tu déclares “ Cette chanson ne ressemble à aucune autre de mon disque solo et est censée inspirer une action collective”. Quelle action collective voudrais-tu voir ?<br />S.T.: Dernièrement, j’ai voulu comprendre en profondeur ce que la civilisation signifie. Je pense qu’on est tous accros à cette chose qu’on appelle ‘civilisation” qui a commencé il y a 10.000 ans (ndlr ‘Before Present’ pour préciser). Nous les Arméniens avons été au commencement de la civilisation (ndlr il délire, pardonnez-le, mais on l’aime quand même – note du correcteur : je confirme, d’ailleurs on est pareils). Cela dit, nous ignorons qui nous étions avant la civilisation, avant même celle des Arméniens. Nous savons que nous avons eu de multiples dieux comme les Grecs et beaucoup d’autres cultures, mais nous n’en savons guère plus sur cette époque, ni d’où vient son véritable caractère spirituel. Donc, c’est très important pour moi d’explorer notre part indigène, pas seulement en tant qu’Arménien, mais en tant qu’être humain. Nous faisons partie d’une progression des choses sur cette planète. Beaucoup de changements radicaux se produisent et continuent de se produire, et c’est très important pour nous de savoir où nous nous situons.<br /><br />K.M. : Tu as dit “La civilisation en elle-même n’est pas durable. La civilisation est terminée”. Tu peux expliquer ?<br />S.T.: Au rythme actuel de progression, basé sur une surpopulation et un taux accéléré de destruction des ressources naturelles mondiales, la civilisation n’ est scientifiquement pas tenable.<br /><br />K.M. : Parle-nous du rôle de System of a Down joué dans...<br />S.T.: La fin de la civilisation? [Hahaha]. Ce serait une super question ! Excuse-moi, quelle était ta question ?<br /><br />K.M. : Le rôle qu’a joué System of a Down dans ta carrière et dans ta vie.<br />S.T.: Ca été mon groupe pendant 11 ans. Ca a lancé ma carrière musicale. Y compris mes amis avec qui j’ai joué et auprès de qui j’ai appris, que j’ai aimés et aidés. Et cela m’a conduit à être ce que je suis aujourd’hui pour explorer le genre de styles artistiques que j’ai explorés et être capable d’avoir une plate-forme d’expression. Mais System of a down n’est pas une marque, c’est un collectif de 4 amis qui sont artistes et qui jouent ensemble quand ils le désirent. Et je fais partie de ce collectif, et ma voix fait toujours partie de ce collectif.<br /><br />K.M. : Entre la musique, la poésie et l’activisme populaire, où est-ce que tu te situes et comment te sens-tu dans ces genres différents ?<br />S.T.: J’essaie tout, je suis mes envies, tu comprends ? Si je sens comme un appel et que je dois m’engager quelque part, partir et mettre en place quelque chose, ou si je sens que je dois écrire une chanson, tout cela fait partie de la progression naturelle de ma vie.<br /><br />K.M. . : Qu’as-tu à déclarer au sujet du débat actuel concernant la résolution du génocide arménien ?<br />S.T.: Je viens juste d’en parler sur une radio de Boston. On ne peut nier un génocide ou la Shoah en se basant sur une opportunité politique. Ca n’a absolument aucun sens. Si nous affirmons, comme les Etats-Unis, que nous sommes une démocratie, alors nous devons nous regarder en face et nous demander : Pouvons-nous mentir sur un génocide, ou en différer la reconnaissance au nom d’intérêts géopolitiques ou stratégiques ou dans l’intérêt d’une occupation militaire injuste en soi? C’est tenter de défaire une erreur par une autre erreur et cela n’a aucun sens. Voilà pourquoi beaucoup de parlementaires souiennent cette résolution, qui a été votée au Comité des Affaires étrangères. Et je suis sûr qu’elle sera votée par la Chambre des Représentants. D’ailleurs elle a le soutien de sa présidente, Nancy Pelosi.<br />Je sens qu’il y aura toujours un prétexte. Vous savez, nous avons attendu 92 ans, mais là je veux aller plus loin et dire que la résolution n’est pas l’essentiel. La reconnaissance n’est qu’une part de la juste solution. Si des gens viennent chez moi, tuent ma famille et pillent ma maison, je ne vais pas leur courir après pendant cent ans en les suppliant de reconnaître ce crime. Ce serait absurde. Je les conduirais plutôt au tribunal et j’exigerais la justice. Et c’est ce dont nous devons faire en fin de compte. Mais bien sûr, nous savons que ceci est le premier pas, donc nous devons garder cela à l’esprit.<br /><br />K.M. . : Toujours sur cette question, la Secrétaire d’Etat C. Rice a déclaré que le “Le vote de cette résolution sera en fait très problématique pour tout ce que nous essayons de faire au Moyen-Orient”.<br />S.T.: J’ai peur de tout ce qu’ils essaient de faire au Moyen Orient. J’espère que cette résolution leur remettra le cul en place. [ndlr rires]<br /><br />--------<br />note :<br />Nancy Pelosi (née Nancy Patricia D’Alesandro le 26 mars 1940 à Baltimore), est une femme politique américaine, membre du parti démocrate et représentante du 8e district de Californie au Congrès des États-Unis depuis 1987. Elle est la chef de file du parti démocrate à la Chambre des représentants depuis 2002. Présidente de la Chambre des représentants depuis le 4 janvier 2007, elle est la première femme à accéder à un poste aussi élevé.Khatchig Mouradianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06586890931026647735noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2181913486636918869.post-13218450078352733972007-11-10T06:16:00.000-08:002007-11-19T06:18:23.663-08:00Turkish PM: No Genocide, ‘We Even Gave the Armenian Deportees Pocket Money’By Khatchig Mouradian<br /><br />The Armenian Weekly<br />Nov. 10, 2007<br /><br />WASHINGTON—On Nov. 5, after meeting with President Bush, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan gave a speech at the National Press Club in Washington, speaking mainly of U.S.-Turkish relations, the Kurdish issue and the Armenian Genocide Resolution, H.Res.106.<br />In his speech, Erdogan said that “it is sad for us to see” the introduction of a resolution that “renders legitimacy to the so-called Armenian genocide.” He stressed that the resolution “has the potential to deeply damage our strategic relations and it is important to ensure that is not discussed on the floor of Congress.”