Asbarez – The Chair of the Board of Trustees of the Bird’s Nest Orphanage Seta Khedeshian said His Holiness Aram I, Catholicos of the Great House of Cilicia has ordered the suspension of plans to
According to Lebanon’s Aztag daily, Khedeshian told Voice of Van radio station that the Catholicos decided to suspend plans in order for the Catholicosate to provide a more comprehensive explanation to the public, and to create a calmer atmosphere so that the issue is analyzed in a broader way.
Over the past few months, several reports were published claiming that there were plans to build a luxury beach resort on two-thirds of the historic Bird’s Nest Orphanage plot in Jbeil, Lebanon. In early February, the Board of Directors of Bird’s Nest informed the public that plans for the site envision relocating the 33 individual graves to 2 collective tombs on the upper part of the Bird’s Nest plot. Around two-thirds of the graves are of orphans; one-third are of genocide survivors or employees of the orphanage born before 1915. The decision to relocate the bodies was purportedly made to “bring the remains of these orphans closer to the grave of Maria Jacobsen, the founder of the orphanage.”
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