Author: Babajanian Karo

NEEDLEWORK EXHIBITION DEVOTED TO 100TH ANNIVERSARY OF ARMENIAN GENOCIDE OPENED IN ALEPPO

11:42, 18 March, 2015

YEREVAN, 18 MARCH, ARMENPRESS: On 17 March, within the framework of
events of the 100th anniversary of the Armenian Genocide, a needlework
exhibition of the Western Armenia and the Armenian provinces of
Cilicia has opened in the hall of Aleppo’s Holly Mary Church.

The editorial office of “Kantsasar” newspaper informed “Armenpress”
about this. The exhibition is organized by the regional Department of
the Syrian-Armenian Assistance Cross, headed by the Primate of Armenian
Diocese of Beroea, His Grace Archbishop Shahan Sarkissian and sponsored
by the Syrian central body of the centennial of the Armenian Genocide.

The three leaders of Syrian-Armenian communities, General Consul of
Republic of Armenia to Aleppo, the representative of the Armenian
Relief Fund, members of Assistance Cross organization and other guests
attended the opening ceremony.

The Armenian provinces’ history, traditions and habits, embroidery,
dialects and delicious meals have been introduced during the
exhibition.

ARMENIA’S EXTERNAL DEBT EXPECTED TO EXCEED $ 5 BILLION IN A FEW YEARS (VIDEO)

11:18 | March 18,2015 | Economy

Armenia plans to issue Eurobonds this year to help offset the effects
of the economic crisis in its key trade partner, Russia, Armenia’s
Finance Ministry said in February.

Economists in Armenia say that the country’s decision to issue
Eurobonds will increase the country’s foreign debt which is estimated
to exceed $ 5 billion in a few years. Armenia’s external debt now is
over $4 billion.

In its previous sitting, the Armenian government approved plans to
release more Eurobonds, which means Armenia will take a new loan for
several years and is obliged to pay interest year every year u until
the country repays the principal loan in seven years.

TIME TO ACKNOWLEDGE ARMENIAN GENOCIDE

Porterville Recorder, CA
March 18 2015

Michael Carley / A Different Drum Recorderonline.com

When one thinks of the word genocide, what often comes to mind is the
Nazi holocaust of World War II during which Germany killed millions.

Communists, gays and minorities of all stripes were among the targets,
but Jews in particular suffered with an estimated six million of
their number killed, a substantial portion of the European Jewish
population of the time.

But, the word genocide was actually coined by Raphael Lemkin, a Jewish
attorney from Poland, with regard to a different historical event,
one not discussed as widely, the Armenian genocide.

The Armenian genocide wasn’t simply one event. Persecution began long
before the main attacks in 1915. As Armenians began to organize for
improvement of their lot in the late 19th century, they fell victim
to persecution by authorities of the Ottoman empire. Massacres of
Armenians took place as early as 1894, taking the lives of thousands.

Further persecution took place, including more massacres, over the
next twenty years. In what would become a prelude to Nazi propaganda,
the Ottomans began a campaign in 1914 arguing that Armenians were a
threat to their society. But the genocide began in full in April 1915,
a century ago next month.

Among other events, the Ottomans arrested about 250 intellectuals
and began the mass deportation of thousands. Others were sent on what
would later be called a “death march” through the desert toward Syria
where many perished. Property was confiscated, extermination camps
were established, some temporary, others contained mass graves. Many
were drowned.

Again presaging the Nazis, many were killed through medical
experimentation, including overdoses of various drugs, including
morphine.

Estimates of those killed vary substantially, but the numbers are
likely between one and one and a half million Armenians.

Some Americans did speak out against the genocide, including former
president Theodore Roosevelt, populist Williams Jennings Bryan,
Rabbi Steven Wise and feminist Alice Stone Blackwell.

The Republic of Turkey is the successor state to the Ottoman Empire and
it staunchly opposes using the term genocide. Nonetheless, the Armenian
Diaspora has consistently pushed for recognition of it, as they should.

To date, 22 countries have adopted resolutions acknowledging the
Armenian genocide as have 42 of the 50 US states.

Numerous congressional resolutions have been put forward to formally
recognize the Armenian genocide, only to fail due to lobbying by
the Turkish government. Relationships with a key ally have taken
precedence over historical accuracy.