<br /><br />“In fact, these Armenian allegations which are being kept constantly on the agenda in various countries have not been proven historically or legally,” Erdogan continued, repeating his call for a joint historical commission to examine what happened to the Armenians in 1915. When Erdogan suggested the idea of a “joint commission” in 2005, the International Association of Genocide Scholars (IAGS) sent him an open letter which read: “We are concerned that in calling for an impartial study of the Armenian Genocide you may not be fully aware of the extent of the scholarly and intellectual record on the Armenian Genocide. … We want to underscore that it is not just Armenians who are affirming the Armenian Genocide but it is the overwhelming opinion of scholars who study genocide: hundreds of independent scholars.”<br /><br />Yet, at the National Press Club this week, Erdogan said he was sure there was never a genocide of the Armenians. “What took place was called deportation,” he said. “That was a very difficult time. It was a time of war.”<br /><br />The Armenians, he argued, were provoked by other countries to rebel, leading to Ottoman Turkish government’s decision “to start deporting the Armenian citizens to other parts of the Empire.”<br /><br />To show how well the Armenian deportees were treated, Erdogan—who made no reference to the killing of any Armenian—went so far as to say that the Ottoman government even provided the Armenians with pocket money. “…And we have documents in our archives which attest to this fact,” he said.<br /><br />“There are all sorts of instructions about how people should be sent from one area to another, how much money is to be paid to them as pocket money as they travel. Those who counter [our thesis] must come up with their own documents, but there are no documents that they can show,” he charged.<br /><br />A Leading Turkish Historian Responds<br /><br />The Armenian Weekly contacted Turkish-born historian and sociologist Taner Akcam, professor of history at the University of Minnesota and author of A Shameful Act: The Armenian Genocide and the Question of Turkish Responsibility, to comment on Erdogan’s allegation.<br />“I haven’t seen any single Ottoman document that shows that money was given to Armenians,” Akcam said. “It is, indeed, true that the central government sent money to the regional authorities to cover the expenses of the deportations. Part of the revenues from plundering the possessions of the Armenians and auctioning them was used by the government to finance the deportations.”<br /><br />Furthermore, Akcam said, “There is ample evidence that in the Eastern Anatolian regions like Eskishehir, Afyon and Konya, Armenians were partially ‘transported’ by train and were made to pay for their own tickets.Khatchig Mouradianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06586890931026647735noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2181913486636918869.post-32337285263753210042007-11-10T04:25:00.000-08:002007-11-11T04:25:49.814-08:00Turkish PM: No Genocide, We Even Gave the Armenian Deportees Pocket MoneyBy Khatchig Mouradian<br /><br />The Armenian Weekly<br />Nov. 10, 2007<br /><br />WASHINGTON—On Nov. 5, after meeting with President Bush, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan gave a speech at the National Press Club in Washington, speaking mainly of U.S.-Turkish relations, the Kurdish issue and the Armenian Genocide Resolution, H.Res.106.<br /><br />In his speech, Erdogan said that “it is sad for us to see” the introduction of a resolution that “renders legitimacy to the so-called Armenian genocide.” He stressed that the resolution “has the potential to deeply damage our strategic relations and it is important to ensure that is not discussed on the floor of Congress.”<br /><br />“In fact, these Armenian allegations which are being kept constantly on the agenda in various countries have not been proven historically or legally,” Erdogan continued, repeating his call for a joint historical commission to examine what happened to the Armenians in 1915. When Erdogan suggested the idea of a “joint commission” in 2005, the International Association of Genocide Scholars (IAGS) sent him an open letter which read: “We are concerned that in calling for an impartial study of the Armenian Genocide you may not be fully aware of the extent of the scholarly and intellectual record on the Armenian Genocide. … We want to underscore that it is not just Armenians who are affirming the Armenian Genocide but it is the overwhelming opinion of scholars who study genocide: hundreds of independent scholars.”<br /><br />Yet, at the National Press Club this week, Erdogan said he was sure there was never a genocide of the Armenians. “What took place was called deportation,” he said. “That was a very difficult time. It was a time of war.”The Armenians, he argued, were provoked by other countries to rebel, leading to Ottoman Turkish government’s decision “to start deporting the Armenian citizens to other parts of the Empire.”<br /><br />To show how well the Armenian deportees were treated, Erdogan—who made no reference to the killing of any Armenian—went so far as to say that the Ottoman government even provided the Armenians with pocket money. “…And we have documents in our archives which attest to this fact,” he said.<br /><br />“There are all sorts of instructions about how people should be sent from one area to another, how much money is to be paid to them as pocket money as they travel. Those who counter [our thesis] must come up with their own documents, but there are no documents that they can show,” he charged.<br /><br />A Leading Turkish Historian Responds<br /><br />The Armenian Weekly contacted Turkish-born historian and sociologist Taner Akcam, professor of history at the University of Minnesota and author of A Shameful Act: The Armenian Genocide and the Question of Turkish Responsibility, to comment on Erdogan’s allegation.