Author: Kalantarian Kevo

TBILISI, May 13 (Reuters) – Thousands of demonstrators blocked access to government buildings in the Armenian capital Yerevan on Friday in the latest of a spate of protests demanding the resignation of the prime minister.

Pressure against Nikol Pashinyan has increased since he moved closer to normalising relations with Azerbaijan, which defeated Armenia in a six-week war in 2020.

The unrest also coincides with Russia’s war in Ukraine, which is prompting its former Soviet neighbours to reassess their own security and their relations with Moscow.

Protests have simmered in Armenia for weeks since Pashinyan said the international community wanted Yerevan to “lower the bar” on its claims to the disputed Nagorno-Karabakh region.

Video posted on YouTube showed protesters, led by opposition figures, brandishing tricolour Armenian flags and chanting anti-government slogans as rows of police officers guarded the buildings.

“With this we are showing that Nikol (Pashinyan) has no power in the country,” TASS news agency quoted Ishkhan Saghatelyan, vice president of Armenia’s National Assembly, as saying.

Pashinyan’s comments on Nagorno-Karabakh came as Azerbaijan has said it was ready for peace talks to take place soon but that Yerevan would need to renounce any territorial claim against his country.

The Nagorno-Karabakh enclave is internationally recognised as part of Azerbaijan but was populated and fully controlled by ethnic Armenians until they lost to Azerbaijan in a six-week war in 2020.

With Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, another former Soviet country, Armenia has begun pondering its relations with its neighbours to reduce the external threats it could face.

“The war has caused all of Moscow’s partners to reconsider their relationships,” said Laurence Broers, an associate fellow of the Russia and Eurasia Programme at Chatham House in London.

“In Armenia there is concern that in a worst case scenario Armenia may be coerced into some kind of union state relationship with Russia, and consequently that Armenian statehood itself is in doubt.”

Armenia is currently a close ally of Russia, which has a military base in the northwest of the country and sent peacekeepers to Nagorno-Karabakh under the accord that ended the fighting in 2020.

Pashinyan has insisted he would not sign any peace deal with Azerbaijan without consulting the ethnic Armenians in Nagorno-Karabakh.

The Journal Times 

WI – April 27 2022

Armenian Genocide Remembrance Day is on April 24, which this year fell on a Sunday.

Four Armenian churches in the southeast Wisconsin area — including Racine’s two Armenian churches and two from Milwaukee — gathered at St. Hagop Armenian Church, 4100 Newman Road, to commemorate with a full Divine Liturgy.

Deacon Levon Saryan said to commemorate the occasion, the Holy Communion was prepared with the Armash Chalice, which dates to 1820 and was named for the Holy Mother of God Monastery at Armash (located outside of Istanbul) where it came from.

The chalice is in a private collection in Milwaukee. Saryan said the owner was gracious and allowed the chalice to be used for the service.

“It was a very moving service,” Saryan said. He added that church members gathered together afterward for fellowship.

He added there was a lot of good feeling among the attendees, who seemed relieved the pandemic was behind them, so they were able to meet again in fellowship.

Historians generally date the start of the Armenian genocide to April 24, 1915, the day around 250 Armenian intellectuals in Constantinople (now Istanbul) were seized and taken to holding camps. Few of those who were seized survived long.

Ottoman Empire leaders seized the intellectuals believing, that if the Armenian people were deprived of leadership, it would be more difficult for them to organize and resist religious oppression.

Outside of Constantinople sat the Armenian community of Armash, where there was a monastery and seminary to train priests for the church, an important center for Armenian religious life.

During the genocide, the community of Armash was seized and sent on a death march across the Syrian Desert. The monastery and seminary were looted, destroyed and the location was used for a new mosque.

The exact figures are not known, but historians estimate 1-1.5 million died as a result of the forced marches across the Syrian Desert. Those left behind, primarily women and children, were forced to adopt Islamic religion and culture.

