Author: Kalantarian Kevo

Armenian Assembly of America News
1334 G Street, N.W., Suite 200
Washington, D.C. 20005
Tel: (202) 393-3434
Fax: (202) 638-4904
E-mail: [email protected]
Web:

The Armenian DNA Project; not so `simple’ research in human genetics

by Orsolya Doricsak

AAANews
05/02/2014

Hovann Simonian and Peter Hrechdakian, administrators of the Armenian DNA
Project, delivered the 18th Annual Vardanants Day Armenian Lecture, titled
`DNA and the Origin of People: The Armenians’ on Tuesday, April 22 at the
Library of Congress, in Washington DC.

By reaching thousands of years into the past, the project aims to find
genetic traces of both the ancient peoples whose descendants make up the
current Armenian population (including Colchians, Hattians, etc.) as well
as the ancient peoples who conquered or passed through Armenian lands (such
as Arabs, Turks, Cimmerians and Romans).

The major Armenian groups – haplogroups as they call them – came into
existence about 20 thousand years ago, far before any ethnic or religious
identification, according to Hrechdakian. Furthermore, based on the ancient
DNA research, Armenians geographically originated from the area where they
are living now, and throughout Eastern Anatolia (ancient Armenia).

Beyond the genetic map of the Armenians, which has been more or less
identified, this research presents some method whereby the ethnic makeup of
different nations can be compared. For instance, `Armenian DNA today most
closely resembles Turks from Eastern Anatolia, Assyrians/Chaldeans and
Mizrahi Jews (Kurdistant, Iraq, Azerbaijan and Georgia),’ said Mr.
Hrechdakian.

The DNA project worldwide started in the late 1990s. `The first paper on
Armenian DNA was written in 2001 by Levon Yepiskoposyan, which is
independent from our observation, that started in 2009. Since 2009, more
than one thousand Armenians have joined the program, which is currently
focused on formulating the DNA of Armenian subpopulations,’ Mr. Hrechdakian
said in his presentation.

As a Hungarian graduate student in Communication and Media Sciences,
attending the lecture was a real intellectual inspiration, which motivated
me to think about the relationship between the DNA project and the field of
communications. Specifically, I am interested in more than the DNA project
– which was started in Hungary 2 years ago. Some `Why?’ questions might be
answered through this approach or at least the theory might be a reliable
aspect of divergence in communications.

If you are interested in getting tested, or to learn more about Armenian
DNA, please visit their website here
; or the Armenian DNA
Facebook Group here:

Orsolya Doricsak is a graduate student studying Communication and Media
Sciences at Corvinus University of Budapest, Hungary. She is currently
doing a research at the Armenian Assembly of America in Washington, DC in
international relations and political communications.

Available online:

APRIL, THE CRUELEST MONTH: MINNESOTA REMEMBERS, AND SEEKS TO PREVENT FUTURE GENOCIDE

Minn Post, Minnesota
April 30 2014

By Ellen J. Kennedy | 09:56 am

“April is the cruelest month.”

Those words by the poet T.S. Eliot could have been written about
genocide. The anniversaries of six genocides occur in April, tragedies
that span nearly a century and occurred in Europe, Asia, and Africa:

April 3 – Darfur genocide April 5 – Anniversary of the siege of
Sarajevo, Bosnia April 7 – Rwandan Genocide Remembrance Day April 17
– Anniversary of the Cambodian genocide April 24 – Armenian Genocide
Remembrance Day April 27 – Holocaust Remembrance Day

Last year, the Minnesota House and Senate passed, nearly unanimously,
a bill to designate every April as Genocide Awareness and Prevention
Month.

The hearings in St. Paul were deeply moving. Bunkhean Chhun showed a
beautiful photograph of his family that was taken in Cambodia before
the genocide in the 1970s. His father had died when Bunkhean was very
young but he had four siblings. He said, “There, in the picture, were
my three brothers, my only sister, my mother, and I. All of them but
me were killed.” Two million people perished in that tragedy.

