Genocide News - German insurance and the US federal law

[Moogey]

CALIFORNIA COURT DENIES ARMENIANS RIGHT TO OTTOMAN
LIFE INSURANCE POLICIES
hetq.am2009/08/21 | 13:12
Diaspora

Yesterday's Associated Press reported that a California court has
overturned a law that would have allowed descendants of Armenian
Genocide survivors to seek compensation for life insurance policies
issued by German insurance companies to Armenians in the Ottoman
Empire. Here's the article.

A federal appeals court invalidated a California law Thursday that
allowed heirs of Armenians killed in the Turkish Ottoman Empire
nearly a century ago to seek payment on the life insurance policies
of dead relatives.

The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said the law amounted to
unconstitutional meddling in U.S. foreign policy.
(Hah! This is tantamount to admitting: we don't care about justice, values, rights, or anything else but political expediency - Moogey).

It based its 2-1 ruling on a 2003 U.S. Supreme Court decision that
struck down another California law designed to help Holocaust survivors
collect on Nazi-era insurance policies.

The federal government does not recognize the mass killings of
Armenians during World War I as genocide, but the California
Legislature did in 2000 when it enacted the disputed law.

About half of the people of Armenian descent living in this country
reside in California.

Lawyer Brian Kabateck, who represents Armenian-American heirs, plans
to appeal.

"The ruling is wrong. It's a disaster," Kabateck said. "The one million
Armenians that live in California today have been told by the court
that even the use of the word 'genocide' by a government is illegal."

If the ruling is not set aside, it would prevent Armenian heirs from
claiming inheritances and prohibit California and other states from
marking the anniversary of the onset of the ethnic bloodshed that
claimed the lives of up to 1.5 million Armenians between 1915 and
1919 in what is now eastern Turkey, Kabateck said.

He alleges European banks and insurers illegally retained assets
valued in 1915 at about $15 million, a sum worth substantially more
at today's value.

The California Legislature passed the law giving heirs of Armenians
who died or fled to avoid persecution until the end of next year to
file claims for old bank accounts and life insurance policies.

Class-action lawsuits brought by Armenian descendants in California
and other states led to a $20 million settlement with New York Life
Insurance Co. in 2005 and a $17 million settlement the same year with
French life insurer AXA.

William Werfelman, a spokesman for New York Life, said the company
had no intention of trying to get back any of the money it paid out
under the 2005 settlement.

"By acting honorably, and in keeping with our company values of
humanity and integrity, New York Life made many friends in the Armenian
community and we cherish these friends," Werfelman said.

Thursday's ruling reversed a lower court judge who refused to dismiss
another class-action suit against the German life insurance companies.

Turkey long has denied the loss of so many Armenian lives constituted
genocide and instead describes the deaths as resulting from civil
unrest that accompanied the collapse of the Ottoman Empire.

The appeals court agreed with the German companies that California's
policy improperly conflicted with the federal government's foreign
policy aims.

Neil Soltman, the lawyer who represented the German insurance companies
that prevailed in the case, said his clients had stood to lose in
payouts to Armenian-Americans in California. Soltman said it was not
clear the companies ever sold life insurance policies to victims of
the Ottoman Empire violence.

"We are very pleased with the decision. We think it is entirely
consistent with recent Supreme Court cases and 9th Circuit cases
which have held that California and other states should not be passing
legislation that deals with questions of foreign affairs," he said.

The court recounted successful efforts by former presidents Bill
Clinton and George W. Bush to defeat congressional legislation that
would have recognized an Armenian genocide.

U.S. Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Pasadena, who as a state assemblyman co-wrote
the law that was overturned by the 9th Circuit, was perplexed by the
court's reasoning.

"You have a group of people that has a government that hasn't had
the will to recognize the genocide and as a result of that failing,
are being told they don't have valid insurance claims," he said.

DESCENDANTS OF ARMENIAN GENOCIDE VICTIMS CAN'T SUE
FOREIGN INSURANCE COMPANIES, US COURT OF APPEALS RULES

PanARMENIAN.Net
21.08.2009 19:51 GMT+04:00

/PanARMENIAN.Net/ 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.

But a divided three-judge panel of the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of
Appeals overturned that ruling, saying the California law attempted to
undercut the president's diplomatic authority and had to be preempted
by the federal policy against acknowledging the genocide.

Congress has considered resolutions three times in the last decade that
would have provided official recognition of the genocide. Each time,
the White House has stepped in to urge that the bills be scuttled,
out of fear that passage would damage relations with Turkey, whose
government disputes that a genocide took place.

"I think the decision is outrageous. If taken to its logical extension,
what this decision means is that all 40 states that have recognized
the Armenian genocide have to set aside that recognition," said Brian
S. Kabateck, a Los Angeles lawyer representing the plaintiffs whose
own maternal grandparents died in the genocide.

"This is a sad day for Armenian Americans," he said, adding that the
decision would make recovery of victims' bank accounts, insurance
proceeds and other property impossible. He vowed to appeal for
rehearing by a larger panel of judges.

Vartkes Yeghiayan, the lawyer for lead plaintiff Father Vazken
Movsesian of St. Peter Armenian Church, described the ruling as
"devastating."

