Author: Chavushian

OSCE MUST SOLVE FROZEN CONFLICTS: NEW FINNISH FOREIGN MINISTER

Agence France Presse
April 10 2008

Finland’s new foreign minister Alexander Stubb called for a solution
to the so-called "frozen conflicts" in eastern Europe and central
Asia on Thursday in Vienna.

"We must seriously look for solutions to the so-called frozen
conflicts. My aim is to re-energise efforts towards peaceful settlement
of these conflicts," Stubb said in his first address to the permanent
council of the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe
(OSCE), of which Finland is currently the president.

Stubb was named as Finland’s new foreign minister after his
predecessor Ilkka Kanerva was forced to resign last week in the wake
of a text-message scandal, which involved him bombarding a stripper
with mobile phone messages of a sexual nature.

The OSCE has played a mediating role in disputes over Abkhazia,
South Ossetia, Transdniestr and Nagorno-Karabakh, four breakaway
regions in the former Soviet bloc that have been refused independence.

The disputes between Georgia and Russia over the status of Abkhazia
and South Ossetia were one of the reasons the former Soviet state’s
application for a NATO membership action plan was blocked at the
Bucharest summit last week.

Stubb also announced an informal "quintet" meeting on June 1-2 in
Helsinki between Finland, Spain, which chaired the OSCE in 2007,
and the next three countries to take over the chairmanship: Greece,
Kazakhstan and Lithuania.

He emphasised however that the Finnish chairmanship would not deviate
from the programme it announced in January and called for continued
work in Kosovo and Afghanistan.

"The three Cs — continuity, coherence and co-operation — will guide
us in our endeavours," he said.

Stubb was named as Finland’s new foreign minister after his
predecessor Ilkka Kanerva was forced to resign last week in the wake
of a text-message scandal, which involved him bombarding a stripper
with mobile phone messages of a sexual nature.

NKR PRIME MINISTER CONGRATULATED

Panorama.am
15:06 11/04/2008

The new appointed Prime Minister of Armenia received a congratulation
message from the NKR Prime Minister. It is particularly stated in
the message:

"Dear Tigran Sureni, I am sending you my cordial congratulations and
joy for your appointed as the Prime Minister of the country. I know
You as a skilled professor in the financial-economic field and I hope
that by Your leadership the RA Government will conduct active and
effective labor duties. And all the projects and principles mentioned
in Serzh Sargsyan’s plans will be carried out.

There is no doubt that you skills and knowledge will serve as
contribution to the improvement of social-economic life In Armenia."

The Prime Minister of NKR expressed his hope that the NKR and Armenians
relationship will be more strengthened and directed to the defense
of the country.

TIGRAN SARGSIAN PUTS IN APPLICATION OF RESIGNATION FROM POST OF CHAIRMAN OF CENTRAL BANK

Noyan Tapan
April 10, 2008

YEREVAN, APRIL 10, NOYAN TAPAN. Tigran Sargsian, who was appointed
Prime Minister of the Republic of Armenia on April 9, put in an
application of resigntaion from the post of the Chairman of the
Central Bank on the eve.

This statement was made by Tigran Torosian, the Speaker of the RA
National Assembly, in the April 10 sitting.

According to the RA Constitution, the Chairman of the Central Bank is
appointed at the suggestion of the President of the republic by the
National Assembly for a six-year term. Thus, the National Assembly
is to make the appointment of the new Chairman of the Central Bank
through ballot in the near future.

PARLIAMENT SPEAKER RECEIVES CZECH SENATE CHAIRMAN

ARMENPRESS
April 9, 2008

YEREVAN, APRIL 9, ARMENPRESS: Parliament chairman Tigran
Torosian received today chairman of the Czech Senate Prsemil
Sobodka. Mr. Sobodka is in Armenia for attending the inauguration
ceremony of president-elect Serzh Sarkisian. Armenian ambassador to
the Czech Republic Ashot Hovakimian, was also in attendance.

