The year ahead, 2009

Published: Wednesday December 31, 2008

An eventful year has ended and we look ahead with hope to the new year.

A new day in Washington

Barack Obama and Joe Biden are to be sworn in as president and vice president of the United States on January 20.

Around the world in the past year we have witnessed the limits of American power. We have seen that the United States, acting unilaterally, relying heavily on military force, can seldom achieve sustainable outcomes. The new administration will seek to mend alliances that have become frayed over the last few years. At the same time, it will seek to restore America's moral authority. This is a good and necessary combination.

As it seeks to mend alliances, the United States will be asked to accommodate the particular agendas of foreign powers. The president-elect recognizes that U.S. power depends heavily on the credibility of the United States. Thus, while he will necessarily accommodate the reasonable security concerns of other countries - including Turkey, Russia, and perhaps even Iran - he has repeatedly made it clear that he will not do so at the cost of America's moral authority.

Consistent with that approach, Mr. Obama has said repeatedly that as president he will acknowledge the Armenian Genocide.

Toward universal affirmation

Full U.S. acknowledgement of the Armenian Genocide is thus in the cards for 2009.

In the coming weeks, as a community we will want to review where we need to go from there. What further steps will we take to honor the memory of our martyrs and our lost patrimony in a worthy manner? How will we make the memory and lessons of the Genocide a permanent part of the American social consciousness? How will we leverage U.S. affirmation into further progress toward universal affirmation and more specifically the acknowledgement of the Genocide by Turkish society and the Turkish state?

Financial challenges

The worldwide financial crisis is affecting and will continue to affect our families and our community institutions in the United States, as well as the people of Armenia and Karabakh.

Some of our community institutions - primarily the church and charities - will have to expand their social services to aid American-Armenian families in trouble because of the recession. Likewise, they will have to address greater needs in Armenia and Karabakh, as economic growth there slows down.

At the same time, our community institutions will have to figure out how to fulfill their missions on a tighter budget. This is a formidable challenge that each organization will have to face not passively but with active planning. The pages of this newspaper will remain open for an exchange of views and experiences in this matter.

And, of course, those of us who are able to help will be called upon to be generous at a difficult time. Financial challenges are not new to the Armenian community, and we trust that we will come together as we have in the past to overcome them.

Civil liberties in Armenia

Fully nine months have elapsed since the confrontation between antigovernment protesters and law enforcement personnel that left eight civilians and two officers dead in Yerevan. At the time, the government blamed the organizers of the protests, led by failed presidential candidate Levon Ter-Petrossian, for amassing weapons and preparing to usurp power through mass disturbances and armed force. The opposition blamed the government for attacking peaceful, unarmed protesters with lethal force.

To reduce the polarization of state and society in the aftermath of these traumatic clashes, numerous voices called for a credible, transparent inquiry into the events. These voices included European institutions of which Armenia is a member. (They also included this editorial page.) The president and parliament of Armenia eventually set up an ad hoc commission of inquiry, which in turn set up an expert group. In the absence of public hearings, the commission and expert group have yet to answer pressing questions and assuage concerns. We look forward to seeing a more active, transparent inquiry in the coming weeks and months.

The Special Investigations Service and Prosecutor General meanwhile have been investigating the events as a criminal matter. Dozens of antigovernment figures are under investigation, many of them being held behind bars by court order. Some have been convicted and sentenced to prison. A handful have been pardoned by the president. The case of seven prominent opposition figures - including the heads of three branches of the Yerkrapah veterans' organization, most of whose members legally carry weapons - is now in court, where it has unfortunately taken on an element of farce: the defendants (arguing that the trial is rigged) refuse to rise when the judge enters the courtroom and the judge holds them in contempt and postpones the proceedings.

The U.S. government and European institutions have criticized the imprisonment of opposition figures, suggesting that they are being held for political reasons. This criticism may be taken to demonstrate a lack of respect for Armenia's investigators, prosecutors, and courts. A former head of state and commander in chief - the first president, no less - urged the military to engage in mutiny, reporting to an angry mass of people that he has information that the armed forces will in fact engage in mutiny: this is not a spectacle that any country can take lightly.

But observers have had reason to suspect that the criminal justice system is not operating in an apolitical and independent manner in this case. No one - pro- or anti-government - has been held directly accountable for any of the 10 deaths. No evidence has been adduced to support the contention that protesters fired on police. Mr. Ter-Petrossian, said to be the ringleader of the conspiracy, has not even been questioned.