President George W. Bush and his state department opposed recognition
during his tenure in office. While campaigning for president,
candidate Obama promised to recognize the genocide if elected,
but reversed course once in office, adhering to the same policy of
his predecessors, his administration opposing several congressional
attempts. The same goes for potential candidate Hillary Clinton who
lobbied against recognition during her tenure as Secretary of State.

As the century date approaches next month, it would be a good time
to do the right thing and simply acknowledge history as it happened.

If we’re looking for silver linings, one only has to turn to our
neighbors to see the positive impact Armenian immigrants have had on
American society.

Armenian immigration began well before the 1915 events, with a wave
coming through the early massacres and the genocide period and another
wave coming from the 1960s onward, largely Soviet Armenians who had
not fully integrated into Soviet society.

The most recent American Community Survey (formerly the Census long
form) estimates that there are nearly half a million Armenian-Americans
in the US, though some estimates place the number far higher. The
highest concentration has been in the Los Angeles area, comprising
more than 40 percent of the national total.

Going back even further, some of the earliest Armenian immigrants
came here to the Central Valley, many of them settling in the Fresno
area as early as 1874. A number of them became Valley farmers and in
the early years, discrimination against Armenians was common.

Best known of these was William Saroyan. Born in Fresno in 1908,
Saroyan was the celebrated writer of short stories such as The Daring
Young Man on the Flying Trapeze and many others. Saroyan won the
Pulitzer Prize for drama in 1940 and an Academy Award in 1943 for
the film adaptation of his novel The Human Comedy.

You can see cultural events at the Saroyan Theatre, near the Fresno
Convention Center. One you might consider would be tonight’s town hall
event, From the Ottoman Empire To Today: The Time for Reconciliation.

Michael Carley is a resident of Porterville.

OBAMA ADMINISTRATION INSULTS MEMORY OF ARMENIAN HOLOCAUST

Front Page Magazine
March 18 2015

March 18, 2015 by Stephen Brown

Next month, Armenians worldwide will mark the centennial of the
Armenian Holocaust that saw 1.5 million of their people perish
barbarically at the hands of the Ottoman Turks in a jihad that is
continuing today under the Islamic State. This destruction of the
Armenians in Anatolia, where they had lived for several thousand years,
was also the event that gave Hitler reason to believe he could get
away with exterminating Jews, Poles and Gypsies.

“Who still remembers today the annihilation of the Armenians?” the
Nazi leader reportedly said.

The trauma of 1915 left deep scars on the Armenian psyche, similar
to those the Nazi Holocaust made on that of the world’s Jews. As
a result, one would think the Obama administration would show an
increased sensitivity regarding the killing of Armenians, especially
by Muslim enemies, and more especially in view of the approaching
Armenian Holocaust’s centenary in April. But only last month,
US Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs
Victoria Nuland urged Armenian authorities to make “a humanitarian
gesture” and release two Azeri terrorists who had crossed the border
from Azerbaijan and murdered two people, one a 17-year-old. A third
Armenian, a woman, was badly wounded.

“Such humanitarian gestures have been shown to reduce tensions
and build trust between the sides. So that’s what she (Nuland) was
referring to,” said a state department spokeswoman later at a press
briefing, in explaining the assistant secretary’s controversial
remarks.

Nuland was in Azerbaijan, the second stop of her tour of the Caucuses
Mountains, when she made the “humanitarian gesture” comment, having
previously visited Georgia. In Azerbaijan, Nuland also said she
would take up the matter of releasing the two imprisoned Azeris when
she visited Armenia, her next and last stop. Armenia and Azerbaijan
are both former Soviet republics in the southern Caucuses Mountains,
who now face each other over a closed, hostile border. Armed clashes
occur there now almost daily and deaths have occurred. The military
confrontation between the two Caucasian nations has recently become
so heated, it is feared armed conflict could break out.

The cause of the enmity between Christian Armenia and Azerbaijan, a
Turkic-speaking, Muslim-majority country, was an undeclared war fought
from 1988 to 1994 over Nagorno-Karabakh, an Armenian enclave inside
of Azerbaijan that sought secession and reunification with Armenia in
the dying days of the Soviet empire. The Nagorno-Karabakh Armenians,
perceiving themselves as victims of the Soviet Union’s nationalities
policy, believed they were righting a historical wrong. In 1921, the
Bolsheviks had first awarded the enclave to Armenia but later reversed
that decision, giving it to Azerbaijan, even though the population,
according to an early Soviet census, was 95 percent Armenian. Stalin
was reportedly responsible for this fateful, and disastrous, decision
reversal.

