Month: June 2022

To remember history, especially the dark and troubling moments from the past, is a responsibility. The weight of that responsibility, says Eileen Melkonian ’23, falls particularly hard on Armenians.

“If history is forgotten, it is doomed to be repeated again,” Melkonian says.

Making sure the Armenian genocide, one of the most horrific events of the 20th century, is not forgotten is important to Armenians such as Melkonian. As many as 1.2 million people lost their lives, and many thousands of others were exiled, in a systematic campaign of killing and deportation that began in 1915 by the old Ottoman Empire.

Today, the horrors of the genocide can often feel lost to time and overshadowed by the other genocides that have tragically followed, and Turkey, the modern-day successor to the Ottoman Empire, refuses to recognize what happened. The United States only formally recognized the Armenian genocide last year.

The genocide, however, is not something Armenians will allow to fade into the past. “God forbid, no one will know our history,” Melkonian says. “We spread as much information as we can. Every Armenian has a duty to do this. They have a duty to spread awareness on behalf of the culture.”

Eileen Melkonian ’23, co-president and co-founder of the Armenian Student Association at Babson

Melkonian and her friend, Nairi Enright ’24, are the co-presidents and co-founders of the Armenian Student Association at Babson. The small but active student group, which has roughly 10 members, is, in part, a social organization. It organizes events and networks with other Armenian student groups. “It’s always great to meet other Armenians,” Melkonian says. “There are not a lot of Armenians in the world, unfortunately.”

But, raising awareness about Armenian culture and history, particularly the genocide, is a main concern, one that has led Melkonian and Enright to petition Babson to include more about the genocide in appropriate College coursework.

“It leaves you with a sick feeling that your history is being left out. It’s upsetting. It’s sad. You don’t understand why,” Enright says. “We want to limit that. The genocide is a big part of history. People need to be educated about this.”

The importance of Armenian culture and history was instilled in Melkonian and Enright as they were growing up. Melkonian was born in the U.S. to Armenian immigrants, her mother a refugee from Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan, a country where a number of anti-Armenian attacks broke out in the late 1980s. In 1990, in what’s known as the Baku pogroms, seven days of attacks were aimed at Baku’s Armenian residents, essentially clearing them from the city. “She came here (to the U.S.), with $10 in her pocket and started a life,” Melkonian says.

Melkonian grew up in a traditional household eating lots of Armenian food. Her parents were strict, a direct result of their experiences. “I was watched over very closely,” she says. “My parents went through a lot of hardships. The mentality they came to America with was, you always have to be safe. They saw the world by what events happened to Armenians back then.”

Nairi Enright ’24, co-president and co-founder of the Armenian Student Association at Babson

Learning that history left an impression on Melkonian. “That inspired me to fight for Armenian rights and education,” she says.

Enright was born in Armenia and immigrated to the U.S. as a baby. Her grandmother taught her how to cook Armenian foods, and her grandfather founded the Armenian elementary school she attended. From an early age, Enright attended genocide remembrance events. Held annually on April 24, those events typically bring together the entire Armenian community. “We march together,” Enright says. “It’s really powerful and really emotional.”

Enright learned that being an Armenian came with an obligation. “If you don’t know the history and the culture, then who will keep the language alive? Who will keep Armenia alive?” she says. “Growing up, it was stressed to me to have ties to Armenian family, to always speak the language.”

Enright and Melkonian first met while attending Lexington High School in suburban Boston, and then reconnected at Babson, where they carried with them a need to tell the Armenian story.

That story, unfortunately, can sometimes seem missing. At Babson, Melkonian grew frustrated when the Armenian genocide wasn’t mentioned in several courses (in history, human rights, and law) where she felt it was a natural fit. “Those topics are relevant when talking about the Armenian genocide,” she says. “I was upset and disappointed. I didn’t know what to do.”

“Babson is making a big effort to support us and make our voices heard.”

