In a matter of a few hours at time of writing, Georgians will go to the polls to vote in a presidential election called prematurely after a state of emergency followed opposition protests in Tbilisi at the beginning of November. After Mikhail Saakashvili came to power when street protests forced his predecessor, Eduard Shevardnadze, to resign during the so-called “Rose Revolution,” things have improved significantly in Georgia.

However, many Georgians are quite openly critical of Saakashvili. While still believing in the premise of the 2003 revolution and still convinced of the need for reform, many consider him mentally unstable and even question the official account of the circumstances surrounding prime minister Zurab Zhvania’s untimely death in 2005. Even so, despite some setbacks, Georgia was considered a beacon of relative democracy in the South Caucasus.

Until November 2007, that is. When riot police used excessive force, tear gas and rubber bullets to disperse an opposition rally in downtown Tbilisi, concerns about democracy in Georgia came to the fore. Today, the former Soviet republic’s democratic credentials will again be put to the test. However, the BBC reports that the opposition are already crying foul.

The main opposition candidate in Georgia’s snap presidential election has accused the authorities of preparing to rig Saturday’s vote.

“What is currently happening in Georgia is not a free election,” Levan Gachechiladze said in a statement broadcast on Georgian television.

[…]

Mr Gachechiladze complained that “we cannot use media outlets or promotional means”.

He added that a “smear campaign” was being staged against the opposition in the media.

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In the interest of transparency given the tendency for many sites to inflate the number of readers, with some confusing hits and page views with the number of actual accesses, Google Analytics reports the following in terms of statistics for this blog in 2007:

Visitors:	94,404
Absolute Unique Visitors:	58,742
Page views	176,175

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When I moved to Armenia in 1998 I have to admit that I wasn’t prepared for the high level of corruption to be found in almost every sphere from international organizations to the public sector. In fact, it didn’t take long to discover at all, but what struck me most was how politics and the economy were pretty much simply a battle between competing clans with the population ostracized from anything remotely resembling an albeit embryonic democratic system.

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With 2008 almost upon us, it’s time once again for me to wish readers a Happy New Year. Under normal circumstances I’d also announce that the number of posts will be less as a result, but with the presidential election in Georgia a matter of days away, that hardly seems likely. On the other hand, with parliamentary elections held in Armenia in May earlier this year and the unofficial pre-election campaign starting at the end of 2006, perhaps the situation is not too dissimilar to that this blog found itself in a year ago when the situation was almost as hectic as it is now.

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Yezidis, Alagyaz, Aragatsotn Region, Republic of Armenia © Onnik Krikorian / Oneworld Multimedia 1998

My feature article and photographs for Geographical, the magazine of the Royal Geographical Society, were meant to be published in the January 2008 edition, but now it looks like it’s already been published in the December issue. Unfortunately, the full text of the article is not available online yet, but when it is I’ll post another link and an excerpt. Until then, this is what Geographical has for now.

A people divided

Armenia’s Yezidi people practise one of the purest versions of Kurdish culture, but, as Onnik Krikorian discovers, outside forces have riven the small community.

My last published article on Yezidis in Armenia was for the Institute for War and Peace Reporting and can be read online here, and many of the transcripts of the interviews I’ve done since 1998 are here. Also, until the full Geographical article can be read online, there’s plenty of posts and links to previous articles on Yezidis in Armenia and Georgia under the relevant category.

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Myrthe from The Armenian Odar has a new blog, The Armenian Odar Reads, and as I just picked up accesses coming from her latest post I decided to take a look. Anyway, a little surprising given that the new site is a book review one, but after reading about Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes I discovered why. About a week ago I gave her a copy of Armenia: Poverty, Transition & Democracy by yours truly, and she has indeed taken a look. Not really a review, but it’s always nice to read such nice words even if they are from a friend.