Fred Amram talked about his 3-year-old cousin. She was killed in a
gas chamber and her tiny body was turned into ashes in a crematorium
in Auschwitz. Fred and his parents are the only survivors in his
entire extended family; he has no other relatives. Six million Jews
and millions of others were exterminated during the Holocaust.

Recognition and remembrance

At the hearing, I read the testimony of Zara Bezhanyan Tronnes,
granddaughter of survivors of the genocide perpetrated in the Ottoman
Empire during World War I, when close to 2 million Armenians died.

Zara wrote, “We want recognition and remembrance of an event that
lives with us to this day — recognition because this is a defining
event of our existence, and remembrance because the last victim of
genocide is the truth. Please adopt a resolution to proclaim April
as Genocide Awareness and Prevention Month.”

Gov. Mark Dayton signed the bill into law. Minnesota became the third
state in the country, following California and Texas, to pass this
important legislation.

Why does this legislation matter? This bill encourages educational,
faith, civic, private, and public organizations throughout Minnesota
to teach about genocide. Most critically, however, it enjoins us to
consider steps to prevent genocide.

This legislation follows recommendations of the Genocide Prevention
Task Force, convened by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum,
the American Academy of Diplomacy, and the United States Institute
of Peace in 2008. The Task Force report — issued by former U.S.

Ambassador to the United Nations and former Secretary of State
Madeleine Albright and former Secretary of Defense William Cohen —
found that in order to prevent future genocides and mass atrocities,
educating the public can help to protect individual rights and promote
a culture of lawfulness to prevent future genocides.

Putting a face on the numbers

Two weeks ago was the 11th anniversary of the genocide in Darfur,
the first genocide of this century, a tragedy still ongoing. Katie-Jay
Scott and Gabriel Stauring, human-rights activists, visit refugee camps
in Chad where hundreds of thousands of Darfuris have been living in
limbo for a decade. Katie-Jay said, “Stalin once remarked, ‘One death
is a tragedy. A million deaths is a statistic.’ We are dedicated to
putting a face to the numbers.” They travel across the US to schools,
universities, and communities, telling the stories from Darfur, stories
of more than 400,000 people murdered and three million displaced.

Last week marked the 20th anniversary of the genocide in Rwanda, 100
days in 1994 when 800,000 people perished as the world stood by. Alice
Musabende, orphaned during that genocide when her grandparents,
parents, 12-year-old sister, and 9-year-old and 2-year-old brothers
were killed, said, “Remember with us, not because you must feel guilty,
as some often say – although some people at the UN probably should –
but because we are a part of you and you are a part of us.”

Two years ago we marked the 20th anniversary of the beginning of the
four-year siege of Sarajevo, the longest siege in modern history,
which claimed 11,541 men, women, and children. We let this tragedy
happen again in Europe, still blood-soaked from the Holocaust.

Creating political will

What can we do? First, we must acknowledge that no president has ever
been voted out of office for failing to prevent genocide. The world’s
leaders do not have the political will to stop it. In order to create
political will, we need a powerful international movement like the one
that advocated successfully for an end to slavery in the 19th century.

Ellen J. Kennedy

This requires a massive educational campaign – part of what Minnesota’s
bill supports. See the World Without Genocide website for information
and listings of events, including “Besa: Albanian Muslims who saved
Jews during the Holocaust,” a photography exhibit by Norman Gershman;
see below for April 30 reception/film event details.

Second, we each must urge our leaders to act. We need international
institutions that are strong enough to predict and prevent genocide.

We need rapid-response forces for non-violent prevention; diplomatic,
economic, and political intervention; and effective international
courts for punishment. We need the private sector to cut off supply
chains for armed groups and to invest in economic development and
education at grass-roots levels, so that people have meaningful
alternatives to violence. And we need to support the strengthening
of civil society and the rule of law, promoting infrastructures for
true democracy, not merely facilitating voting procedures that are
sham elections in closed political systems.