Torosian was quoted by the parliament press office as saying that
he was pleased that Mr. Sobodka arrived in Armenia on this important
day, when Armenia sums up its achievements over the last decade and
outlines its future actions.

Torosian said also he hopes that Sobodka’s visit will give a new
incentive to bilateral relations development. He said the Czech
experience of transition is valuable for Armenia.

Sobodka said he was happy to attend the ceremony.

He said he was in favor of immediate contacts between peoples saying
also he will make an official visit to Armenia next autumn.

He then spoke about Armenia’s role in regional developments and said
Armenia and his country should sign an intergovernmental agreement
that will prompt Czech investments in Armenia.

Then Torosian briefed Sobodka on post-election developments in Armenia
with a focus on March 1 unrest.

Critics’ Forum
Literature
Genocide and the Historical Imagination
By Hovig Tchalian

April is the cruelest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain.

It is difficult in the month of April to escape the temptation, the
seeming inevitability, of writing on a topic dealing with the
Genocide. The necessity of that exercise in this "cruelest month"
perhaps renders the famous opening lines of T. S. Eliot’s epic poem,
The Wasteland, now become cliché, nonetheless an apt epigraph to this
article.

The occasion that prompted the article is another look back – this
time to the recent publication of the new edition (2007) of a book by
Samantha Power and one by Peter Balakian that appeared a year after
the first publication of Power’s book.

The year 2002 saw the original publication of Samantha Power’s
moving, brutal, Pulitzer Prize-winning account of America’s failure
to halt the perpetration of genocide in the twentieth century, "A
Problem from Hell:" America and the Age of Genocide (New York: Harper
Collins, 2002), the first chapter of which concerns the Armenian
Genocide. A year later, Peter Balakian published his own well-known
and award-winning account, The Burning Tigris: The Armenian Genocide
and America’s Response (New York: Harper Collins, 2003).

Balakian himself looks back to Power, noting in his Preface that she
and other historians affirm that the Genocide comprises "the template
for most of the genocide[s] that followed in the twentieth century"
(Burning Tigris, xiv). Here, Balakian follows the well-trodden path
of many Genocide advocates before him in arguing that recognizing
past genocides helps prevent future ones. His statement is
qualitatively no different, in fact, than what Power also mentions –
herself echoing countless others before her – that Hitler justified
the Jewish Holocaust based at least in part on history’s feeble
response to the Armenian Genocide ("A Problem from Hell," 23).

But Balakian’s explicit purpose in The Burning Tigris is also much
larger than what this statement alone would suggest – it is to
reinstate the Genocide as a central, perhaps the central, human
rights calamity in American history. As Balakian puts it (Burning
Tigris, xiii):

The U.S. response to the Armenian crisis, which began in the 1890’s
and continued into the 1920’s, was the first international human
rights movement in American history and helped define the nation’s
emerging global identity. It seems that no other international human
rights issue has ever preoccupied the United States for such a
duration. . . . The breadth and intensity of the American
engagement in the effort to save the Armenians of the Ottoman Empire
is an important chapter in American history, and one that has been
lost. It is also one from which Americans today can learn a great
deal.

Balakian proposes a historical perspective that would help explain
America to itself by pointing to a crime that coincides with a
seminal moment in American nationhood and identity, akin to the
widespread displacement and killing of Native Americans in the
expansion of the U.S. across the American continent in the 18th and
19th centuries. In this case, however, the crime is not that of the
perpetrator but of the historical witness and advocate turned
bystander and accomplice.

Balakian’s argument in effect encompasses a second historical
tragedy, one akin to Genocide denial, which, as Balakian later points
out (quoting Emory University’s Deborah Lipstadt), stands as
the "`final stage of genocide,’ because it `strives to reshape human
history in order to demonize the victims and rehabilitate the
perpetrators’" (xix). The crime here is an even more subtle one –
the American nation betrays the Armenian victims of the crime by
first betraying itself, by forgetting or ignoring the advocacy of
many prominent Americans in its own past who called for recognition
and response. Among them were the likes of industrialist John D.
Rockefeller, feminist social critic Charlotte Perkins Gilman, writer
Stephen Crane, U.S. Ambassador to Turkey Henry Morgenthau, Sr.,
former President Theodore Roosevelt, and poet Ezra Pound, who was
also, ironically, instrumental in the final edits to Eliot’s
Wasteland, published in 1922, when debates about the proper response
to "the Armenian Question" still raged.