After finishing Sherlock Holmes, I got up, did some chores in the house and then sat down again to read. This time I read Armenia: Poverty, Transition & Democracy by Onnik Krikorian. He is a friend of mine who works as a freelance photographer and journalist here in Armenia. His blog is in my opinion the best English language blog on Armenia and one of the best sources of news on Armenia (and no, I am not saying that because I happen to know the guy). He runs another blog here covering the run-up to the presidential elections in Armenia on February 19 next year. Onnik’s book consists of several articles on Armenia accompanied by his pictures. His website and blogs are well worth a look and a read.

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PanArmenian.Net reports that Armenian bloggers have protested the opening of the Days of Azerbaijan posted earlier. Well, it’s fair to say that they don’t represent Armenian bloggers as a group, but it is interesting to see the use of the word blog in a headline or story. Usually local publications here take news from time to time off blogs, but fail to quote the source while the rest of the world’s media see no problem in doing so at all.

Anyway, the group of bloggers do not speak for all of us, and it’s interesting to note that such an event could not have taken place without the permission of the Ministry of Education and Science (I assume). Certainly, those coming from Azerbaijan would have had to receive visas, and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs have welcomed the initiative as well, so perhaps this group of bloggers should have instead sent bars of soap there too, but anyway.

What is interesting, however, is that this protest appears to have been staged before RFE/RL published its story so why wasn’t it mentioned? On the other hand, this PanArmenian.Net article is hardly objective either, but at least doesn’t leave out a significant incident which RFE/RL appears to have done.

/PanARMENIAN.Net/ A group of Armenian bloggers handed a symbolic present – a peace of soap - to Georgy Vanyan, the initiator of “Days of Azerbaijan” in Yerevan. The present was handed with a wish “for better work.”

The measure had for an object to teach the organizers of the so-called Days of Azerbaijan a good lesson.

December 17, a rather strange event titled “Days of Azerbaijan” took place in Yerevan. The event was organized by well known director of Mkhitar Sabastatsi educational complex Ashot Bleyan and his assistant Georgy Vanyan, who represents a Caucasus center of peace sponsored by the UK Embassy. Not to mention absurdity of the event jointly with a state which tries to justify Armenia and Nagorno Karabakh’s blockade in the eyes of the world community, it’s noteworthy that such an initiative could hardly occur in Azerbaijan.

The RA Armenian Ministry of Science and Education did not react.

Armenian schoolchildren were offered to write a composition with a title “Open letter to my peer”, “How I see Azerbaijan”, “Armenia-Azerbaijan: the future.”

Comments are unnecessary, but taking into account the writings of the schoolchildren who are being filled with the ideas that “Baku and Ankara are Armenia’s best friends and the evil comes from Diaspora and Dashnaks, who keep on speaking of a genocide.” No one wants war, especially Armenians. But there is a difference between desire for peace and treason. Unfortunately, Bleyan and Vanyan are not the people to understand this.

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LVB.net has an interesting post on the impact of blogging on society and politics based on a moderated working group on the same subject which was part of the European Bloggers (Un)Conference. Interestingly, E-Channel’s Gegham Vardanyan and TOL Georgia’s Irakli Jibladze were present at the event and some points are worth republishing here.

1. In the UK, an Ipsos Mori poll found that only 16% of people trust journalists. It’s not as much because of what they write, but also because what they don’t write. While public broadcasters depend from politics for funding, commercial media depend from advertizing and profits. Because of their individual perspective, bloggers are seen as more independent and honest. Still, bloggers can learn some things from professional journalists in fields like writing style, clarity and efficiency.

2. Does this mean that bloggers have to be objective? Not at all. The new age is an age of opinion, not of facts. In order to be credible, honesty is more important than neutrality or objectivity.

3. Political campaigns are already changing into a more participatory way as a result of web 2.0 and blogs. However, this effect is still superficial and its impact on political programs is still low. Especially in the US we see that web 2.0 are effective for fundraising. But blogging and web 2.0 are not just about politics, it’s about society. They are transforming society by giving a voice to individuals and groups. Ideas are now also flowing from the bottom to the top instead of exclusively top down.

