Yesterday marked the first anniversary of the murder of ethnic Armenian newspaper editor and journalist Hrant Dink in Istanbul, Turkey. Dink was shot outside the office of the Agos newspaper on 19 January 2007. A prolific advocate for civil, human and minority rights in Turkey, Dink was killed by 17-year-old Ogun Samast. His murder shocked the world and marked one of few times when Armenian, Turkish and other bloggers spoke about an event making headline news across the world with one voice.

A year on and the conversation in the blogosphere might be less, but many people the world over — and not least in Armenia and Turkey — remember Dink. A rare voice calling for reconciliation between Armenians and Turks, Dink’s message and legacy is still remembered today. A week ago, Blogian posted information on Hrant Dink memorial events to be held the world over.

Internations Musings makes a short but to the point post consisting of just two photographs taken in Istanbul with the title “I believe darkness will one day reunite with light.” Rastî simply posts various quotes and photographs, including one from the Armenian Foreign Minister, Vartan Oskanian.

The brutality, the impunity, the violence of Hrant’s murder serves several political ends. First, it makes Turkey less interesting for Europe, which is exactly what some in the Turkish establishment want. Second, it scares away Armenians and other minorities in Turkey, from pursuing their civil and human rights. Third, it scares those bold Turks who are beginning to explore these complicated, sensitive subjects in earnest.

The full post is available on Global Voices Online.

A1 Plus reports that an explosion has destroyed the front door of the offices of Chorrord Ishkhanutyun, a newspaper supportive of the former president, Levon Ter Petrosian. The newspaper is very outspoken in its criticism of the government and the president almost to the extent that it can hardly be called a newspaper, but anyway.

Today early in the morning the entrance door of “Chorrord Ishkhanutyun” editorial office was exploded. The director of the newspaper Mher Ghalechyan informed “A1+” that the incident took place at about 4.30 in the morning. According to him, explosives were installed on the door. The iron bars of the door were completely damaged, the windows and chandeliers were broken. Fortunately, the equipments were not damaged. At this moment the employees of the newspaper are cleaning up the rooms. Police employees are at the place of the incident. They have started a criminal case after the investigation and examination of the place.

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Via Unzipped, Armenia Now reports that a 59-year-old cleaning woman has been killed by a bear kept by the head of Armenia’s Military Police. According to the report, it is also believed that the Military Police headquarters in Yerevan is home to a tiger raising serious concerns as to the rule of law and abuse of position in Armenia.

The family refuses to give the alleged victim’s surname; they only say that a woman named Jasmine, 59, who was a cleaning lady at the department, was killed on Thursday. The sources say the bear escaped its cage while attendants entered to feed it. It is said that the woman was taken to hospital where she died of wounds. The family says it was called to identify the body and saw that she had suffered an attack.

[…]

The family refuses to give further information. The Military Police refused to answer ArmeniaNow’s question concerning the alleged event.

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After a hectic few days, I’m trying to catch up with posting links to news on significant events as they pertain to Armenia. Perhaps one of the most interesting stories is news that an MP from the ruling Republican party, Tigran Arzakantsian, was last week shot, stabbed and hospitalized after a night out gambling in a Moscow casino. Last Wednesday, RFE/RL reported on the incident.

“According to eyewitnesses, a fight broke out in the casino among three of the guests” shortly after 4:00 a.m. (0000 GMT),” the Russian news agency Interfax quoted a police official as saying. “During the fight, one of the participants twice shot his opponent, who has been hospitalized…. Doctors are fighting for his life,” the official said.

“It was in the casino of the hotel,” another unnamed Russian police official told the AFP news agency. “Two unidentified attackers came up to him and stabbed him several times. He fought back, then one of them shot him in the arm. Then they ran away.”

[…]

Arzakantsian, who was reelected to the Armenian parliament on the HHK ticket last May, had already been hospitalized in the Russian capital after being beaten up at another local casino in March 2006. Reports in the Armenian press likewise linked the incident to a gambling dispute, saying that the 41-year-old businessman lost as much as $800,000 on a single night and failed to pay up. He denied those reports.

The latest incident coincided with a visit to Moscow by an Armenian government delegation headed by Prime Minister Serzh Sarkisian. Arzakantsian was reportedly present Sarkisian’s meeting with Armenian university students there held on Tuesday evening. Both Sharmazanov and a government spokeswoman in Yerevan said he was not a member of Sarkisian’s delegation.

