Author: Emil Lazarian

AGBU PRESS OFFICE
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Phone (212) 319-6383
Fax (212) 319-6507
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PRESS RELEASE
Thursday, June 17, 2004
LIGHTS, CAMERA, SATAMIAN
New York – On the heels of the success of last year’s ‘Zvart’ operetta,
Krikor Satamian, along with collaborator Maestro Vatche Barsoumian,
is busy putting together another work by composer Dikran Tchouhadjian
originally titled ‘Leblebiji Horhor Agha’ and now incarnated as
‘Leblebiji’ for three performances this fall in Los Angeles.
A veteran of Beirut’s AGBU Vahan Papazian Theatre Group, a graduate
of England’s famous Bristol school, and an actor with a long line of
movie and network television credits under his belt, Satamian needs
no introduction to Armenian theatre lovers. His name is synonymous
with Armenian theatre in America. He continues to foster Armenian
language performances in a country where the tradition is confined
predominantly to first-generation Armenian Americans.
When Satamian first arrived in America, he settled in the New York area
and began drawing from the local talent pool. But as fluent Armenian
speakers became increasingly difficult to find on the East Coast,
he relocated to Los Angeles where he spotted more potential.
“There was fertile ground [in L.A.] for theatre with all the immigrants
from Armenia and the Middle East,” said Satamian. ” It caught on
like wildfire. I found a generation of actors and now I have a second
generation that is coming from the schools.”
He quickly tapped into the Armenian love of theatre, which has been
sustained by the Armenian immigrants from Armenia, Iran, Syria and
Lebanon. Now the head of the AGBU Ardavazt Theatre Group, Ardavazt is
the only full-time theatre company in Los Angeles. It often tours
other cities across the continent that are hungry for Armenian
theatrical productions.
Ardavazt is currently presenting Hagop Baronian’s ‘Honorable
Beggars’. Later this year, it will be mounting a play by Zareh
Melkonian, the production of ‘Leblebiji’ and five one-act plays
performed by the Ardavazt Junior’s company, created to cultivate a
new wave of talent.
Satamian has also created a series of highly successful one-man shows
that he toured to AGBU chapters across the continent. In Watertown
and Montreal, his performances helped in the fundraising effort for
local AGBU center renovation initiatives.
Since the San Francisco Opera’s ‘Arshak II’ production by Tchouhadjian
in 2001, Satamian has been mining his popular works, most of which
have not been performed since the late nineteenth century in Istanbul
and later in Beirut in the late sixties.
While Verdi influenced ‘Arshak II’, Tchouhadjian’s operettas were
popular pieces that provided people with the equivalent of the show
tunes of their era–works that combined Italian with Oriental music.
‘Leblebiji’ is Satamian’s most ambitious Ardavazt production and
is slated for three nights this fall in contrast to the two nights
reserved for ‘Zvart’.
“The reaction [to ‘Zvart’] was tremendous, it was more than we
expected,” Satamian said. “In fact, when we did our budget we
calculated sixty percent attendance income. It turned out that
attendance was over ninety-five percent.”
“We did two performances in a 3,000 person auditorium and both
performances were full,” he added, noting some people were turned
away from the Sunday performance because of space limitations.
“This time will be bigger. It’s big in scope, and everything needs
a lot of planning,” Satamian said of the preparation underway for
‘Leblebiji’,” he continued. “We will be getting more advertisers,
more donations this time. Those that were sitting on the fence last
time know we can do it and will be onboard.”
There will be new needs this time around, Satamian says, including
more advertising to the non-Armenian community who can easily enjoy
the production because of the ‘surtitles’ that electronically translate
the Armenian dialogue and music on a screen above the stage.
‘Leblebiji’ is the latest in Satamian’s repertoire, but as someone
who is always thinking and dreaming big, he hopes one day to up the
ante and produce more challenging productions.
“I have lots of plays in mind but I don’t have the talent power to
be able to do them. The people I have are competent who can do the
average play but the difficult ones like Shakespeare, Ibsen or Bernard
Shaw I can’t yet. I say ‘yet’ with the hope that maybe these people
will show up one day on the scene.”
If Satamian’s past successes are any indication, it won’t be long
before that happens. Until then, audiences can enjoy AGBU Ardavazt
Theatre Group’s 2004 line up. The company’s ‘Leblebiji’ performances
are scheduled for October 22-24, 2004 and for more information about
this and other shows please contact AGBU Pasadena at (626) 794-7942
or [email protected].

