Author: Kalantarian Kevo

“Nowhere, A Story of Exile” book on Armenian massacres in Baku presented

Saturday, September 06, 2014

Novosti international press center in Yerevan yesterday hosted
“Nowhere, A Story of Exile” book about a family of Armenian refugees
from Baku. The head of Ordinary Genocide Project Marina Grigoryan said
at the event that the book was published in the U.S. and is unique in
the sense that it is the first English-language book about the
Armenian massacres in Baku.

According to M. Grigoryan, the book is based on Anna Astvatsaturian
Turcotte’s diary that she kept at age of 10-12 when she lived in Baku.
Later in the United States where she moved along with her family, Anna
Astvatsaturian Turcotte published the book that contains her memories
of the 1988-1992 events. The book also includes recollections from
witnesses of persecution and atrocities committed against Armenians.

M. Grigoryan said that because of the records made in the diary, Anna
Astvatsaturian Turcotte can be compared to Anne Frank, a Jewish girl
who described the Nazi terror in her wartime diary.

Ms. Grigoryan informed those present that the creative group of “The
Baku Tragedy in Eyewitness Accounts” Project that was launched on the
25th anniversary of the Armenian massacres in the Azerbaijani capital
went to the U.S. to meet with Armenian refugees residing there. “As a
result, extensive interesting materials with unique accounts were
gathered to be used for a new collection and a film,” the project head
said, adding that new forms of presenting the tragedy will be sought.

“We consider it important to show that not only Armenians, but also
families in which one of the spouses was of Armenian descent suffered
from the tragedy,” Marina Grigoryan said. She announced that the
English- and Russian-language premieres of the film are scheduled for
January 2015.

Novosti-Armenia news agency reports that Anna Astvatsaturian Turcotte
who is on a visit to Yerevan said for her part that the Americans are
not familiar with the Karabakh problem and the Baku events, but
following the book’s publication and the meetings held, many of them
started taking a sincere interest.

She told those present that in September 1989 when she was 11 her
family fled Baku and moved to Armenia. The plight of Armenian refugees
from Baku worsened after the 1988 Spitak earthquake, amid the Karabakh
war and the disintegration of the USSR.

“After living in quite difficult conditions in Armenia for two and a
half years, our family made a decision to move to America. We arrived
in the U.S. with four suitcases, $180 and refugee status: that was all
we had. It was the beginning of a new peaceful future,” Astvatsaturian
Turcotte noted.

In her words, at that time she took a decision to preserve the diary
for her children and grandchildren so that “they could be aware of
their roots, their past and imagine those hardships that the people of
Artsakh have endured,” she said.

“Interest in the Baku events and the Karabakh independence process is
increasing in American society in recent years. Many members of the
Armenian Diaspora had no idea of it, and I consider this inadmissible.
My husband and me worked together to contribute to the adoption of the
resolution about Karabakh’s independence by the State of Maine,”
Astvatsaturian Turcotte stated.
In her words, she has repeatedly made speeches, sharing her memories
not only in various U.S. states, but also in the Congress, and she
received an invitation to deliver a speech in the European Parliament
in October.

“I will speak about the difficult path that Armenians of Baku have
followed, as well as the Karabakh problem and the work aimed at the
recognition of Karabakh’s independence,” said Anna Astvatsaturian
Turcotte, a lawyer and a mother of two. She was granted U.S.
citizenship in 1997.

The Ordinary Genocide Project is implemented the PR and Information
Center of the Armenian President’s Administration. As part of the
project, a series of documentaries was filmed in five languages about
the events in Sumgait, Baku, Maraga, the Ring Operation, Karabakh
records website was launched, and a number of books were published,
republished, and translated.

Putin’s Hand Was Shaking

Igor Muradyan, Political Analyst
Comments – 06 September 2014, 19:50

It is becoming obvious that the center of gravity of the international
conflicts has confidently moved to the Black Sea which was considered
a relatively stable region for a long time. In reality, however, there
has never been stability here, and there was something like balance of
forces between two major Black Sea states – Russia and Turkey – and
this circumstance became the main hindrance to intensifying
military-political presence of NATO and the United States in the Black
Sea region.