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The BBC has a story detailing new data revealed by a human rights group on race attacks in Russia. As detailed in the local press and many blogs here, Armenians have fallen victim to such attacks although so too have other minorities from the Caucasus. Indeed, according to some sources, Russian ultra-nationalists do not differentiate between Armenian, Azerbaijani, Georgian and Chechen which is kind of ironic given the ethnic tensions here.

Sova says 38 people have been murdered in racist killings so far this year, and well over 300 people have been injured, mainly in stabbings.

According to its figures, the most common victims of racist killings are from the Caucasus and Central Asia.

It also warns that Russia’s skinheads have begun targeting other minorities, including homosexuals.

Sova says that Moscow, St Petersburg and Russia’s fourth city - Nizhniy Novgorod - are the leaders in racist attacks.

It says 24 people have died in Moscow alone this year as a result of racially motivated killings by what it terms “skinheads”.

The word “skinhead” in Russia implies something much more than appearance.

It is the generic term given to the country’s ultra-right activists, who continue to form organisations and carry out attacks with what anti-racism groups say is impunity.

Sova estimates there are more than 60,000 skinheads in Russia.

It says its figures suggest the toll of racist attacks is increasing, but prosecutors remain reluctant to attribute racial motivation to killings of ethnic minorities.

Instead, they often put them down to simple “hooliganism”.

Campaigners say this is because the authorities have traditionally turned a blind eye to racist killings, and used nationalism as a political weapon.

Furthermore, a substantial proportion of ordinary Russians voice opinions that would be criminally racist in many European countries.

The full article is here, and all of this is just one reason why many of us are concerned by the appearance of neo-Nazi slogans and emblems here. Yes, Armenia and some other CIS republics are simply years behind in following similar trends in Russia, but we can definitely do without this one, I think.

Panorama reports that the Prosecutor for the Lori region, Albert Ghazarian, was killed in what is almost certainly an assassination on 25 August. Ghazarian was shot dead on his way home in Vanadzor at 00.20 am.

As Prosecutor Office Press Secretary Sona Truzyan informs, Ghazaryan has been shot with four bullets and was injured in his back, shoulders and neck. The investigation discovered four Macarov type gun shells at the place of the accident.

The operative-investigation group lead by temporary acting chief prosecutor of Armenia, Mnatsakan Sargsyan, has been at the place of the accident. The place of the accident has been investigated and the body has been examined. Medical and judiciary tests have been appointed.

A criminal case has been instituted based on article 104 of the Armenian Criminal Code. A qualified team from prosecutor’s office, police and national security services has been set up. All measures are taken to unveil the circumstances of the murder and to discover the guilty. Preliminary investigation results will be further reported.

Itar Tass reports that the Russian and Armenian Foreign Ministries are taking very seriously the early Monday morning shooting of Russian army officer Dmitry Yermolov. That attack which appears to have occurred in Arinj, better known as being the home village of Gagik Tsarukian, seems very spontaneous and frighteningly unpredictable. I don’t think I’ve ever heard such a story of seemingly random violence in Armenia.

Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Grigory Karasin discussed the recent killing of a Russian officer on the Yerevan outskirts with his Armenian counterpart Gegam Garibdzhanian by phone on Tuesday.

“The Armenian diplomat said that the national government controls the investigation,” the Russian Foreign Ministry said. “An investigation team has been formed, and suspects are being questioned. The Armenian Foreign Ministry promised to inform Russia about the investigation progress.”

A Russian officer was killed on the Yerevan outskirts, the Armenian Prosecutor General’s Office said earlier in the day.

According to the prosecutors, assailants stopped a vehicle carrying five Russian servicemen in the village of Arindzh in the small morning hours of Monday. The servicemen were beaten and allowed to drive off. The assailants opened fire at the departing car and injured Lt. Dmitry Yermolov. He died on the way to hospital. Another passenger was hospitalized with a gunshot wound.

Two suspects were apprehended, and their hunting guns were seized, the prosecutors said.

