Month: November 2023

BAKU: Azerbaijan on Thursday refused to participate in normalization talks with arch-rival Armenia that were scheduled to be held in the United States this month due to what it described as Washington’s “biased” stance.

Baku and Yerevan have been locked in a decades-long regional conflict over Azerbaijan’s Nagorno-Karabakh region, which Baku regained in September after a lightning attack against Armenian separatists.

Internationally mediated peace talks between the former Soviet republics have seen little progress, but leaders of the two countries said a comprehensive peace agreement could be signed by the end of the year.

The Foreign Ministry in Baku said in a statement: “We do not see it as possible to hold the proposed meeting at the level of the foreign ministers of Azerbaijan and Armenia in Washington on November 20, 2023.”

The move came after a hearing in the US House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee on Wednesday, where the department said Assistant Secretary of State James O’Brien made “biased and biased statements” about Azerbaijan.

O’Brien told the House of Representatives committee that “there will be nothing normal with Azerbaijan after the events of September 19 until we see progress on the peace path.”

He added, “We have canceled a number of high-level visits and condemned (Baku’s) actions.”

“Such a unilateral approach by the United States could lead to the loss of the American mediation role,” the Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry said.

Armenian Prime minister Nikol Pashinyan said on Thursday that “Yerevan’s political will to sign a peace agreement with Azerbaijan in the coming months remains firm.”

Pashinyan and Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev held several rounds of talks mediated by the European Union.

But last month, Aliyev refused to attend the round of negotiations with Pashinyan in Spain, citing “France’s biased position.”

French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz were scheduled to join European Union Secretary General Charles Michel as mediators in those talks.

So far, no tangible progress has been made in the European Union’s efforts to organize a new round of negotiations.

https://geotvnews.com/azerbaijan-rejects-the-armenian-peace-talks-scheduled-in-the-united-states-and-the-world-geotv-news/

Azerbaijan continues to refuse to attend peace talks with Armenia, citing what it calls the biased approach of Western mediating countries. This time it was the U.S. that displeased Azerbaijan. 

On November 16, Azerbaijan's Foreign Ministry put out a statement announcing the country's decision not to attend a meeting of the Armenian and Azerbaijani foreign ministers in Washington scheduled for four days later.

The snub was in large part a response to U.S. Assistant Secretary of State James O'Brien's testimony the previous day at a House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing titled "The Future of Nagorno-Karabakh." He told the committee that the U.S. was working on establishing a "comprehensive, thorough and transparent" record of what happened in the formerly Armenian-populated enclave before and during Azerbaijan's September military takeover. 

"We have commissioned independent investigators, we have our own investigators working in the field. There is information available from international non-governmental organizations and other investigators. And as we develop the record of what happened, we will be completely open about what we are finding. I can't put a timeline on this investigation, but we will inform you as we go forward," he said. 

O'Brien went on to express support for Armenia, which has been attempting a pivot away from Russia and is scrambling to accommodate the 100,000-some people displaced from Nagorno-Karabakh in September. 

"I am very impressed by the Armenian government's commitment to reforms and diversifying the relationships that it has – economic, political, energy and security – particularly in the Trans-Atlantic community," he said. "And I think we owe it to the people of Armenia to help them through this difficult situation so that those choices they have made very bravely are able to help them to make them have a more secure, stable and prosperous future." 

O'Brien also said that the U.S. had canceled high-level bilateral meetings and engagements with Azerbaijan (without specifying exactly when) and would keep urging Baku to "facilitate the return of Nagorno-Karabakh Armenians who may wish to go back to their homes or visit cultural sites in the region, as well as restore unimpeded commercial, humanitarian, and pedestrian traffic to the region."

In its statement the Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry called the hearing "a blow to the Azerbaijan-U.S. relations in bilateral and multilateral formats."

"The groundless accusations voiced against Azerbaijan are irrelevant and undermine peace and security in the region," the statement read. 

On the day of the hearing, the U.S. Senate also adopted a bill titled "Armenian Protection Act of 2023". If it becomes law, the bill will suspend all military aid to Azerbaijan by repealing the Freedom Support Act Section 907 waiver authority for the Administration with respect to assistance to Azerbaijan for the years 2024 and 2025.