Research conducted in different political centers of the United
States, Europe and Russia has allowed figuring out the place of the
Black Sea Caucasus in actual politics. In most general terms, it is
possible to state that the United States, despite its attempts to
cooperate with Russia on a number of issues, is trying to maintain
certain tension in the Black Sea and South Caucasus region, as well as
the Caspian for the purpose of containment of not only Russia but also
Iran.

Such “framework” tension allows legitimizing a certain level of
military-political presence of the United States in the region, carry
out its intentions relating to medium and small states of the region,
attract them to participate in the U.S. strategy.

In this respect, the key question of actual regional research is: what
role and importance is envisaged by the United States for Turkey in
this region?

The intentions of the United States in the Black Sea and the South
Caucasus had quite limited logistical goals rather than large-scale
strategic ones which are aimed at moving forward-based objects to the
central regions of Eurasia. This contradicts the present intentions of
the United States in the regions of the Near East, Central and South
Asia.

The United States was not going to set up permanent military bases and
has formed a system of military logistics to support possible actions
in case of occurrence of threats to their interests and interests of
their partners in the West and Eurasia.

American experts think the United States had different intentions and
over the past few years have revised them to match the changing
situation. The United States did not need to boosts its military
forces in this region. It intended to maintain the balance of forces
in the Black Sea and the South Caucasus and, according to the
Americans, they have succeeded.

At present, in fact, there is a military intervention or strong
political pressure from Russia’s side, and the United States only
responds and reacts. The Americans are still interested in the setup
of the secure logistical system which may enable effective
transportation of military cargo and military contingent to Central
Asia without hindrances which, unlike the South Caucasus, is acquiring
greater importance for the United States.

The United States is viewing the United States as an important region
where activities aimed at China’s containment will be staged and the
importance of which has not weakened after the withdrawal of the
American troops from Afghanistan. The United States has broad
military-organizational tasks in Central Asia, which requires reliable
communications.

Aside from this, the United States must continue to implement
objectives aimed at ensuring the security of oil and gas
communications, both existing and presumed, the importance of which
has dropped considerably due to changes in the global situation of
carbohydrates. The intentions of the United States are not related to
the setup of front-based military objects but provision of reliable
means of communication.

The United States is trying to redirect the problems of the South
Caucasus to the European Union, i.e. have the Europeans cover expenses
and goals relating to the problems of integration of the region with
the European political and economic space.

The solution of the issues of accession of Georgia to NATO in the
short-term and medium-term perspective appears impossible due to both
the factor of Russia’s resistance and internal problems of NATO which
cannot afford and continue its enlargement.

Like in respect to the states of the Near East, the United States is
conducting a policy of strengthening defense capacity of the South
Caucasian countries and prevention of foreign pressure and
intervention. In this respect, the impression is that this U.S. policy
supposes prevention of intervention and pressure not only by Russia
but also by Turkey.

At the same time, these “frequent” movements do not resolve the
general goal – limitation of the influence of Russia and Turkey in the
Black Sea region. The United States is close to the necessity to
resolve the problems it had discerned a long time ago, and Washington
has always understood that sooner or later they would have to make
decisions on what Russia fears – creation of American bases in the
region.

Now, on the days of the NATO summit in Wales, it is clear that the
United States with the help of the United Kingdom and several other
members of the alliance, not NATO will resolve this issue. Without
creating a front-based system the United States cannot resolve the
problem of security in Eastern Europe and entire Europe.

Even radical Russian political scientists cannot deny that these U.S.
plans and intentions had been provoked, and they would not have been
there had Russia not pushed its way through without having necessary
sufficient forces and capacity.

Russia is at a loss, and the United States felt the historical chance
to return NATO’s former dynamics. The Russian mass media have
announced that Vladimir Putin has outlined a plan of settlement of the
Ukrainian crisis on board the plane, with his right hand on the left
knee but they did not specify that his hands were shaking. Whenever
the global system runs into a fragmentary crisis, the best thing is to
swallow the factors of the crisis, and highly unpleasant consequences
are awaiting Russia.