During the conflict, both sides engaged in ethnic cleansing. According
to authors Caroline Cox and John Eibner, Azeris cleared 40,000
Armenians out of Kirovabad, Azerbaijan’s second-largest city, in 1988
in response to Nagorno-Karabakh’s secession drive. Another Azeri pogrom
against Armenians, in which 32 were killed, preceded this in Sumgait,
followed by another in Baku, Azerbaijan’s capital.

“The Armenians were not quick to retaliate to the Sumgait massacre,”
wrote Cox and Eibner in their 1993-published book Ethnic Cleansing In
Progress: War In Nagorno-Karabakh. “But Armenian restraint crumbled in
response to the Kirovabad pogrom and the anti-Armenian demonstrations
in Baku.”

In the war itself, the outnumbered Nagorno-Karabakh Armenians, with
assistance from neighboring Armenia, not only won their independence,
defeating the Azeri forces, they also conquered some adjoining
Azeri territory, which they still hold today. With the victory,
Nagorno-Karabakh renamed itself Artsakh (its ancient name when
an Armenian kingdom), and became an independent state, recognised
internationally, however, by few others. These diplomatic difficulties
have also prevented Artsakh from joining Armenia, although the two
are closely entwined.

Until now, Artsakh has refused to return the Azeri territory it
occupies until it can be guaranteed that it will not be used to stage
attacks on its land. In this respect, Nagorno-Karabakh has adopted
a position similar to Israel’s regarding the Arab territories it
captured in 1967: it will trade land for peace.

Azerbaijan’s ally, Turkey, which is located on Armenia’s western
border, became so incensed when the Artsakh forces were winning that
it threatened to attack Armenia, although it was not officially a
combatant. Apparently, Turkey is not content with having murdered
1.5 million Armenians a hundred years ago and wants to continue this
homicidal tradition in this century. A Turkish military assault on
Armenia would be like Germany attacking Israel today.

However, a warning from the Kremlin that a Turkish attack on Armenia
would mean war with Russia caused Turkey to climb down, thus averting
a regional conflict. In the end, to save face, all Turkey could do
was seal its border with Armenia as well. This closure has lasted now
22 years, severely disrupting the Armenian economy. And incredibly,
while trying its best to strangle Armenia, Turkey has hypocritically
complained about Israel’s blockade of Gaza.

So it is against this background of war, genocide, ethnic cleansing
and ancient hatreds that Nuland called upon Armenian authorities to
make a “humanitarian gesture” and release the murderers. The two
Azeri terrorists were found guilty in a Republic of Artsakh court
after an “open and transparent trial,” and received prison sentences
of life and 22 years respectively. One of the charges that formed the
conviction was “murder committed by an organised group motivated by
ethnic hatred.” Artsakh security forces killed a third Azeri terrorist
belonging to the group. None of the three, Azerbaijan claims, are
members of its military.

Although Artsakh is recognised by four American state governments,
the most recent being California in 2014, the federal government
continues to deny it diplomatic recognition. As a result, Nuland
did not talk with Artsakh authorities when in Armenia. Instead,
she met with the Armenian foreign minister and visited the Armenian
Holocaust memorial in Yerevan. But Nuland’s talks with Armenian
officials concerning the two Azeri terrorists yielded no results.

This was to be expected. Armenians well remember the terrible injustice
and humiliation inflicted on them when the Hungarian government
released early from prison an Azeri military officer, Rami Safarov,
who had killed Armenian officer, Lt. Gurgen Markarian, in his sleep
with an axe in 2004 in Budapest. Both were attending a North Atlantic
Treaty Organization-sponsored event at the time. Safarov was released
after he had served only six years of a 30 year sentence for reasons
that have yet to be discerned, outraging both Armenians and Hungarians.

“With their joint actions the authorities of Hungary and Azerbaijan
have opened the door for the recurrence of such crimes,” Armenia’s
then president, Serge Sarkisian, stated prophetically. “With this
decision they send a clear message to the butchers. The slaughterers
hereafter are well aware of the impunity they can enjoy for murder
driven by ethnic or religious hatred.”