I am grateful to Minnesota’s elected officials for designating April
as Genocide Awareness and Prevention Month. For those who perished,
those who survived, and those who bear witness today, we, and our
elected officials, must pledge to do better in the future than we
have done in the past.

(BESA Exhibit and Film: A free gallery reception will be held at
William Mitchell College of Law on Wednesday, April 30, from 5:30 p.m.

to 6:30 p.m., with a film (“Besa: The Promise”) and talk from 7 to
9 ($10 general public, $5 students and seniors, free to Mitchell
students). Open to the public; no reservations are necessary.)

Ellen J. Kennedy, Ph.D., is the executive director of World Without
Genocide at William Mitchell College of Law.

TURKEY ‘READY TO CONFRONT’ SLAUGHTER

Irish Independent
April 30 2014

Associated Press – Published 30 April 2014 02:30 AM

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said yesterday that his
nation was ready to “confront” the nation’s history of killing ethnic
Armenians nearly a century ago, but stopped short of admitting it
was genocide.

In a weekly speech in parliament addressing his ruling party’s
legislators, Mr Erdogan reiterated a call for Armenia and Armenians
living abroad to participate in research with Turkey to document
precisely what happened.

Historians estimate that up to 1.5 million Armenians were killed by
Ottoman Turks around the time of World War I, an event widely viewed by
scholars as the first genocide of the 20th century. Turkey, however,
denies that the deaths constituted genocide, saying the toll has been
inflated, and that those killed were victims of civil war and unrest.

“We are saying, let’s wipe away the tears, push prejudices to one
side, and reveal historic truths . . . in an objective manner,”
Mr Erdogan said.

“I hope that Armenia and the Armenian diaspora recognise our courageous
step and reciprocate,” he said.

WORLD PREMIER SCREENING OF DIGGING INTO THE FUTURE “ARMENIA DIRECTED BY JOSEPH ROSENDO

By MassisPost
Updated: April 29, 2014

GLENDALE, CA On Friday, May 16, 2014, at 7 pm, Emmy award winning
director Joseph Rosendo will screen Digging Into the Future -Armenia
at the Glendale Central Library Auditorium, 222 East Harvard Street in
Glendale. The presentation is in English. Admission is free. Library
visitors receive 3 hours FREE parking across the street at The Market
Place parking structure with validation at the Loan Desk.

Digging into the Future-Armenia is an archeological expedition to
Armenia. It turns viewers on to the thrill of discovery while making
genuine human connections with a people’s past and the present.

Armenia is the first journey of a new proposed PBS series that merges
archeology’s science and humanity into an hour-long entertaining,
educational and cultural adventure that spans the globe. For this
adventure Rosendo joins archeologists from UCLA’s Cotsen Institute,
which is dedicated to the creation, dissemination, and conservation
of archaeological knowledge and heritage. Charles Stanish is the
institute’s director and Gregory Areshian is the director of the
institute’s Armenia program. Rosendo crisscrosses Armenia to ancient
sites where some of the world’s oldest artifacts have been discovered.

Joseph Rosendo’s Travelscope Emmy-award winning director Joseph Rosendo
has been a travel, food and wine journalist and a travel broadcaster
for more than 30 years. Since 2007, he has hosted, directed and written
Joseph Rosendo’s Travelscope, the award-winning travel television
series. Rosendo’s first travel story appeared in The Los Angeles Times
in 1980. He has been published in countless publications worldwide and
was the Consulting Editor for DK Eyewitness Travel Guides as well as
the author of an Insider’s Guide to Los Angeles. For twenty-four years,
as the creator and host of Travelscope Radio, he created features for
numerous electronic media outlets including Discovery Channel Radio
and the Associated Press.

### CONTACT: Elizabeth Grigorian, Armenian Outreach
Coordinator, Glendale Library, Arts & Culture Department
[email protected] or (818) 548-3288.