One belonged to Saryan and the other to Chuck Hajinian, a member of St. John the Baptist Armenian Church in Greenfield, who has family ties to Racine.

Both men are collectors of Armenian artifacts and together they purchased the chalices as part of a collection of historic items from an estate sale.

Saryan and Hajinian researched the chalices and discovered both dated from the 1800s and were donated to the Armenian seminary of Armash, located outside of Istanbul, in the 19th century.

While they aren’t certain of what happened to the chalices following the genocide, initially the collectors theorize the chalices eventually reached the antiques market in Europe, Saryan said.

However, with further research, Saryan said it was also likely that a priest was able to procure them and they stayed in his family. “It’s hard to know.”

He and Hajinian purchased them from the estate of another Armenian collector.

Both Saryan and Hajinian said from an emotional standpoint, that they feel the chalices belong to the monastery and the Armenian people.

For that reason, Saryan donated his chalice to the Armenian Church in New York City, the headquarters for the local churches. From there, the archbishop took the chalice to Beirut, Lebanon, and donated it to the Armenian Museum.

Few elected officials addressed Armenian Genocide Remembrance Day this year. Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, R-Rochester, was one of them. His statement, issued Sunday, is as follows:

“Today, April 24, is the day to remember the 1.5 million Armenians murdered by Turkey before during and after World War I.

The Armenian Genocide was the Ottoman government’s systematic extermination of 1.5 million Armenians, mostly citizens within the Ottoman Empire. The starting date is conventionally held to be 24 April 1915, the day that Ottoman authorities rounded up, arrested, and deported from Constantinople (now Istanbul) to the region of Ankara, 235 to 270 Armenian intellectuals and community leaders, the majority of whom were eventually murdered. The genocide was carried out during and after World War I and implemented in two phases—the wholesale killing of the able-bodied male population through massacre and subjection of army conscripts to forced labor, followed by the deportation of women, children, the elderly, and the infirm on death marches leading to the Syrian Desert.

Driven forward by military escorts, the deportees were deprived of food and water and subjected to periodic robbery, rape, and massacre.

Millions murdered.

Turkey says it never happened.

The Armenian genocide occurred during the twilight of the Ottoman Empire, which allied itself with Germany during World War I. After their ill-fated invasion of Russia, Turkish leaders became suspicious of the empire’s Armenian Christian minority and began a years-long persecution.

Armenian leaders in Istanbul were detained, deported and killed on April 24, 1915 — widely considered to be the beginning of the genocide — and the campaign spread from there. Hundreds of thousands were killed, and others were forced from their homes on long marches into the Syrian desert, where many more died.

Never Forget…”

President Joe Biden last year became the first U.S. president to actually refer to the genocide as a “genocide.” On Sunday, he issued another statement in memory of the 1.5 million Armenians “who were deported, massacred or marched to their deaths in a campaign of extermination” by Ottoman Empire forces.

Turkey responded by claiming Biden’s declaration was ”incompatible with historical facts and international law.”

 

April 28 2022

LOS ANGELES – According to historians, before Glendale and Hollywood, the original communities Armenians settled in were Fresno, Boyle Heights and Montebello. 

In 2020, the city of Montebello marked its 100-year history. Originally, it was an agricultural community with humble beginnings, before its successes in commerce and in the oil industry. Not long after Montebello was established in 1920, it became the first suburb most Armenians settled in back in the 1930s, which is just part of a piece of Southern California history.

“It was Fresno and Montebello. And the reason that those two communities were as heavily populated, densely populated as early as they were, is both complicated and really easy.  The Fresno Armenians were those who came from the Ottoman Empire escaping genocide, looking for foreign lands, and established themselves in the agricultural economy of the Central Valley,” Salpi Ghazarian, Director of Armenian Studies at the University of Southern California’s Dornsife Institute. “Those who came to Montebello were those who during World War ll escaped the Soviet Union, escaped many of them from Ukraine, from the various cities that are being bombed today.”