Balakian’s argument casts him in the quintessential role of the
immigrant’s son, speaking at once for his Armenian past and his
American present. His approach accomplishes a complex objective –
providing the hope and promise of restoring a lost fragment of
America’s own past through the transformative, redemptive act of
restoring to Armenians a measure of social and historical justice
already embedded in American political history. In essence, the well-
worn path of Balakian’s argument about Genocide prevention comes
across a sideways path into the American psyche; by retracing the arc
of the victim’s (and his own national) history – that of obsessively
revisiting the past – Balakian ends up recasting it in terms of the
eyewitness’s personal and national narrative. Balakian’s Armenian-
American identity allows entrée into the American psyche. And from
that perspective, at least, the personal precedes the historical;
self-betrayal precedes the betrayal of the victims.

We might say, in this regard, that while the explicit argument of
Balakian’s text is to hold up a mirror to the American conscience,
its implicit one is grappling with the difficult task of historical
reconstruction – that of belatedness, or the difficulty in the
distanced present of rehabilitating an event now lost to it. The
American tragedy simply reenacts history’s more primal betrayal – of
itself.

What makes Balakian’s rendering especially effective, however, is its
ability to personalize the historical, to make its belatedness matter
to the eyewitness (almost) as much as it does to the victim. In this
recapitulation, what appears as another tragic, hopeless attempt at
recovery simply reinforces the personal commitment – to recognition,
to a clear and unambiguous response – required to make it real; the
historical argument solidifies into the simple need to act.

America’s tragic failure to be true to itself and its own past unites
Balakian’s book with Power’s. A single, complex question haunts both
texts: "What is the role of the most powerful nation in the world
when the ultimate crime is being perpetrated in plain view? . . .
Why is U.S. policy evasive, sluggish, resistant to action . . . and
often tinged with denial?" (xiii-xiv).

Both texts argue that, when viewed from the personal as well as the
historical perspective, resistance becomes denial, complacency shades
into complicity. In doing so, they follow individual but parallel
paths that render them mirror images of each other. Balakian speaks
as the American-born son of Armenian immigrants, carrying that
experience with him into the American historical landscape. Power
instead takes her (non-Armenian) readers along for a journey into the
Armenian (and Jewish and Cambodian …) psyche. Both render the
position of neutrality an impossible one to inhabit by compelling
their audiences to re-examine the role of the historical eyewitness,
balanced uneasily between the two poles of victim and perpetrator.

It is hardly surprising, then, that Balakian emphasizes the
importance of "survivor accounts," which, he argues rightly, "are a
profound part of history and allow us into regions we would not
otherwise come to know" (xviii). Without the benefit of that
perspective, Power instead begins her narrative several years later.
Her first chapter, "Race Murder," opens interestingly in 1921 Berlin,
where Soghomon Tehlirian assassinated Mehmet Talaat, Turkey’s former
Interior Minister and one of the masterminds behind the Genocide.

Power thus begins not with the historical question, but as the
instincts of any good reporter or novelist might suggest, with the
historical actor. In fact, she begins with the exact moment of the
assassination, repeating in the course of her description the words
Tehlirian reportedly spoke as he pulled the trigger: "This is to
avenge the death of my family" ("A Problem from Hell," 1). By
beginning with the pathos of Tehlirian’s act of vengeance, Power has
the reader immediately occupy a position other than his own, one with
its own peculiar and compelling complexities. Tehlirian is at once a
self-appointed avenger and a victim of Genocide – Power soon reminds
us that Tehlirian was himself dragged to Der-el-Zor and clubbed on
the head, awaking to find himself in the midst of carnage, the lone
survivor among his village and family.