4. In countries without free media, bloggers usually get in trouble only when they start to have a real impact. But for these bloggers it is difficult to get a real impact, as their blogs are not picked up by the mainstream media. Sometimes the impact can be indirect, through world opinion and foreign media. Check out globalvoicesonline.org for news about censorship and freedom of expression.

5. How can bloggers measure their impact? Counters and statistics only tell one part of the story. It’s not the quantity that counts, but the quality of your readership. A few opinion makers as readers can have a greater impact than thousands of other readers. Surveys can be useful to discover who is reading your blog.

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In addition to acting as the Caucasus Editor for Global Voices Online, some exciting news, I hope. I’ve been asked to act as the Armenia coordinator/contact person for a new online media project set up by France 24.

The Observers is a France 24 site that aims to:

Enrich our coverage of international current affairs with eyewitness accounts from ‘observers’- that’s to say those people who are at the heart of events. Videos, texts, photos- none of the content is produced by professional journalists- but everything is selected, verified, translated and explained by our team.

Give you the opportunity to discuss current affairs with ‘observers’ chosen by France 24, or with ‘friends’, sorted according to their expertise and interests.

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RFE/RL carries a report by AFP that Hrant Dink, the ethnic Armenian editor of the Agos newspaper in Turkey who was murdered in Istanbul, Turkey, earlier this year has been named as one of its World Press Freedom Heroes by the International Press Institute.

“Hrant Dink’s nomination as our 52nd World Press Freedom Hero is a tribute to his bravery, but also an acknowledgement of his significant contribution to freedom of expression and press freedom in Turkey,” IPI Director Johann P. Fritz said.

Dink, a well-known Turkish-Armenian editor and columnist, was murdered in Istanbul on 19 January 2007. He had received numerous death threats from Turkish nationalists who viewed his journalism as treacherous.

Dink was shot twice in the head and once in the neck by a Turkish nationalist outside the offices of the newspaper he founded in 1996. He had faced legal problems for denigrating “Turkishness” under Article 301 of the Turkish Penal Code in his articles about the massacre of Armenians during the First World War. In July 2006, he lost an appeal over a suspended six-month prison sentence handed down for violating Article 301. His prosecution stemmed from an article in 2004 about the 1915-17 massacres of Armenians under the Ottoman Empire. Aside from this criminal case, Dink was also facing prosecution for a second article condemning his conviction.

Born on 15 September 1954, Dink was best-known for reporting on human and minority rights in Turkey and for advocating Turkish-Armenian reconciliation. In a February 2006 interview, he said he hoped his reporting would pave the way for peace between the two peoples. “I want to write and ask how we can change this historical conflict into peace,” he said.

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The IPI award was formally handed over to his widow, Rakel Dink, on 10 December in Vienna. “The murder of Hrant Dink deprived Turkey of one of its most courageous and independent voices and it was a terrible event for Turkish press freedom in general,” Fritz said. “Hrant Dink is one of at least 91 journalists murdered so far in 2007. In most cases, these murders occurred with impunity. We call on governments around the world to ensure that those responsible for these heinous crimes are brought to justice.”

Via the Committee to Protect Bloggers, IFEX carries a report from the Committee to Protect Journalists on the arrest of Tunisian blogger and freelance journalist Slim Boukhdhir. He is charged with “aggression against a public employee” and the “violation of public morality standards.”

Under the penal code, the charges could bring 18 months in prison. Boukhdhir was also charged under a 1993 national identity card law with “refusal to show his identification card to a public security agent.” He could be fined under that law.

A court in the suburban city of Sakiet Ezzeit denied his release today. The hearing is scheduled to resume on December 4. Authorities did not disclose the basis for the charges.

“The Tunisian government is again using the judicial system to silence independent-minded journalists and bloggers,” CPJ Executive Director Joel Simon said. “Slim Boukhdhir has been a frequent target of assault and harassment by plainclothes police and it appears the courts are now taking their turn.”

The news is a week old, but I only came across it a few minutes ago and consider that bloggers writing on political themes anywhere in the world should give such cases exposure on their blogs. Anyway, more information can be found here.