Genocide

What if the conflict many call the "first genocide of the 21st century" weren't one at all? In the United States, many see the six-year war in Darfur as a bloody campaign by a Sudanese Arab-dominated government against rebellious "African" tribes in western Sudan. Two consecutive American presidents and several activist groups have defined it as genocide. But others, while acknowledging the severity of the violence, question whether it meets the legal definition of genocide.

With the jury unable to reach a verdict, a judge has declared a mistrial in the case of a Rwandan-born woman who was charged with covering up her role in that country's 1994 genocide in order to obtain U.S. citizenship. The trial of Beatrice Munyenyezi in Concord, N.H., had been closely watched because she was only the second Rwandan immigrant to stand trial in the United States on charges of lying on immigration applications about whether they participated in the killings of more than half a million people in the central African nation.

With the jury unable to reach a verdict, a judge has declared a mistrial in the case of a Rwandan-born woman who was charged with covering up her role in that country's 1994 genocide in order to obtain U.S. citizenship. The trial of Beatrice Munyenyezi in Concord, N.H., had been closely watched because she was only the second Rwandan immigrant to stand trial in the United States on charges of lying on immigration applications about whether they participated in the killings of more than half a million people in the central African nation.

In a March 5 editorial , The Times opposed a bill in the French parliament that would have made it a crime to deny the Armenian genocide. The bill was proposed by President Nicolas Sarkozy, then struck down byFrance's Constitutional Council. Now Sarkozy says he wants to revive it. Reader Berj Proodian wrote suggesting that The Times may have been hypocritical on the subject: "In the past year, the L.A. Times has printed [several] editorials condemning France's law against denying the Armenian genocide.

Re "Can Genocide End in Forgiveness," by Michael Shifter, Opinion, March 7: The recent reports concerning the Commission for Historical Clarification in Guatemala provide us with the opportunity for some clarification of recent moral dilemmas in the U.S. Spokespersons for the right wing in America have decried the lack of morality that characterizes the president and the majority of the American people who support him. They seem intent on claiming the...

Regarding Crispin Sartwell's "The Genocidal Killer in the Mirror," Commentary, April 11: I could not agree more. I was wondering when somebody would point out this obvious truth. But let's get the genders right. It is only true if the face in the mirror is male. Maxine Del Gallo El Monte

Armenian Americans descended from victims of the 1915-18 massacre by Ottoman Turks can't sue foreign insurance companies for unpaid claims because the U.S. government doesn't legally recognize that an Armenian genocide occurred, a federal appeals court ruled Thursday. A Glendale priest and thousands of other Armenians whose relatives were among the 1.2 million killed had won a partial victory two years ago. U.S. District Judge Christina A. Snyder said then that a 2000 law passed by the California Legislature gave the descendants standing to sue three German insurance companies.

Issa Munyangaju is willing to tell his story, but he requires a beer. He sips a Primus in a dim concrete bar and talks about the houseboy he shot during the genocide. They were friends, he says, until they came to a roadblock manned by Hutu militiamen. They gave Munyangaju, also Hutu, a gun. They told him he would be killed if he didn't execute his friend, whose ethnic group, the Tutsis, had been targeted for extermination. "I followed their orders," Munyangaju, 44, says. He put a bullet in the young man's stomach, and was within earshot when another shot finished him off. While he was in prison, government officials visited to tout the benefits of confessing at a type of trial known as gacaca (pronounced ga-CHA-cha)

There will come a day, some said, when Armenians won't need to take to the streets in protest, and they will simply honor slain ancestors with peaceful lament. But that day didn't appear any closer Saturday, as Armenians gathered worldwide to commemorate the Armenian genocide of 1915, which claimed the lives of about 1.2 million Armenians under Ottoman-ruled Turkey. In Yerevan, Armenia's capital, hundreds of thousands laid flowers at a monument to the victims, while across Southern California, Armenian families marched, prayed and paused to remember lost great-grandparents, great-grand-uncles and great-grand-aunts —loved ones who were deported, starved, arrested and executed almost 100 years ago. The Turkish government does not recognize the genocide, and a long-debated resolution that would call for the United States to officially acknowledge the killings faces opposition in Congress.

A YouTube video that prompted the suspension of Tucson shooting suspect Jared Lee Loughner in September was released Friday by officials at Pima Community College and included rambling statements such as "We are examining the torture of students" and "This is genocide in America. " The video, no longer on the website, was released to The Times following a public records request and offers the extended example of Loughner's voice. A campus police officer who saw the video "positively recognized the voice and the reflection in the window as student Jared Loughner," according to a school police report.