GALUST SAHAKIAN NOMMé POUR LA PESIDENCE DU PARLEMENT

ARMENIE

L’organe exécutif du parti républicain d’Arménie (RPA), a tenu
une réunion au cours de laquelle il a discuté de la candidature
pour le poste de président du parlement, un poste restant vacant
depuis le 13 avril car son titulaire précédent, Hovik Abrahamian,
a été nommé Premier ministre.

Eduard Sharmazanov, le porte-parole du RPA a confirmé aux médias
après la réunion que Galust Sahakian, le leader actuel de la faction
parlementaire du RPA, a été nommé a ce poste.

Le parti jouit d’une majorité a l’Assemblée législative qui permet
d’avoir de facon certaine son candidat préféré installé en tant
que président au travers d’un scrutin secret.

mercredi 30 avril 2014, Stéphane ©armenews.com

BATTLES IN SYRIA’S KESSAB CONTINUE

13:08 â?¢ 29.04.14

The heated battles continue in Syria’s Armenian populated town of
Kessab and its neighboring regions.

Tert.am’s sources report that the government forces have managed to
liberate several key coastal districts though it is still early to
speak about retaking the entire city and ensure the local Armenians’
return.

Aleppo, Syria’s former economic capital which has a big Armenian
community, has now resumed the electricity supply after a 12-day
outage.

Tert.am’s sources in Aleppo say that the situation was relatively
calm on Monday.

The problem of the food shortage, which caused a major panic
especially in the Easter period, has also been resolved. The city
now has fuel supply, but cars still reportedly line up near gas
filling stations. The city is said to be facing a shortage of liquid
gas balloons.

Armenian News – Tert.am

AL-MONITOR: ISRAEL HAS MORAL DUTY TO RECOGNIZE ARMENIAN GENOCIDE

12:47 29.04.2014

An article by Akiva Eldar published by Al-Monitor explores the
possibility that Israel will revisit and possibly revise its
enforcement of Turkey’s gag-rule against her open acknowledgement of
the â?ªâ??Armenian â?ªâ??Genocide. The article is provided below:

At the Foreign Ministry in Jerusalem, the message of condolence issued
by Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan to the Armenian people
on April 23, the eve of the 99th anniversary of the Armenian genocide,
was closely examined. What will Israel do now? Will it continue to
fence-sit on the issue of recognizing the disaster that befell the
Armenian people, caught between taking a moral stand and avoiding
angering the Turks? If Erdogan can afford to change the Turkish
attitude toward this sensitive issue, perhaps it’s time for Israel
to adopt a clearer and more decisive stance.

On the other hand, how will it look for the Israeli government to
be dragged along in the wake of a Turkish leader who doesn’t miss
a chance to lash out at it? How will the Foreign Ministry explain
a decision to recognize the Armenian genocide, after arguing for
years that one must examine this sensitive issue “through an open
debate based on data and facts, and not on political decisions or
declarations.” This is what Likud Minister Gilad Erdan said in a 2009
speech delivered at the Knesset, asking in the government’s name to
remove from the agenda the issue of recognizing the Armenian genocide.

At that same debate, Erdan said, “Israel asks not to determine
conventions as to what occurred, since these are â?¦ supporting
the political position of one of the sides.” Is the slaughter of
the Armenians in fact a political matter? Twenty-two years ago,
the deputy foreign minister in the national unity government of the
late Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir and President Shimon Peres said,
“There are things that go beyond politics, and there are things
that go beyond diplomacy. Holocausts of nations are a clear case
in point.” These comments were made in response to a question by
then-Knesset member Yair Tzaban of the now-defunct Ratz party. He was
seeking the government’s reaction to reports that Israeli officials
were cooperating with Jewish-American organizations to derail a
congressional initiative to mark the commemoration of the Armenian
genocide in the United States. That deputy foreign minister who
answered the question on the part of the government was none other
than current Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Several months later, in April 1990, it turned out that for the Foreign
Ministry, the genocide committed against the Armenian people was
most certainly a diplomatic issue. Under pressure from the ministry,
Israel’s public television station backed out of its plan to air
Theodore Bogosian’s documentary “An Armenian Journey.” Following the
uproar that ensued, the board of directors of the Israel Broadcasting
Authority ordered that the film be screened.

