The “Le Monde diplomatique” in its January 1996 issue published an article titled “Neither peace nor war in Nagorno-Karabagh”, signed by Jean Gueyras. The ARF Central Committee of France has sent a letter to the magazine, because the ARF has been directly defamed by the journalist.

In its letter, the ARF Central Committee states:

Our astonishment or rather our consternation are therefore all the more reinforced by reading these few leathal lines concerning the opposition in Armenia, and more particularly the ARF, that commit directly the author of the article and deliberately incriminate, without any concern for analytical nor journalistic precision, a party of which we are the representatives in France.

(…) That the current authorities of Yerevan accuse this party of ‘striving to create a Lebanon-style situation’ is a fact that we would be well in sorrow to contest, even if of course we refute such accusations; but that the party is known in the ‘Diaspora for its terrorist methods of action’ is a strictly personal appreciation, that designates the author of this article as a simple spokesperson for the ongoing propaganda in Armenia.

A minimum of professional consciousness would have required that Mr Gueyras get his information on location, in France for example, about the esteem in which it is held — within the Armenian community as well as with the French institutions — a party that has accompanied the community uprooted by the Genocide through its difficult integration, that has contributed to root it on French soil while helping it to preserve its identity, and by safeguarding the objective of Armenia’s independence, which the course of History seemed to condemn as utopic.

The ARF is known in France for its Maisons de la culture (Community Centers), for its schools and also for its untiring struggle for the Armenian Cause, that includes the recognition of the 1915 Genocide, rather than for its talents for fireworks, regardless of Mr Gueyras’ tales, shared by the Armenian ex-KGB; the latter had sent in July a letter to the Quay d’Orsay and to other Foreign affairs ministries warning them against clandestine and terrorist activities of the ARF.

Indeed, one can only deplore that M. Gueyras takes part in this coarse propaganda game and thus serves a regime, which a number of observers have nevertheless denounced fot its authoritative drift and breaches to democracy.

ARF-Dashnaktsutyun
Central Committee of France
January 24, 1996