Author: Badalian Vardan

L’ATTAQUE CONTRE LES MILITANTS ARMENIENS NON RESOLUE

Armenie

La police armenienne a declare qu’elle n’a pas encore entame de
procedure penale formelle dans le cadre de l’attaque de la semaine
dernière sur deux activistes de premier plan de la societe civile. Ces
deux agressions ont ete vivement condamnee par des groupes locaux et
internationaux des droits humains.

Haykak Arshamian et Suren Saghatelian ont ete passes a tabac dans le
centre d’Erevan par plusieurs hommes non identifies et hospitalises peu
de temps après avoir participe a une manifestation contre l’adhesion
de l’Armenie a l’union douanière.

Un porte-parole a dit que les policiers poursuivent leur enquete,
mais qu’ils n’ont pas encore ouvert une enquete criminelle formelle,
ce qui est necessaire pour l’arrestation et l’inculpation des suspects.

Arshamian a affirme que les policiers ne sont pas presses de resoudre
l’affaire car ils savent que les autorites gouvernementales sont
peut-etre a l’origine des agressions. Il a fait valoir qu’il y a
beaucoup de cameras de surveillance sur la rue menant a son quartier
et que les enqueteurs auraient pu facilement localiser la voiture
qui les aurait suivis cette nuit-la. “Ils ne sont pas motives pour
resoudre l’affaire” a revendique Arshamian.

Cette agression relayee mediatiquement etait la dernière d’une serie
d’attaques violentes contre les militants contestant le gouvernement.

Depuis la fin du mois d’août, au moins six jeunes participants a un
sit-in devant le bureau du maire d’Erevan ont ete agresse par des
voyous inconnus depuis la fin août.

Reagissant a ce dernier incident, plus de 30 organisations non
gouvernementales armeniennes ont signe une lettre commune demandant
a l’Office des Nations Unies du Commissaire aux droits de l’homme une
aide pour arreter ce qu’ils ont decrit comme une violence systematique
contre les personnes critiquant le gouvernement. Ils ont affirme que
les attaques violentes sont l’~uvre de ” delinquants criminels ”
agissant avec la complicite de la police. Amnesty International a
exige la semaine dernière que les autorites armeniennes enquetent
sur cette attaque de facon “impartiale et efficace”. “Les autorites
sont tenues de promouvoir les droits a la liberte d’expression, de
reunion et d’association. Seule une enquete efficace demontrerait
qu’ils prennent au serieux leur engagement en matière de droits de
l’homme”, a declare Denis Krivosheev, le directeur adjoint du groupe
base a Londres pour l’Europe et l’Asie centrale.

jeudi 12 septembre 2013, Claire ©armenews.com

AZERBAIJANI FOREIGN MINISTRY INVESTIGATES POSSIBLE ACTIVITY OF ITALIAN COMPANY IN NAGORNO-KARABAKH

Trend, Azerbaijan
Sept 11 2013

Azerbaijan, Baku, Sept. 11 /Trend S. Aghayeva/

The Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry has instructed the country’s embassy
in Italy to investigate the possible activity of a Italian company in
the occupied Nagorno-Karabakh region of Azerbaijan, Foreign Ministry’s
spokesman Elman Abdullayev told Trend on Wednesday.

The Italian company plans to create a cluster of light industrial units
in Nagorno-Karabakh. On September 11 the company’s representatives
will arrive in the city of Khankendi in order to become familiar with
the work conditions, Armenian media outlets reported.

The conflict between the two South Caucasus countries began in 1988
when Armenia made territorial claims against Azerbaijan.

Armenian armed forces have occupied 20 per cent of Azerbaijan since
1992, including the Nagorno-Karabakh region and seven surrounding
districts.

Azerbaijan and Armenia signed a ceasefire agreement in 1994. The
co-chairs of the OSCE Minsk Group, Russia, France and the U.S. are
currently holding peace negotiations.

Armenia has not yet implemented the U.N. Security Council’s four
resolutions on the liberation of the Nagorno-Karabakh and the
surrounding regions.