However, the problem of the policy and interests of Europe persists.
Europe does not hurry to consolidate with the United States to defend
European security, which has become absurd. The best way of inspiring
Europe to take more decisive actions is to shift the focus and centers
of tension in Europe from Central Europe to the Black Sea, i.e. the
Black Sea-Caucasus.

In fact, the model of the Crimean war is applied when the question is
whether Turkey will participate in this military-political action.
However, most probably, they will do without Turkey which cannot
continue to be a more or less reliable partner to NATO and the United
States.

ANCC members meet with minister Christian Paradis

September 5, 2014

On September 4th ANCC (Armenian National Committee of Canada) Western
Region representatives Vahe Andonian and Hagop Der Hagopian met with
the Hon. Christian Paradis, Canada’s Minister of International
Development and La Francophonie.

Together they discussed support for Syrian Armenian refugees, Iraq
minorities, and refugees in Armenia and Artsakh .
The ANCC members suggested that Minister Paradis visit Armenia in the
near future to see first hand the refugees there and also to support
Armenia as a member of La Francophonie.

The Minister welcomed the invitation and said he would be willing to
go on any occasion.

He introduced the ANCC to his Ministry’s Director of Policy and
Stakeholder Relations Mr. Idee Inyangudor , to keep relations open
with the ministry regarding our community’s
concerns .
On the same day representatives Andonian and Der Hagopian had a short
meeting with Canadian Red Cross CEO Conrad Sauve and his Western
Canada Communications Advisor Nathan Huculak.

Discussion centred around Canadian Red Cross assistance to Armenia
through the Armenian Red Cross.

Azerbaijani taken captive in Karabakh is a son of police official

16:10, 06.09.2014

Azerbaijani media presented additional information about an
Azerbaijani man taken captive by Nagorno-Karabakh.

According to ANC Press, Javid Samiroglu Mamedov is a resident of
Terter Region. Preliminary reports suggest that he is a son of the
deputy chief of Terter road police department.

As reported earlier, a citizen of Azerbaijan has been taken captive at
an attempt to cross the state border of NKR in north-eastern
direction. Javid Samiroglu Mamedov was taken captive on Friday
evening.

Armenia News – NEWS.am

Near a Turkish school, 10,000 dead Armenians are still ignored: Chris Bohjalian

13:28, 6 September, 2014

YEREVAN, SEPTEMBER 6, ARMENPRESS: 10,000 dead Armenians continue being
ignored at the bottom of the Dudan Crevasse, near a Turkish school.
Armenpress reports that the famous American Armenian writer Chris
Bohjalian wrote about it in his new article published in the
Washington Post periodical. “The three-story Yenikoy elementary school
rises from a plateau like a mesa in south-central Turkey. It is the
only building for miles, its exterior walls a pale yellow reminiscent
of sweet corn. But the playground swings and slides beside it are a
full-on rainbow of crayons: The bright blue of a cerulean sky. The
crisp red of a fire engine. The orange of a traffic cone.

Surrounding the playground, however, is a black wrought-iron safety
fence. Why? Because the school and playground sit at the edge of a
ravine that is easily a hundred feet deep. At the bottom of the ravine
is the Dudan Crevasse, a vertigo-inducing gash that plummets at least
another 350 feet.

I have visited the area twice in the past two years. In May 2013, the
first time I went, the school did not exist. By this August, it had
sprouted from the earth like a dandelion.

When I returned to the ravine and saw the school, I was enraged. My
anger was not driven by the idea that adults had built a playground
beside a dangerous ravine or by the fact that the building despoils an
otherwise pristine natural landscape — though both are true.

I was furious because that ravine is the final resting place for an
estimated 10,000 of my ancestors, the Armenians of Chunkush, which is
the village beside Yenikoy. In the summer of 1915, Turkish gendarmes
and a Kurdish killing party marched virtually all of the Armenians who
lived in the area to the ravine. There they shot or bayoneted them and
tossed the corpses into the crevasse.