If you live in a country that truly values free speech, then no matter what opinion you hold - whether it's rational or irrational - you have the right to voice it. You can deny the Holocaust happened, or that men walked on the moon, without fear that you will be brought up on criminal charges. (Of course, you still risk public rebuke or humiliation from people who hold the opinion that you are ridiculous.) That freedom is generally considered a fundamental human right. So it was reassuring when France's Constitutional Council last week struck down a proposed law that would have criminalized the denial or minimizing of the genocide of Armenians at the hands of Ottoman Turks in the early 20th century.

Survivors of Armenian genocide victims can't sue German insurance companies for failing to pay claims because only the federal government can bring foreign entities to court, the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled Thursday. The 11-judge panel dismissed the case brought nearly a decade ago by Southern California Armenians, probably putting an end to their efforts to compel the German companies to pay survivors' benefits on policies sold to victims between 1875 and 1923. A 2000 revision to California's Civil Code allowed California courts to consider the Armenians' insurance claims beyond the deadline for petitioning for payouts by subsidiaries of the German insurance company now known as Munich Re. "The Constitution gives the federal government the exclusive authority to administer foreign affairs," the appeals court said in a unanimous ruling.

The genocide issue Re "Genocide bill riles Turkey," Jan. 28 The Armenian genocide question will not go away in France or in Turkey until the genocide is recorded, recognized and honored with dignity in Turkey. Getting to this point has taken nearly 100 years of parrying Turkish opinion that the killing of more than 1 million Armenians starting in 1915 does not meet the legal standard of genocide - intent to exterminate a race or a group - although many historians agree it does.

The object of the game is to see how hard a hand on the computer screen can slap a cartoon image of French President Nicolas Sarkozy. It made its debut only hours after the French Senate passed legislation Monday that would criminalize denial of the Armenian genocide. That bill has caused a furor in Turkey, further damaging a relationship chilled by Sarkozy's staunch opposition to Turkey's long-standing bid for membership in the European Union. Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan declared it racist and a "massacre of free thought.

On Monday, the French Senate is scheduled to debate and possibly vote on a bill that would criminalize denial of the Armenian genocide of 1915, along with any other events recognized as genocide in French law. The bill has passed the lower house of Parliament. The Senate should reject it, in the name of free speech, the freedom of historical inquiry and Article 11 of France's pathbreaking 1789 Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen ("The free communication of ideas and opinions is one of the most precious rights.…")

REPORTING FROM JERUSALEM -- Israeli lawmakers plan to discuss the possibility of setting a day to commemorate the Armenian genocide of 1915-18. But the initiative is causing tension ahead of the discussion, scheduled for Monday, because of concerns over the reaction by Turkey, which denies a genocide took place. Until now, similar commemoration proposals have been referred to parliamentary committees that meet behind closed doors. This will be the first time the subject will be discussed at a committee whose meetings are public.

There is no space remaining in hell today. The doomed already fill it. They live, sleep, eat, rot and die squeezed together four men per square yard in the roofless brick box that is Gitarama Prison. Built to confine 400 on a ridge among the banana and potato communes of central Rwanda, the prison yard is now engorged with 6,793. There is no room to lie and sleep, no space to sit.

An international tribunal in The Hague upheld a life sentence for genocide handed down to former Rwandan Prime Minister Jean Kambanda for having "instigated, aided and abetted" the slaughter of hundreds of thousands of Tutsis and moderate Hutus in 1994. The ruling by the U.N. appellate court permanently validated the world's first conviction of a head of government for genocide. More than 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus were massacred by extremist Hutus.

Should people have the right to deny historical fact? The Times' editorial board thinks so, writing on Dec. 21 that a proposed law in France to criminalize denial of the Armenian genocide would be a "monstrous violation of free speech. " Reader Janet Gross of Los Angeles took issue with the editorial board's view that genocide denial is an opinion worthy of free-speech protection: "The right to the opinion that the Armenian genocide in 1915 perpetrated by the Turks never happened should be protected?

  Despite threats by Turkey and vocal opposition at home, French lawmakers approved a bill Thursday making it illegal to publicly deny that the Armenian genocide occurred. In retaliation, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan recalled his country's ambassador and said bilateral visits would be suspended and joint military operations with France canceled, Agence France-Presse news service reported. Earlier Thursday, thousands of people waving Turkish flags protested the impending vote outside the National Assembly in Paris.