ARAS OZBILIZ: TRIPS OVER CORNER FLAG IN WORST CORNER KICK EVER

Mirror, UK
Sept 11 2013

11 Sep 2013 09:16

Has Armenian Aras Ozbiliz taken the worst corner kick of all time? Our
vote is yes, absolutely yes

Aras Ozbiliz, whose sporting idol is Lionel Messi, has managed to take
what could be the worst corner kick of all time, while representing
his national side Armenia.

The Spartak Moscow winger stepped forward to take a corner against
Denmark in a World Cup qualifying match, only to trip over the
corner flag.

Araz Ozbiliz rushes forward, trips over the flag, kicks the ball and
falls to the ground, not before committing handball.

He then looks up, slightly bemused at what just happened, and the
linesman flags for foul play.

Armenia lost the game 1-0, after Daniel Agger scored a penalty for
Denmark in the 73rd minute.

GREENBERG CENTER LAUNCHES ITS NEW HOLOCAUST GENOCIDE-STUDIES INITIATIVE

Connecticut Jewish Ledger
Sept 11 2013

Posted by JudieJacobson on September 11, 2013
By Cindy Mindell

WEST HARTFORD – With the opening of its new exhibition and educational
program, “Genocide: Israel Charny and the Scourge of the Twentieth
Century,” the Maurice Greenberg Center for Judaic Studies at the
University of Hartford takes up the mantle created by Charny nearly
35 years ago.

Charny co-founded the first academic institution dedicated to
Holocaust and genocide studies in Jerusalem in 1979, together with
Shamai Davidson z”l and Nobel Laureate Elie Wiesel. Their Institute
on the Holocaust and Genocide may also be the first whose researchers
linked the two phenomena in their studies.

Earlier this year, the landmark institution joined forces with the
Greenberg Center, the result of a shared vision between Charny and
Greenberg professors Richard Freund and Avinoam Patt. The Greenberg
Center’s new initiative includes management of the Genocide Prevention
Now Teaching Website, created by the Jerusalem Institute, as well as
a host of programs designed for University of Hartford students and
faculty, area educators, and the community at large.

The exhibition, “Genocide: Israel Charny and the Scourge of the
Twentieth Century,” marks the launch of this new initiative, which
includes a series of courses, workshops, public programs, exhibitions,
and web-based projects, all designed for students and educators as
well as for the community at large.

The Greenberg Center has focused on Holocaust and genocide education
over the past two decades through annual workshops and exhibitions,
many designed for educators. The center will now work to preserve the
testimonies of second and third generation Holocaust and genocide
survivors for an international educational oral history resource,
“In Our Own Words.” A pilot project will be launched in the greater
Hartford community this fall by Dr. Avinoam Patt, the Philip D.

Feltman Professor of Modern Jewish History at the Greenberg Center,
and director of the Museum of Jewish Civilization. As part of his
course, “Responses to the Holocaust,” honors students will interview
some 20 children of Holocaust survivors through CT Voices of Hope,
a program of the Jewish Federation Association of Connecticut.

Patt is working with Karen Jungblut, director of research and
documentation at the University of Southern California Shoah
Foundation, who will interact with the class via Skype.

“We want to find out how being the child of survivors impacts one’s
own identity and life choices,” Patt says. After its inaugural year,
the oral history project will be replicated by Patt’s colleagues
at academic institutions in England, Israel, Australia, and Rwanda,
resulting in a global archive of interviews.

As part of its new educational initiative, the Greenberg Center
recently named Dr. Joseph Olzacki as a special advisor on genocide and
Holocaust education. Olzacki is co-creator of the Identity Project, a
Holocaust and genocide education program that launched at Bloomfield
High School in 2006. At the time, Olzacki was director of visual
and performing arts and public information for the Bloomfield Public
Schools, and he designed the initiative together with Rabbi Philip
Lazowski of West Hartford and the Jewish Federation Association of
Connecticut (JFACT).

Since 2010, Olzacki has established a relationship with the government
of Rwanda, working with human rights and educational organizations on
anti-genocide curricula. In March, he helped organize the inaugural
event for the Greenberg Center’s Genocide and Holocaust Education
Initiative, bringing Rwanda president Paul Kagame to the university
to participate in an academic symposium on the aftermath of genocide
and to deliver a public lecture.

