WikiLeaks -Armenia N 134
2010-01-26
C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 02 YEREVAN 000041
SUBJECT: POGROM COMMEMORATIONS TO COUNTER BAKU’S ANTI-ARMENIAN PR
YEREVAN 00000041 001.2 OF 002
Classified By: AMB Marie L. Yovanovitch, reasons 1.4 (b,d).
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SUMMARY
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¶1. (C) During the past several weeks, extensive commemorations of the January 1990 pogroms of Armenians in Baku have taken place in Yerevan. The GOAM’s sponsorship and support of the commemorations appears to be qualitatively and quantitatively higher than in recent years. Post learned that the new, high-level attention is intended as a riposte to anti-Armenian propaganda spread by Azerbaijan. END SUMMARY.
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POGROM COMMEMORATIONS
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¶2. (SBU) Over the last several weeks, numerous events have been held in Yerevan to commemorate the January 1990 pogroms in Baku in which approximately 50 ethnic Armenians were killed, and which, together with other events, would prompt over 350,000 Armenians to flee Azerbaijan. Larisa Alaverdian, a Baku native, Armenia’s first Human Rights Defender, and now an MP for the opposition Heritage party, said she hoped the events would address what she called Armenian society’s passivity and ignorance about the events 20 years ago. Calling this passivity dangerous, she said the 1990 pogroms were a continuation of earlier ones committed in Azerbaijan (1905-07, 1918, and 1988-92). Singling out Pan Turkism ideology as the catalyst for the massacres, Alaverdian said “it’s not accidental that the events that took place at the end of the 20th century are called the continuation of the same Turkish genocide realized against the Armenians, because it is the same ideology, the same policy, the same aims and the same people who realized it.” Alaverdian accused Azerbaijan of falsifying the facts of the various massacres in the late 1980s and early 1990s, and massacres as genocide.
¶3. (C) The first event to be held was a January 15 roundtable put on by Armenia’s Human Rights Defender (Ombudsman) entitled “Ethnic Cleanings (sic) in Azerbaijan: Baku 1990). (Comment: The Embassy declined the invitation to attend, given our view that these commemorations are unhelpful to the Turkey-Armenia normalization and NK settlement processes. End Comment.) During the week of January 13-19, special classes on the January 1990 pogroms were conducted in Armenian secondary schools, with Armenian’s Education Minister leading one of these classes. On January 19, members of youth NGOs, youth councils, and the youth wings of various political parties signed a petition addressed to international organizations, parliaments, and UN member states’ governments declaring their intention to fight for the international recognition of the “Armenian Genocide” in 1990 in Baku. Prime Minister Tigran Sargsian and other GOAM officials visited Armenia’s Genocide Memorial complex that same day to pay tribute to the victims of the January 1990 pogroms.
¶4. (SBU) On January 20, Armenia’s National Academy of Sciences held a conference devoted to the 20-year anniversary of the January 1990 pogroms in which a documentary on the pogroms was shown. Post learned that the Public Affairs and Information Center at the Presidency prepared the documentary (but was not attributed as the film’s sponsor), and that the PM, Speaker of the Parliament, and Yerevan’s mayor attended. Various political forces in the “parliament” of the “Nagorno Karabakh Republic” also issued a joint statement on the 20th devoted to the anniversary of the pogroms, appealing to the UN, the Council of Europe, the OSCE, and the parliaments of Minsk Group Co-chair countries to carry out an unbiased investigation of the crimes committed in Baku January 13-19, ¶1990.
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COMMEMORATIONS TO COUNTER BAKU’S ANTI-ARMENIAN PR
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¶5. (C) A contact at the UNDP personally invited by the Human Rights Defender to attend his roundtable told us that the Ombudsman held it to a) counter aggressive Azerbaijani “PR” on alleged NK war atrocities by ethnic Armenian forces, and b) highlight to Armenia’s domestic audience the official neglect that ethnic Armenian refugees from Azerbaijan have suffered since arriving in Armenia. When we contacted the Ombudsman directly, after his roundtable, he confirmed that this year’s commemorations were the first time that the GOAM has chosen to mark them at such a high level.
¶6. (C) Arman Melikian, the former “foreign minister” of the “Nagorno Karabakh Republic,” told us he welcomed the GOAM’s pro-active commemorations. He said that previously the authorities did not see a need for them, and thought “making noise about the pogroms” would hurt the NK conflict negotiations. Now, Melikian said, “they finally understood that the policy of silence was wrong and unproductive.” Khachik Kokobelian, an influential figure in the opposition Armenian National Congress, told us he views the commemorations as “a signal to Aliyev that “we were silent on this issue previously, but won’t be anymore.”
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COMMENT
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¶7. (C) This year’s commemorations have definitely received a higher level of government support and attention than in previous years. Many here think the GOAM has been too passive in informing the international community of what happened to Armenians in Azerbaijan in the closing days of the Soviet Union when Nagorno Karabakh ethnic Armenians broke away from Baku. They believe that the GOAM’s passivity has fostered ignorance of these modern-day Armenian tragedies abroad and at home, and ceded the moral high ground to Azerbaijan and its aggressive campaign to highlight Azerbaijani suffering. The involvement of the Presidency, PM, and Ombudsman in this year’s commemorations, as well as the government-backed events, suggest that the GOAM will take a more active role in commemorating the Armenian victims of recent ethnic violence to ensure that the world better understands that past.
YOVANOVITCH