<br /><br />“I haven’t seen any single Ottoman document that shows that money was given to Armenians,” Akcam said. “It is, indeed, true that the central government sent money to the regional authorities to cover the expenses of the deportations. Part of the revenues from plundering the possessions of the Armenians and auctioning them was used by the government to finance the deportations.”<br /><br />Furthermore, Akcam said, “There is ample evidence that in the Eastern Anatolian regions like Eskishehir, Afyon and Konya, Armenians were partially ‘transported’ by train and were made to pay for their own tickets.Khatchig Mouradianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06586890931026647735noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2181913486636918869.post-26067980946287749152007-11-02T15:15:00.000-07:002007-11-02T15:18:02.818-07:00The Washington Post Perpetuates a Destructive MythBy Khatchig Mouradian<br /><br />The Armenian Genocide Resolution (H.Res.106) has attracted enormous media attention since it was passed by the House International Affairs Committee on October 10. However, the content of many of the articles, columns and stories written make one thing clear: Writers across the United States were ill-prepared to tackle the issue of the Armenian genocide, simply because they knew very little about it.<br /><br />One case in point is Richard Cohen's article in the Washington Post, titled "<a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/10/15/AR2007101501323.html">Turkey's War on the Truth</a>" (Oct. 16, 2007). Cohen makes arguments based on false premises. After conceding--with condescension--that what happened to the Armenians in 1915 was "plenty bad," he concludes that it falls short of genocide "because not all Armenians...were...affected." Clearly, if we follow his train of thought, Cambodia, Rwanda, Darfur and several other cases should not be labeled as "genocide."<br /><br />Read the entire article here:<br /><a href="http://www.jewcy.com/daily_shvitz/washington_post_lemkin_and_armenian_genocide">http://www.jewcy.com/daily_shvitz/washington_post_lemkin_and_armenian_genocide</a>Khatchig Mouradianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06586890931026647735noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2181913486636918869.post-22218159656156958712007-10-21T08:19:00.000-07:002007-10-21T08:24:51.580-07:00An Interview with Serj TankianBy Khatchig Mouradian<br /><br /><br /><em>The following interview with System of a Down’s frontman Serj Tankian was conducted on Oct. 16 at the Paradise Club in Boston, Mass. Tankian is on tour promoting his new album—set to be released on Oct. 23—“Elect the Dead.”</em><br /><br />Khatchig Mouradian—Talk about your experience putting this album together.<br />Serj Tankian—Making this record has been a real learning experience, a strong positive experience for me, and very organic. I have my own studio, I go in and record as I please. I have hundreds of songs and I picked out songs that would lend themselves to my voice for this particular project. I recorded all the pianos and most of the strings (I brought in a couple of string players but I wrote all the string parts), programmed all the drums, then brought in drummers later to play them live, performed most of the guitars, most of the bass and vocals, pretty much produced it myself and recorded it myself and put it out on my own label through Warner, the distributor.<br /><br />K.M.—You say, “With this record all success or failure rests with me. It made me realize that I have an amazing life and I’m getting to make a lot of my dreams come true.” Talk about those dreams.<br /><br />S.T.—Well I have dreams every night. [Laughs.] I love doing music and it’s become my work. It was my passion and now it’s also my work. I’ve also devoted part of my life to learning other things around me, whether it’s spiritual, political or ecological. And, you know, I have a lot of things I want to accomplish. But accomplishments aren’t really important personally. I enjoy this process of not just putting a record out but involving different people, different video directors, different artists, website designers and journalists, and enjoying the process and learning from the process.<br /><br />K.M.—Referring to the song “The Unthinking Majority,” you say “it is unlike any song on my solo record and meant to inspire collective action.” What collective action would you like to see?<br /><br />S.T.—Ultimately I’d like to see some type of deep perspective and understanding of what civilization means. I think we’re all addicted to this thing called civilization that started 10,000 ago. We as Armenians have been at the beginning of that civilization, yet we don’t know what we were before civilization even as Armenians. We just know that we had multiple gods like the Greeks and many other cultures, but we don’t know much about those times and where the true character of spirituality comes from. So it’s very important for me to explore our indigenous past, not just as Armenians but as humans. We’re a part of the progression of things on this planet. A lot of radical changes are occurring and will continue to occur, and it’s important for us to know where we stand.<br /><br />K.M.—You mentioned civilization. You’ve said, “Civilization itself is not sustainable. Civilization is over.” Can you explain that?<br /><br />S.T.—At the current rate of progression, based on overpopulation coupled with the accelerated rate of destruction of the world’s natural resources, civilization is scientifically unsustainable.<br /><br />K.M.—Talk about the role System of a Down played in…<br /><br />S.T.—Ending civilization? [Laughs.] That would be a great question! Sorry, what was your question?<br /><br />K.M.—The role System of a Down plated in your career and your life.<br /><br />S.T.