Power’s dramatization of Tehlirian’s assassination plot addresses
Balakian’s implicit argument of "belatedness" introduced above – of
Armenians pressing for recognition and Americans struggling with
response. Tehlirian has both suffered the crime and looks back to
its commission six years later, embodying at once the dual and
contradictory roles of victim and latecomer.

In a sense, the scene Power depicts dramatizes the moment of
redemption offered by Balakian. Her version of Tehlirian’s act re-
imagines the near-tragedy of American complicity through complacency
as a moment of high conviction. In the person of Tehlirian, Power
introduces the vagaries of the latecomer only to dissolve them in a
moment of action; as a survivor – in essence, a near-victim –
Tehlirian has lived to tell about it and, more importantly, to act on
his experience and knowledge. Balakian’s retracing of the Armenian
psyche into the American finds its parallel in Power’s substitution
of Tehlirian’s action for America’s own. Without romanticizing the
assassination itself, Power uses it as a clear and unmistakable call
for response.

Balakian’s Burning Tigris and Power’s "A Problem from Hell" share an
acute sense of personal identity and responsibility. It is that
sensibility that allows the two authors to re-imagine the respective
roles of the historical witness and the originary victim from within
the context of personal and national commitment, a daunting feat
normally accomplished in the best fiction.

And yet perhaps this is not entirely surprising – many great works of
historical writing also share with literature a profound sense of the
power of the historical imagination. By pointing the way to personal
and national advocacy, action and response, the two authors also
highlight the hazards of the historical imagination, which expresses
itself in the struggle over evidence and the interminable polemic
about points of view.

Powers reminds us that this "debate" started with the historical
actors themselves. She recounts an encounter between Ambassador
Morgenthau and Mehmet Talaat in which the latter is said to have
offered these chilling words about his government’s responsibility
(arguably more chilling than Hitler’s later proclamation about this
same instance, now in the past), "`We don’t give a rap for the
future!’ he exclaimed. `We live only in the present,’" later adding
to a German reporter, "`we have been reproached for making no
distinction between the innocent Armenians and the
guilty.’ . . . `But that was utterly impossible, in view of the fact
that those who were innocent today might be guilty tomorrow’" (8).
The words represent a sinister version of the collective guilt and
expiation of the American nation imagined by Balakian and Power,
which has here already been cast as the inevitable collective "guilt"
of the entire Armenian race. In moments such as these, Burning
Tigris and "A Problem from Hell" remind us that it is perhaps the
cruelest of April’s ironies that the historical imagination itself is
what can most easily betray us.

All Rights Reserved: Critics Forum, 2008. Exclusive to the Armenian
Reporter.

Hovig Tchalian holds a PhD in English literature from UCLA. He has
edited several journals and also published articles of his own.

You can reach him or any of the other contributors to Critics’ Forum
at [email protected]. This and all other articles published
in this series are available online at To sign
up for a weekly electronic version of new articles, go to
Critics’ Forum is a group created to
discuss issues relating to Armenian art and culture in the Diaspora.

AZERBAIJANI DELEGATION TO CONDEMN CO-CHAIR COUNTRIES’ POSITION ON UN RESOLUTION IN OSCE PA

Azeri Press Agency
April 7 2008
Azerbaijan

Baku. Elnur Mammadli – APA. "At the next session of OSCE Parliamentary
Assembly stance will be taken on the Minsk Group co-chairs’ voting
against the resolution on "The situation in the occupied Azerbaijani
territories" in UN," head of Azerbaijani delegation to OSCE PA,
Vice-Speaker of the Parliament Bahar Muradova said, APA reports.

She said that Azerbaijani side had always expressed its dissatisfaction
with the ineffective activity of the Minsk Group.