Safarov returned home to Azerbaijan on a “special flight” and received
a hero’s welcome. For his foul murder, the government rewarded him
with a pardon, eight years back pay, an apartment and a promotion of
two ranks, similar to honours Palestinians bestow on their terrorists
for killing Israelis. Also like the Palestinians, one Azeri member
of the national legislature called Safarov “a national hero.” Which
shows the level of Azeri hatred and civilizational development when
an axe murderer is accorded this status.

The reason the Obama administration requested on Azerbaijan’s
behalf that the two Azeri murderers be released was probably not
a humanitarian one, as it maintains. Like some Arab countries,
Azerbaijan is very oil rich, while Armenia has no oil. American
companies also have investments in the large Azeri oil industry.

Equally important, Azerbaijan serves as a hub for the Caspian
Sea-Central Asian energy pipelines. As well, both Israel and the
United States view Azerbaijan as an ally in the regional showdown with
Iran. So it is most likely that upholding these business and strategic
interests with Azerbaijan was the real reason behind Nuland’s pushing
for the terrorists’ release.

This situation resembles the controversial early release by Great
Britain of Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, a Libyan also known as the Lockerbie
Bomber, who was responsible for 259 deaths when a Pan Am flight was
destroyed by a terrorist bomb over Scotland in 1988. It was later
revealed that the British oil company, British Petroleum, had lobbied
for his release, which greatly helped it obtain a $900 million oil
exploration contract from Muamarr Gaddafi.

But Armenia is not Great Britain. The murder of Lt. Markarian in
Budapest and the two civilians in Artsakh are symbolic of the hatred
and homicidal fate the surrounding Turkic populations have in store
for the Armenian people, much like the Arabs have for Israel. Also
like Israel, Armenians cannot allow the lives of their people to be
sold cheaply. They have already suffered one holocaust. Granting
early release to the two Azeri terrorists would send a wrong, and
very dangerous, message, one that would likely be interpreted as
weakness in one of the world’s rougher neighbourhoods where only
strength is respected.

Besides, some Armenians view Nuland’s request as hypocritical. Would
the United States, for example, release Dzhokhar Tsarnaev to Russia as
“a humanitarian gesture” to better relations with an Islamic country
or with Putin, they ask? Or free early other imprisoned foreign
terrorists with American blood on their hands?

If the State Department truly wants “to reduce tensions and build
trust” in the region, it should first tell Azerbaijan and Turkey to
lift their blockades and open their borders with Armenia, ending the
crippling of the Armenian economy. This is the humanitarian gesture
it should be pursuing and not the release of two murderers.

The border openings would not only be a good start to solving the
other outstanding regional issues, it would also serve to lessen the
Armenian fear that their Muslim neighbours simply want to finish the
extermination project they started in 1915. It would also constitute
a very fitting gesture of friendship and reconciliation, especially
by Turkey, to Armenians worldwide on the centenary of the horrific
event that serves as the well-spring of so much of their pain.

But instead of a adopting a principled position that would help
lessen that pain, the Obama administration appears to have taken one
of unprincipled pragmatism.

ARMENIAN COMMUNITY UNVEILS KEY EVENTS

Buenos Aires Herald, Argentina
March 18 2015

Leaders of the Armenian community in Argentina yesterday announced
a number of activities to commemorate the one hundredth anniversary
of the Armenian genocide on April 24. Events will include a mass at
the Buenos Aires Metropolitan Cathedral and an open-air concert of
composer Santiago Chotsourian. Organizers also unveiled the official
image of these events — a violet flower with the slogan “don’t forget
about me.”

ARMENIA LEADER: WE DO NOT INCITE HOSTILITY AND HATRED AMONG OUR PEOPLE

18:56, 18.03.2015

YEREVAN. – The Republic of Armenia will also continue its fight
against the crime of genocide within the framework of international
organizations,President Serzh Sargsyan said during “At the Foot of
Mount Ararat” media forum in Yerevan.

“In 2013, at its 22th session, the UN Human Rights Council unanimously
adopted the resolution on the prevention of genocide initiated by
Armenia. This year we are going to table another draft resolution,”
he said, addressing the participants.

“It is inspiring that the representatives of the international
community are also engaged in Armenian-led initiatives. Moreover,
its members continue to bring their weighty contribution towards the
recognition and condemnation of the Armenian Genocide.

We are forever grateful to all those states and peoples who both in
times of the calamity and during the subsequent years, have granted
asylum to thousands of Armenians, giving them an opportunity to
survive and preserve their identity and become full-fledged members
of society in the given countries.

