Author: Ekmekjian Janet

‘Vodka Lemon’ Life’s astringent taste can go down smooth
By Elvis Mitchell New York Times
Times Argus
March 22, 2005
“Vodka Lemon” just might be the world’s iciest postcard film: You
will never be so happy to sit inside a cozy, theater as when you
watch the actors exhaling clouds of warm breath over the blindingly
white expanse.
But the thicket of relationships that the director, Hiner Saleem,
has created and weaves his cast and camera through is so invitingly
hotblooded and crowded with hilariously melodramatic incident
that the snowbanks are not nearly as forbidding as they initially
seem. Eventually the chilly air becomes a character; it has the
astringent sharpness of the title drink that everyone in the movie
downs, and complains about.
The picture starts with an old man being pulled across the snowy
wastes on his bed, an image right out of a dream. But Saleem’s gifts
come from giving these outlandish visual statements a grounding in
the everyday reality that the characters experience. He is headed to
a funeral, and “Vodka Lemon” charts the intermingling – marriages,
death and sexual complications – in an Armenian village. Like most of
the other New Directors/New Films offerings “Vodka Lemon” is set in
a place that almost makes us want to applaud for the sheer industry
required to get a camera crew there.
Chief among the citizens is the wily Hamo, played by Romik
Avinian. With a grizzled jaw line one could scratch to start a
fire, Avinian dominates the picture as if he has finally grown
into his surly, direct charisma. This fine, guarded actor anchors
the goings-on. After attending so many funerals, Hamo has begun a
flirtation with a much younger woman, the 50-ish widow Nina (Lala
Sarkissian). She feels a void in her life, and he simply recognizes
now as the time for both of them to move into a new adventure.
The ravaged and impoverished village also must cope with its own
deficits. The support system in place during Soviet rule is long gone,
with several residents fondly griping about the comforts, such as
they were, that the Soviets provided. There hasn’t been much change;
life in this flash-frozen community has gone from minimal to Spartan,
but nostalgie de la boue is still nostalgia.
“We have nothing left but our freedom,” one villager grouses. Saleem
understands that need is the central motivating force in the villagers’
lives: for heat, food, emotional humidity and clarity.
Saleem’s layering does compensate for the lack of formal structure,
though the picture is provisionally set around the shock waves caused
by the imminent wedding of Nina’s granddaughter. But the picture
does not need an elaborately contrived plot. What it has instead
is a neighborly, fresh-air quality; all the doors in the miniature
snow-globe of a town are open, as is the chatter and curiosity about
everyone’s familial intrigues.
The movement from one conversation to another gives a likable freedom
to “Vodka Lemon,” and allows Saleem to set up a few running jokes
that combine quotidian absurdity with thoughtful melodrama, like the
opening shot of the old man, and a few other freakish outbursts that
have to be witnessed to be believed, and savored.
It is an intelligent gamble on Saleem’s part; he knows that if he’s
not going to satisfy audiences with convention, he should at least
supply a few entrances as detonation devices.
“Vodka Lemon” could be an Ice Capades version of a Beckett play,
with a group of seasoned though modest hammy actors in complete
control. Their affectlessness gives the movie an atmosphere of
hypothermia-laced surrealism, with shots of drama serving the same
purpose as the vodka; both keep the blood flowing. This movie has
an antic, mordant visual poetry that matches up with the rancor and
feeling in its population’s souls.