"Azerbaijani State and President have concrete position and it has been
delivered to them on different levels. We know why the co-chairs did
so. But they themselves say otherwise it will have negative impact on
the process of negotiations. I think that they should at least abstain
in order not to make negative influence on the negotiations. That’s
why we will express deep concern at the session of the Parliamentary
Assembly", he said.

As regards the prospects of peaceful settlement of Nagorno Karabakh
problem in this format, Bahar Muradova expressed her hope that the
process of negotiations would have positive results.

"Any problem can be solved through negotiations. The main thing is
that one should be frank. Our position is open and fair. Results can
be achieved, if the opposite side is also fair", she said.

RA PARLIAMENT PUT OFF DISCUSSION OF SECOND READING OF THE DRAFT LAW ON LOCAL POWER BODIES OF YEREVAN FOR 90 DAYS

arminfo
2008-04-07 15:44:00

ArmInfo. RA Parliament put off discussion of the second reading of
the draft law on local power bodies of Yerevan for 90 days.

As RA Parliament speaker Tigran Torosyan said, the discussion had
to be put off in view of the necessity of holding public hearings
and comprehensive discussion of the issue. By well-known reasons
related to the election and post-election processes, discussions were
somewhat delayed. As T. Torosyan said, first of all, it is necessary
to adopt the law and, second, implement a new system of self-government
in Yerevan.

To recall, the first reading of the draft law was adopted on December
6, 2007. As Deputy Territorial Administration Minister Vache Terteryan
said in his speech, in case of adoption of the draft law, alterations
and amendments will have to be made to 20 laws. The draft law was
widely discussed with representatives on international structures
as well. Various levels discussions have started since 1995 when the
Constitution of the country was adopted. According to the draft law,
Yerevan will be divided to 12 administrative districts which will
come forward as communities and local power bodies. Yerevan mayor
will appoint the heads of the administrative districts. Yerevan mayor
and seniors will become the main management structures. Seniors’
Council should consist of 65 people and elected by the proportional
election system.

The party which ensures 40% of its representatives in the senior’s
council will get 50+ one seat and ensure majority in such a way. In
this case the man which is the first in the party list will become
Yerevan mayor without voting. Seniors will become a new electoral
institution, which should elect the mayor. The latter will have
five deputies, four of which will be appointed by him and the first
vice-mayor will be elected by the seniors.

Seniors will have a right to draw out normative documents. It is
also planed to create audit commission institute which will discuss
demands of the minority. Mayor’s resignation institute will be
also introduced. This is necessary to avoid undesired political
processes. If any faction introduces vote of lack of confidence to
the mayor seniors may suggest an alternative candidate for the mayor
over the next 36 hours. Vote of lack of confidence may be introduced
not earlier than a year before the election.

PRESS RELEASE
Catholicosate of Cilicia
Communication and Information Department
Contact: V.Rev.Fr.Krikor Chiftjian, Communications Officer
Tel: (04) 410001, 410003
Fax: (04) 419724
E- mail: [email protected]
Web:

PO Box 70 317
Antelias-Lebanon

Armenian version: nian.htm

ANTELIAS TO HOST AN INTERNATIONAL INTERFAITH CONFERENCE

An international interfaith conference on migration is scheduled to take
place in the Antelias headquarters of the Catholicosate of Cilicia over the
next week. Over 100 delegates from around the world will take part in the
conference.

The conference is jointly organized by the World Council of Churches (WCC)
and the Middle East Council of Churches (MECC). Its inaugural session will
feature remarks by Catholicos Aram I, the General Secretary of WCC, Sam
Kobia, the spiritual leaders of the Maronite, Orthodox, Sunni and Shiite
communities in Lebanon, as well as the Lebanese Minister of Culture, Tarek
Mitri. A banquet will be held in honor of the guests on the same evening.

##
The Armenian Catholicosate of Cilicia is one of the two Catholicosates of
the Armenian Orthodox Church. For detailed information about the Ecumenical
activities of the Cilician Catholicosate, you may refer to the web page of
the Catholicosate, The Cilician
Catholicosate, the administrative center of the church is located in
Antelias, Lebanon.