While attaching importance to the recognition and condemnation of
genocides as a means of preventing their recurrence, we also extend
our gratitude to all those states and organizations who continue
to reflect upon the crime committed against our nation. This bears
witness to the civilized world’s sincere commitment to the protection
of universal values, which inspires nations subjected to genocide
to believe in the restoration of justice and violated rights, just
condemnation of the crimes and inadmissibility of impunity.

The resolution titled “The Armenian Genocide and European Values”
adopted recently by the EPP Political Assembly on March 3, 2015
was a striking example of such a commitment. It contained serious
political messages on the recognition of the Armenian Genocide,
its condemnation and denial, and called upon Turkey to confront its
past. Such a position on the Armenian Genocide adopted by Europe’s
largest and most influential political force should indeed play a
guiding role for European institutions and EU member states.

It is clear that in today’s world the guarantee of stability and
normal development is peaceful co-existence and tolerance. This is
the very principle guiding us through the Nagorno-Karabakh peace
process, thereby not allowing Azerbaijan to ruin peace negotiations
with its bellicose statements and provocative actions. In contrast
to Azerbaijani authorities, whose provocative actions endanger the
stability of not only their state but also of the region, Armenia is
fully aware of the grave consequences of such adventurism. Therefore,
by containing Azerbaijan’s military provocations, we try to avoid
a new spark of the conflict, which will seriously deteriorate the
already unstable situation in our entire region.

We do not incite hostility and hatred among our people, which has
been an inseparable component of the policy carried out by the
Azerbaijani authorities for years. In contrast to the Azerbaijani
President who declared that the Armenian people are the number one
enemies of Azerbaijanis, I would like to highlight once again that
the Armenians do not have enemy nations.

It was Azerbaijan’s decades-long anti-Armenian policy and the
determination to restore historical justice that ultimately drove
the people of Nagorno-Karabakh to exercise their inviolable right to
self-determination – to build their own homeland on their own land.

Regardless of Azerbaijan’s threats and provocations, the wheel of
history is impossible to roll back: the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic is
already a well-established reality and it is not feasible to break
the freedom-loving spirit of its people. To ascertain it, I am calling
upon you to visit Nagorno-Karabakh to get acquainted with the Artsakh
state-building on the ground and represent the objective reality to
your public.

The Armenian position on the settlement of the conflict remains
the same: it must be settled within the framework of the OSCE Minsk
Group, through peaceful negotiations on the basis of the three famous
principles of the Helsinki Final Act put forth by the Co-Chairs.

Azerbaijan’s efforts to alter the format provided by the Minsk
Group, talk to the Republic of Armenia and Nagorno-Karabakh from
a position of force, provocations and blackmail will not yield a
lasting solution. This is an unequivocal truth.

On January 27, 2015 the Co-Chairs of the OSCE Minsk Group issued a
statement in Krakow on Azerbaijan’s destructive policy, in which they
called upon Azerbaijan to live up to its commitments to the peaceful
resolution of the conflict. I strongly believe that continued sending
of targeted messages calling to exercise restraint will incite certain
degree of vigilance with their true addressee.”

Armenia News – NEWS.am

EX-PRESIDENT: AZERBAIJANI ECONOMY IS OIL-DEPENDENT AND THIS IS DANGEROUS WITH CURRENT DECLINE OF OIL PRICES

14:07 18/03/2015 >> ECONOMY

For the period of January-February the production of petroleum products
declined by 8% in Azerbaijan as compared to 1 March of the previous
year, Azerbaijani news outlet Haqqin.az reports.

Citing the information provided by the State Statistics Committee of
Azerbaijan, the outlet notes that mazut production saw the biggest
decline – 99.5% (up to 200 tons), the production of lubricants dropped
by 65.8% (2.6 thousand tons), bitumen – by 53,4% (19.7 thousand tons)
and kerosene – by 7.9% (106.6 thousand tons). January-February period
saw a rise in petrol production for 0.7% (199.4 thousand tons),
straight-run gasoline for 36.4% (20.6 thousand tons), and diesel –
for 18.3% (480.9 thousand tons).

According to the article, the whole production is carried out in
Heydar Aliyev oil refinery. Azerneftyaq refinery merged with this
oil refinery since 1 January, 2015.

