Genocide

Thousands lined the streets of the capital Yerevan to protest the first visit by a Turkish leader and to demand that Turkey acknowledge World War I massacres of Armenian civilians as genocide. President Abdullah Gul was invited by Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan to watch a World Cup qualifying soccer match. Turkey won, 2-0. Many hoped the diplomacy would help the two neighbors overcome decades of antagonism.

Nearly 700 Ivory Coast farmworkers alleging that they became sterile from exposure to a U.S.-made pesticide can't claim to be victims of genocide because the producers didn't intend harm, a federal appeals court ruled Wednesday. The pesticide, known as DBCP for dibromochloropropane, has been banned in the United States since 1979. The Africans' suit against Amvac Chemical Corp. of Newport Beach, Dole Food Co. of Westlake Village, Dow Chemical Co. and Shell Oil Co.

Re "When mass rape turns into genocide," Opinion, Nov. 13 David Scheffer is correct. The International Criminal Court must include the crime of rape as genocide in its long-anticipated arrest warrant for Sudan's president, Omar Hassan Ahmed Bashir. The threat of these arrest warrants has finally caused a change in the status quo, after six years of genocide. Recognizing that rape is a tool of genocide sends a clear message that rape is a crime that diminishes humanity as a whole.

Re "Rwanda's trial," Opinion, Nov. 14 Stephen Kinzer makes serious, unsupported accusations against my country. He seems content to take at face value the theses developed by a Rwandan commission whose mandate, given by the Rwandan regime, was to "gather proof showing French involvement in the genocide perpetrated in Rwanda in 1994." A major investigation into France's role in Rwanda was carried out in 1998 by a French parliamentary task force. It confirmed that France bears no responsibility whatsoever in the genocide.

The ringleader of the 1994 Rwanda genocide was sentenced Thursday to life in prison for his role in the early days of an ethnic slaughter that eventually killed an estimated 800,000 people. Theoneste Bagosora, 67, is the highest-ranking military officer convicted at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda. The former colonel's prosecution is viewed as a significant step in efforts to punish war crimes.

Nearly two years ago, John Evans did something no U.S. ambassador to Armenia before him had done: He used the word "genocide" -- in public -- to describe the deaths of about 1.2 million Armenians at the hands of Ottoman Turks. It has long been a sore point with Armenian Americans that the U.S. government does not refer to the killings that began in 1915 as genocide, and Evans' use of the word did not signal a change in that policy.

Former Ethiopian dictator Mengistu Haile Mariam was sentenced to life imprisonment, ending a 12-year trial on charges of genocide and other crimes committed during his rule. Mengistu, tried in absentia, is unlikely to ever spend a day behind bars, however, as he lives comfortably in exile in Zimbabwe, which says it won't deport him as long as he refrains from political activity.

Until two years ago, the eloquent editor of Turkey's only Armenian language newspaper was barely known to many in Los Angeles' vast Armenian American community. But when Turkey charged that Hrant Dink's uncompromising stories had insulted that nation's identity, the iconoclastic resident of Istanbul quickly gained notice. So his assassination Friday stunned and saddened those who had known him for years and many who had only recently learned his name.