Wednesday, July 28, 2004

For those of you who have been following the logs and comments of Cilicia and these logs, you will notice a difference of opinions going between Raffi and I.

Though it was for the most part a private matter that we were discussing via e-mail, Raffi decided to bring it out in the comments so others could get involved and clearly did so in a mean spirited manor.

In short, this whole thing started with my reposting of the HETQ article about the April 13th human rights violation by the Kocharian government, which was well documented on Cilicia. At that time, Raffi sent out in mass to everyone he knows said information, with the instructions that it should be disseminated to everyone the receiver knows.

I sent a copy of Raffi’s letter to everyone in my address book, which included Edik, who as you know, is the top person at HETQ and who turned it into an on-line article.

Following that article being printed, Raffi made threats of taking Edik to court, to which I pointed out what I have stated in the third paragraph of this log, being that Edik only followed Raffi’s instructions.

Following all this, my good friend Hagop Bedrossian joined the Cilicia log, to which I posted a congratulatory comment, which Raffi deleted, along with a bunch of other comments to other loggers and banned me from comments.  None of the initial comments were snide or off topic so I was a bit confused as to why he did this?

I wrote to Raffi to try to figure out what it was that caused me to be banned?  In short it became clear after a few messages that I was banned  because I had sided with Edik and the only way I would once again have commenting privileges from my computer in Artsakh is if I would admit that Edik was wrong with what he had done.  This also would show to Raffi my loyalty to him.

I wrote back to Raffi that considering he was making threats to take Edik to court and so on, it was better that I let them iron out any problems they may have without any opinion or siding as to who was right or wrong, beyond what I had stated in the past.

Raffi didn’t like my answer and in the last message that I responded to, up until the last line that Raffi had written what he was saying was actually making sense, until he made mention of my problem with “pedophilia”, referring to my relationship with my fiancй who has been of legal age for 3 years, but is quite a bit younger than me.  To this I told him that he really needed help and this kind of help was something I could not offer him.

At that point, all this was going on out of the public eye, so as far as I was concerned, no harm was done by his comments. 

This all recently changed with his comments on my logs and on comments of Shooshig’s logs, which once again questions the legalities of my relationship with my fiancй.  He also made a mean spirited comment about the lands of Jerusalem being sold off, knowing that my uncle is the one responsible to make sure that no such thing happens.

Though I was actually looking forward to reciprocate the gesture that Hagop Bedrossian has shown me for the last few years, commenting on my logs, continue to be an active participant in comments of the Cilicia logs, thanks to this misunderstanding and Raffi’s lack of maturity, I will not be able to do this.  And since I can’t comment, I see no reason to continue to read the Cilicia logs.

Anyway readers, this is an example of what can happen among Armenians in the homeland when there is a matter of different opinions and instead of trying to resolve the differences in a civil way, some people choose to attack the other and bring up irrelevant issues that are not even true, hurt feelings, cloud issues and create conflicts in the process.  BTW, those actions in the eye of the law can be viewed as slander and defamation, which when one is made to defend themselves against such things, can also cause mental anguish (something I really don’t care to have).   And when this is done by the USAID outreach person to the Diaspora (which I happen to be one of those people who are part of the Diaspora that if I understand Raffi’s job correctly, he is suppose to be reaching out to in a positive way), the effects to everyone involved is amplified.

I do understand that living in Armenia is not that easy these days and after April 13th, especially for those that witnessed first hand what happened, it is very hard to come to terms with reality and what ones expectations are, since the two right now do not seem to correspond.  For that reason, I have been extra forgiving to Raffi, though his actions are really pushing my limits and though we have a long way to reach my breaking point, I felt that a little bit of transparency could put an end to this problem once and for all.  And yes Raffi, when all is said and done, I do still love you and wish the best for you as I know you do for me.

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