Haqqin.az also reports that many analysts predict a new decline in oil
prices to 40% this week. The experts of the Singaporean United Overseas
Bank claim that the drop of the prices of oil is conditioned by the
“investors concern that the ‘black gold’ resources in the US are at
record levels and go on rising.” According to the data of Goldman
Sachs experts, oil extraction will increase for 230 thousand barrels
per day in the US in the fourth quarter of 2015.

Apparently, the world is about to face the biggest drop of prices
of oil since the 1980’s. It will certainly hit all the oil-producing
countries, including Azerbaijan, the article reads.

In an interview to Haqqin.az ex-president of Azerbaijan Ayaz Mutalibov
called on the government of the country to get rid of “oil needle”
as soon as possible.

“Yes, at the beginning of the 1990s we had to bet on oil as it first
of all presupposed geopolitical aspect as well – to take its place in
the international community. But the parallel development of non-oil
sector was to take place in the internal politics. That is, we need
to give freedom to the citizens engaged in small and medium-sized
businesses. For example, 40% of the budget of many European countries
is made up of the revenues from the SMBs. Although much was done in
that direction in Azerbaijan during the recent years, non-oil sector
has not become an important source of budget incomes. Oil dependence
is remaining enormous,” Mutalibov noted adding that the monopolies
devour small enterprises, preventing the development of the SMBs,
which contradicts the philosophy of market economics. You cannot
rely on oil. That is why the government must now immediately take up
effective measures to save Azerbaijani economy from oil dependence.

There are also reports that the Cabinet of Ministers of Azerbaijan
introduced changes into the Register of Natural Monopolies regarding
the abbreviation of the biggest natural monopoly in Azerbaijan –
State Oil Company of Azerbaijan Republic (ARDNS). According to the
changes, the abbreviation ARDNS was replaced with the abbreviation
SOCAR, news outlet Oxu.az reports.

PROGRAM WILL LINK FATE OF JEWS, ARMENIANS

18:34, 18 Mar 2015
Siranush Ghazanchyan

Jewish and Armenian young people will embark on a joint educational
program that will combine study of the Holocaust and the massacre of
Armenians 100 years ago, according to the New Jersey Jewish News.

The program was announced March 12 by Barbara Wind, director of the
Holocaust Council of the Jewish Federation of Greater MetroWest NJ,
following a lunchtime session on the Armenian genocide at the Aidekman
campus in Whippany.

She is enlisting other agencies in the Greater MetroWest community to
join in the educational effort, saying it would be “a good idea to get
our kids and Armenian kids together to learn about the two genocides.”

No concrete details have been developed; the program, said Wind,
“is just in the planning stage.”

Wind is also hoping that Jewish and Armenian participants will join
in planting forget-me-not seeds outside Saint Mary Armenian Church
in Livingston and the Sister Rose Thering Garden at the Lester Senior
Housing Community, also on the Aidekman campus.

The flower is a symbol of the 100th anniversary of the Armenian
genocide, when Turks were accused of brutal forced deportations and
massacres that annihilated an estimated 1.5 million Armenians.

Wind said she hopes to enlist as participants in the new venture the
Diller Teen Fellows, a program for young leaders sponsored locally by
the GMW federation, and young people who have “twinned” with Jewish
Holocaust survivors through the council as part of their bar and bat
mitzva projects.

“Our role will be to encourage teens and their families to
participate,” said Robert Lichtman, executive director of The
Partnership for Jewish Learning and Life, the federation’s Jewish
identity-building organization.

Wind said the Armenian and Jewish atrocities have deep historical
parallels. She noted that much of the outside world failed to react
to reports of mass slaughter between 1915 and 1918.

“Hitler was empowered by the Armenian genocide to do whatever he
wanted to the Jews because nobody ever reacted” to the earlier tragedy,
said Wind.

Wind’s observations were echoed by two Armenian guest speakers at the
midday program, whose audience of 40 was composed largely of Jewish
Holocaust survivors.

“If the world had treated the Armenian genocide with more outrage and
took a position on it there might not have been a Nazi Holocaust,”
said Roy Stepanian, a health-care consultant from Chatham whose
great-grandparents were murdered by Turkish soldiers.

Stepanian’s grandfather, who survived the attack, watched as his own
father and three of his siblings were knifed to death.