Sudan’s Final Solution
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
Published: June 19, 2004
The New York Times
LONG THE SUDAN-CHAD BORDER — In my last column, I wrote about
Magboula Muhammad Khattar, a 24-year-old woman whose world began to
collapse in March, when the Janjaweed Arab militia burned her village
and slaughtered her parents.
Similar atrocities were happening all over Darfur, in western Sudan,
leaving 1.2 million people homeless. Refugees tell consistent tales of
murder, pillage and rape against the Zaghawa, Fur and Masalit tribes
by the Arabs driving them away.
As this genocide unfolded, the West largely ignored it. That was not
an option for Ms. Khattar and her husband, Ali Daoud.
The night after the village massacre, survivors slipped out of the
forest to salvage any belongings and bury their dead. They found the
bodies of Ms. Khattar’s mother and father; her father’s corpse had
been thrown in a well to poison the water supply. Ms. Khattar was now
responsible for her 3-year-old sister as well as her own two children.
Then, as they prepared the bodies, one moved. Hussein Bashir Abakr, 19,
had been shot in the neck and mouth and left for dead, but he was still
alive. His parents had both been killed, along with all his siblings
except for one brother, who had been shot in the foot but escaped.
That brother, Nuradin, gave up his duty to bury their parents,
choosing instead to carry Hussein into the forest and to try to
nurse him with traditional medicines. Nuradin’s bullet wound made
every step agonizing, but he was determined to save the only member
of his family left. Over the next 46 nights, Nuradin dragged himself
and his brother toward Chad.
Finally, they staggered over the dry riverbed marking the border,
where I found them. Hussein has lost part of his tongue and many of
his teeth and cannot eat solid food. He is sick and inconsolable;
his wife and baby were carried off by the Janjaweed and haven’t been
seen since. As I interviewed him, he bent over to retch every couple
of minutes, Nuradin still cradling him tenderly.
Ms. Khattar and most of the other villagers decided they could not
make the long trek to Chad. So they inched forward at night to find
refuge on a nearby mountain.
Every other night, she crept down the mountain to fetch water, risking
kidnapping by the Janjaweed. “It was so hard in the mountains,”
Ms. Khattar recalled. “There were snakes and scorpions, and a
constant fear of the Janjaweed.” Six-foot cobras have killed some
of the refugees. To feed her children, Ms. Khattar boiled leaves and
plants normally eaten only by camels. Even so, her mother-in-law died.
Officially, Sudan had agreed to a cease-fire in Darfur. But at the
end of May, a Sudanese military plane spotted the villagers’ hideout,
and soon after, the Janjaweed attacked.
“Ali had told me: `If the Janjaweed attack, don’t try to save me. You
can’t help. Don’t get angry. Just keep the children and run away to
Bahai [in Chad]. Don’t shout or say anything,’ ” Ms. Khattar said. So
she hid in a hollow with the children, peeking out occasionally. She
saw the Janjaweed round up all the villagers, including her husband
and his three young brothers: Moussa, 8, Mochtar, 6, and Muhammad,
4. “Even the boys,” she remembers. “They tied their hands like this”
— she motioned with her arms in front of her — “and then forced
them to lie on the ground.” Then, she says, the males were all shot
to death, while women were taken away to be raped.
There were 45 corpses, all killed because of the color of their skin,
part of an officially sanctioned drive by Sudan’s Arab government to
purge the western Sudanese countryside of black-skinned non-Arabs.
The Sudanese authorities, much like the Turks in 1915 and the Nazis in
the 1930’s, apparently calculated that genocide offered considerable
domestic benefits — like the long-term stability to be achieved by
a “final solution” of conflicts between Arabs and non-Arabs — and
that the world would not really care very much. It looks as if the
Sudanese bet correctly.
Perhaps Americans truly don’t care about the hundreds of thousands of
lives at stake — we have other problems, and Darfur is far away. But
my hunch is that if we could just meet the victims, we would not be
willing to acquiesce in genocide.
After two Janjaweed attacks, Ms. Khattar was left a widow, responsible
for three small, starving children in a land where showing her face
would mean rape or death. I’ll continue her saga in Wednesday’s
column.  
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