The USC program is committed to documenting, preserving, and most importantly, giving a voice to the people who lived during those historic years. Not only do their stories make up the history of Southern California, but these are the stories that are an essential part of the Armenian experience.

Data from the USC archives says 20 million Soviet citizens died in WWII. Of those, 200,000 of those were Armenians. Some were captured by the Germans, historic Armenian communities in Eastern Europe and Crimea were relocated as slave labor, others retreated with the German army seeking an escape from Stalin’s regime. This is how some 4,000 Armenians found themselves in Stuttgart, Germany when the war ended.

Montebello resident Jack Hadjinian’s grandparents were part of that group.

“My grandfather Senekerim “Sam” Arakelian was a genocide survivor who eventually was taken to Germany by Nazis as forced labor. Along with another 2,000 to 3,000 Armenians that lived in labor camps, my family ended up in Stuttgart in the labor camp. My mom is one of 185 Armenians that were born in those camps,” Hadjinian said. 

“They bonded during a really difficult time. Those bonds have continued through today, through the various generations,” said Ghazarian.

By 1952 most of the 4,000 Armenians were allowed to land in the U.S. as a result of a special act of Congress called the Displaced Person’s Act of 1948 that enabled their immigration.

USC studies reveal some settled in Detriot, Michigan or Niagara Falls, New York as they remembered the families they had left behind and began new lives as factory workers, while many came to Montebello and sustained bonds of friendship that were based on the relationship and interdependence from their years in Stuttgart.

Jack Hadjinian’s family went through Ellis Island, to Worcester, Massachusetts, to Detroit. “There were a lot of jobs there. My uncles worked on the Ford F-150 assembly line and some of my uncles worked for Cadillac. My grandfather was a janitor at Ford,” he said. 

Eventually, many like Hadjinian’s family headed west.

“They came to Boyle Heights, which is such an important core for Los Angeles. [There are] so many communities- the Jewish community, the Latino communities and the Armenian community started out there,” said Ghazarian.

“As they moved, they looked for businesses to make a living that did not require language skills or education. Many of them started in the trash business and actually hauling trash. And then it was Armenians who transformed the trash business from just residential trash pickup to commercial trash pickup, which is such a huge industry in Southern California. Other Armenians went into the food business, and started with lunch trucks, which then later became hot lunch trucks,” said Ghazarian.  

They had that entrepreneurial spirit. As they thrived they gave back to the community, they established churches, schools, dance groups and community centers. Montebello is home to the first Armenian Genocide Memorials in the country.

“It is the first Armenian Genocide monument on public property in the world. It is world-famous and everybody knows about it. It stands 75 feet tall,” Hadjinian explained.

The Holy Cross Cathedral is another place that brings thousands of people through its doors. This church has great significance in Hadjinian’s life.

“I was baptized here in this church and I was married in this church. My family contributed to the building of this church. This is a one of the larger church properties Armenian church properties,” said Hadjinian.

Right next door is Bagramian Hall, an enormous banquet hall, where large-scale events take place. Next to Bagramian Hall is the smaller Tumanjan Hall, which was the youth center.

Hadjinian said Montebello is a wonderful place where everyone seems to really understand and respect each other’s cultures.

One Armenian-owned business that perfectly illustrates the diversity of the community is a local favorite – Z’s Diner. “It is an interesting place that’s very colorful. Not just physically, but when you look at the menu you will find that they serve Mexican food, Armenian food, and American cuisine,” he added. 

“I think the common denominator in Montebello is that everyone feels very connected to this community. There are people or families like mine that have been here three, or four generations. Not many Armenian communities go that far back,” said Hadjinian.

“This is a place where four generations get together willingly…it’s really quite phenomenal. It continues this whole concept of community and neighborhood that in many places in the U.S. we’ve lost, but this community sustains it,” said Ghazarian.