—It’s been my band for 11 years. It launched my musical career. It included my friends that I’ve played with and learned from and love and care for. And it’s brought me to where I am today to explore the type of artistic avenues that I have been exploring and to be able to have a platform of speech. But System of a Down is not a brand, it’s a collective of four friends that are artists that play together when they so desire, and I am a part of that collective, and my voice has always been a part of that collective.<br /><br />K.M.—From music to poetry to grassroots activism, where do you find yourself and how do you feel in these different avenues?<br /><br />S.T.—I do whatever, I follow my heart, you know? If I feel like making a call and doing something in terms of activism or going out there and planting something or if I feel like writing a song, it’s just all a part of the natural progression of my life.<br /><br />K.M.—What do you have to say about the current discussion regarding the Armenian Genocide Resolution?<br /><br />S.T.—I just said it on a radio station in Boston. You can’t deny a genocide or holocaust based on political expediency. It makes absolutely no sense. If we claim as America that we’re a democracy then we have to look in the mirror and ask: Can we lie about a genocide or hold off its recognition for the sake of geopolitical or strategic gains or a military occupation that is unfair in itself? It’s trying to undo one mistake with another mistake and it doesn’t make sense. That’s why a lot of Congressmen are behind the resolution, and it passed [the House Foreign Relations] Committee and I’m confident that it will pass the House. And it’s got Speaker [Nancy] Pelosi’s support.<br /><br />I feel like there’s always going to be an excuse. You know, we’ve waited 92 years, but ultimately I want to go further and say, recognition is not that important. Recognition is one part of the just solution. If someone came to my house, killed my family and robbed my house, I’m not going to run after them for a hundred years and beg them to recognize that crime. That makes no sense, I’m going to take them to court and I’m going to loudly request justice, and that’s what needs to be done ultimately. But obviously, we all know that this is the first step, so we got to keep the goal in mind.<br /><br />K.M.—On the same issue, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said that “The passage of this resolution indeed will be very problematic for everything we are trying to do in the Middle East.”<br /><br />S.T.—I’m scared of everything they’re trying to do in the Middle East. Maybe the resolution will help them put their asses in place.Khatchig Mouradianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06586890931026647735noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2181913486636918869.post-2240742648537030862007-10-18T10:21:00.000-07:002007-10-18T10:23:46.930-07:00Fallout looms as genocide resolution moves to HouseMany in local community stand behind support for recognition<br /><br />By Lorne Bell<br /><br />The Jewish Advocate<br />Thursday October 18 2007<br /><br /><a href="http://www.thejewishadvocate.com/this_weeks_issue/news/?content_id=3848">http://www.thejewishadvocate.com/this_weeks_issue/news/?content_id=3848</a><br /><br />Amid frenzied debate at the local, national and international levels, the U.S. House Foreign Affairs Committee voted on Oct. 10 to officially recognize the Ottoman Empire’s World War I massacre of Armenians as genocide. The non-binding House Resolution 106, which will now move to the full House for vote, prompted Turkey to immediately recall its ambassador to the U.S., and has elicited concerns from Israeli and American officials about the impact on relations with the Turkish government.<br /><br />“[Relations with Turkey] are very important for Israel,” said Nadav Tamir, consul general of Israel to New England. “Israel was out of the debate.”<br /><br />Officials in the Bush administration and eight former secretaries of state signaled their opposition to the resolution in advance of last week’s vote. In a letter to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), the former secretaries wrote that the passage of HR-106 “would endanger our national security interests.”<br /><br />While the measure appeared as if it would quickly pass through the House, nearly a dozen House members – from both parties – have withdrawn their support for the resolution as of Wednesday, according to the New York Times.<br /><br />But while government officials are worried about the consequences of offending Turkey, a key ally in the Middle East, local Armenians have praised the resolution, saying any fallout between Turkey and the U.S. will be short-lived.<br /><br />“These are knee-jerk, hysterical reactions,” said Khatchig Mouradian, editor of The Armenian Weekly, which is based in Watertown. “Turkey is not a superpower and realizes full-well it needs the U.S.”<br /><br />Mouradian said this summer’s controversy between Boston area Armenian and Jewish communities and the Anti-Defamation League helped to foster awareness of the issue. That controversy, which eventually led the national ADL to recognize the Armenian genocide, saw several Massachusetts towns cut ties with the ADL’s No Place for Hate program and the temporary firing of the organization’s regional director, Andrew Tarsy, who publicly dissented from the national position.<br /><br />“The local controversy did not directly affect the resolution, but on an educational level, it was immensely important,” said Mouradian.<br /><br />But political relations with Turkey were not the only concerns voiced by opponents of the resolution. Concerns about the safety of Jews worldwide also played a role in the ADL’s initial reluctance to recognize the massacre as genocide.<br /><br />In a full-page advertisement in the Washington Post last week, the Jewish community of Turkey asked Congress to defeat the House resolution. The Turkish Foreign Ministry praised the nation’s Jews for opposing what it called an “unjust and erroneous” resolution.<br /><br />Any reprisal by Turkey against Jewish interests should serve as a wake up call to American and Jewish alliances with the republic, according to James Russell, professor of Armenian Studies at Harvard University.