On that front, Azerbaijan's diplomatic body argued that the U.S. was repeating "the same mistake" it made in 1992, when Azerbaijan was sanctioned with this amendment, "despite being a state who faced aggression and occupation" at the hands of Armenian forces.

Also on November 16, the U.S. reaffirmed its support for Armenia-Azerbaijan rapprochement irrespective of who mediates. "We would encourage the two parties to engage in those talks, whether they are here, whether they are somewhere else, and that'll continue to be our policy," spokesperson of the U.S. State Department Matthew Miller told a briefing.

Baku for its part does not seem interested in the U.S. having an active role in those talks. For some months now, it has been expressing distaste with Western-brokered negotiations and instead shown a preference for regional mediators like Russia, Turkey, and Iran. 

And its latest statement, the Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry warned that, "[S]uch a unilateral approach by the United States could lead to the loss of the mediation role of the United States."

Benefit shows can be slogs. But All for Armenia, a comedy show on Friday, Nov. 3rd at the Upright Citizen’s Brigade Theater, was anything but. It managed to raise money for a vital cause while also being very, very funny. 

The show was hosted by comedian and master impressionist James Adomian, who along with producers Sam Varela of Naked Comedy, Chris Tcholakian of the Everything Now Show and stand-up Armond Gorjian, put together a stellar lineup of comics and character performers, jammed into two hours.

All proceeds for the show went to All for Armenia, a nonprofit that provides humanitarian aid to the estimated 100,000 Armenians displaced from the Nagorno-Karabakh region, also known as Artsakh, after being pushed out by neighboring Azerbaijan. All told, the show raised over $1,700.

Adomian kicked off his hosting duties with a short set that included his best-in-the-biz Bernie Sanders impression and musings about his (one-quarter) Armenian-ness.

There wasn’t a dud in the program that followed, with stand-ups Aparna Nancherla, Nate Craig, Chris Estrada, Alice Wetterlund, River Butcher and character performer Alyssa Limperis all bringing their A-game, with punchy sets that delivered the goods.

The charming comic Mary Basmadjian gave us a gut-busting look into the trials of dating as an Armenian woman. Guy Branum didn’t shy away from the topic at hand in a brilliantly dark set that tackled, among other things, the popularity of genocide.

Actor and LA radio legend Phil Hendrie also performed in character, and in a moment of nostalgia for the LA talk radio faithful, gave us a spot-on Tom Leykis impression. Leykis, the shock jock from the 90s and aughts, infamously tweeted, “Angelenos don’t give a SHIT about Armenia” — a sentiment quickly debunked if you talk to anyone from LA.

Lory Tatoulian was a showstopper, reprising her character Sossi Hayrabedian, a Ross Dress for Less-clad Armenian running for president, who harangued the crowd and left us in tears. And Reggie Watts closed out the night with his signature bizarre observational stylings.

We talked with Adomian afterwards about what it meant to produce a show benefitting the Armenian cause.

“We’re seeing all this bad news in the last two months, and in the last three years, from Armenia and Artsakh — the ethnic cleansing that happened, the massacres, the torture, at the hands of Azerbaijan,” Adomian told us. “And people don’t know what to do besides retweet something or like an Instagram post. So it was really nice to give people a chance to help directly with the refugees from Artsakh.”

It’s been a grim few years for the Armenian community globally and locally — LA County is home to the largest concentration of Armenians outside of Armenia. 

Nagorno-Karabakh, a region of disputed territorial claim, has been de-facto governed by ethnic Armenians as the independent Republic of Artsakh following a 1994 war between Armenia and Azerbaijan. Armenians have been living there thousands of years and made up a large majority of its population.

In 2020, the neighboring oil-rich and authoritarian Azerbaijan, backed by Turkey, launched an offensive that took effective control of the region. In the ensuing years, they blockaded the region and terrorized Armenians living there with documented accounts of torture. 

