Month: October 2016

A Hungarian Parliament panel has rejected an Armenian Genocide recognition bill submitted by the Green Party, which holds five seats in the 199-member Parliament reports, quoting Turkish media.

The bill failed to pass the Foreign Relations Committee because of the vote of the Fidesz and Jobbik parties.

Marton Gyongyosi of the Jobbik Party, vice-chairman of the Hungarian National Assembly’s Foreign Affairs Committee, said “the issue should be left to historians and international law experts.”

“Hungarian lawmakers should not be concerned about what Pope Francis, politicians and parliaments of other countries say,” he said.

FOX 11 – The last known survivor of the Armenian Genocide was a special guest at an event hosted by the Armenian Law Students’ Association at Loyola Law School.

Aleksan Markaryan shared his memories of the genocide.

He said he was fired from his childhood job at a pharmacy because he was a Christian.

Markaryan remembers being called an infidel. In order to save his life, he converted to Islam.

He remembers watching people in his village as they were taken away to never be again, the genocide ended a long eight years later in 1923.

During that time, up to 1.5 million Armenians were exterminated by the Ottoman Government – now modern Turkey.

Yandex is opening a programming school for 8-10 graders in Yerevan. The school will offer free classes comprising thematic lectures and workshops.

The academic program has been worked out by the Yandex School of Data Analysis. Specialists from Armenia, Russia and other countries will be invited to teach at the school.

The classes will start in January 2017, the registration of students will start from December 12, 2016. Children will have to pass an on-line test and an interview.

The Nagorno Karabakh issue may be touched upon on the sidelines of the meeting of CSTO Foreign Ministers in Yerevan scheduled for October 14, Spokesperson for the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs Maria Zakharova told a weekly briefing.

Referring to US Secretary of State John Kerry’s statement on the impossibility to solve the Karabakh conflict at this point, Zakharova said: “The settlement process benefits from practical work, not statements.”

Rebel-held eastern Aleppo in northern Syria may face “total destruction” in two months, with thousands killed, the UN’s Syria envoy has said, the BBC reports.

Staffan de Mistura told reporters that he was prepared to personally accompany al-Qaeda-linked jihadists out of the city if it would stop the fighting.

He also appealed to Russia and Syria not to destroy the city for the sake of eliminating militants.

The UN says 275,000 civilians are trapped in the war-torn east of Aleppo.

“The bottom line is, in a maximum of two months… the city of eastern Aleppo at this rate may be totally destroyed,” Mr de Mistura told a news conference in Geneva.

“Thousands of Syrian civilians, not terrorists, will be killed and many of them wounded.”

He added: “This is what you, we, the world will be seeing when we will be trying to celebrate Christmas, or the end of the year, if this continues at this rate, unimpeded. Homs [Syrian city] multiplied by 50.”

He said the UN was not willing to “be passive, resign ourselves” to genocides such as those in Srebrenica and Rwanda.

Photo: AP

 

A curious college student in Portland, Ore., has discovered a 1599 Geneva Bible — the Bible of Queen Elizabeth I and William Shakespeare — in the basement of his school’s library, reports.

The book — found at Lewis & Clark College’s Aubrey R. Watzek LIbrary — could have royal lineage, according to the local Oregonian newspaper. One page reads: “Imprinted at London, by the Deputies of Christopher Barker, Printer to the Queenes most excellent Majestie.”

“It’s quite rare,” said Hannah Crummé, the archivist at Lewis & Clark College.

This edition of the Bible made the scriptures accessible through many elaborate woodcut illustrations. One, titled “The Situation of the Garden of Eden,” is a map of the ancient Middle East, showing “The Great Armenia,” “Mesopotamie,” “Babylone” and “The Golphe of the Persian Sea.”

The Bible is in good condition despite repairs that wouldn’t meet today’s book-conservation standards, the newspaper reported.

Crummé has traced its ownership to Francis Fry, a 19th-century Bible collector in England.

Student Sam Bussan was working in the special collections and archives on Sept. 27. As he was preparing to leave for the day, he spotted a label on a bottom shelf that read “Bibles.”

Intrigued, he opened the four boxes and “found all these incredible books,” including Bibles from the 17th through 19th centuries.

“To have that end up in such an unlikely place is very exciting and intriguing,” Bussan said. “The quality of printing is really amazing.”

According to the Oregonian, the 1599 Geneva Bible is the second-oldest book in the school’s collection, as they have one book that is about 500 years old.

Photo: AP

 

Antonio Guterres, the man formally nominated to be the next UN secretary general, says he plans to “serve the most vulnerable,” the BBC reports.

The former Portuguese prime minister said he felt both “gratitude and humility” by the appointment.

He said he would serve the “victims of conflicts, of terrorism, rights violations, poverty and injustices of this world”.