<br /><br />“If Turkey responds by blaming the Jews for this when it’s fairly obvious that the Jewish community was cautious – if not overly cautious – then all it proves is how shaky that friendship with Turkey is,” said Russell.<br /><br />Still, the ADL has continued to oppose a congressional resolution, calling such measures “counterproductive.” And others have questioned the wisdom of the local community’s support for the resolution since Armenia is aligned with countries that are antagonistic to Israel, like Iran and Syria, while Turkey is a strategic ally.<br /><br />Grand Rabbi Y. A. Korff cautioned this summer that the local community may be weighing in on a situation in which it cannot make the most informed decision. In a statement to the Advocate, the Rebbe said that diplomatic fallout with Turkey was inevitable.<br /><br />“By taking the high moral ground, doing what is ‘right’ for others, and sacrificing pragmatic support for ourselves, we have once again shot ourselves in the foot for something which, after all, doesn’t really have much, if any, practical consequence anyway,” said the Rebbe.<br /><br />But the resolution’s affect on international relations should not trump moral obligation, according to Nancy K. Kaufman, executive director of the Jewish Community Relations Council of Greater Boston, who has been a staunch supporter of the resolution.<br /><br />“We are always concerned for the safety of Jews and we are also vigilant about the [importance of] Turkish-Israeli and Turkish-U.S. relations,” said Kaufman. “These concerns must be taken seriously, but they cannot be an excuse for genocide denial.”<br /><br />With Turkey recalling its ambassadors to the U.S., the fate of American military bases in Turkey is a pressing concern for U.S. officials. Meanwhile, Turkish Foreign Affairs Minister Ali Babacan told the Jerusalem Post last week that Turkish ties with Israel as well as the U.S. would suffer if the resolution passed.<br /><br />But despite looming political fallout for the U.S. and the Jewish state, Tarsy, ADL regional director, defended the organization’s decision to recognize the genocide.<br /><br />“There obviously continue to be complicated political issues on the table,” said Tarsy. “The hope in all of this is for recognition of the very difficult history [in Turkey] and for reconciliation. I think that’s everyone’s hope.”Khatchig Mouradianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06586890931026647735noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2181913486636918869.post-19093572763112833082007-10-17T19:38:00.000-07:002007-10-17T19:42:20.087-07:00Serj Tankian: Genocide Resolution Is the First Step<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjyPtMT857P9x3LpDqQUvKrSAqduZVuBBI0IYh_PbGFh_LsvUQbE9tTgpe9kAzJF0RUAW3__ZJqx5x5h_9PFQvHFk1rohyphenhyphenRSZrUcMV6KcjCkMk2Hpmi2NPjDNIktDpg_quvChYmww6zHA2f/s1600-h/October_6-8_2007_004.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5122501490883221682" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; CURSOR: hand; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjyPtMT857P9x3LpDqQUvKrSAqduZVuBBI0IYh_PbGFh_LsvUQbE9tTgpe9kAzJF0RUAW3__ZJqx5x5h_9PFQvHFk1rohyphenhyphenRSZrUcMV6KcjCkMk2Hpmi2NPjDNIktDpg_quvChYmww6zHA2f/s320/October_6-8_2007_004.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><div>The Armenian Weekly<br />Oct. 16, 2007<br /><br />BOSTON, Mass. (A.W.)-In an interview with Armenian Weekly editor Khatchig Mouradian at the Paradise Rock Club in Boston today, System of a Down’s frontman Serj Tankian spoke about the current the Armenian Genocide Resolution and the discussion it has generated.</div><br /><div><br />“You can’t deny a genocide or holocaust based on political expediency. It makes absolutely no sense. If we claim as America that we’re a democracy then we have to look in the mirror and ask: Can we lie about a genocide or hold off its recognition for the sake of geopolitical or strategic gains or a military occupation that is unfair in itself? It’s trying to undo one mistake with another mistake and it doesn’t make sense,” Tankian said. “That’s why a lot of Congressmen are behind the resolution, and it passed [the House Foreign Relations] Committee and I’m confident that it will pass the House. And it’s got Speaker [Nancy] Pelosi’s support,” he added.</div><br /><div><br />Tankian continued, “I feel like there’s always going to be an excuse. You know, we’ve waited 92 years, but ultimately I want to go further and say that recognition is not that important. </div><br /><div>Recognition is one part of the just solution. If someone came to my house, killed my family and robbed my house, I’m not going to run after them for a hundred years and beg them to recognize that crime. That makes no sense. I’m going to take them to court and I’m going to loudly request justice, and that’s what needs to be done ultimately. But obviously, we all know that this is the first step, so we got to keep the goal in mind.”</div><br /><div><br />Asked about Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice’s statement that “The passage of this resolution indeed will be very problematic for everything we are trying to do in the Middle East,” Tankian responded, “I’m scared of everything they’re trying to do in the Middle East. Maybe the resolution will help them put their asses in place.”</div>Khatchig Mouradianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06586890931026647735noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2181913486636918869.post-26932608501334266162007-10-14T15:56:00.000-07:002007-10-14T16:00:18.660-07:00Orhan Pamuk: Armenian Genocide is a Moral Issue<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiDL7p1Hid1UZod6EvDyyzA6CuvRHUzm4_6gehPPRChRApKQknhgN4AloMID4L39NY9lzjHUCTPSH4Y_IuRbUI67YtaESB_3DHdhhK6GfSY8NgjCpZQ3lUPa8FXeB2LBdtz6m7RIfs5zLsa/s1600-h/October+6-8+2007+010.