Eileen Melkonian ’23

Sharing her concerns with Enright, the two then reached out to Babson administration and eventually met with Lawrence P. Ward, vice president and dean of campus life. “He took the time,” Enright says. “I can’t begin to describe how helpful he was.”

Ward connected Enright and Melkonian to professors and leaders on campus, which allowed them to offer input on how the genocide can be presented in the classroom. Enright and Melkonian already have spoken about the Armenian genocide before a class studying the Cambodian genocide of the 1970s, and they partnered with the College’s Office of Religious and Spiritual Life to put on a community peace circle this past April 24. “Babson is making a big effort to support us and make our voices heard,” Melkonian says.

Melkonian hopes that Armenian students at other colleges will attempt similar actions. “People aren’t as educated about it as other genocides. That is disappointing,” she says. “I hope Armenian students get inspired to bring this to light at their own schools.”

May 31, 2022 2:57 PM EDT

Stockholm, May 31, 2022 – Armenian President Vahagn Khachaturyan should refrain from ratifying legal amendments allowing state bodies to revoke journalists’ accreditation, the Committee to Protect Journalists said Tuesday.

On May 25, Armenia’s parliament approved the amendments to the country’s mass media law, according to news reports and an entry on the parliamentary website. Previously, only media outlets could revoke their journalists’ accreditation with state agencies, although amendments last December allowed agencies to deny accreditation.

According to media reports, local press freedom advocates fear that authorities could use the amendments to bar critical journalists from covering parliamentary sessions and other government events. The amendments will take effect when signed by the country’s president, according to Ashot Melikyan, head of the local press advocacy group Committee to Protect Freedom of _expression_, who spoke with CPJ by telephone.

“The recent amendments to journalist accreditation regulations are the latest example of Armenia’s departure from international standards in media legislation. Given the country’s highly polarized politics and potential for selective application, these amendments are concerning,” said Gulnoza Said, CPJ’s Europe and Central Asia program coordinator, in New York. “We urge President Khachaturyan to refrain from ratifying the amendments and call on authorities to work with local press freedom organizations to reform recent restrictive media laws.”

Under the new regulations, state bodies will be able to terminate journalists’ accreditation if they violate the body’s accreditation regulations or “rules of procedure” for a second time within a year after receiving a written warning for a previous violation.

The bill’s authors, two deputies with Armenia’s ruling Civil Contract party, have denied that the amendments restrict freedom of the press, stating in parliament that only the accreditation of a specific journalist can be revoked, not media outlets as a whole. They added that outlets would be able to replace any journalist whose accreditation was terminated and argued in parliament and in an explanatory note accompanying the bill that the change was necessitated by “numerous cases” of journalists threatening and insulting parliamentary deputies and “obstructing the activities of both deputies and other journalists.”

Melikyan told CPJ that while a small number of journalists have been guilty of inappropriate behavior, it was wrong to enact laws on this basis, as authorities could use the law as an “instrument of pressure” against the journalistic community. “Today, government organs might object to journalists’ behavior. Later it could be how journalists cover their work,” Melikyan said.

Journalists will be able to appeal decisions on denial and termination of accreditation through the courts, he added but said it remains to be seen how both state organs and the courts will apply the law in practice.

Melikyan described the amendments as the latest “link in the chain of regressive media bills” in Armenia. In July and October 2021, the country recriminalized insult and tripled existing fines for insult and defamation, while parliament banned journalists from entering the legislative chamber without advance permission and limited media interviews to a designated area, as CPJ documented.

CPJ emailed the Parliament of Armenia, the Office of the President, and the Office of the Prime Minister for comment but did not receive any replies.

https://cpj.org/2022/05/armenia-parliament-passes-bill-allowing-state-bodies-to-revoke-journalist-accreditation/

“The sultan wants to annihilate us / Arise, my child, I beseech you.”

These are the lyrics from a 19th century song that recalls Armenian militia fighting against the mass murders of Armenians in Ottoman Turkey. Today, the words have been dusted off and remixed to support Armenian protesters demanding the resignation of the country’s prime minister Nikol Pashinyan.