Patt hopes that, through Olzacki’s work, the Greenberg Center will
be able to sponsor exchange students from Rwanda.

Olzacki’s photos of Rwandan genocide sites will be featured in the
new exhibition.

“This is not a morbid exhibit; our intent is not to show anything
that is grotesque or inappropriate for a young audience, but rather
three sites of genocide over the course of the 20th century and what
they look like today,” Patt says. “There are pictures of memorials,
sites where genocide happened. The exhibition reflects on the process
of destruction without showing the end results of destruction.”

Among the photographs is the work of University of Hartford professor
Mari Firkatian, a descendant of survivors of the Armenian Genocide.

Firkatian’s photos highlight the reconstruction of the Sourp Giragos
(Holy George) Church in Diyarbakir, Turkey, which is being restored
thanks to the efforts of the town’s mayor and Armenians who fled the
city in 1915. Photographs taken by members of the Greenberg Center’s
Sobibor Documentation Project in Poland show the Sobibor Extermination
Camp and nearby Wlodawa Synagogue, and the Majdanek Concentration
and Extermination Camp.

“These photos are meant to raise awareness, that these are places that
once existed, still exist, and have great meaning to the people who
suffered there,” Patt says. “The last stage of genocide is denial. By
showing images of the sites of destruction and genocide, we teach
that these are real places and that these things happened. It’s our
duty to raise awareness.”

The Greenberg Center will present several programs on Holocaust and
genocide education during the fall semester:

~U Monday, Sept. 23, 7 p.m.: Lecture and Exhibit Opening: “Genocide:
Israel Charny and the Scourge of the Twentieth Century” KF Room
and Museum of Jewish Civilization, Mortensen Library, University
of Hartford. (For an in-depth interview with Dr. Israel Charny,
see below.)

~U Monday, Oct. 14, 7 p.m.: Film Screening – Sneak preview of Deadly
Deception at Sobibor, in honor of the 70th anniversary of the Sobibor
Revolt on Oct. 14, 1943. Wilde Auditorium, University of Hartford .

Tickets: (860) 768-4228

~U Monday, Oct. 28, 8:30 a.m.-3 p.m.: 14th Annual Holocaust and
Genocide Education Workshop: “Learn from the Past, Teach for
the Future”, 1877 Club, Harry Jack Gray Center, University of
Hartford, Registration required by Friday, Oct. 18: (860) 768-4964
or [email protected]

~U Monday, Oct. 28, 7 p.m.: “The Nazi Universe of Persecution: Recent
Findings of the USHMM Encyclopedia of Camps and Ghettos” with Dr.

Martin Dean, Applied Research Scholar and Editor, USHMM Encyclopedia
of Ghettos, Wilde Auditorium, University of Hartford

~U Saturday, Nov. 9, 7 p.m.: Symposium on Archaeology and the
Holocaust: “70 Years after the Sobibor Revolt: Special Kristallnacht
Program” with Yoram Haimi, Israel Antiquities Authority, Ben-Gurion
University of the Negev, Wilde Auditorium, University of Hartford

~U Monday, Nov. 11, 7 p.m.: Kristallnacht Program: “Holocaust Denial:
A New Form of Anti-Semitism” with Dr. Deborah Lipstadt, Dorot Professor
of Modern Jewish History and Holocaust Studies, Emory University

UConn Greater Hartford Campus, 85 Lawler Road, West Hartford. Program
information: (860) 768-4964

ARMENIANS GATHER FOR ANNUAL FESTIVAL

Western Queens Gazette, NY
Sept 11 2013

On September 7, the Armenian Church of the Holy Martyrs at Oceania
Street and Horace Harding Expressway in Bayside, celebrated its annual
Oceania Street Festival in observation of the Feast of the Exaltation
of the Holy Cross.

Hundreds of area residents, many of Armenian descent, feasted on
traditional foods that included chicken kebabs, salads, a variety of
pita breads, baklava, coffee, imported teas, wine and beer.