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5121330876071860386" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; CURSOR: hand; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiDL7p1Hid1UZod6EvDyyzA6CuvRHUzm4_6gehPPRChRApKQknhgN4AloMID4L39NY9lzjHUCTPSH4Y_IuRbUI67YtaESB_3DHdhhK6GfSY8NgjCpZQ3lUPa8FXeB2LBdtz6m7RIfs5zLsa/s320/October+6-8+2007+010.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><div>By Khatchig Mouradian<br /><br />The Armenian Weekly<br />Oct. 12, 2007<br /><br />CAMBRIDGE, Mass. (A.W.)—Answering a question from the audience during his book reading organized by the Harvard Bookstore on Oct. 12, Turkish novelist and Nobel laureate Orhan Pamuk said that the Armenian genocide is a moral issue that needs to be discussed freely in Turkey.</div><div><br />The question read, “What do you think about the Armenian Genocide Resolution in the U.S. Congress?” Pamuk said, “I was expecting this question.” Interrupted by laughter from the audience, Pamuk continued, “Don’t worry, I’ll get out of it.” </div><div><br />“For me, it’s a moral issue, it’s a personal issue,” he went on to say. “For me it’s an issue of free speech, which we don’t totally have in Turkey. … The Turkish people should be able to freely discuss [this issue].”</div><div><br />Pamuk added, “I basically think it is upsetting that this issue is getting to be an arm-twisting issue [between states] rather than a moral or free speech issue in Turkey.<br /><br />Pamuk was in Cambridge to read from his newly published book Other Colors: Essays and a Story (Alfred A. Knopf, 2007). He is the winner of the 2006 Nobel Prize in Literature. In 2005, he was charged with “insulting Turkishness” under Turkey’s notorious Article 301 for saying in an interview with a Swiss magazine that “Thirty thousand Kurds and a million Armenians were killed in these lands and nobody dares to talk about it.” The charges were later dropped.</div>Khatchig Mouradianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06586890931026647735noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2181913486636918869.post-23824622925525128572007-10-06T16:35:00.000-07:002007-10-08T16:40:13.029-07:00‘The Resolution Speaks to the Survival of the Armenian People Today’Says Congressman Edward Royce<br />By Khatchig Mouradian<br /><br />The Armenian Weekly<br />October 6, 2007<br /><br /><em>WASHINGTON (A.W.)—The following interview with Congressman Edward R. Royce (R-Calif.) was conducted on Sept. 28 in his office in Washington. The video of the interview can be viewed on </em><a href="http://www.haireniktv.com/"><em>www.haireniktv.com</em></a><em>.</em><br /><br />Khatchig Mouradian—Congressman, where does the Genocide Resolution stand at this point and where do we go from here?<br /><br />Edward Royce—Well, what we do now is what we did a few years ago when we got the bill out of committee. I’ve served on the Foreign Affairs Committee for a number of years, and I carried in the State Senate of California the first genocide resolution recognizing the Armenian genocide. We got that out of the California State Senate with a little help from our friend George Deukmejian, who was governor at the time.<br /><br />Also, a few years ago we were able to actually get this very resolution on to the House floor. Now, at that point in time, President [Bill] Clinton contacted Speaker [Dennis] Hastert and they convinced the leadership not to bring it up on the House floor. But where we’re focused right now is explaining to the Members that the French have recognized the genocide, the Germans have recognized it, and for those of us who are Republicans, that Ronald Reagan, as president, recognized the genocide. It is time that we officially, as the Congress of the United States, do this. We’re in the process right now of talking to the members—and I’m working on the Republican side—in order to have the votes there if we can schedule this before committee.<br /><br />K.M.—And why is it important for the U.S. Congress to recognize the Armenian genocide, an event that took place in a different part of the world 92 years ago?<br /><br />E.R.—My father was involved during the Second World War with U.S. forces when they went into Dachau, the concentration camp. He actually took photographs, he was an amateur photographer. And ever since, he has been quite outspoken on the way in which the international community can be silent at times about genocide. One of the things he reminds people of is Hitler’s comment back to the chairman of the joint chief of staff in the Reich. And Hitler said, “Who speaks today of the annihilation of the Armenians?”<br /><br />The reality is that history can repeat itself and will do so especially if we don’t get history right, and if we don’t have it acknowledged. And when you have something as horrific as the genocide in which over one and a half million Armenians perished in Western Anatolia and Turkey, when you have something on that scale and it is not acknowledged, there is the danger that it could be repeated.<br /><br />This is also important to us because Armenia is struggling today, and here it is in the grips of an embargo imposed by Turkey and by Azerbaijan. They’re in a tough neighborhood and in the last three years we’ve seen Azerbaijan increase its defense budget 638 percent. If we wonder about how Armenia struggles in this environment, I’ll just share with you the index of economic freedom, which measures how much progress different countries make. It lists Turkey at 83rd in the world, while young Armenia is ranked 32nd. So you can see the amount of reform going on in that country, but at the same time you can see the discrimination, and you can see the high tariffs imposed by its neighbors in terms of goods and services getting in and out of the country. So this not only speaks to the past, it speaks to the survival of Armenia and the Armenian people today.<br /><br />This is one of the reasons that we’ve been involved in efforts to try to champion the Millennium Challenge account, and as you know Armenia will receive over $235 million for its rural areas, for its agriculture, to help rebuild its roads. But at the same time, what we’re also trying to do is knock down that embargo.