Eventually, three out of every four Armenians living in the Ottoman
Empire were systematically annihilated by their own government during
the First World War: 1.5 million people.

Turkey has a long history of denying the Armenian genocide. But the
figures don’t lie. Outside of Istanbul, the nation was ethnically
cleansed of its Armenian Christian minority. In 1914, according to
Armenian Patriarchy census figures, there were 124,000 Armenians in
the Diyarbakir province, which includes Yenikoy and Chunkush; by 1922,
there were 3,000. Today there are but a handful, all descendants of
the survivors who were raised as Muslims and sometimes referred to as
“hidden.”

There are no markers or memorials in Turkey that commemorate the
myriad sites of the slaughter. (There are in Syria, then the edge of
the empire, where many of the Armenians were killed.) Imagine
Auschwitz without even a signpost; imagine Buchenwald without a
plaque. It isn’t easy for diasporan Armenians such as myself to find
the sites in what once was our homeland.

But we do. There are plenty of eyewitness accounts; there are plenty
of memoirs.

Some of us make pilgrimages to such places as the Dudan Crevasse to
pay our respects to the dead. We visit the remnants and rubble of the
churches that as recently as 99 years ago were active, vital and
vibrant congregations. We bow our heads. We say a prayer. We gather
the garbage that grows like moss beside the altars.

When my friends and I have asked the Kurdish villagers what they
believe happened once upon a time at the Dudan Crevasse, usually their
answers suggest a near-century of denial and obfuscation. Sometimes
they tell you some people died there, but they don’t know who or why.

Sometimes they insist they know nothing. And once a pair of
middle-school-age girls told a friend of mine, “Some Armenians fell in
there.”

There is the stone skeleton of a massive Armenian church in the
village and the shell of an Armenian monastery on the outskirts. If
you ask the locals where the 10,000 Armenians of Chunkush went, some
will tell you with a straight face that they moved to the United
States.

I do not know the thinking behind the placement of the Yenikoy
elementary school. But I have my suspicions. I would not be surprised
if next year when I visit, the crevasse has been filled in: the
evidence of a crime of seismic magnitude forever buried.

The irony, however, is this: It will no longer take complex directions
or GPS coordinates to find the 10,000 dead at Dudan. All you will need
to tell someone is to visit the Yenikoy elementary school. Go stand by
the playground. The dead are right there”.

ARMENIE-DEFENSE
Un mur de 200 mètres de long pour protéger des tirs azéris les enfants
de l’école de Nerkin Garmirarpiuyr

Afin de protéger les jeunes enfants des tirs ennemis azéris, au
village de Nerkin Garmirarpiuyr (région de Tavouche) qui se trouve à
quelque 300 mètres de la frontière arméno-azérie, fut construit un mur
de 20 cm d’épaisseur et de 200 mètres de long. Un mur de 3 mètres de
haut qui protègera les écoliers Arméniens des tirs azéris. La
construction de ce mur de protection est une première en Arménie. > dit le
directeur de la maternelle du village arménien, Sevada Manoutcharian.
26 élèves fréquentent la maternelle de ce village frontalier de 1380
habitants. Placée sous le feu direct des tirs azéris, cette école
maternelle n’a pas cessé de fonctionner, même lors des tirs nourris
d’août dernier. Les élèves étaient seulement privés de la cour de
récréation. Désormais, les enfants ont retrouvé leur liberté.

Krikor Amirzayan

samedi 6 septembre 2014,
Krikor Amirzayan (c)armenews.com

Village headman says his conscience will not allow him to remain quiet (video)

17:15 | September 5,2014 | Regions

Head of Shamut village Baghish Vanyan says his conscience will not
allow him to remain quiet.

Everyone knows each other in the village that has 352 residents, and
he cannot simply force them to pay taxes. He sees his villagers
working hard to afford basic necessities. Many are falling well below
society’s standard of living. The village headman says he cannot ‘lay
his human qualities aside’ and perform his duties.