The attorney representing the German insurers, Neil M. Soltman,
called the decision "a straight-down-the-middle determination that
in the area of foreign affairs, federal power has to prevail."

Judge Harry Pregerson dissented from the majority opinion by Judges
David R. Thompson and Dorothy W. Nelson. Pregerson wrote that
the District Court had correctly judged the California statute as
"within the state's traditional area of competence" in regulating
the insurance industry.

The plaintiffs sought settlement of claims under policies issued by
German insurers Victoria Versicherung and Ergo Versicherungsgruppe, as
well as their parent company, Munchener Ruckversicherungsgesellschaft.

[ArmSurvival]

Re: Genocide News - German insurance and the US federal law

This ruling is even illegal according to U.S. law. The issue was brought up in a California court-- the government of California recognizes the Armenian Genocide. The federal government is constitutionally required to respect state laws, and it cannot override a state law if it doesn't conflict with a federal law. Basically, the only LEGAL way that the federal government could strike down this motion, is if there was a bill passed at the federal level which explicitly states that there was no Armenian Genocide. Such a bill obviously does not exist, therefore the federal government is obliged to respect California law. Isn't studying the Constitution a prerequisite for becoming a judge?

The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said the law amounted to unconstitutional meddling in U.S. foreign policy.

Germany is forced to pay J ews many billions. J ews force America to give Israel $3 billion per year, to ally ourselves with them, and to enter conflicts with nations which "threaten" Israel-- and this is not considered "meddling in U.S. foreign policy". But a couple of Armenians asking for their life insurance policies, which they paid for, and which were gauranteed by law, is considered "meddling in U.S. foreign affairs". Give me a break.

[Haykakan]

Re: Genocide News - German insurance and the US federal law

These hypocracys are nothing new and they get worst as time passes.

[Moogey]

Re: Genocide News - German insurance and the US federal law - two more items

Ayse Gunaysu is a translator and human rights activist. She often writes for Armenian papers.It's very interesting.

The Armenia Weekly
Gunaysu: Turkish Perception of the Recent US Court Ruling
By Ayse Gunaysu • on August 27, 2009 •

Among thousands of news items showering down from international agencies,
none of the Turkish dailies or TV channels skipped the news about a U.S. Federal
Court of Appeals ruling against Armenian demands for unpaid insurance claims.

Many headlines revealed a hardly concealed note of victory, reporting that the U.S.
Court had dealt a “big blow” to Armenians. Some of them were a little bit more
professional, reflecting only a satisfaction: “Court decision to anger Armenians.
” Even the most seemingly “objective” ones used wording that presented the issue
as a defeat on the part of the “Armenians” —not a violation of the rights of legitimate
beneficiaries, the clients of insurance companies that profited from a government’s
extermination of its own citizens. Even the daily Taraf, considered to be waging the
most courageous struggle against the “deep state,” used the headline: “Bad news
to Armenians from a US court” (Aug. 22, 2009, p.3), a headline that, intentionally
or not, reinforces the essentialist conception of Armenians widespread in Turkey
and reflects a cold-hearted pseudo-impartiality —“bad news”!—in the face of an
infuriating usurpation of one’s rights.

Apart from a handful of people, no one in Turkey, watching the news or reading the
headlines (often without reading the full texts), knows that at the turn of the century
several thousands of Armenians in the provinces of the old Armenia were issued
life-insurance policies, with benefits amounting to more than $20 million in 1915
—dollars still unpaid to the legal heirs of the victims who perished under a reign
of terror. This is not surprising because this audience is even ignorant of the fact
that on the eve of World War I, there were 2,925 Armenian settlements in the old
Armenia, with 1,996 schools teaching over 173,000 male and female students,
and 2,538 churches and monasteries—all proof of a vibrant Armenian presence in
the Ottoman Empire. When I tried to explain this to my 83-year-old mother, who
thought the U.S. court had done something good for Turkey, she couldn’t believe
her ears. She was quite sincere when she asked: “Western insurance companies?
At that time? In Harput, in Merzifon, in Kayseri? Are you sure?” Because she could
not even imagine that what is now to us the remote, less-developed cities with rural
environs where pre-capitalist patterns still prevail—places more or less isolated
from today’s metropolitan centers—were once, before 1915, rich and developed
urban centers, with inhabitants much closer to the Western world than their fellow
Muslim citizens, in their economic activities, social structure, and way of life.
Although a university graduate (something unusual for a woman in Turkey at that
time), a person of culture with a real sense of justice in everything she does, my
mother was brought up in a system of education based on a history that was
rewritten to reconstruct a national identity of pride, and which turned facts upside
down. This was the result: an “enlightened” individual who knew nothing about how
things were in her own—beloved—country and what had happened just a decade
before her birth.

So, how can one expect my mother to know that Talat Pasha, a member of the
PUC triumvira and one of the top organizers of the Armenian Genocide, had
shocked Henry Morgenthau, the U.S. Ambassador to Istanbul in 1915, with his
audacity when he said: “I wish, that you would get the American life insurance
companies to send us a complete list of their Armenian policy holders. They
are practically all dead now and have left no heirs to collect the money. It of course
all escheats to the state. The government is the beneficiary now. Will you do so?”