Then in September of this year, Azerbaijan fully invaded Artsakh and ethnically cleansed it of its Armenian population, forcing an estimated 100,000 its Armenians to flee to Armenia — a massive number considering Armenia has a population under 3 million — resulting in a humanitarian crisis.

The events are a stark parallel to the Armenian Genocide, perpetrated by Turkey, which started in 1915 and resulted in the killing of over 1 million Armenians, primarily through death marches. Both Turkey and Azerbaijan deny the Armenian Genocide.

But you’d be loath to find any of this in newspaper headlines or on cable. With wars in Ukraine, Africa, and now, the Middle East, there has been little to no coverage of Armenia’s turmoil in our media.

“There’s next to zero news coverage outside of like KTLA locally,” Adomian explains. “The State Department has a shameful policy of just playing both sides. And so the Armenians have been very depressed worldwide, feeling like there’s no support from any quarter — ganged up on by Turkey and Azerbaijan and Russia together, and the United States and Canada doing nothing.”

“But then you realize on the street, among the real people, wherever there are, people love them and like them and want to support them. So we don’t have a lot of support at the highest levels of media, state departments and other foreign ministries and other countries, but we do have a lot of support with real people.”

Adomian thanked the UCB Theatre where he has performed since it opened in 2005. “When the ethnic cleansing started, they were very, very accommodating, and then the conversation started immediately about doing a fundraiser there.”

For a benefit with such a bleak backdrop, it felt good to laugh. And it definitely helped that the show was stacked with comedians who can do what comedians do best — make light in darkness.

“It was a little bit emotional for me because it was the first time I got to see firsthand — not just on the internet, but in person — people come out who weren’t Armenian to support the Armenians in a time of great tragedy and crisis,” Adomian reflected. “And I was kind of amazed that nobody was afraid to laugh and have a good time. It was a fun night.”

https://www.laweekly.com/james-adomian-hosts-a-night-of-big-laughs-at-ucb-all-for-armenia/

Armenian authorities said on Thursday that they had opened an investigation after the country's only synagogue was vandalized in an arson attack, AFP reported.

Video from social media on Wednesday showed a person pouring burning fuel on the door of the Mordechai Navi Jewish Center, which serves the small Jewish population in the capital Yerevan.

"On November 15, the police received a call that unknown persons wanted to set fire to the doors of the building at 23 Nar-Dos Street in Yerevan. An investigation has been launched," local police told AFP.

Rima Varzhapetyan, the president of Armenia's Jewish community, said that the synagogue had not been seriously damaged and that no one was in the building at the time.

"We are horrified because Jews have never had any problems in Armenia," she told AFP.

Israel's non-resident ambassador to Armenia, Joel Lion, denounced the attack in a statement on social media.

"I call on the government of Armenia to condemn all forms of anti-Semitism, to fully investigate this crime, and bring the perpetrators to justice," he said.

The incident comes amid a spike in antisemitic incidents around the world since the October 7 attacks on Israel by Hamas, and Israel's subsequent war against the group in the Gaza Strip.

These include vandalism at a Jewish cemetery on Cleveland’s west side, where a number of headstones were found spray painted with red swastikas.

Last week, a Los Angeles woman was charged with hate crimes after ramming her vehicle through the gate of a local synagogue and cultural center.

The incident came days after Paul Kessler, a 69-year-old Jewish man, died from blunt-force head trauma after he was hit in the head with a megaphone during a confrontation with a counterprotester at a Los Angeles protest.

In Montreal, gunshots were fired at a Jewish school in the city twice within one week.

https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/380468

Xana Capital, the company owned by Israeli settler Danny Rubenstein, also known as Danny Rothman, has made further attempts in the last twenty-four hours to seize a sizeable tract of land in the Armenian Quarter in occupied East Jerusalem.

On two separate occasions, Wednesday evening and Thursday morning, private security guards and Israeli settlers stormed the Armenian Quarter in a move to assert control of the land in dispute. Two bulldozers accompanied them. 

Earlier in the month, armed Israeli settlers made a similar move, but community members repelled them. 
 