Taxes in this village of Lori region are collected by 80 percent. By
law, the headman can implement a government program in the community
only after collecting entire taxes.

Details are available in the video of Ankyun +3 TV Company

Washington Post
Sept 5 2014

Near a Turkish school, 10,000 dead Armenians are still ignored

By Chris Bohjalian September 5 at 5:31 PM

Chris Bohjalian’s most recent novel, “Close Your Eyes, Hold Hands,”
was published this summer.

The three-story Yenikoy elementary school rises from a plateau like a
mesa in south-central Turkey. It is the only building for miles, its
exterior walls a pale yellow reminiscent of sweet corn. But the
playground swings and slides beside it are a full-on rainbow of
crayons: The bright blue of a cerulean sky. The crisp red of a fire
engine. The orange of a traffic cone.

Surrounding the playground, however, is a black wrought-iron safety
fence. Why? Because the school and playground sit at the edge of a
ravine that is easily a hundred feet deep. At the bottom of the ravine
is the Dudan Crevasse, a vertigo-inducing gash that plummets at least
another 350 feet.

I have visited the area twice in the past two years. In May 2013, the
first time I went, the school did not exist. By this August, it had
sprouted from the earth like a dandelion.

When I returned to the ravine and saw the school, I was enraged. My
anger was not driven by the idea that adults had built a playground
beside a dangerous ravine or by the fact that the building despoils an
otherwise pristine natural landscape — though both are true.

I was furious because that ravine is the final resting place for an
estimated 10,000 of my ancestors, the Armenians of Chunkush, which is
the village beside Yenikoy. In the summer of 1915, Turkish gendarmes
and a Kurdish killing party marched virtually all of the Armenians who
lived in the area to the ravine. There they shot or bayoneted them and
tossed the corpses into the crevasse.

Eventually, three out of every four Armenians living in the Ottoman
Empire were systematically annihilated by their own government during
the First World War: 1.5 million people.

Turkey has a long history of denying the Armenian genocide. But the
figures don’t lie. Outside of Istanbul, the nation was ethnically
cleansed of its Armenian Christian minority. In 1914, according to
Armenian Patriarchy census figures, there were 124,000 Armenians in
the Diyarbakir province, which includes Yenikoy and Chunkush; by 1922,
there were 3,000. Today there are but a handful, all descendants of
the survivors who were raised as Muslims and sometimes referred to as
“hidden.”

There are no markers or memorials in Turkey that commemorate the
myriad sites of the slaughter. (There are in Syria, then the edge of
the empire, where many of the Armenians were killed.) Imagine
Auschwitz without even a signpost; imagine Buchenwald without a
plaque. It isn’t easy for diasporan Armenians such as myself to find
the sites in what once was our homeland.

But we do. There are plenty of eyewitness accounts; there are plenty of memoirs.

Some of us make pilgrimages to such places as the Dudan Crevasse to
pay our respects to the dead. We visit the remnants and rubble of the
churches that as recently as 99 years ago were active, vital and
vibrant congregations. We bow our heads. We say a prayer. We gather
the garbage that grows like moss beside the altars.

When my friends and I have asked the Kurdish villagers what they
believe happened once upon a time at the Dudan Crevasse, usually their
answers suggest a near-century of denial and obfuscation. Sometimes
they tell you some people died there, but they don’t know who or why.
Sometimes they insist they know nothing. And once a pair of
middle-school-age girls told a friend of mine, “Some Armenians fell in
there.”

There is the stone skeleton of a massive Armenian church in the
village and the shell of an Armenian monastery on the outskirts. If
you ask the locals where the 10,000 Armenians of Chunkush went, some
will tell you with a straight face that they moved to the United
States.

I do not know the thinking behind the placement of the Yenikoy
elementary school. But I have my suspicions. I would not be surprised
if next year when I visit, the crevasse has been filled in: the
evidence of a crime of seismic magnitude forever buried.

The irony, however, is this: It will no longer take complex directions
or GPS coordinates to find the 10,000 dead at Dudan. All you will need
to tell someone is to visit the Yenikoy elementary school. Go stand by
the playground. The dead are right there.