Following on from the 20 May shootout in Armenia’s second largest city of Gyumri, RFE/RL reports that one of those involved — Spartak Ghukasian, the notorious son of the city’s controversial Mayor — has handed himself in after two months on the run. The shootout has gained particular notoriety given the death of a young boy at the same time as the incident. Apparently killed by an explosive device, the police still maintain that there is no connection between the two incidents.

Ghukasian Jr. turned himself in the day after his controversial father was summoned to a meeting in Yerevan with Prosecutor-General Aghvan Hovsepian. A newspaper report on Friday said the Gyumri mayor, who has claimed to be unaware of his son’s whereabouts, was “offered” to hand over the suspect to law-enforcement authorities within 24 hours. He was reportedly received by President Robert Kocharian earlier this week.

[…]

In an earlier televised interview, Ghukasian vehemently denied Spartak’s involvement in the gunfight that left at least two people wounded. He accused the media and his rivals of discrediting his family by implicating it in other instances of violence reported in Gyumri in recent years. He also rejected mounting calls for his resignation.

The flamboyant mayor, who is a senior member of the governing Republican Party of Armenia (HHK), was seriously wounded in a mysterious drive-by shooting that killed three of his bodyguards about last April.

The shootout coincided with the May 20 disappearance of a 12-year-old boy whose decomposed body was found in an abandoned Gyumri shack a week ago. Many local residents suspect that Robert Simonian may have been hit by a stray bullet or run over by one of the cars involved in the shootout.

Investigators have effectively dismissed this theory, saying that Simonian most probably died as a result of playing with a hand grenade or another explosive device.

Residents of neighboring houses did not report hearing any explosions on May 20, however. Many also wonder how the police failed to stumble on Simonian’s corpse when they scoured the entire shanty town with sniffer dogs in the days that followed his disappearance.

The prosecutors have said the precise cause of the boy’s death will be established by a more meticulous forensic examination. According to Truzian, the examination is still not complete.

Anyway, I still don’t buy the official line that the boy’s death was coincidental and I’m also somewhat disappointed to see that no other blogger apart from Garo (aka Christian Garbis) at Notes from Hairenik and myself covered or offered commentary on this disturbing story. If the two incidents are connected — something which most people I’ve spoken to believe — then this is really one of the most appalling crimes I’ve heard about in Armenia in nearly nine years of being here.

The RFE/RL update is here.

In what is the most shocking story that I have heard in the nearly nine years I’ve been here, RFE/RL reports that the decomposed corpse of a dead boy has been finally found, his body apparently riddled with shrapnel. Nobody is going to buy that story since the 12- year old boy, Robert Simonian, went missing on the same day as a high profile gun fight between two groups of men that included the son of the Mayor of Armenia’s second largest city, Gyumri, on 20 May.

Prosecutors in Yerevan confirmed on Thursday reports that Simonian was found dead in a makeshift house the previous night shortly after the stench of his decomposing body was felt by residents of adjacent home. A family that owns the house left Gyumri seven years ago and it has been empty since then.

A spokeswoman for the Office of the Prosecutor-General, Sona Truzian, told RFE/RL that the local police and prosecutors believe that he was apparently killed by a hand grenade or another military explosive device. “A [preliminary] examination of the site and the body found numerous traces of splinters from military ammunition on Robert Simonian’s body and the walls, floor and ceiling of the house,” she said. “The precise cause of the death will be determined by a forensic examination.”

Asked whether there might be a connection between the boy’s death and the May 20 shootout, Truzian said, “We will be able to answer this question only after the end of the inquiry, when the cause of the child’s death is ascertained.”

The prosecutors said earlier that the gunfight, which left at least two people wounded, was between two groups of local youths led by Ghukasian’s notorious son Spartak and Rustam Sargsian, son of a prominent local businessman. They were promptly charged under relevant articles of the Armenian Criminal Code. But despite official arrest warrants, both young men and most of their alleged accomplices remain at large, with the investigators claiming to have been unable to track them down so far.

The Gyumri mayor, who narrowly survived an apparent assassination attempt in April, claims that he is unaware of his son’s whereabouts. He is a senior member of the governing Republican Party of Armenia (HHK).

Ghukasian and members of his family, who have extensive business interests in a city still reeling from the catastrophic 1988 earthquake, have repeatedly been linked with violent incidents reported in Gyumri in recent years. The latest high-profile gunshots deepened a widespread sense of insecurity reigning among local people. Many of them feel that the Ghukasian family and other local business clans enjoy impunity thanks to their wealthy and government connections.