Hagop Djernazian told The New Arab that members of the Armenian community stopped the work from progressing.  

"The community prevented them from advancing. Then the police came at 11:00 pm in big numbers and demanded the community to leave, but we stood in front of the police and prevented them from entering". 

According to Djernazian, lawyers representing the Patriarchate have explained to the Israeli police that the matter is in the courts and, in the meantime, the settlers cannot change facts on the ground. 

Xana Capital is laying claim on the land following signing a deal with the Armenian Patriarch Nourhan Manougian several years ago. The Armenian Patriarchate has since withdrew from the agreement. The details of the agreement are not entirely apparent. 

The property deal reportedly pertains to 11.5 dunams in the Armenian Quarter, which amounts to 25 per cent of the total size of the Armenian Quarter in Jerusalem's Old City. It includes a vast tract of land currently used as a parking lot, a seminary, and five residential homes. 

Omar Haramy, a Palestinian Christian activist who came to show solidarity with Armenian activists, told TNA that "Jerusalem is under attack, especially the Armenian Quarter; there is no justice in Jerusalem, no justice under occupation". 

Members of the various Churches in Jerusalem, including the Latin Patriarchate and the Evangelical Lutheran Church, are expected to pay solidarity to the Armenian Patriarchate on Friday. 

https://www.newarab.com/news/armenians-confront-israeli-settlers-jerusalems-old-city

JERUSALEM, Friday, (WAFA) – The Higher Presidential Committee for Church Affairs said Israel is trying to control the Armenian neighborhood by force, threats, and intimidation, calling on the international community to intervene to preserve this Christian heritage.

The committee asserted that Israeli forces and settlers are aggressively attempting to seize control of the Armenian Quarter in occupied Jerusalem, utilizing force, intimidation, and threats against its residents. It urgently called upon the international community to intervene in order to safeguard this Christian heritage.

A statement released by the executive member of the PLO and head of this committee, Ramzi Khouri emphasized the relentless harassment faced by Armenian Quarter residents and highlighted recent measures to dismantle walls within the Armenian Orthodox Patriarchate’s private vehicle parking lot.

Khouri affirmed that the Armenian Quarter is an indispensable Armenian and Palestinian heritage, and underscored the unwavering determination of the Palestinian people to resist Israeli pressures, especially the discriminatory measures imposed on Christians and Muslims in Occupied Jerusalem.

The committee’s head called for immediate and decisive international intervention to counter Israeli policies, cease settler provocations, and halt the forced displacement of Palestinians, particularly in the Old City of Jerusalem.

T.R.

Documentaries about the impact of war claimed two of the top prizes as the International Documentary Festival Amsterdam handed out awards Thursday night.

1489, directed by Armenian filmmaker Shoghakat Vardanyan, won Best Film in International Competition. The film revolves around the disappearance of the director’s 21-year-old brother, Soghomon Vardanyan, who went missing in the early days of the renewed fighting in 2020 between Armenia and Azerbaijan over the disputed region of Nagorno-Karabakh, an area Armenians refer to as Artsakh. 

The award comes with a €15,000 cash prize. The jury members of the International Competition were Emilie Bujès, Francesco Giai Via, Tabitha Jackson, Ada Solomon, and Xiaoshuai Wang. 

Jurors called 1489, “A film that acts as a piercing light that makes visible the vast hidden interior landscape of grief and creates a tangible presence from unbearable absence. Cinema as a tool of survival—to allow us all, to look at the things we would rather not see. And ultimately, an unforgettable example of cinema as an act of love.”

Palestinian filmmaker Mohamed Jabaly won Best Director in International Competition for his film Life Is Beautiful, an account of how he became stranded in Norway while making his earlier film Ambulance. While in the Scandinavian country in 2014, the border to Gaza was closed, preventing his return. But when Jabaly went to apply for a visa to stay longer in Norway, there was a snag. The form he had to fill out by computer did not list Palestine as a country. 

“For me, I was a bit shocked when I realized that I’m stateless,” Jabaly told Deadline in Amsterdam earlier this week. “Coming to Norway, applying for a new visa and then like, hey, I cannot choose Palestine [from the drop-down menu]. And that’s for me, what does that mean?”