The Scotsman, UK
March 20 2005
Less talk, more action
BEN KIERNAN
IN TWO years of mass killings and forced population displacements,
Sudan and its Arab Janjaweed militias have caused the deaths of more
than 200,000 Africans in the country’s Darfur provinces. Though
existing international law already provides both a relevant statutory
definition of genocide and a court to judge these crimes, needless
semantic disputes are hampering effective punishment and deterrence.
Failure to promptly bring those responsible before the International
Criminal Court (ICC) could render the international community
helpless onlookers – and would further encourage such crimes.
Despite persistent reports of attacks on Africans in Darfur, military
intervention has been slow. The African Union peacekeeping force is
small. Guarding their own sovereignty, few African or Arab
governments will intervene in a regional Islamic state, or prosecute
its crimes. US intervention, with American forces extended in Iraq
and elsewhere, seems unlikely. Washington favours a genocide
tribunal, in a special court restricted to hearing the Darfur case.
It opposes the new permanent ICC, which one day might try US war
crimes.
Differing definitions of genocide plague the legal response. A United
Nations commission, urging referral of the case to ICC prosecutors,
recently found that crimes against humanity and war crimes are
occurring in Darfur. The commission avoided charging Sudanese
government officials with genocide stating that “only a competent
court” can determine if they have committed “acts with genocidal
intent”. Meanwhile, the US government, the German government and the
parliament of the European Union all accuse Khartoum of “genocide”.
Why this debate over the definition of genocide? Although the concept
preceded the invention of the term, the jurist Raphael Lemkin coined
the word in his 1944 classic Axis Rule in Occupied Europe. Warning of
what we now call the Holocaust, he cited previous cases, particularly
the 1915 Armenian genocide perpetrated by the Ottoman Young Turk
regime. Lemkin thought the term should denote the attempted
destruction not only of ethnic and religious groups but also of
political ones, and that it encompassed systematic cultural
destruction as well.
The 1941-45 Nazi genocide of Jews and Gypsies constitutes not only
the most extreme case of genocide, it differs from previous cases –
the conquistadors’ brutality in the New World or Ottoman massacres –
in an important respect: the Holocaust was one of the first examples
of attempted physical racial extermination. On a smaller scale, this
fate had already befallen a number of indigenous peoples in the
Americas, Africa and Australia – and, later, the Vietnamese minority
in Cambodia and Tutsis in Rwanda in 1994. By then, planned
near-complete annihilation of a people had become the colloquial
meaning of “genocide”.
Yet the postwar UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of
Genocide adopted Lemkin’s broader concept, which encompasses the
crimes in Darfur. Ratified by most UN member states, the 1948
convention defines genocide as acts committed “with the intent to
destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial, or
religious group, as such”.
It includes even non-violent destruction of such a group. While
excluding cultural destruction and political extermination, the
convention specifically covers removal of children, imposing living
conditions that make it difficult to sustain a group’s existence, or
inflicting physical or mental harm, with the intent to destroy a
group “as such”. Australia’s Human Rights and Equal Opportunity
Commission found in 1997 that the UN definition of genocide applied
to the removals of Aboriginal children from their parents to “breed
out the colour” – as one Australian official put it in 1933. The law
thus expands the popular understanding of genocide. As in the case of
Darfur, genocide may fall well short of total physical extermination.
The legal recourse now available to victims under international law
is a good reason to accept the 1948 UN definition. In 2003, Sudan
acceded to the Genocide Convention. It is statutory international
law, binding on 136 states. In the past decade, UN tribunals for
Bosnia and Rwanda have convicted genocide perpetrators from both
countries. The convention’s definition is enshrined in the statute of
the ICC, created in 2002 and ratified by 94 states.
The legal definition is broad in another sense. In criminal law, the
term “intent” does not equal “motive”. One of Hitler’s motives for
the construction of Auschwitz was to destroy the Jews directly, but
other genocide perpetrators have pursued different goals – conquest
(Indonesia in East Timor), “ethnic cleansing” (in Bosnia and Darfur)
– which resulted in more indirect cases. If those perpetrators did
not set out to commit genocide, it was a predictable result of their
actions.
The regimes pursued their objectives, knowing that at least partial
genocide would result from their violence: driving Africans from
Darfur, crushing all national resistance in East Timor, imposing
totalitarian racism in Cambodia. When such policies knowingly bring
genocidal results, their perpetrators may be legally judged to have
possessed the “intent” to destroy a group, whatever their motive.
Such crimes are not the same as the Holocaust, but international law
has made them another form of genocide.
The 1948 Convention also outlaws complicity, incitement, conspiracy
and attempt to commit genocide. A government could commit those
crimes by facilitating an ongoing genocide against indigenous people.
Darfur may include such cases of official complicity with the
Janjaweed militia attacks. In colonial Australia, British authorities
did not set out to exterminate Aborigines but some police and
settlers did. Nor did US federal officials adopt such a goal in
California and the West, though some state governments and
bounty-hunting posses did. Yet courts in both countries prohibited
testimony by native people. Such official policies and their
deliberate, sustained enforcement facilitated or resulted in the
predictable genocide of a number of Aboriginal and Native American
peoples.
Complicity, discrimination and refusal of legal responsibility to
protect threatened groups continued in the 20th century. Even after
World War II, the UN Security Council failed to enforce the 1948
Genocide Convention until the crime recurred in Europe. By then
genocide had proliferated elsewhere. A few independent scholars,
inspired by Lemkin, had long been working to broaden understanding of
the phenomenon beyond the Holocaust. Most scholars now include the
Armenian, Bangladeshi, Cambodian, East Timorese, Guatemalan,
Sudanese, and other cases, along with those of Bosnia and Rwanda.
Attention has also turned to indigenous peoples. A German official
recently apologised to the Herero people of Namibia for Berlin’s
genocidal conquest of South-West Africa in 1904-05. The US and
Australia have yet to acknowledge genocides against their indigenous
inhabitants but now the Muslim Africans of Darfur have a legal
remedy.
After a century of genocide, resistance and research on the
phenomenon, the world community has a legal definition, an
international statute outlawing the crime and a court asserting
jurisdiction over it. The task now requires less definitional
disputation, more investigation, rigorous enforcement and
compensation for the victims. Unless either the Sudanese government
invites the ICC, or the UN decides to send the case before the ICC,
the Darfur crimes may go unpunished. Lest international efforts to
prevent genocide disintegrate into empty talk, the ICC should be
allowed to take up the case of Darfur.
Ben Kiernan is the A.Whitney Griswold Professor of History and
director of the Genocide Studies Program at Yale University