A band provided musical entertainment with ethnic dance performances
and modern musical selections.

Children’s rides, games and festival foods lined Oceania Street, where
youngsters enjoyed slides, a bounce house, cotton candy and ice cream.

Candidate for Queens borough president Melinda Katz and her partner,
Curtis Sliwa of the Guardian Angels, shook hands and greeted the
festivalgoers.

Dozens of vendors sold Armenian themed novelties and gifts, including
books, music, movies and jewelry.

Admission to the festival was free and participants enjoyed good
times under a sunny sky. -Jason D. Antos

HEAD OF ARMENIAN PATRIARCHATE VISITS HOMETOWN SILVAN IN SOUTHEASTERN TURKEY

21:45 11.09.13

The acting head of the Armenian Patriarchate in Turkey Aram AteÅ~_yan
has visited his hometown Silvan in the southeastern Diyarbakir province
on Sept. 11, a first since he was delegated the office following the
withdrawal of Archbishop Mesrob Mutafyan from his duties in 2008 due
to illness, The Hurriyet Daily News reports.

AteÅ~_yan expressed his joy at being able to make an official visit
to his homeland, but deplored the destruction of Armenian cultural
legacy in the area.

“I have returned happily to Silvan that I had left with sadness when
I was five years old,” AteÅ~_yan said, adding that he frequently
visited the district where his sister is still living.

“Once upon a time, Turks and Armenians lived together in this land.

Steps are being taken now to ensure that we can live all together
once again. We have come to consolidate love and brotherhood,”
AteÅ~_yan said.

AteÅ~_yan stressed the richness of the historic cultural heritage in
the region.

“There were eight Armenian churches in the Silvan region alone, but
most have now been destroyed. The historical monuments should be taken
under protection and the consciousness of protecting history should
be developed. The historical buildings and monuments in Silvan should
be promoted to the whole world,” he said.

Mass at Surp Giragos Church

AteÅ~_yan also paid a visit to the Surp Giragos Church in Diyarbakır,
where he conducted a mass attended by Mayor Osman Baydemir and the
famous writer of Armenian origin, Mıgırdıc Margosyan.

The church was restored on Baydemir’s initiative and reopened in 2011.

AteÅ~_yan thanked the city officials and the Armenian community from
Diyarbakır for showing interest in reviving the Armenian traditions.

On Sept. 8, AteÅ~_yan had performed the first baptism in 98 years at
Akdamar Church (Akhtamar in Armenian) on Lake Van.

Turkish authorities restored the church between 2005 and 2007 before
opening it as a museum. The Divine Liturgy was celebrated there for
the first time in 95 years in 2010.

Eastern and southeastern Turkey was inhabited by a large Armenian
community before the mass massacres and deportations in 1915.

ARMENIAN NUCLEAR POWER PLANT TO EXPORT NUKE AGENTS TO RUSSIA

September 11, 2013 – 18:08 AMT

PanARMENIAN.Net – A draft resolution envisaging provision of a license
to Armenian Nuclear Power Plant CJSC for nuclear agents’ export to
Russia was included on the September 13 governmental sitting agenda.

Armenian Nuclear Power Plant has already singed a nuke agents’ export
deal with Russia’s TVEL Ltd.

Armenian Nuclear Power Plant, currently operative, was launched in
1976. The plant was shut down over political reasons in 1989, with
a 404-megawatt NPP unit relaunched in 1995.

Armenia is planning to build a new 1000-megawatt unit, with an
estimated implementation cost of $5 billion.

TVEL Ltd. is a Russian manufacturer of nuclear fuel, with 100% of
company’s stocks owned by Atomenergoprom OJSC; the company unites
Russian civil nuclear industry.

ARMENIA’S ACCESSION TO CUSTOMS UNION WILL RESULT IN CHEAPER NATURAL GAS, EXPERT SAYS

YEREVAN, September 11. / ARKA /. Armenia’s accession to the Customs
Union will guarantee it cheaper price for imported natural gas,
Sevak Sarukhanian, deputy head of Noravank research and education
foundation said today.