The directing award comes with a €5,000 prize.

Jurors described Life Is Beautiful as, “A timely cinematic _expression_ of the universal need to be recognized in our full humanity. A compelling indictment of the bureaucratic and political structures that deny that. A directorial tone that, almost impossibly, manages to find hope and humor amid unimaginable pain. An urgent call for freedom, freedom of movement, freedom of opportunity and the freedom to pursue our dreams.” [Scroll for full list of IDFA Awards winners].

The IDFA Award for Best Editing (recipient of a €2,500 prize) in International Competition went to Anand Patwardhan for The World Is Family.

“A vivid evocation of 100 years of history in less than 100 minutes of cinema,” jurors wrote of The World Is Family. “An intimate act of family portraiture whose spirited subjects are lovingly painted with humor and deep humanity. A facility with scale and whose fluidity in form beautifully reflects flow of life, death, and history.”

The IDFA Award for Best Cinematography in International Competition (along with a €2,500 prize) went to Flickering Lights, directed by Anirban Dutta and Anupama Srinivasan.

Jurors called the film, “A beautiful relationship between a vibrant community and the audience, created through the curious and patient gaze of the camera. An accomplished portrait of existence without electricity, of life without light, until a moment of transformation. With an unshowy but deeply effective sense of really being there.”

In the separate Envision Competition, a section devoted to daring cinematic approaches to documentary, Best Film was awarded to Canuto’s Transformation, directed by Ariel Kuaray Ortega and Ernesto de Carvalho. 

The award comes with a €15,000 prize. Envision Competition jurors included Annouchka de Andrade, Cao Guimarães, Kirsten Johnson, and Kivu Ruhorahoza. (Basma al-Sharif, a Palestinian director and artist, withdrew from the Envision jury in the midst of the festival, citing displeasure over how IDFA had handled a pro-Palestinian protest that interrupted the opening night ceremony).

The Envision jury said of Canuto’s Transformation, “With a decades-long commitment to the filmmaking process within community, a sense of humor, and a quest to move between worlds. This film embodies the many meanings of transformation.” 

In addition, Ariel Kuaray Ortega and Ernesto de Carvalho won the Award for Outstanding Artistic Merit for their film and a €2,500 prize.

Kumjana Novakova earned the Best Directing honor (and €5,000 prize) in the Envision Competition for her documentary Silence of Reason.

Jurors praised Novakova for her “rigorous presentation of forensic evidence and the incredible courage of women whose testimony meant that rape would be internationally recognized as a crime of war. Kumjana Novakova cinematically rendered these crimes unforgettable.”

In other categories, At That Very Moment directed by Rita Pauls and Federico Luis Tachella won the IDFA Award for Best Short Documentary. The award is accompanied by a €5,000 cash prize.  

The jurors said, “For its simplicity, spontaneity, and transparency in dealing with people, things, and small details, and for the depth of the questions raised in it that are profound despite their apparent simplicity, and for its smooth and intense cinematic work, especially photography and lyrical editing, the jury awards the IDFA Award for Best Short Documentary to At That Very Moment by directors Rita Pauls and Federico Luis Tachella.”

A special mention went to My Father directed by Pegah Ahangarani.  

“For this filmmaker’s ability to transform archival photographs and video recordings into a film that combine to form an intimate visual narrative, and restores a sensitive, realistic, and influential era – with the negative and positive that it entails—in both public and private history, the jury gives a Special Mention to My Father by Pegah Ahangarani,” the jury wrote. 

Jury members for the IDFA Competition for Short Documentary were Nadim Jarjoura and Brigid O’Shea. 

The IDFA Award for Best Youth Documentary (13+) went to Mariusz Rusiński for Sister of Mine. The award is accompanied by a €2,500 cash prize.  

The IDFA Award for Best Youth Documentary (9-12) went to Sebastian Mulder for And a Happy New Year. Cash prize: €2,500.

A special mention went to Boyz by Sylvain Cruiziat.   