The protesters, waving the flags of Armenia and the disputed territory of Nagorno-Karabakh, follow a white pickup truck through Yerevan’s central streets, shouting “Armenia without Nikol”and “Nikol is a traitor”. Led by youthful protesters at the front, they often wear black T-shirts with crosses on them, serving as a reminder of camouflage fatigues worn by Armenian soldiers during fighting against Azerbaijan.

Now a month old, the protests began when two opposition parties, led by former presidents Robert Kocharyan and Serzh Sargsyan, left parliament and took to the streets on 27 April in protest at Pashinyan’s ongoing peace negotiations with Azerbaijan and opening the border with Turkey.

Protest leaders have repeatedly warned the Armenian public that Pashinyan, if not overthrown, will concede Karabakh Armenians’ right to self-determination in the negotiations with Azerbaijan, and that Turkey could refuse to recognise the Armenian Genocide as part of the ‘normalisation’ talks with Armenia.

Pashinyan appeared to raise the possibility of concessions over Nagorno-Karabakh in April, saying that “today the international community tells us again: ‘Lower your benchmark on the status of Nagorno-Karabakh a little’.” Yet protest leaders have not offered an alternative for Armenia’s foreign policy, instead leaving these questions to the temporary government which will follow if their campaign succeeds.

Anthropologist Aghasi Tadevosyan told openDemocracy the current protest movement is the most aggressive he has seen in the country – but is also identified with the country’s “old guard” and their cronies, leading some to dub it ‘the revolution of millionaires’.

“People surely have concerns about the fate of Karabakh, but the fear of ‘return of the old’ is bigger,” Tadevosyan said.

In their attempt to force him out of power, protesters have used the civil disobedience tactics of Pashinyan himself, who came to power in the 2018 Velvet Revolution.

Four years ago, opposition MP Pashinyan organised a city-wide campaign of blocking transport and roads in Yerevan, which eventually helped him dislodge Sargsyan from power. But since Armenia’s defeat in the 2020 Karabakh War, Pashinyan’s government has come under fire for its weakness in handling the conflict. In response to the defeat by Azerbaijan, hundreds of people demonstrated in central Yerevan over the government’s failures, even breaking into parliament buildings.

This time, protesters’ efforts at blocking traffic are sporadic and have not paralysed the city like in 2018. Rather, the protesters have created traffic problems in the gentrified city centre with few alternative roads to the suburbs.

But after a month of protests, why has it proved unsuccessful? According to independent observers, the daily average number of participants is around 3,000-5,000, while protesters claim the rally gets about 50,000 attendees daily and is growing.

On the street, several protesters explained the protests’ lack of popularity by virtue of the Armenian people not being “awake”, and therefore unaware of the danger that Pashinyan poses to the country.

Grigoryan emphasised that in a number of cases ‘the physical force used by police officers during the apprehension of persons’ was ‘obviously disproportionate’ and that there were documented cases in which ‘brutal physical force’ was used against those who had already been restrained by the police.

During the May 30 protest, protesters attempted to force their way inside a  government administration building. In the ensuing clashes over a dozen people were injured, and some were hospitalized, including police officers. 

Daniel Ioannisyan, Programs Coordinator at the Union of Informed Citizens, an Armenia-based democracy watchdog, drew attention to the ‘apparent criminal actions’ of the crowd trying to storm the government administration, saying that the police might be allowed to ‘take special measures’ to stop the protesters, though only ‘within proportion’. 

While over 100 people were briefly detained by police during the incident, eight were arrested and remain in police custory. They may be facing criminal charges. 

Since the protests began a month ago, 25 criminal cases have been launched by Armenia’s Investigative Committee concerning  ‘unlawful actions’ by the police. 

https://oc-media.org/disproportionate-force-from-armenian-police-as-clashes-with-protesters-continue/