Father Arshen Aivazian, who retired as pastor of Saint Mary Armenian
Church in 2000, said he has heard testimony by “hundreds if not
thousands of witnesses to the Armenian genocide. My father was one
of them. He was four years old when my grandfather, who was the town
crier, was the first to be rounded up. They never saw him again.

“Almost invariably, every night at the dinner table my father would
make sure we heard his life experience and that we did all we could
to make sure not to allow anyone to destroy our dreams,” said Aivazian.

“My father died as a monument to shattered dreams.”

Aivazian compared the destruction of Armenian culture and Jewish
culture during the last century.

“Hundreds, thousands of churches and monasteries, the whole life of
a community, was destroyed entirely. Isn’t that what happened in the
Holocaust?” he said.

Turkey has never recognized the slaughter as genocide, although the
United Nations and at least 22 nations, including the United States,
use the term to describe the events.

“There is a rapidly growing group of scholars and intellectuals who
are coming forward and asking their government to stop the stupidity
of denial,” said Aivazian. “Rest assured, nobody can deny the Nazi
Holocaust because the evidence and eyewitnesses are too vast to deny.

The same with the Armenian genocide. The evidence is too vast to deny.”

AT OPENING CEREMONY OF HEYDAR ALIYEV LYCEUM IN KARS ANTHEM OF AZERBAIJAN PLAYED ONLY AFTER ERDOGAN INTERVENED

12:45 18/03/2015 >> SOCIETY

At the opening ceremony of technical lyceum after Heydar Aliyev in
Kars, Turkey, in which the President of Turkey Recep Tayyip Erdogan,
the President of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev and the President of Georgia
Giorgi Margvelashvili took part, the protocol service made a mistake:
the national anthem of Azerbaijan was not performed at the appropriate
time, Azerbaijani information outlet Oxu.az reports citing TV channel
CNN Turk.

According to the article, the national anthem of Turkey was performed
at the beginning of the ceremony. The participants of ceremony were
waiting for the Azerbaijani anthem after that, however, it was not
performed.

As the article has it, Erdogan first talked to the head of the protocol
service, and later with the responsible officials of the agency. Taking
the podium Erdogan declared that “first they would correct the mistake
of the protocol service.” The anthem of Azerbaijan was performed only
after that.

Source: Panorama.am

ARMENIA, CHARLES AZNAVOUR IN UDIENZA DAL PAPA MERCOLEDE A 100 ANNI DA GENOCIDIO

Articolo pubblicato il: 14/03/2015

Charles Aznavour, mercoledì prossimo, sara in piazza San Pietro
per l’Udienza generale del Papa. A quanto apprende l’Adnkronos da
autorevoli fonti vaticane, l’artista francese novantenne mercoledì
potra coronare il suo sogno, incontrando il Papa al termine
dell’udienza. Aznavour è stato infatti ammesso al baciamano del
Pontefice. Un incontro, quello tra il Papa e l’armeno più famoso al
mondo, che assume ancora più significato visto che ricorrono i cento
anni dal genocidio armeno.

In quell’occasione, Aznavour, sempre a quanto si apprende, proporra a
papa Francesco di fare un concerto in Vaticano per ricordare i cento
anni dal genocidio. Un’idea che potrebbe trovare la sua realizzazione.

Tra l’altro, fanno notare le stesse fonti, l’entourage argentino
vicino a Francesco conosce benissimo le canzoni del ‘Frank Sinatra
della Francia’.

Il prossimo 24 aprile ricorrera, infatti, il centenario dell’inizio
del massacro di un milione e mezzo di armeni in Turchia. Proprio
nell’ambito delle commemorazioni, l’arcivescovo di Buenos Aires
Mario Poli, nel corso di una messa celebrata nella cattedrale armena
cattolica di Nostra Signora di Narek, aveva annunciato ai fedeli che
il Papa, il prossimo 12 aprile, domenica della Divina Misericordia,
avrebbe celebrato nella basilica di San Pietro una messa per ricordare
i cento anni dall’inizio del genocidio armeno, iniziato il 24 aprile
1915 con un massacro a Costantinopoli. Nell’occasione ci sara anche
il Patriarca armeno.

Aznavour è un eroe nazionale per molti armeni che, nel tempo, gli hanno
dedicato monumenti e onorificenze. E’ noto l’impegno dell’artista
novantenne nei confronti dell’Armenia. Ora viene esaudito il suo
desiderio di incontrare il Papa argentino. In quella terra, Aznavour
è considerato un mito.