PRESS RELEASE

Armenian National Committee
San Francisco – Bay Area
51 Commonwealth Avenue
San Francisco, CA 94118
Tel: (415) 387-3433
Fax: (415) 751-0617
[email protected]

Verjine Svazlian Discusses 53 years of Collecting Genocide Testimonies
and Songs

March 19, 2008, San Francisco – Verjine Svazlian, Lead Researcher at the
Institute of Archeology and Ethnography at the Academy of Sciences in
Armenia, presented her research on the oral tradition of Armenian
Genocide survivors, through their eye-witness testimonies and songs
revealing their experience.

Co-sponsored by the Bay Area Armenian National Committee, the UC
Berkeley Armenian Studies Program and the Hamazkayin Armenian Cultural
and Educational Society, Svazlian’s presentation was based on the many
oral histories of Armenian Genocide survivors, which she personally
collected beginning in 1955 from 100 localities in Western Armenia. She
undertook these efforts often at great personal risk from authorities in
the former Soviet Union and Turkey. Her latest book, translated from
Armenian into English, Russian, Turkish, French, and other languages is
titled, "The Armenian Genocide and the People’s Historical Memory."

"The Armenian Genocide, as an international political crime against
humanity, has become, by the brutal constraint of history, an
inseparable part of the national identity, the thought and the
spiritual-conscious inner world of the Armenian people," said Svazlian,
who was born in Egypt and immigrated with her family to Soviet Armenia
in 1947. "There is no man without memory. Similarly, there cannot exist
a nation without memory," said Svazlian.

Svazlian began collecting Genocide testimonies as a student at the
Yerevan Khachatour Abovian Pedagogical University, walking door-to-door
and village-to-village, searching for Armenian Genocide survivors who
had been rescued. Her work is particularly valuable not only because of
its volume, but because of the short amount of time that had passed
since the Genocide. One of her subjects, Maritsa Papazian was born in
1874, in Samsun. Many of the survivors Svazlian interviewed were
"repatriates" to Soviet Armenia, living in newly built districts on the
outskirts of Yerevan (like Nor Aresh, Nor Giligia, Nor Zeytoun, Nor
Marash, etc.)

Svazlian spoke about the circumstances of her meetings with the
survivors. "Upon meeting the eyewitness survivors miraculously saved
from the Armenian Genocide, I always found them silent, reticent and
deep in thought. There was valid reason for this mysterious silence,
since the political obstacles prevailing in Soviet Armenia for many
decades did not allow them to tell about or to narrate their past in a
free and unconstrained manner."

Because of these circumstances and the horrors the survivors had
experienced, Svazlian said she went to great lengths to earn the trust
and friendship of her subjects, in order to obtain the most genuine and
comprehensive testimonies. They include descriptions of a wide range of
topics: the native land, patriarchal life and customs,
communal-political life, historical events, discriminatory practices
(i.e. taxes, prohibitions directed only against Armenians), and the
inhumanities of the forced exile, murders, mutilations, and the
holocaust, all of which remained vivid in many of the survivors’ memories.

Svazlian read from several testimonies, including that of Nektar
Gasparian, born in 1910 in Ardvin, who confessed, "More than 80 years
have passed, but I cannot forget up to this day my prematurely dead
beloved father, mother, uncle, grandmother, our neighbors and all my
relatives who were brutally killed, and we were left lonely and
helpless. During all my life I have always remembered those appalling
scenes, which I have seen with my own eyes and I have had no rest ever
since. I have shed tears so often…" Verginé Gasparian, born in 1912
in Aintap said in her interview, "The Turks slaughtered my father
Krikor, my mother Doudou, my brother Hagop and my sister Nouritsa before
my eyes. I have seen all that with my own eyes and cannot forget until
this day."