<br /><br />And as you know, my friend, Congressman Crowley from New York and myself championed the legislation to explicitly prevent any funding for any rail line that goes through that region and bypasses Armenia. We’re going to continue to speak out for the truth and point out the obvious and use U.S. power and prestige and the fact that this country is based on an ideal—that ideal is freedom—in order not only to try to help Armenia today but to have the record books, the history books, properly record all over the world what happened. And frankly, when Congress speaks, it helps focus people’s attention on what is actually happening in the world.<br /><br />K.M.—You’ve also been very active in speaking out against the genocide in Darfur. So what parallels do you see there?<br /><br />E.R.—I took the actor Don Cheadle along with Paul Rusesabagina (who he portrays in the movie “Hotel Rwanda”) and a nightline television camera crew into Darfur, Sudan, and recorded the aftermath of an attack there. We went into the village of Tinei, which was once a vibrant community but now has a population of a handful of people. We talked to survivors of different attacks while we were there, and two documentaries were produced out of it on that genocide. Subsequently we were able to get a genocide resolution through the United Nations and passed it here through Congress. In so doing, we’ve now put enormous pressure on China to quit providing the arms. (Just as China provided the arms used by Rwanda in the genocide in Rwanda, they’re now providing the arms here.) And this kind of pressure, I think, can help mobilize the international community.<br /><br />And let’s think again about the point President Reagan made when he recognized the Armenian genocide. He spoke of the Holocaust, the Armenian genocide, and then the genocide in Cambodia that took two million lives. And he was making the point that if we don’t speak out, history can repeat itself. Here it is today, repeating itself, with a radical fundamentalism that is driving the Janjaweed, and the Khartoum government is right behind it. The Khartoum government is actually involved in helping fund this. So again, to me, pointing these things out, and trying to educate people around the world and trying to get an admission as to what is happening is very, very important in terms of human rights. If you don’t get the past right, there’s a danger you’re not going to get the future right. And we should call the Armenian genocide for what it is: genocide.<br /><br />K.M.—Congressman, what is your take on the recent letter signed by eight former Secretaries of State?<br /><br />E.R.—If President Reagan could speak out, if the French National Assembly could speak out, if historians all around the world can speak out, it’s time for the U.S. Congress to speak out, regardless of what kind of angst that might cause to some in foreign affairs. I just think you try to do the right thing, and that’s what we need to do.<br /><br />K.M.—Congressman, one of the issues being raised, especially in the Turkish media, is how the Genocide Resolution is being pushed forward by the Democrats. They often ignore the fact that the resolution enjoys bipartisan support. How can we make the case for that?<br /><br />E.R.—I think people forget that it was under Republican majority that we actually got the resolution out of committee in the past. And it was under a Republican president, President Reagan, that the Armenian genocide was addressed. And so, as one who has labored long and hard on this, I’m well aware of the fact that this is a bipartisan effort. I would think anyone who is trying to claim otherwise is being a little political. And frankly, with these kinds of issues we should keep the partisan politics out of it. We’re talking about human rights, we’re talking about history here, and so I appreciate you asking that question because it’s good to get that history right, too. We passed that resolution out of the committee successfully with the help of Republicans and Democrats, when the Republicans were the majority.Khatchig Mouradianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06586890931026647735noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2181913486636918869.post-48611200637745781012007-10-06T16:30:00.000-07:002007-10-08T16:39:40.430-07:00‘Retain Confidence in Speaker Pelosi’Says Congresswoman Anna Eshoo<br /><br />By Khatchig Mouradian<br /><br />The Armenian Weekly<br />October 6, 2007<br /><br /><em>WASHINGTON (A.W.)—The following interview with Congresswoman Anna Eshoo (D-Calif.) was conducted on Sept. 28 in her office in Washington.</em><br /><br /><em>The video of the interview can be viewed on </em><a href="http://www.haireniktv.com/"><em>www.haireniktv.com</em></a><em>.</em><br /><br />Khatchig Mouradian—Congresswoman, now that we have 226 co-sponsors of the Armenian Genocide Resolution, what’s next?<br /><br />Anna Eshoo—A few very important things need to be done. First, we want to keep getting co-sponsors, so this is not something that has ended. Every week I talk to members on the floor of the House to invite them to come on to the resolution, answer questions, etc. Very importantly, Congressman Tom Lantos from Northern California, who is the chairman of the House International Relations Committee, needs to schedule the bill for mark-up—that means that you write up the bill, it’s accepted by the committee, there’s a vote in the committee, and then it qualifies to come to the floor of the house for action. Now why is 226—and counting—important? Because the majority of the House is 218. We have to keep members on the legislation, not allow people to stray, not allow the Turkish lobby to affect members and peel them off of the legislation.<br /><br />K.M.—The expectations are high, and it’s up to Speaker Nancy Pelosi to put the resolution to vote. Yet, she’s under a lot of pressure from lobby groups, the Tukish government and the State Department. How do you see this issue developing in the next few weeks?<br /><br />A.E.