TALK OF THE TOWN
By SAM WILLIAMS
New York Post, NY
June 20 2004
June 20, 2004 — New York is a city lost in translation. Almost half of
the Big Apple’s residents do not speak English as their first language,
according to surprising new research.
The research, conducted by the Modern Language Association, gives the
first neighborhood-by-neighborhood analysis of the languages spoken
across the five boroughs.
English, the official language in New York City since 1664, is spoken
as a first language by 3.9 million residents, while almost 3.6 million
people are more familiar with another tongue.
English is no longer the most widely spoken first language in more
than 30 New York neighborhoods, the research found.
Spanish has become the most widely spoken language in one-quarter of
the city’s neighborhoods.
The research, which uses data from the 2000 Census, allows linguists to
track everything from the number of Italian speakers in Tottenville,
S.I., (669) to the number of Gujarati speakers in Glen Oaks, Queens
(635).
“Our goal is to let people see what languages are spoken where,” says
Rosemary Feal, executive director of the Modern Language Association,
an organization dedicated to promoting the study and teaching of
languages.
David Goldberg, a Yiddish-language scholar who is MLA’s director
of foreign-language programs, said the research also breaks down
neighborhood language patterns into two major age groups — under 18
and over 18.
Such capabilities make it easy to spot the generation difference
between Manhattan’s Yiddish-speaking community, where less than 3
percent of speakers are under 18, and Brooklyn’s Yiddish-speaking
community, where the number of children speakers jumps to 35 percent.
Venture up to Rockland County, and the ratio of youthful speakers
rises to 47 percent.
“You can see a vibrant, relatively young Hasidic community moving in,”
says Goldberg.
A similar pattern appears to be emerging within the city’s
Chinese-speaking population.
Traditionally centered around Manhattan’s Lower East Side, the
community has formed two distinct offshoots in Brooklyn and Flushing,
Queens, over the last two decades.
Again, age data offer a hint at new immigration patterns: In Manhattan,
13 percent of Chinese speakers are under 18.
In Brooklyn and Queens, the numbers rise to 18 percent and 15 percent,
respectively.
When it comes to assessing the city’s two main language groups,
English and Spanish, The Bronx weighs in with the city’s largest
Spanish-speaking population (534,660), while Staten Island boasts
the largest percentage of English speakers — 74 percent.
Both boroughs have their surprises, however. The Bronx also happens
to be home to the city’s largest Tagalog community (3,981), while
Staten Island’s 10304 ZIP code hosts the largest concentration of
African-language speakers, 4.3 percent.
To really hear New York’s increasing linguistic diversity, one need
only visit Queens.
In addition to topping out in terms of native Chinese (126,904), Korean
(57,447), and Urdu (17,837) speakers, the city’s second-largest borough
boasts the most Armenian (3,531), Thai (2,794), and Navajo speakers
(11).
Perhaps the most significant evidence of linguistic diversity,
however, is the fact that English, while still predominant, registers
as a majority language in less than half — 28 out of 60 — Queens
ZIP codes.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

Kabardino-Balkaria marks Aznavour’s 80th birthday
By Marina Chernysheva
ITAR-TASS News Agency
June 20, 2004 Sunday 1:27 PM Eastern Time
NALCHIK, June 20 — The Culture Fund of Kabardino-Balkaria had a
party marking the 80th birthday of singer Charles Aznavour on Sunday.
Representatives of 12 cultural and ethnic associations of the republic
were invited to attend the party by the republican organization of
the Russian Armenian Union.
More than 5,000 Armenians live in Kabardino-Balkaria nowadays, head
of the Armenian community of Kabardino-Balkaria Zherar Ioannesyan said.

Armenian trespasser detained on Azeri-Iranian border
ANS TV, Baku
19 Jun 04
The State Border Service said today that on 13 June they detained an
Armenian who tried to secretly cross the Iranian-Azerbaijani border
in the section supervised by a border outpost in Fuzuli District’s
village of Qazaxlar.
The border trespasser was 33 year-old Gerasim Grogoryevich
Lazarian. The Border Service’s investigation department has instituted
criminal proceedings into the case. The trespasser is in custody. An
investigation is under way.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

