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PERSONAE NON-GRATA
BY GAREN YEGPARIAN
asbarez
Monday, September 10th, 2012
Hungary, Azerbaijan, Armenians... the latest mess. What to make of
this all?
Armenians are rightly incensed at the heroification of an axe murderer
by his government, that of Azerbaijan. Although deep down no one is
surprised at this Azeri behavior, it might be considered ill-mannered
to actually say so... So what's next? What to do?
Demonstrations are being held at Hungarian embassies and consulates
around the world (even the tiny Armenian community in India organized
one). In the Los Angeles area, the September 6 demonstration held
at the local consulate saw more than 600 people expressing their
disapproval of Hungary's behavior. In this case, we got a two-fer. The
building housing that consulate also housed the Azeri consulate. So
it was extra fun. And, when a note was to be delivered, building
security blocked entry, even when the "messenger was Paul Krekorian,
one of the 15 city councilmembers who govern the city in which both
of these consulates are located. That's pretty brassy!
But, it also suggests what one of class of actions we might pursue
might be!
Regardless of what you think of Hungary's protestations of
innocence and ignorance (that Azerbaijan's dictator-president
planned to unconscionably release of axe-murderer Ramil Safarov),
they did transfer a criminal serving a sentence to a country whose
governmental behavior is not the most stable. A government that is
high on oil-vapor, i.e. money. There is also the possibility that
this was an "I'll scratch your back and you scratch mine" type of
arrangement with Azerbaijan buying billions of dollars' worth of
Hungarian government debt. There's also another factor. Currently,
the party in power in Hungary is from the right-wing segment of the
political spectrum.
These parties tend to be more nationalistic. So it is surprising that
given Hungarians' experiences with the Turks, they did not connect
the dots so to anticipate that the Turks' self-avowed "cousins,"
the Azeris, might do something internationally unacceptable, given
historic patterns of behavior. If either of these considerations has
merit, then regardless of whether the Hungarians knew exactly what
was coming, they have some atonement to do.
Of course there's no question of Azerbaijan's culpability in this
mess. I even saw a headline suggesting this might trigger war. Plus
who knows, this might just be the lever needed to pry apart Azerbaijan
from that part of the international community that is hung up on the
misrepresented "inviolability of border's" that the Azeris use to
"support" their claim on Artsakh (as Harut Sassounian intimated in
his latest column).
So what can we do?
We should work on the local level- cities, counties, states (and
their equivalents in other jurisdictions and countries-villages,
towns, parishes, shires, provinces, etc.) to impose a cost -financial,
diplomatic, cultural, reputational, or whatever else we can come up
with- to show that this type of egregious, human rights and decency
violating action, will not go unnoticed, be quickly forgotten, or
end up imposing a heavy burden on the violators.
If you've got ideas on this front, please air them in whatever venue
you can find- a letter to the editor, a blog posting, even a Facebook
entry!
From: Baghdasarian
BY GAREN YEGPARIAN
asbarez
Monday, September 10th, 2012
Hungary, Azerbaijan, Armenians... the latest mess. What to make of
this all?
Armenians are rightly incensed at the heroification of an axe murderer
by his government, that of Azerbaijan. Although deep down no one is
surprised at this Azeri behavior, it might be considered ill-mannered
to actually say so... So what's next? What to do?
Demonstrations are being held at Hungarian embassies and consulates
around the world (even the tiny Armenian community in India organized
one). In the Los Angeles area, the September 6 demonstration held
at the local consulate saw more than 600 people expressing their
disapproval of Hungary's behavior. In this case, we got a two-fer. The
building housing that consulate also housed the Azeri consulate. So
it was extra fun. And, when a note was to be delivered, building
security blocked entry, even when the "messenger was Paul Krekorian,
one of the 15 city councilmembers who govern the city in which both
of these consulates are located. That's pretty brassy!
But, it also suggests what one of class of actions we might pursue
might be!
Regardless of what you think of Hungary's protestations of
innocence and ignorance (that Azerbaijan's dictator-president
planned to unconscionably release of axe-murderer Ramil Safarov),
they did transfer a criminal serving a sentence to a country whose
governmental behavior is not the most stable. A government that is
high on oil-vapor, i.e. money. There is also the possibility that
this was an "I'll scratch your back and you scratch mine" type of
arrangement with Azerbaijan buying billions of dollars' worth of
Hungarian government debt. There's also another factor. Currently,
the party in power in Hungary is from the right-wing segment of the
political spectrum.
These parties tend to be more nationalistic. So it is surprising that
given Hungarians' experiences with the Turks, they did not connect
the dots so to anticipate that the Turks' self-avowed "cousins,"
the Azeris, might do something internationally unacceptable, given
historic patterns of behavior. If either of these considerations has
merit, then regardless of whether the Hungarians knew exactly what
was coming, they have some atonement to do.
Of course there's no question of Azerbaijan's culpability in this
mess. I even saw a headline suggesting this might trigger war. Plus
who knows, this might just be the lever needed to pry apart Azerbaijan
from that part of the international community that is hung up on the
misrepresented "inviolability of border's" that the Azeris use to
"support" their claim on Artsakh (as Harut Sassounian intimated in
his latest column).
So what can we do?
We should work on the local level- cities, counties, states (and
their equivalents in other jurisdictions and countries-villages,
towns, parishes, shires, provinces, etc.) to impose a cost -financial,
diplomatic, cultural, reputational, or whatever else we can come up
with- to show that this type of egregious, human rights and decency
violating action, will not go unnoticed, be quickly forgotten, or
end up imposing a heavy burden on the violators.
If you've got ideas on this front, please air them in whatever venue
you can find- a letter to the editor, a blog posting, even a Facebook
entry!
From: Baghdasarian