—Well, the Armenian-American community should retain their confidence in Speaker Pelosi. She has always been on the resolution since she came to Congress, she’s been committed to the community and what needs to be done. She has spoken every year on it on the floor of the House, and now we are so proud that she is our Speaker. So she hasn’t changed her mind about the issue. It’s up to us to be able to pass it. The Speaker doesn’t tell people how to vote. … And then she likes to win. So we’re going to have to demonstrate that we have the votes on the floor in order to win. And we have all known from the very beginning—no one knows it better than the Armenian-American community—that this has always been tough. The opposition understands our position of strength now and they keep ratcheting up every day.<br /><br />K.M.—Do you see any difference between the way the opposition operated previously and the way it’s operating now?<br /><br />A.E.—There’s more money, and there’s more pressure.<br /><br />K.M.—And what are your thoughts on the letter, signed by eight former Secretaries of State, which urges Speaker Pelosi to keep the resolution off the House floor?<br /><br />A.E.—I have to tell you I’m not surprised. And the reason I’m not surprised is that each of those Secretaries of State are defending the policy that they implemented. We haven’t had one administration that was with us. This is how high the climb is. So while I would like to have had it be different, it’s not a surprise to me because every single administration has sided the other way. They have not been with us. That’s why we know that it’s up to us to launch this and to move it, and I think their sending this letter shows the power of the [Turkish] lobby. I mean there’s a lot of money in this. There’s a ton of money in this in plain English. So, yes, we’ve always known we have a tough fight. They’ve been successful for 25 years in the Congress, but I believe that we can change it and I believe that we will change it, and the reason for that is because it’s the right thing to do.<br /><br />K.M.—Why is it important for the United States Congress to recognize a crime against humanity that took place 92 years ago in a different part of the world?<br /><br />A.E.—The greatest strength that America has is her moral standing in the world. That has been and continues to be the most eloquent statement about who and what we are as a nation. And we have moved away from some of those values—very sadly, I must say—and that has chipped away at the credibility of the United States of America. Make no mistake about it, we are the mightiest in terms of military, we certainly are the most powerful economic force in the world, but without moral standing, you have a house that is essentially built on sand. So this is about who we are and what we stand for. And our human rights record and our recognition to correct not only history around the world, but our very own history. We had to fight to acknowledge that slavery was wrong in our country. So we have a very, very long record on this. And that’s why it is important. What did Hitler say? “Who will remember the Armenians?” We will!<br /><br />K.M.—Congresswoman, this is a very important human rights issue, but it’s also a very personal issue for you. Can you talk about that?<br /><br />A.E.—Well, as you know, I’m half Hye (Armenian) and half Assori (Assyrian). That’s a very powerful mixture for me because both sides of my family were persecuted and fled the region. When I saw that full-page ad in the New York Times taken out by the Turkish lobby saying, “Let’s settle this once and for all as to whether there was or was not a genocide, and have a commission...” Excuse me? Did my grandmother lie? I mean, I sat at her knee and she described the slaughter of her own family.<br /><br />We’re not asking anyone for money. We’re simply stating that this be a fact that is set down and recognized by the American people. And I think the American people are way ahead of us. There isn’t any argument in my Congressional district or across the country as to whether this is something that took place. In fact, constituents are stunned that this is even a battle. And the battle is being waged against denial. I think that it would be a gift for the Turkish people and the Turkish government to get this behind them. This isn’t the present-day Turkey that did it, this was the Ottoman Empire, so yes, this is very, very close to me. It’s my family, it’s who I am, and it’s where I come from.<br /><br />But this is also very important for our nation to recognize. And when you move from denial to truth, you’re free.Khatchig Mouradianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06586890931026647735noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2181913486636918869.post-24840464387258995112007-10-02T10:25:00.000-07:002007-10-02T10:27:05.221-07:00My Latest Interviews with CongressmenWatch interviews I conducted with five members of the US House of Representatives on September 28-29, 2007. the interviews are about the Armenian genocide resolution and related issues:<br />Congressman Joe Knollenberg:<br /><a href="http://www.hairenik.com/HairenikTV/HA_TV_Clip113.htm" target="_blank">http://www.hairenik.com/HairenikTV/HA_TV_Clip113.htm</a><br />Congresswoman Anna Eshoo:<br /><a href="http://www.hairenik.com/HairenikTV/HA_TV_Clip109.htm" target="_blank">http://www.hairenik.com/HairenikTV/HA_TV_Clip109.htm</a><br />Congressman George Rodanovich:<br /><a href="http://www.hairenik.com/HairenikTV/HA_TV_Clip110.htm" target="_blank">http://www.hairenik.com/HairenikTV/HA_TV_Clip110.htm</a><br />Congresswoman Edward Royce:<br /><a href="http://www.hairenik.com/HairenikTV/HA_TV_Clip111.htm" target="_blank">http://www.hairenik.com/HairenikTV/HA_TV_Clip111.htm</a><br />Congressman Garret Scott:<br /><a href="http://www.hairenik.com/HairenikTV/HA_TV_Clip112.htm" target="_blank">http://www.hairenik.com/HairenikTV/HA_TV_Clip112.htm</a>Khatchig Mouradianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06586890931026647735noreply@blogger.com1