Global Chaos, Just for Fun
terra lycos Network
Wired News
02:00 AM Jun. 17, 2004 PT
It was a sultry evening early last summer when 200 or so New Yorkers
marched into Macy’s department store and loudly informed bewildered
onlookers and one blasé sales clerk that they were looking for a
“love rug” for their communal suburban house.
That was the start of the Mob Project. And this Saturday,
at approximately 2 p.m. local time, people in 76 cities in 32
countries will participate in a global flash mob to celebrate the
first anniversary of what is now a worldwide phenomenon.
Since the first mob gathered in force last year on June 19 (there
was a small mob event in Manhattan a few weeks earlier, but it was a
failure due to police interference), flash mobs have been organized
around the world. People are evidently quite taken by the idea of using
e-mail, blogs and the Internet to gather together a group of people
who suddenly materialize in public places, do something absolutely
inane and then vanish.
Some mobs have joined together to sing Christmas carols. Others have
gathered to support then-Democratic presidential hopeful Howard Dean,
to attempt to link their laptops to form a supercomputer, to taunt
performance artist David Blaine when he was hanging in a box over
the River Thames in London or to protest local politics.
Mobs can do whatever they want; there is no mob boss, no Tony Soprano
running things. But it is worth pointing out that flash mobs were
supposed to be meaningless, silly, utterly pointless endeavors,
according to “Bill,” who conceived the whole Mob Project idea.
“It’s just a mob, for no reason. That’s it, that’s the whole point,”
said Bill, when Manhattan’s Mob Project ended Sept. 10, 2003.
The current political unrest in many areas of the world sparks a
desire to describe the global mob as a warm and fuzzy international
gathering. But in a return to the random roots of the mob as Bill
dreamed of it, organizers have firmly stated that the gathering will
have absolutely no political or social significance.
“The idea of the East greeting the West and the West greeting the East
and everyone coming together has nothing to do with a real flash mob
script. Mobs should be silly,” said one of the event’s main organizers,
who in the spirit of Bill just goes by the name “Dave.”
Dave, who describes himself as “a 36-year-old communications technician
from Moscow, who was born in Armenia, is Chinese by origin and has
been living in New York and Chicago for the past three years,” seems
to be a perfect person to host a global event.
The idea for the global mob was first posted May 21 on the Flash Mob
Association website run by Dave and his collaborator, “Capricorn.”
Twenty-five people from six countries were soon involved in the
planning.
Mobs follow a script that lets participants, many of whom don’t know
each other, synchronize their actions. In Manhattan, the scripts,
printed on slips of paper, were handed out to participants at
designated meeting places immediately before the beginning of each
event. Since then, many people have relied on e-mail or text messages
sent to mobile phones to deliver the scripts.
Participants in the global flash mob will receive their scripts
by e-mail immediately prior to the event. To participate, a local
organizer just needs to register. Once signed up, they will receive
the e-mail containing the script and will also have access to private
planning forums.
Organizers said they worked hard to come up with a script that
would work well for people in different locations. The various mobs
are encouraged to follow the script as closely as possible, but the
organizers also said that participants should feel free to alter the
script to suit cultural differences if needed.
“Planning this has been a lot of fun,” said “Tempest,” an organizer
from Sydney, Australia. “The script is pretty cool, I think. It should
confound a lot of people.”
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

Ethnic Armenian MPs gather in Yerevan to discuss national problems
Noyan Tapan news agency, Yerevan
18 Jun 04
Seventy deputies of Armenian origin from 25 countries have arrived
in Yerevan to attend the first session of the Armenian Parliamentary
Assembly of Friendship, Noyan Tapan news agency said on 18 June.
The session whose sole aim is to “join the efforts of the Armenian
National Assembly and MPs of Armenian origin from abroad” is discussing
“ways of resolving all-Armenian problems and expanding relations
between parliaments”, the agency said.
Armenian Speaker Artur Bagdasaryan, Prime Minister Andranik Markaryan,
the chairman of the Karabakh parliament, Oleg Yesayan, and Armenian
Prime Minister Vardan Oskanyan addressed the session and noted the
need to “maintain the assembly’s effective work” and regularly to
gather to discuss national issues.