A common element in the interviews were the survivors’ tally of members
of their extended family – how many were massacred, and how many
survived. Hazarkhan Torossian born in 1902 in Balou said," So many
years have passed, but up ’til now I cannot get to sleep at nights, my
past comes in front of my eyes, I count the dead and the living." Hrant
Gasparian, born in 1908 in Mush said, "I told you what I have seen.
What I have seen is in front of my eyes. We have brought nothing from
Khnous. We have only saved our souls. Our large family was composed of
143 souls. Only one sister, one brother, my mother and I were saved."
And Verginé Nadjarian born in 1910 in Malatia said, "Our family was very
large, we were about 150-200 souls. My mother’s brothers, my father’s
sisters, and brothers. They slaughtered them all on the road to
Der-Zor. Only three of us were left: I, my mother and my brother."

Through her interviews, which Svazlian conducted in written, audio
taped, and videotaped form and in different dialects and languages, she
also captured testimonies about the self-defense actions that took place
in several Armenian towns attacked by the Turkish military (as in Van,
Shatakh, Shabin-Karahisar, Sassoun, Musa Dagh, Urfa, and others.)

Svazlian discussed the wisdom also revealed by many of her subjects.
She quoted Armenian Genocide survivor Artavazd Ktradsian, born in
Adabazar in 1901, who began his memoir with the words, "A man should be a
man, whether he is an Armenian or a Turk." She also said that many of
her subjects harbored no ill will or hatred toward Turks in general,
pointing out testimonies that included descriptions of the neighborly
relations between the two peoples. Arakel Tagoyan, who was born in 1902
in Derdjan, testified about his village’s pilgrimage to the monastery of
St. Garabed in Mush, saying, "Besides the pilgrims, Turkish and Kurdish
inhabitants also gathered, ate the offering with us, rejoiced with us,
sang and danced. They brought sick people on the tomb of St. Garabed to
be healed."

The testimonies also reveal various forms of popular folklore
(lamentations, songs, parables, proverbs, prayers, oaths, etc.), which
not only lend a more valuable ethnographic study, but also help to
confirm the reliability of the survivors’ narratives. Svazlian said
that some of the subjects even took it upon themselves to make the sign
of a cross and swear to the truthfulness of their statements. One
survivor from Erzeroum, Loris Papikian, born in 1903, stated at the
beginning of her interview, "…I should tell you first that if I
deliberately color the events and the people, let me be cursed and be
worthy of general contempt…"

Svazlian also played excerpts of survivors singing songs about the
Armenian Genocide. "The authors of those historical songs were mainly
the Armenian women," said Svazlian. "Those horrifying impressions were
so strong and profound that these songs have often taken a poetic shape
as the lament woven by the survivor from Mush, Shogher Tonoyan (born in
1901), which she communicated to me with tearful eyes and moans:

"…Morning and night, I hear cries and laments,
I have no rest, no peace, and no sleep,
I close my eyes and always see dead bodies,
I lost my kin, friends, land, and home…"

"With their originality and ideological contents, these historical songs
are not only novelties in the fields of Armenian Folklore and Armenian
Genocide studies," said Svazlian, "but they also provide the possibility
for comprehending, in a new fashion, the given historical period with
its specific aspects."

Svazlian has collected a variety of songs, divided into categories
according to the experience they communicate: "Songs of mobilization,
arm-collection and imprisonment," "Songs of deportation and massacre,"
"Songs of child-deprived mothers, orphans and orphanages," "Patriotic
and heroic battle songs," and "Songs of the lost Homeland and of the
rightful claim."

Many survivors from different regions sang the same songs, with
variations. The songs had been passed along extensively by word of
mouth. Many of them were composed and sung in Turkish, especially in
towns where speaking Armenian was forbidden. Numerous interviews
attested to the practice of Turkish authorities cutting out the tongues
of those speaking and/or teaching the Armenian language, and one of the
collected songs included the refrain:

"They entered the school and caught the school-mistress, Ah, alas!
They opened her mouth and cut her tongue, Ah, alas!"