Representatives of the establishment appealed the decision and the
film was shelved.

Despite pressure from successive Israeli governments, leftist
politicians led by Tzaban and former Minister Yossi Sarid and a
handful of right-wingers, among them Knesset members Benny Begin
and Reuven Rivlin, refused to drop the matter. In 2011, Tzaban,
this time as a private citizen, was invited to the Knesset to take
part in a debate on the subject of the Armenian genocide, held by
the Knesset’s Committee on Education.

“We are fighting with all our strength, justifiably so, against
denial of the Holocaust, but we’re not fighting properly and not
doing what needs to be done on the issue of denial of the Armenian
genocide,” said the man who was formerly the minister of immigration
and absorption. “We have interests; we’re not ignoring them, but we
cannot do the opposite of what we have demanded that others do in
our case.”

In the 1940s, when we implored the world for help and didn’t get it,
Tzaban said, supposedly good people told us, “You’re right, but we
have interests; we have existential interests that prevent us from
lending you a helping hand.”

Tzaban quoted the profound lines written in 1945 by poet Natan
Alterman, in “Interests”:

“The hands of the ignorant and the wicked nurtured an illusion of
an imaginary world, where each people were commanded to protect
a group of interests, and to honor them with prayer, drink and
food. Buildings and giant altars were erected to those interests (we
will visit their ruins). In the 20th century, children were sacrificed
for those interests. Empires bowed their heads, and eternal truths,
bound in ropes, were sacrificed to those interests.”

The Marmara flotilla affair and the deterioration in Israel’s relations
with Turkey since the humiliation of the Turkish ambassador in the
office of former Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon changed the
interests map: Turkey out, the Armenian genocide in.

In June 2012, Erdan returned to the speaker’s podium with a
new position regarding the genocide. No neutrality this time, no
fact-checking or other fig leaves for economic and defense-related
interests. This time, the minister determined that “There’s a problem
with turning the recognition into a political debate, and the issue
should be looked at from the point of view of the value of human
life.” Not only that, but, “As Jews and Israelis, we should have
a special obligation to learn about human tragedies.” That same
government representative who had previously asked to remove the
subject from the Knesset agenda announced, “It would be fitting for
the Knesset to discuss it in depth and if it deems it appropriate,
to express recognition of the genocide.”

This time, he did not suggest examining the data and the disputed
facts, saying, “There’s something of the ridiculous in the debate,
because I did not hear any historic arguments on the question of
whether the murder occurred. â?¦ The government did not deal with
this issue, probably out of a desire to prevent it from turning into
a political issue, and it’s fitting for the government to officially
recognize the holocaust of the Armenian people.”

These lines are being written on the eve of Holocaust Remembrance Day.

As I do every year, tomorrow I will commune with the memory of
my uncles and aunts and their sons and daughters who perished in
Auschwitz. I recall that there are those in the world who deny that
my family members and my people were murdered, and I congratulate
those fighting against those contemptible people. True, no event in
modern history can compare to the horrors perpetrated by the Nazi
regime against the Jewish people, but Adolf Hitler’s deeds do not
give us permission to ignore the tragedies of other peoples. We don’t
require a seal of approval from a Turkish tyrant to be moral Jews.

Is the son of former official the author of the shots in Gyumri?