The abandoned shelter where Simonian’s body was found is not far from another makeshift house where the dead boy lived with his parents. The police claimed to have combed the entire Gyumri slum with sniffer dogs in the days that followed his disappearance. It is not clear why they failed to detect the corpse and why neighbors did smell its foul odor earlier.

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While most of us were focusing on last week’s parliamentary election, another event occurred that shouldn’t have paled into insignificance in comparison. On Saturday 12 May, 30-year-old Levon Gulyan died under mysterious circumstances in police custody. The authorities claim that Gulyan died while attempting escape from police custody, but human rights activists and his family suspect that he died during interrogation at the hands of police.

While it has long been reported by international human rights organizations that the police here rely on torture and physical abuse to extract confessions from suspects, Gulyan’s death is even more serious given that he was merely a witness to a deadly shooting that occurred outside his restaurant a few days earlier.

RFE/RL reported the news.

“They probably hit him in the head with something and he died,” Ghulian’s uncle, Toros Papazian, told RFE/RL. “They just don’t want to admit that he died in a police office.”

Papazian said his nephew’s body bore traces of violence such as a broken rib and thigh bone and bruises on his heels. “Levon was accidentally tortured to death before being thrown out of the window,” he said.

Ghulian was the owner of a restaurant in Yerevan’s southern Shengavit district near which a man was shot dead on May 9 in a reported dispute between two groups of unknown individuals. He was first detained and questioned at Shengavit’s police department.

“They were forcing Levon to name the murderer,” Papazian said. “He didn’t know that, but they kept beating him.”

Papazian added that Ghulian was for days repeatedly interrogated by the Shengavit police and prosecutors before being taken to the national Police Service’s Directorate General of Criminal Investigations on Saturday. He said the deputy chief of the department, Hovik Tamamian, personally drove him to his office.

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Avan, Yerevan, Republic of Armenia © Onnik Krikorian / Oneworld Multimedia for EurasiaNet 2007

As mentioned previously, news of two bomb blasts at Prosperous Armenia party offices in Yerevan meant that I cut short my trip with the Heritage Party to the regions today. News had come in soon after we set off for Dilijan and I eventually returned to Yerevan at around 4pm to make my way to the site of one of the blasts in the Avan district of the capital.

Workers from one of Tsarukian’s companies were already replacing the windows of the ground floor shop, but somewhat ironically, most of the damage appeared to have hit the adjoining shop where staff were still visibly upset. A1 Plus reports that the shop’s owner estimates the damage at $25,000 in addition to blowing out the windows of apartments above.

RFE/RL has more on both blasts.

Two Yerevan offices of the pro-presidential Prosperous Armenia Party (BHK) were rocked by explosions early Thursday in what President Robert Kocharian promptly condemned as an attempt to destabilize the political situation in the country ahead of next month’s parliamentary elections.

The blasts occurred in the space of two hours early in the morning, blowing out the doors and windows of the BHK offices in the city’s northern Kanaker-Zeytun and Avan districts but not injuring anyone. Police said they were caused by explosive devices planted at the entrance to the premises.

The Avan office, which occupies a single room on the ground floor of an apartment building, was particularly damaged by the blast. BHK workers were already repairing it early in the afternoon. Several apartments in the 16-story building also had their windows shattered by the blast.

[…]

Police quickly examined the sites of the bombings and launched a criminal investigation under an article of Armenia’s Criminal Code that deals with substantial material damage deliberately inflicted on private property.

According to Kocharian’s press secretary, Victor Soghomonian, the president of the republic, who is widely believed to support the BHK, instructed law-enforcement authorities to “take all necessary measures to solve the crime as soon as possible.”

[…]

The governing Republican Party of Armenia (HHK), one of the BHK’s main election rivals, promptly condemned the blasts, in what looked like a denial of any responsibility for them. “Such actions are taken by those who are incapable of waging an honest and just political struggle and are ready to destabilize the situation in the country,” the party said in a statement.

The HHK, which is led by Prime Minister Serzh Sarkisian, and the BHK are widely seen as the two frontrunners in the Armenian election campaign. There are fears that the obviously uneasy rapport between their leaders could flare up into a bitter confrontation on election day.

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