Svazlian provided the following examples of songs about the Genocide:

I got up in the morning; the door was closed,
The major came, a club in his hand,
The blind and the lame spread before him,
Armenians dying for the sake of faith!

The place called Der-Zor was a large locality,
With innumerable slaughtered Armenians,
The Ottoman chiefs have become butchers,
Armenians dying for the sake of faith!

The desert of Der-Zor was covered with mist,
Oh, mother! Oh, mother! Our condition was lamentable,
People and grass were stained with blood,
Armenians dying for the sake of faith!

Svazlian’s interviews included survivors who were already adults during
the Armenian Genocide. Some of their testimonies can be quite graphic
and look at the Genocide in the context of world politics. An example
is Hagop Papazian, born in 1891 in Sivrihissar. Papazian was a graduate
of Istanbul Medical University, who had served in the Turkish army as a
medical officer and had seen all the atrocities first hand: "…When I
recall all that I think to myself: none of the civilized countries took
any step towards humanism. Therefore, willy-nilly they encouraged the
Turks to annihilate millions of unarmed and defenseless, innocent
Armenians of Western Armenia, a whole nation, from the old to the young
with such cruelty that hadn’t been heard or written in the history of
mankind: people were tortured and tormented to death, held captive,
kidnapped, raped, forcibly turned into Turks, slaughtered, sent to the
gallows, some were hanged head-down and left to die in torments. They
imprisoned hundreds of people in churches and barns, hungry and thirsty,
for several days and then they poured kerosene on them and burned them
to ashes. Countless, innumerable people were drowned in the Euphrates
River. On both sides of the road of exile, they buried small children
alive up to their neck and left them to die, and the deported people
were led by the same road to see these atrocities and to feel violent
grief. The Turks cut open the bellies of pregnant women with swords,
they violated the young virgin girls, kidnapped young women to make them
concubines in their harems, they forced aged and young people to become
Turks and speak only Turkish… The Armenian nation was isolated and
was in a tragic situation. The Armenians lost their historical native
land; millions of Armenians were martyred ruthlessly. And all that took
place before the eyes of civilized humanity, by their knowledge and
permission. The Great States acted as Pilates for their future material
interests and willy-nilly allowed the Grey Wolf – the Turks – to torture
and devour an unarmed and defenseless nation. They encouraged the
Turks, thus becoming accomplices in the Armenian Genocide…"

The wealth of eye-witness testimonies that Svazlian has accumulated over
the decades was meant to be absorbed by future generations, both to give
them a knowledge of their past and to counter historical revisionism and
genocide denial. She used the testimony of Dikran Ohanian, born in 1902
in Kamakh, to illustrate her purpose. Ohanian said, "…My past is not
only my past, but it is my nation’s past as well."

AZG Armenian Daily #065, 05/04/2008

Karabakh issue

AZERBAIJAN HAS A FALSE IMPRESSION OF KARABAKH’S
POSITION

A new period of discussions of Karabakh settlement has
started in NKR National Assembly. The initiator of the
hearing is the NA foreign relations permanent
committee. After the closed hearings of April 2
Chairman of the Committee Vahram Atanesian and NKR
Foreign Minister Georgi Petrosian met with the
journalists and answered their questions.

According to them, the theme of the hearings was the
precedent of Kosovo. According to the Foreign
Minister, Kosovo may serve as a precedent for other
conflicts mainly for Karabakh settlement.

NA foreign relations permanent committee chairman is
sure that the situation in the negotiation process has
basically changed and NKR Parliament as a
representative body should clarify its position and
level a road for the executive body’s corresponding
steps. Karabakh is not obliged to correspond its view
with RA. There aren’t permissible or not permissible
means, there is the will of the people and the
representative body should be guided by it.

"Nagorno Karabakh declared its independence 16 years
ago and now the main issue is to protect that
independence", added V. Atanesian.

What about Azerbaijan’s approach, our neighboring
country has a false impression of Karabakh’s position.

By Kim Gabrielian, translated by L.H.