ITAR-TASS News Agency
TASS
March 18, 2005
Australian detained in Moscow airport may be fined or jailed
MOSCOW
Legal proceedings have been instituted against an Australian for
Thursday’s incident on the Tokyo-Moscow flight. The proceedings are
instituted under the article on “giving information known to be false
about an act of terror,” the Sheremetyevo airport police department
told Itar-Tass.
The detained passenger is identified. He is Simon Talityan, a
29-year-old Australian citizen of Armenian origin, who flew via
Moscow to Yerevan to his brother.
The crew commander reported to an air traffic controller not long
before the landing at Moscow that one of the passengers attempted to
break through to the cockpit, threatening to blow up the airliner.
When the plane landed, Sheremetyevo airport security service officers
and police detained the offender right aboard the plane.
Talityan was heavily drunk. He is detained and held in the airport
detention ward.
The false terrorist, who made the passengers and crew experience
unpleasant moments, may be fined a considerable sum or sentenced up
to three years.
The Australian Foreign Ministry confirmed on Friday that the
passenger was an Australian citizen.
The Australian Embassy in Moscow said it would render consular
assistance to the citizen.
Australian diplomats said it was really an Australian citizen, a
resident of Sydney. He attempted to get into the cockpit, threatening
to blow up the plane.
To render consular assistance to the Australian citizen, the embassy
maintains constant contact with appropriate structures investigating
the incident.
The embassy has given no comments so far on causes and motives of the
passenger’s actions.