Euro-Est
17 juin 2004
PARTICIPATION DE DIPLOMATES ARMENIENS A UN STAGE EN LITUANIE SUR
L’INTEGRATION EUROPEENNE .
Des diplomates arméniens ont participé an stage au ministère
lituanien des Affaires étrangères, du 31 mai au 11 juin, en vue d’en
apprendre davantage sur l’intégration européenne. Selon le ministre,
ces diplomates ont étudié l’expérience lituanienne en matière de
préparation à l’adhésion, divers aspects de la coordination d’activités
liées à l’UE ainsi que la formation de l’opinion publique quant à
l’intégration à l’Union européenne.
Ils ont également pris part à une série de réunions au sein des
institutions lituaniennes et ont visité l’Institut des Sciences
politiques et des Relations internationales de l’Université de
Vilnius. Le Ministre a expliqué que des représentants des pays du Sud
Caucase (Arménie, Azerbaïdjan et Géorgie) participeront à différentes
activités de formation en matière d’administration publique, en
Lituanie, en 2004-2005, dans le cadre d’un programme de transfert
vers ces pays de l’expérience lituanienne en matière d’intégration
européenne. Un stage similaire a été organisé en janvier à l’attention
de hauts responsables ukrainiens.

PUTIN JOKES AT EURASIAN FORUM
RIA Novosti, Russia
June 18 2004
ASTANA, June 18 (RIA Novosti) – President Vladimir Putin joked that it
was “inhuman” to have the leaders of the Eurasian Economic Community
meet so early because of a three hour time difference between Moscow
and Astana.
The Russian President is participating in the international forum,
“Eurasian Integration: Trends of Modern Development and Challenges of
Globalization,” in Astana, the capital of Kazakhstan, at Lev Gumilyov
Eurasian University.
“We have come here to discuss humanitarian issues but [Kazakhstan’s
president] Nursultan Abishevich [Nazarbayev] is not treating us
humanely – it is 6 a.m. in Moscow now, and I will hardly be able to
deliver as great of a speech as he has,” Mr. Putin said smiling.
Mr. Putin was to speak after Mr. Nazarbayev who spoke about many
aspects of cooperation between member states of the Eurasian Economic
Community (the member states are Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan,
Russia, and Tajikistan) and CIS Collective Security Treaty Organization
(Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, and Tajikistan). The
Russian president was apparently in high moods.
“Gumilyov’s ideas captivate people,” he said, “Some experts argue that
almost all people become relatives as 14 or 15 generations pass. I am
not sure about the entire planet, but within the Eurasian boundaries of
the former USSR we are all relatives, and closer than 14 generations,”
he emphasized.
Also smiling, he added that there was a funny thing on the agenda that
caught his eye. He said that while the first issue on the agenda was
speeches by heads of Eurasian Economic Community and CIS Collective
Security Treaty Organization member states, “the second line is
especially for [Armenian President Robert] Kocharyan’s speech,”
the Russian leader remarked.
Other heads of state followed in Vladimir Putin’s cheerful tone.
Giving the floor to the President of Armenia, Mr. Nazarbayev said that
he “would like to correct the mistake Vladimir Putin has noticed.” He
assured Mr. Kocharyan that he had nothing to do with what was written
on the agenda.
Mr. Kocharyan reciprocated by saying, as he took the floor, that “the
status of [the economic community] observer has some advantages. It
is great to be a separate issue on the agenda of the forum,” he said
and added he was “thinking whether one should lose this advantage by
getting membership.”
The hall applauded and Mr. Putin, jokingly irritated, exclaimed:
“What are you applauding at?”
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

Russian “Kultura” TV channel to be broadcast in Armenia
Public Television of Armenia, Yerevan
16 Jun 04
[Presenter] The Russian TV channel “Kultura” will be broadcast in
Armenia from September. The head of Russian State Radio and Television
Company Oleg Dobrodeyev, founder of “Kultura” TV, arrived in Armenia
to sign agreement. The Russian “Kultura” promises to show films on
Armenian culture when it is broadcast in Armenia.
[Correspondent over video of meeting] The Russian TV channel “Kultura”
will be soon broadcast in Armenia. This was successful due to the
efforts of the Armenian culture representatives. Armenian President
Robert Kocharyan said this during a meeting with the head of Russian
State Radio and Television Company Oleg Dobrodeyev. Oleg Dobrodeyev
thanked them for the support and attention.
[Oleg Dobrodeyev, captioned, in Russian with Armenian voice over] They
like this channel a lot in Russia. We are assessing your support and
assistance in the broadcast of “Kultura” in Armenia. Thank you. Because
without your assistance this project could not come to fruition.
[Correspondent] Kultura’s programmes would provide Armenians with an
opportunity to be closer to genuine cultural values.