According to him, the failure to join the Russian-led union would mean
substantially higher price that would have a very negative impact on
Armenian economy.

“But the question is whether accession to the union will guarantee an
unchanged price of natural gas. There is no such guarantee, because the
Customs Union is still at the stage of formation of a common energy
policy. However, the trends in the Russian -Belarusian agreements
indicate that Russia will apply the principle of proportionate return,’
he said.

This, he said, does not mean that Armenia will pay as much as consumers
within Russia pay because transport costs should be taken into account
as well.

“In our case, the main problem is the transit fee we pay to Georgia.

The price for Belarus is $190 per one thousand cubic meters. For
Armenia the price may be some $210-$220. In any case the price will be
much lower than $350-$400 that other countries have to pay,’ he said.

“Armenia is not ready to fully integrate either with the Eurasian
Economic Community or the European Union,” a political analyst Yervand
Bozoyan countered. According to him, although Yerevan must remain
committed to European values to build a real democracy, European
integration is fraught with certain risks, as Armenia can not be
simultaneously integrated into Europe and cooperate with Russia on
security issues.

Speaking about Armenia’s intention to join the Customs Union, Bozoyan
claimed the country will face serious technical problems because of
the absence of common border with any of the Customs Union’s member
countries. -0-

16:52 11.09.2013

TURKEY DELIVERS BULK OF T-122 SAKARYA MULTIPLE LAUNCH ROCKET SYSTEMS AND MISSILES TO AZERBAIJAN

by Ashot Safaryan

Wednesday, September 11, 14:00

The Turkish ROKETSAN company will complete the deliveries on
Azerbaijan’s orders by the end of the year, ROKETSAN told APA.

The significant batches of T-122 Sakarya multiple launch rocket systems
and missiles offered by Azerbaijan have already been delivered. T-300
“Hurricane” missiles (named as Kas?rga) are under production and
testing and have been modernized compared to relevant systems in the
arsenal of the Turkish Armed Forces.

The universal launch rocket system produced by ROKETSAN for Azerbaijan
allows firing rockets with 122 and 300 mm caliber.

T-122 Sakarya multiple launch rocket systems purchased by Azerbaijan
from Turkey were demonstrated in Baku military parade in June, this
year. These systems with long-range missiles are capable of destroying
enemy targets at a distance of 40 km.

SALUTING 2,500 YEARS OF INDO-ARMENIAN TIES; ARMENIAN MONUMENT TO BE ERECTED IN MADRAS

09:42 11.09.2013

To mark the 200 years of the existence of the Armenian Street, the
government of Armenia is planning to erect a monument to commemorate
the iconic place which houses the popular Armenian Church, the New
Indian Express reports.

The country is awaiting clearance from the Tamil Nadu government,
Honorary Consul of the Republic of Armenia Shivkumar Eashwaran told
Express. Speaking on the sidelines of an interaction organised by
the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII), Eashwaran said a venue
had been identified for the project, which was being built as part
of Chief Minister J Jayalalithaa’s initiative to mark 2,500 years of
Indo-Armenian ties. The chief minister is likely to inaugurate the
structure, for which she took an initiative after meeting Armenian
envoy Ara Hakobyan twice.

“She wants it to be done. We are working with the state government
in this regard,” said Eashwaran, adding that either Armenian Prime
Minister Tigran Sargsyan or President Serzh Sargsyan would attend
the inauguration.

The street was home for Armenians, who settled in Chennai (then Madras)
in the 16th Century. The lane also houses one of the oldest churches
of India, the Armenian Church. Around 300 families used to live here
before independence. Most of them used to lend money to the British
government, Eashwaran said, adding, however, “Now we hardly have any
(people). I am working towards rebuilding the age-old ties.”

While building the monument near the entrance of the Armenian Street,
all necessary steps will be taken to ensure that no SC order on arches
is violated, he said. “We don’t want to get into any judicial issue.”

Later during the CII interaction, Eashwaran wooed the city businessmen
to invest in Armenia. An Indian business delegation would also be
visiting Armenia from September 24 to 28, CII officials said.