Prague Post, Czech Rep.
Sept 5 2014

Constitutional Court rejects Armenian’s complaint over dismissal at RFE/RL

Former Radio Free Europe employee had been fired without reason after
12 years of service.

Brno, Sept 5 (CTK) – The Czech Constitutional Court (US) has turned
down the complaint by Armenians journalist Anna Karapetyan, who had
unsuccessfully challenged her dismissal from Radio Free Europe/Radio
Liberty (RFE/RL) as discriminatory, the Czech News Agency has learned
from the US database of verdicts.

The RFE/RL, a U.S. radio station seated in Prague, sacked Karapetyan
without telling her why.

The ÚS said this was possible based on Karapetyan’s work contract that
set the U.S. law as decisive for her and the employer’s relationship.
No discrimination or any other violation of fundamental rights
occurred in this case, it added.

Karapetyan had worked for the RFE/RL for 12 years. She filed the
complaint in 2007. Czech courts first turned it down but later, after
the intervention of the Supreme Court, a lower level court decided
that her dismissal was invalid, and she remained the RFE/RL’s
employee.

However, the appeals court again decided in favor of RFE/RL, and the
Supreme Court upheld the verdict last year.

Karapetyan then turned to the ÚS. She said the RFE/RL discriminates
against staffers who are not Czechs or Americans. Their work contract
falls under the U.S. legal regime, but they cannot seek protection in
U.S. courts, Karapetyan says.

She says it is impossible for an employee to enjoy lower protection
than what is guaranteed by the country he/she works in, which is the
Czech Republic in her case.

The ÚS, however, decided it is not discrimination if the employer,
based on work contracts, applies different legal regimes to employees
of different nationalities.

The contractual choice of the decisive legal regime would otherwise
become meaningless, the ÚS ruled.

The case would be different if the employer chose criteria such as the
color of skin, race or sex to formulate work contracts. Karapetyan
says, however, the only reason RFE/RL offers different legal regimes
to employees is their nationality, ÚS judge-rapporteur Milada Tomková
said.

RFE/RL is seated in Prague, but it is funded by the U.S. Congress. Its
goal is to promote democracy worldwide, mainly in the countries where
people have bad access to unbiased information or where they face
various kinds of suppression. At present, the RFE/RL broadcasts to 21
countries, including Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus and Russia, in 28
languages.

Its work contracts practice was criticized by the Czech Helsinki
Committee in 2012.

Czech courts previously dealt with a controversial dismissal of
another RFE/RL staffer, Croat Snježana Pelivan, whose complaint they
turned down as well.

Kuwait News Agency
Sept 5 2014

Kerry meets with leaders of Armenia, Azerbaijan at NATO Summit

05/09/2014 | 09:02 AM | World News

WASHINGTON, Sept 5 (KUNA) — Secretary of State John Kerry met with
President of Armenia Serzh Sargsian and President of Azerbaijan Ilham
Aliyev at the NATO Summit in Wales to discuss the efforts to resolve
the conflict in Nagorno-Karabakh.

Kerry expressed, “strong concern for the recent violence along the
Line of Contact, marking the deadliest period in the conflict since
the 1994 ceasefire took effect,” according to a statement from State
Department Deputy Spokesperson Marie Harf Thursday.

“The United States believes that the cessation of hostilities and the
normalization of relations between Armenia and Azerbaijan will bring
peace and prosperity to the peoples of both countries, and will
contribute to stability in the South Caucasus,” affirmed Harf.

Kerry pushed the leaders to work with the OSCE (Organization for
Security and Cooperation on Europe) Minsk Group, “who are committed to
helping the sides reach a peaceful and lasting settlement.”
Additonally, “He (Kerry) called on the sides to enter into a more
formal negotiation process under the auspices of the Minsk Group
Co-Chairs as proposed by the Swiss Chairman-in-Office at the OSCE,”
affirmed Harf. “A sustained process is necessary to increase trust
between the sides and build momentum towards a lasting peace that the
people of the region deserve.” (end) ak.gta