Mr Guterres was unanimously nominated by the UN Security Council on Thursday.

The UN General Assembly is expected to meet next week to approve his five-year appointment.

The 67-year-old, who led the UN refugee agency for 10 years, will take over from Ban Ki-moon early next year.

He paid tribute to Ban Ki-moon and called on UN members states to “strongly support him in his actions and his initiatives” in his final months in office.

“I have two words to describe what I’m feeling now – gratitude and humility,” Mr Guterres said in Lisbon.

“Humility [is what I feel] about the huge challenges ahead of us, the terrible complexity of the modern world. But it is also humility that is required to serve the most vulnerable, victims of conflicts, of terrorism, rights violations, poverty and injustices of this world”.

–  Turkey is exiting the European Union’s Creative Europe program which supports the arts, including film and TV — a surprise move that comes as relations between the Turkish government and the E.U. become increasingly strained.

In 2015, Turkey joined the ranks of non-E.U. member countries allowed to tap into Creative Europe’s 1.46-billion-euro fund ($1.56 billion) to support culture and the arts between 2014 and 2020. Creative Europe incorporates the E.U.’s Media Program, which subsidizes production, promotion, and distribution of film, TV, and video content.

“The European Commission regrets Turkey’s decision and the fact that Turkish cultural and audiovisual operators will miss future opportunities for cooperation with their counterparts in the E.U.,” an E.U. spokeswoman. “Although this is unfortunate, the commission respects the sovereign decision of Turkey.”

The withdrawal, now under negotiation between the E.U. and the Turkish government, is to be effective from Jan. 1, 2017.

According to Turkish daily Haberturk, the pullout is in response to a and performed in April by Germany’s Dresdner Sinfoniker orchestra, in commemoration of the Armenian genocide.

More recently, in the wake of the July 15 failed coup in Turkey, tensions between the E.U. and Ankara have worsened, partly because E.U. officials have criticized Erdogan’s heavy crackdown against the coup’s alleged plotters and sympathizers.

To date, an estimated 2.4 million euros ($2.6 million) has been allocated by Creative Europe to support Turkish films and cultural projects, including the Istanbul Film Festival’s Meetings on the Bridge co-production forum. It is unclear whether Turkey’s pullout from Creative Europe will also affect the country’s membership in European co-productions fund Eurimages, which is overseen by the Council of Europe, not by the European Union.

In any event, the withdrawal is a blow to the Turkish film industry since producers, distributors and fest and film market organizers will not be able to tap into the Media Program’s soft money. It also symbolically weakens their ties with Europe’s creative community.

“It is a very unfortunate decision,” said Basak Emre, co-director of Festival on Wheels, which promotes Turkish films. “Many artists and cultural institutions will be affected. But we do not know the details of this decision yet,” she noted.

On October 3, AGBU welcomed member of Turkish Parliament Garo Paylan to its Central Office in New York. As part of his tour of the United States, Paylan met with AGBU President Berge Setrakian and AGBU Central Board members Ani Manoukian and Vasken Yacoubian.

In his welcoming remarks, Mr. Setrakian paid tribute to Mr. Paylan’s courage in coming forward with his intervention in the Turkish Parliament on April 24 and for his activism in defense of human rights in Turkey.

During the meeting, both parties discussed the role of the diaspora in supporting the democratic process in Turkey. This meeting was the first to take place between AGBU and Paylan and will set the groundwork for future interactions.

Paylan was one of three Armenians elected to the Turkish Parliament in June 2015. A founding member of the pro-Kurdish People’s Democratic Party (HDP), he has a track record for defending minority rights in Turkey and has been vocal in calling for the country’s recognition of the Armenian Genocide.

Before his election to the Parliament, he served on the central committee of the HDP and worked with Armenian schools in Istanbul to promote multilingual education.

On 5 October Artsakh Republic President Bako Sahakyan sent a congratulatory address in connection with the Day of Teachers.

The address runs as follows:

“Dear teachers,

On behalf of the Artsakh Republic authorities and personally myself I extend my cordial congratulations on your professional holiday, a day that our people traditionally celebrate with a deep feeling of respect and gratitude.

Gratitude for the significant and difficult work that you fulfill educating and bringing up our children, insinuating in them love and respect towards knowledge, helping them make the first steps in life and become honest individuals and citizens, thereby carrying out a patriotic mission of carving the future of our state and people.

Each of us has a favorite teacher and keeps the memories related to him and school years bright during the whole life. These memories warm our souls and leave their unique trace on our further activity.

Highlighting the special role of teachers in our people’s life the state always rates their work high and keeps issues existing in the sphere of education and science in the spotlight, does everything possible to raise a patriotic, educated and progressive generation.

Dear friends,

I once again congratulate all of you on the Day of Teachers and wish peace, robust health, happiness and all the best”.