The jury members for the IDFA Competition for Youth Documentary were Maria Vittoria Pellecchia, Ileana Stanculescu, and Pawel Ziemilski. 

Complete List of IDFA 2023 winners:

The last of the Armenian refugees known as the Georgetown Boys died in 2006, making records of their history all the more important.

Copies of the newsletter they kept at Cedarvale Farm - called Ararat Monthly -  were scattered across the world, making it exceedingly difficult to give a concise voice to this group. But no more.

Issues of the newsletter can now be found in one place in the book Pages from Armenian Canadian History: The Ararat Monthlies. Scholars Daniel Ohanian, Salpi Garabedian and Gabriella Batikian spent over a decade scouring archives and collections for copies in multiple countries. Their work debuted at two recent book launches in Cambridge and Toronto.

Copies of The Ararat Monthlies being sold at their Toronto debut event. Mansoor Tanweer/HaltonHillsToday

“The past ends up being forgotten unless people put it down on paper and find ways of reading it, sharing it with others and so on,” Ohanian told HaltonHillsToday.

“Given this book is about things that happened 100 years ago, it was important to me that we put it together between two covers in a volume so more people know about it today.”

The Georgetown Boys - just over 100 orphaned survivors of the Armenian Genocide - were brought to Canada starting in 1923 to be trained as farmers. Their education took place in Georgetown’s Cedarvale Park, then a farm. The descendants of the Georgetown Boys and Girls, as well as several organizations, marked the centenary of their arrival in June.

The newsletter was a teaching tool to help them develop their English language skills. The voluminous tome of just over 800 pages contains their writings in both English and Armenian. 

“When I read these pages, I see my father,” Lorne Shirinian, whose father Mampre Shirinian was a regular contributor to the newsletter, said. 

Shirinian the elder did not talk much about the genocide in his life. There were a few snippets here and there. Much of what he wrote about, Lorne says, “help round out the narrative a little.”

But, even then there were not enough details in the book. Trauma may have played a role in the decision to, Lorne believes, “spare his kids.”

“Or [spare] himself,” he added. “God knows what he spoke about with my mom, or the Armenian [orphans] when they got together.”

One of the compilers of the book, Daniel Ohanian. Mansoor Tanweer/HaltonHillsToday

At its peak, the publication had 2,000 or so subscribers around the world. For $1 a year, roughly $17 in today’s money, subscribers read about the mundane daily occurrences of their lives, poetry, Armenian history and, of course, their recollections of the genocide. 

Their audience read about election coverage as the orphans vied for political posts on their farm. Mampre Shirinian was even elected mayor. 

Onnig Shangayan wrote about the importance of Mt. Ararat in eastern Turkey – the namesake of the newsletter – saying that it’s “the symbol of Armenia as the maple leaf is of Canada.”

Shangayan declared in another column that “Armenian boys will never go hungry in Canada. But we must work hard and earn the bread we eat.”

As the boys were placed on farms when they were ready to work, some penned updates about their lives with their new families. Hachig Karajian called his adoptive patriarch, Mr. Earl Hindly, in Eramosa “a good gentleman” and called his wife “a very nice lady.”

Hagop Hagopian felt it was important to talk about Vardan Mamikonian, a hero from his people’s history who fought against Sassanid Iran. 

Their trauma often comes through in their words. Many of the boys wrote about mothers, no doubt longing for their own. 

Hagopian tells the story of a 10-year-old orphan boy named Arsham. When walking through the streets on Christmas Eve, he breaks down crying. He remembered the kiss he received from his late mother the previous year. A passing woman takes pity and offers him a gift. “Please lady, give me my mother’s sweet kiss only and nothing else,” Arsham responds.

“There were lots of pieces about mothers and death,” Ohanian said when asked if he felt the boys' trauma. “When there are pieces that make reference to where people lived – their hometowns and homelands – that’s also moving.”

Pages from Armenian Canadian History: The Ararat Monthlies can be purchased from Amazon.

https://www.haltonhillstoday.ca/local-news/georgetown-boys-powerful-words-give-voice-to-armenian-orphans-in-new-book-7828629