The Assassination of Hrant Dink

[Joseph]

And I am very happy to be back and will do everything I can to contribute more often...

Welcome back!

[Jade]

thank you thank you thank you!!! ) - I recently saw a commercial on CNN advertising Armenia as a touristic destination - you do have a beautiful country! and the symbol was a pomegranate...maybe someone here would kindly explain to me why it is the pomegranate they chose to represent armenia?

[Steph]

Hello Jade, perhaps this will help:

Shopping for a Symbol?: The pomegranate has a long tradition and mythology


By Gayane Mkrtchyan
ArmeniaNow reporter
The national symbol has four chambers,like the heart. Count the seeds and see if there's one for every day of the year.

This season of the year, when the fruit trees have already bloomed, nature has another surprise in store for visitors in Armenian gardens. Pomegranates begin blossoming in the southern and northeastern regions of Armenia.

Pomegranate flowers look like tongues of flame blazing in red bowl-like cups. In late autumn the flowers ripen into beautiful fruits.

The pomegranate, a fiery and beautiful fruit, also symbolizes Armenia and Armenian people. People used to worship the pomegranate and believe in all phenomenons related to this fruit.

Of course, in ancient times, the fruit was not characteristic of the entire region. It characterized Siunik and Artsakh. In addition, in Armenian mythology, the pomegranate symbolized fertility, abundance and marriage.

One ancient custom widely accepted in ancient Armenia was performed at weddings. A bride was given a pomegranate fruit, which she threw against a wall, breaking it into pieces. Candidate of historical sciences Armine Stepanyan explains that scattered pomegranate seeds ensured the bride future children. She says that in Artsakh it was accepted to put fruits next to the bridal couple during the first night of marriage. The pomegranate was among those fruits, and was said to also ensure happiness. It is believed the couple enjoyed a pomegranate wine as well.

"The symbol of the pomegranate is connected with insemination. It protected a woman from infertility and protected a man's virile strength," says Stepanyan.

At all times the fruit has inspired artists. Gevorg Simonyan, a salesman at the Aghaksak gift shop, says souvenirs made of pomegranate are of great demand. Pomegrante items can be found in almost in all Yerevan art galleries.

"The biggest clay pomegranate in our gallery costs 20,000 drams (about $35), and the smallest one is 3,000 drams. They aren't made all in the same shape. Masters made them individually, and each one is unique. All of them are different and original," says Simonyan.

If you visit Yerevan's outdoor arts and crafts market on the weekend, vernissage, there is no doubt that the pomegranate is the symbolic fruit in the life of Armenian people. You will see a parade of pomegranates.

Pomegranates are the Armenian symbol of life. Tradition holds that each mature pomegranate has 365 seeds, equal to the days in a year.

The cultivation of the pomegranate has a long history in Armenia. Decayed pomegranates, discovered at the historic spot "Karmir blur" (red hill), have a history of 3000 years.

[Jade]

wow thanks so much for the article, I had extreme pleasure reading it! - Thank you so much again for teaching me something new! - where did you happen to find the article? Because I loved it and I am thinking there must be more where it came from !

[bell-the-cat]

The pomegranate is also a Christian symbol of the Resurrection, the blood-red flesh of the fruit being seen as a metaphor for Christ's blood.

But the Christians just stole the symbolism from Pagan Greece and Rome. The pomegranate was the fruit eaten by Persephone that condemned her to spend 6 months of each year in the Underworld. The pomegranate thus symbolised the Earth's bleakness during winter and its rebirth each spring.

[bell-the-cat]

And also, welcome back Jade, back from the fruitfulness of spring and summer and holidays to the bleakness of autumn and AG forum.

[Joseph]

Kemal Kerincsiz, at it again

Dink family lawyer to stand trial
05.09.2007 14:15 GMT+04:00
/PanARMENIAN.Net/ Legal proceedings were launched in Turkey against Tuncel Sayman, the lawyer of killed Agos editor Hrant Dink. The action followed Sayman’s statement that lawyer Kemal Kerincis is “a disrespectful man”. The statement was made during the court session on Arat and Hrant Dink cases in May 2006.

Mr Sayman said his words were not addressed to anyone in the session. However, Turkish deputy prosecutor general Beyoglu Hayreddin Uysal demands a two-year sentence for Tuncel Sayman, who is accused of “outrage,” Radical newspaper reports.

The Istanbul prosecutor’s office wants a 3-year imprisonment for Hrant Dink’s son Arat Dink and his fellow Sargis Serobyan, who are charged of “insulting Turkishness. They were accused because of the repeated publication of Hrant Dink’s interview where he spoke of the Armenian Genocide recognition.

In case Arat Dink is found guilty, he can face deprivation of liberty from 6 months up to 3 years.

[Jade]

And also, welcome back Jade, back from the fruitfulness of spring and summer and holidays to the bleakness of autumn and AG forum.

Believe it or not this forum is a great distraction from all the things I have to be doing right now in school...Its my last year and in a couple of weeks I start applying to universities - something that I would rather not talk about as everytime the issue is brought up I feel nauseated...

[dele]

Hrant

Acquaintance
I Do Not Forget You Hrant.
I Did Not Read Even One Of Your Lines
I Did Not Read Even One Of Your Articles
But I Can Not Forget You Hrant.
You Are Lying On The Ground
On Your Face As A Sacrificed Sheep.
To Which God Were You Sacrificed
I Can Not Know.
“whilst You Were Trying To Cover Everything With Love
Newspapers Covered You.”
-i Learned This-
…
The Last Shoes You Wore Torn
Told Me Who Were You First Time..
You Became Acquaintance At That Time…
…
You Are So Acquaintance To Me.
Translation Of M.v.s.’poem
02.10.2007 Friday

[Joseph]

http://www.rsf.org/article.php3?id_article=24363

Turkey13 November 2007

Two Trabzon police officers who knew about plot to murder journalist are charged with “abuse of authority”
Two police officers in the northeastern city of Trabzon have been charged in connection with their failure to report what they knew about plans to kill Hrant Dink, the Turkish-Armenian editor of the weekly Agos, prior to his murder in Istanbul last January, the Turkish press reported on 8 November. Trabzon is the city where most of the people on trial for Dink’s murder were from.

The Trabzon prosecutor has charged Veysel Sahin and another police officer identified only by the initials O.S. with “abuse of authority” under article 257.2 of the criminal code. They are expected to respond to the charges before a local magistrate’s court soon and face a possible sentence of six months to two years in prison.

Sahin is on the list of witnesses due to be heard in the Dink murder trial taking place in Istanbul. During the second hearing in the trial on 1 October, the Dink family’s lawyers asked for him to be added to the list of trial witnesses.

The decision to charge Sahin and O.S. suggests that six other members of the Trabzon police force who allegedly knew about the murder plan are not to be prosecuted. They include Muhittin Zenit, who had a conversation with Erhan Tuncel, one of the murder’s alleged organisers, that was recorded.

One of the Dink family lawyers, Erdal Dogan, has said he was not told about the decision to charge the two police officers. The next hearing in the Dink murder trial, which began on 2 July, is to be held on 11 February.

Dink was gunned down on 19 January outside the Istanbul office of the Armenian and Turkish-language newspaper he edited. He had been prosecuted several times because of his comments about the massacres of Armenians in 1915. He was given a six-month suspended prison sentence in 2005 and, at the time of his death, he was facing a possible three-year sentence for describing the massacres as genocide in an interview for Reuters.