Armenia Reports Arrest in Smuggling Case
AP Online
Mar 18, 2005

Armenian police have made arrests in connection with an alleged plot
uncovered by U.S. authorities to smuggle Russian military weapons into
the United States, a security official said Thursday.
Security officials would not say how many people had been arrested in
Armenia, or even when the arrests took place. But Grach Arutyunian,
first deputy of the National Security Service, said one of the
suspects in the United States, Artur Solomonyan, has lived in America
since he became an exchange student in 1998.
The security service said Wednesday that Solomonyan has been wanted by
police in Armenia since 2001 on suspicion of avoiding military
service.
Earlier this week, U.S. authorities announced they had charged 18
people in the scheme. The arrests resulted from a yearlong
investigation in which an FBI informant posed as an arms buyer who
claimed to have ties to al-Qaida.
The informant, an explosives expert, contacted the FBI after he was
approached by a man who said he had access to weapons from the former
Soviet Union and believed the informant could find a willing buyer,
federal prosecutors said.
Using a digital camera, members of the ring, which included Armenians
and South Africans, provided pictures of the weapons they said they
had available for sale, prosecutors said.
The pictures, apparently taken somewhere in Armenia, showed anti-tank
missiles, a Russian missile launcher and an anti-tank rifle, among
other weapons, officials said.
According to a criminal complaint unsealed in U.S. District Court in
Manhattan, the informant met two of the defendants, Artur Solomonyan
and Christiaan Dewet Spies, on several occasions in New York to
discuss the weapons deals.
Solomonyan, an Armenian citizen living in New York and Los Angeles,
and Spies, a South African citizen living in New York, were arrested
Monday night at a Manhattan hotel after meeting one last time with the
informant to finalize their plans before leaving the country to obtain
the weapons, prosecutors alleged.

“WITHDRAWAL OF RUSSIAN TROOPS WILL MEAN END OF ARMENIA”, LEADER OF
ARMENIAN COMMUNISTS THINKS
YEREVAN, MARCH 16. ARMINFO. “Only the politicians, registered in the
Washington Personnel Department, may speak today of the necessity of
withdrawal of Russian military bases from Armenia”. First Secretary of
Communist Party of Armenia Ruben Tovmasian expressed such an opinion
talking to ARMINFO, commenting on the statements of several
politicians on the necessity of Armenia’s integration into NATO with
the follow-up withdrawal of the Russian contingent from Armenia.
According to Ruben Tovmasian, to require the withdrawal of Russian
troops, possessing such a blood0thirsty neighbor like Turkey, means to
initiate repetition of the 1915. “The withdrawal of the Russian troops
will mean the end of Armenia”, the leader of Armenian communists
stressed, reminding that the three centuries old history of
Russian-Armenian relations knew both rises and recessions, but at the
same time these relations have never cooled down. Tovmasian considered
indisputable the fact of the anti-Armenian position of western
countries. In particular, no one of the leaders of the United States
has ever delivered the word “genocide” in the estimation of the famous
events in Western Armenia at the beginning of last century. At the
same time, Russia takes steps towards international recognition of the
genocide of the Armenians in Ottoman empire. Thus, through the
assistance of the Communist party of Russian Federation in Jan of the
current year the communists of Armenia succeeded to achieve
condemnation of the Genocide in the Union of communist
parties. According to Ruben Tovmasian, the communist parties of remote
foreign countries, as well as socialist forces in Latin American and
European countries now are joining the process of recognition of the
Genocide.

