The US State Department’s Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor has just issued Country Reports on Human Rights Practices for 2012.

In the section on freedom of speech and press, under Respect for Civil Liberties, the report refers to the nearly one-year long investigation opened against Vartan Oskanian and involving the Civilitas Foundation. “On May 25, the National Security Service opened an investigation of the former head of the Civilitas Foundation and former foreign minister Vardan Oskanian on suspicion of money laundering, a day after Oskanian’s party, Prosperous Armenia, announced its decision not to join the ruling coalition. The Civilitas Foundation operated one of the largest independent online media outlets, CivilNet, which ran several stories criticizing the administration of the May 6 elections. CivilNet reported that National Security Service agents harassed and followed its reporters and entered its office without appropriate authorization. Many observers described the investigation and its timing after the elections as politically motivated.”

Last month, I travelled to Yerevan, Armenia to meet with people from the Armenian Genocide Museum-Institute (AGMI). They’re working to raise greater awareness of a horrific genocide that saw the murder of 1.5 million people during the final years of the Ottoman Empire around 1915. Ongoing denial of this historic atrocity, waged in the name of racial and religious homogeneity, makes it a contemporary human-rights concern.

When the CMHR opens next year, information about this atrocity will be included in its galleries.  We are also working to establish formal ties of cooperation with the Museum in Yerevan that could help both institutions in our efforts to use awareness and dialogue as a way to promote enhanced human rights for Armenians and all of humanity.
On my trip, I was accompanied and assisted by members of the Toronto-based Zoryan Institute of Canada, a group that supports scholarship and public awareness relating to issues of universal human rights, genocide, and diaspora-homeland relations.