April 29 2014

Just now, the sources of Aravot.am informed that Arkady Khachatryan,
son of former head of Gyumri City Hall Sports Department Hrachik
Khachatryan, is suspected in the shooting of 27-year old taxi driver
Artak Marati Andreasyan shot a day before in front of Shirak
Water-Sewage CJSC, in the neighborhood of Boulevard district, Gyumri.
He is not yet brought to charges, but, according to the police, the
dispute did not contain substantial grounds, it was rather a
hooligan-level dispute. The suspect was found to be drunk, he got on a
taxi, then entered into argument with the driver, shuffling, and
caused a gunshot at the back part of the driver. Note that about 4
years ago, the suspect had a similar story by Vardan Ghukasyan in the
`Textile’ sport club leased to his father for 99 years, where shots
were also heard, and this young man was sentenced to prison. As per
police sources, he is set free for about a year. It should be noted
that today since early morning, long meeting was held in the office of
Shirak Marz police chief, Colonel Vardan Nadaryan. The victim is still
in the intensive care unit, and has not given testimony, whereas the
suspect seems to be hiding in the meantime.

Nune AREVSHATYAN
Read more at:

Struggle against injustice Rule of Law party’s priority ` MP

18:19 ¢ 29.04.14

Speaking in Parliament Rule of Law parliamentary group member
Hovhannes Sargsyan addressed the problems facing Armenia.

According to him, supermarkets cause small shops to close down.

`As a result, jobs are killed rather than created, which causes
larger-scale emigration,’ he said.

With respect to monopolies, the MP said:

`We do not accept the idea of exempting the rich class from the luxury
tax. They must pay the luxury tax not only on their luxury cars, but
also on their villas,’ he said.

With respect to the criticism against the Rule of Law party, the MP
said that the Rule of Law party considers public opinion more
important.

Armenian News – Tert.am

New type of surgery for infants introduced in Armenia

17:48 29.04.2014

The AECP/USAID project `Center of Excellence for the Prevention of
Childhood Blindness’ (CEPCB), which combats childhood blindness
through the prevention and treatment of the Retinopathy of Prematurity
(ROP), is approaching one of the most challenging phases of the
program – ROP surgeries, which have never been performed in Armenia or
the region before. The AECP referred to Dr. Sui Chien Wong
(Moorfields Eye Hospital and Royal Free London Hospital (London, UK)
for high quality and very specific expertise in this area to join the
AECP medical team in this effort. The AECP local doctors are in
attendance to observe and assist in these cases.

The first surgeries took place at the CEPCB operating room at the
Republican Institute of Reproductive Health, Perinatology, Obstetrics,
and Gynecology on April 28. Dr. Thomas Lee, Director of the Retina
Department at the Vision Center of Children’s Hospital of Los Angeles
and the AECP mentor of the CEPCB program, used an innovative online
monitoring system to observe the surgeries in real time and discussed
the overall surgery procedure with Dr. Wong and other colleagues in
the operating room.

The episodes of the surgeries have been presented today at Noyan Tapan
information center by Dr. Sui Chien Wong (Moorfields Eye Hospital ,
Royal Free London Hospital), Dr. Roger Ohanesian (AECP President),
Prof. Alexander Malayan (Chief Ophthalmologist of Armenia, AECP
Medical Director), Prof. Razmik Abrahamyan (Director, Republican
Institute of Reproductive Health, Perinatology, Obstetrics, and
Gynecology) and Nune Yeghiazaryan (AECP Country Director).

`The continuing involvement in the program of the finest retina and
ROP specialists in the world is elevating the treatment of ROP in
Armenia to a level that we hope will qualify Armenia as a regional
center in the nearest future. The project is committed to ensure
excellence both in treatment and in service. We hope very much that
after the experience with their international colleagues the Armenian
doctors will continue successful operations in Armenia’- said the AECP
President, Dr. Roger Ohanesian.

The AECP, in cooperation with USAID and the Ministry of Health,
launched the three-year program, `Center of Excellence for the
Prevention of Childhood Blindness,’ in 2012. The vision of the program
is to make specialized eye care accessible to all children in Armenia
and surrounding countries and eliminate childhood blindness caused by
ROP. It is the logical continuation of the `National Screening and
Treatment Program on Retinopathy of Prematurity in Armenia’ that the
AECP has implemented since 2010. Over 2,000 infants have been screened
and 70 kids have received free-of-charge quality laser procedures.