The Turkish audience, apart from that handful of people, that received the message
about the U.S. Court of Appeals ruling against the Armenians’ right to seek justice,
didn’t stop to think that this was something about one’s most basic rights.
But the reason is simple: National ideology blocks people’s minds. There is a
special meaning attributed to the word “compensation” in Turkey. It is believed that
recognition will be followed by demands of compensation, which will naturally lead
to demands of territory. So, the reference to “compensation” (to be paid to
“Armenians”) in these reports is directly connected in their minds to Armenians’
claim to territory.

This is all about denial. Denial is not an isolated phenomenon, not a policy
independent of all other aspects. Denial is a system. An integrated whole. You
don’t only deny what really happened; in order to deny what really happened, you
have to deny even the existence of the people to whom it happened. In order to
deny their existence, you have to wipe out the evidence of their existence from
both the physical and intellectual environment. Physical refers to the 2,925
Armenian settlements with 1,996 schools and 2,538 churches and monasteries
that are non-existent now. Intellectual corresponds to my mother’s perception
of the U.S. Court of Appeal’s ruling as something good for Turkey.

I watched a film on TV tonight, Akira Kurosawa’s “Rhapsody in August,” a film
about an old lady, a hibakusha (the Japanese word for the victims of the atomic
bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki during World War II) and her four grandchildren.
Watching the film, I saw people commemorating their dead ones with great respect,
taking care of their monuments with endless love, raising their children in the same
spirit, observing Buddhist rituals, praying for their losses. The details showing all
these were elegantly and very impressively depicted. Watching a blind hibakusha
gently cleaning the marble platform of the monument with great care, I thought of
Armenians of my country, who are deprived of this very basic right to publicly honor
the memory of their lost ones. This ban is woven into the very structure of Turkish
society, because the founders of the new Turkish Republic and their successors
built a nation and successfully put into practice an “engineering of the spirit”
whereby the people are convinced, made to sincerely believe, that such
commemorations are a direct insult to themselves.

The outcome of such engineering, this whole complicated system of denial, is
very difficult to dismantle. The Turkish ruling elite will not recognize the genocide,
not in the short-term, not in the mid-term. In the long-term, maybe. But how “long”
a term this will be is something unknown. The dynamic that would step up the
process is the recognition from below, i.e. recognition by the people—a very slow
process, but much more promising than an official recognition in the foreseeable
future. People in Turkey are one by one going through a very special kind of
enlightenment—meeting with facts, learning more about the near history,
getting into closer contact with Armenians here and elsewhere (for example,
meeting and listening to Prof. Marc Nichanian speaking in the language of
philosophy and literature, hearing his words about how meaningless an apology
is when what happened to Armenians was “unforgivable,” about the meaning of
the “usurpation of mourning” and the “impossibility of representation” of what
Armenians experienced. More and more stories are appearing in the dailies and
periodicals in Turkey of our grandmothers and grandfathers of Armenian origin
who were stripped of their Armenian identities, at least in the public sphere.
More and more books are being published about the genocide, enabling the
readers to try and imagine what is unimaginable.

This will turn the wheels of a long process of recognition from below, a recognition
in the hearts of people that will inevitably interact with the process of official
recognition—a must for true justice—no matter how distant it may be for the time
being.


ANCA CALLS ON PRESIDENT OBAMA TO REJECT MISGUIDED FEDERAL
APPEALS COURT DECISION
ARMENPRESS:
August 26, 2009
Yerevan

Armenian National Committee of America (ANCA) called on President
Barack Obama to reject a misguided federal appeals court decision
striking down a California law to allow for the return of Armenian
Genocide-era assets, and encouraged him to immediately and publicly
affirm that it is not the "express federal policy" of the United
States, as the court argued, to prohibit the recognition of this
crime by the Congress or the states.

Representative of the ANCA Elizabeth Chouljyan told Armenpress that
the letter follows a August 20th ruling of a three judge panel of the
U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in the case of Movsesian
v. Versicherung A.G. (No. 07-56722), that struck down a California
law providing remedies for Armenian Genocide-era wrongs. The ruling
contended that state level recognition of this crime contradicts
"express federal policy" and is therefore unconstitutional.

"You bear direct responsibility, Mr. President, by virtue of your
failure to keep your repeated, crystal clear pledges to recognize the
Armenian Genocide, for the Court's judgment that it is the official
policy of the Executive Branch of the United States government to
actively oppose proper recognition of this crime and, upon this basis,
to thus prohibit states from passing laws to help Armenian Genocide-era
victims seek to reclaim lost or stolen property," said Hachikian in
an August 25th letter to President Obama.

The California Legislature passed a law in 2000 giving heirs of those
who died or fled to avoid Armenian Genocide-era persecution until the
end of 2010 to file claims for old bank accounts and life insurance
policies. Class-action lawsuits brought by Armenian descendants in
California and other states led to a $20 million settlement with New
York Life Insurance Co. in 2005 and a $17 million settlement the same
year with French life insurer AXA.