Associated Press Worldstream
March 15, 2005 Tuesday 9:06 AM Eastern Time
World Figure Skating Championships Results
MOSCOW
Results Tuesday from the World Figure Skating Championships at the
Luzhniki Sports Palace (ranking of participants with identical
secores is determined by tie-breaker):
Ice Dance
Compulsory Dance
1. Tatiana Navka and Roman Kostomarov, Russia, 45.97 points.
2. Tanith Belbin and Ben Agosto, United States, 42.18.
3. Elena Grushina and Ruslan Goncharov, Ukraine, 41.30.
4. Albena Denkova and Maxim Staviski, Bulgaria, 40.81.
5. Marie-France Dubreuil and Patrice Lauzon, Canada, 40.51.
6. Isabelle Delobel and Olivier Schoenfelder, France, 40.51.
7. Galit Chait and Sergei Sakhnovski, Israel, 39.13.
8. Oksana Domnina and Maxim Shabalin, Russia, 36.26.
9. Federica Faiella and Massimo Scali, Italy, 36.19.
10. Megan Wing and Aaron Lowe, Canada, 35.11.
11. Melissa Gregory and Denis Petukhov, United States, 34.40.
12. Sinead Kerr and John Kerr, Britain, 32.63.
13. Svetlana Kulikova and Vitali Novikov, Russia, 31.21.
14. Kristin Fraser and Igor Lukanin, Azerbaijan, 31.16.
15. Nora Hoffmann and Attila Elek, Hungary, 30.17.
16. Nathlaie Pechalat and Fabien Bourzat, France, 30.00.
17. Nozomi Watanabe and Akiyuki Kido, Japan, 29.20.
18. Anastasia Grebenkina and Vazgen Azrojan, Armenia, 28.53.
19. Natalia Gudina and Alexei Beletski, Israel, 28.40.
20. Yang Fang and Gao Chongbo , China, 27.57.
21. Christina Beier and William Beier, Germany, 27.24.
22. Alexandra Kauc and Michael Zych, Poland, 26.58.
23. Julia Golovina and Oleg Voiko, Ukraine, 25.24.
24. Olga Akimova and Alexander Shakalov, Uzbekistan, 24.25.
25. Laura Munana and Luke Munana, Mexico, 23.95.
26. Alessia Aurelli and Andrea Vaturi, Italy, 23.83.
27. Judith Haunstetter and Arne Hoenlein, Germany, 22.91.
28. Natalie Buck and Trent Nelson-Bond, Australia, 21.85.
29. Daniela Keller and Fabian Keller, Switzerland, 21.05.
30. Anna Galcheniuk and Oleg Krupen, Belarus, 13.36.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

Slovene OSCE chair stresses resolve to stop intolerance, discrimination
STA news agency, Ljubljana
15 Mar 05
GENEVA
The OSCE is determined to stop intolerance and discrimination, OSCE
Chairman-in-Office and Slovene Foreign Minister Dimitrij Rupel
underscored in his address to the UN Human Rights Commission in Geneva
on Tuesday [15 March].
“In order to firmly embed basic human rights in our societies, we have
to raise awareness among the youth. The Slovene OSCE chairmanship will
therefore dedicate special attention to human rights education,” Rupel
told the assembly.
We have to gradually create an environment that will support cultural
diversity and the integration of migrants, he also said.
In its political and military dimension, the OSCE insists on the
preservation of fundamental human rights principles even when facing
security challenges, according to Rupel.
“Slovenia advocates the promotion and respect of human rights, and
supports the activities of the UN Commission and its mechanisms,” he
stressed.
On the margins of the session, Rupel is expected to meet later today
his Armenian counterpart Vardan Oskanyan and ICRC [International
Committee of the Red Cross] Director General Jakob Kellenberger.

The Oregonian, OR
March 15 2005
3 charged in scheme to steal IDs in fraud case
The three men, all illegal immigrants, are suspected of being part of
an international gang that launders money
JOSEPH ROSE
Police detectives were expecting Kenneth Emina to walk into a
Portland brokerage firm in late January.

Several undercover cops spent the afternoon in the office, posing as
employees and customers, waiting to nab the suspected money launderer
from Nigeria.
What they didn’t anticipate, they said, was Enima spilling the
intricate details of an international gang of thieves at the sign of
the first badge.
“He started giving us names, details, everything, right there,” said
Portland police Detective John Kuechler. “We had to shut him up long
enough to read him his rights.”
Standing in the financial office, Enima, 37, outlined for
investigators a million-dollar fraud ring that was laundering money
through Portland’s financial community.
Police arrested Enima; Francis J. Osai, 35, thought to be from
Nigeria; and Ari Gokbas, 35, an Armenian-Turk. They face charges of
identity theft and first-degree aggravated theft.
The three men, all illegal immigrants from California, stole the
identity of 17 people in 11 states before traveling to Portland in
January, police said. None of the victims was from Oregon.
Using credit cards and fake California driver’s licenses, the trio
allegedly withdrew money from their victims’ commercial bank accounts
at several Portland area branches.
They then attempted to launder the money through brokerage firm
accounts, Kuechler said.
“They had beautiful, beautiful California ID’s,” he said, adding that
the pictures on the fake driver’s licenses were actually sharper than
usual.”
The men are suspected of writing nearly $1 million in checks using
the victims’ accounts, and were in the early stages of pulling the
money out of brokerage accounts, Kuechler said.
In one case, he said, a suspect asked a brokerage firm to make out a
check to a third party and took it across the street to a bank to
cash it with a fake driver’s license.
Police were tipped off by a bank investigator Jan. 26.
Enima had asked a brokerage firm to cut him four checks worth a total
of $36,000 shortly after depositing money into an account, police
said. Suspicious employees at the firm told Enima to come back later
for the checks and called the bank investigator.
Enima and Osai are being held by Homeland Security. Ari Gokbas is
expected to be arraigned in the next week. Federal investigators also
have arrested two men they say were connected to the ring in
California.
Authorities suspect the men were working with someone in Nigeria,
where fraud is one of the top three industries.
“The ultimate goal of these guys,” Kuechler said, “was to wire these
funds to another location, where someone could pick it up and run
with it.”

Providence Journal , RI
March 14 2005
Symposium on genocide today at RIC

01:00 AM EST on Monday, March 14, 2005

Five years ago, the Genocide Education Bill was passed into law in
Rhode Island, but not all the state’s school systems have
incorporated the corresponding curricula. But a symposium organized
by several local educators that is scheduled to take place today may
change that.
The first genocide education symposium in the state is being held at
Rhode Island College’s Gaige Hall. It will feature noted authors and
professors, as well as U.S. Sen. Jack Reed and U.S. Rep. James R.
Langevin.
Esther Kalajian said that she and co-organizer Pauline Getzoyan
embarked on “a two-year labor of love to promote genocide education
in our schools,” that led to today’s symposium. The Armenian National
Committee of Rhode Island and the Armenian Martyrs’ Memorial
Committee of Rhode Island have lent their support.
Kalajian, an educator and parent, whose own parents “were very
dedicated teachers themselves,” said that “this was a cause that I
believed in.”
The speakers include Peter Balakian, author of The Burning Tigris;
Judith Claire Mitchell, author of The Last Day of the War; Jim
Fussell, director of Prevent Genocide International; Jimmie Jones of
Facing History and Ourselves; George Aghjayan of the Eastern Region
Board of the Armenian National Commtitee of America, and Dr. Henry
Theriault, associate professor of philosophy at Worcester State
College.
The sessions will cover topics including the writing process and the
effects of uncovering history, genocide denial, labeling and
genocide, when neighbor turns against neighbor, legislation and
foreign policy.
The bill that passed in 2000 was sponored by former state Rep. Aram
Garabedian. It opened the door for elementary and secondary educators
to develop curriculum on genocide and human-rights issues, says
Kalajian.
“Obviously, there are pockets of genocide education in the state, and
maybe one or two that are covered more extensively than others. But
we wanted to give teachers as much information as possible, and let
them see what is done in other states,” Kalajian said.
Educators will receive a copy of a working curriculum from
California, she said, and hear about curriculum in other states,
including New Jersey, Massachusetts and New York.
“We invited people from outside of Rhode Island, experts in the field
. . . not only in their chosen field but experts who work well and
relate well with students and teachers. We read books, and we went to
hear them,” Kalajian said.
“We are excited not only by the integrity and ability of the people,”
but also by their ability to relate to students and faculty, she
said.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

PanArmenian News
March 12 2005
VARDAN OSKANIAN TO LEAVE FOR GENEVA MARCH 14-15
12.03.2005 05:21
/PanARMENIAN.Net/ March 14-15 Armenian Foreign Minister Vardan
Oskanian will leave for Geneva on a working visit, where he will take
part in 61-st session of the UN Human Rights Commission, the Foreign
Ministry Press Service reported. The FM is expected to deliver a
speech at the session, to meet with the Commission Secretary General
and to have bilateral meetings with official representatives of
different countries.