Author: Kalantarian Kevo

ST GEORGE ARMENIAN CHURCH IN MARDIN, TURKEY AMONG 7 MOST ENDANGERED MONUMENTS OF EUROPE

11:19, 13 June, 2013

YEREVAN, JUNE 13, ARMENPRESS. “Europa Nostra” organization has
published the list of 7 most endangered monuments and sites of
Europe. ICOMOS/Armenia NGO informed “Armenpress” that St George
Armenian Church in Mardin, Turkey (Western Armenia, the Diyarbakir
Vilayet, currently administrative centre of the Mardin Vilayet) has
also appeared in the list of the 7 most endangered monuments and sites.

The statement of “Europa Nostra” organization runs as follows: “For
15 centuries the Church of St. George was the spiritual home of the
large Armenian community in the Turkish city of Mardin. This Grade I
registered historical building was founded in 420 AD and was in use
until 1915, when the Armenian population left the city. In spite of
its outstanding historical and cultural importance, this monument is
currently in an advance state of decay.

Europa Nostra Turkey, with the support of the owner, the Mardin
Armenian Catholic Church Community Foundation, is strongly committed to
rescuing this tangible witness of Turkey’s multicultural history. The
preservation of the church and its annexes would enable the future
generations to understand the contribution of Armenian people
to Mardin’s history and identity and, at the same time, allow a
wider public to appreciate their cultural expressions andartistic
achievements. The local authorities, who are also aware of the
economic advantages from future tourism development, are supportive
of restoration projects in their town, but their endeavours need to
be encouraged and supported by national and European partners.”

Europa Nostra campaigns side by side with our members, organisations
and individuals, to oppose threats to cultural heritage objects and
sites from all over Europe. Saving endangered heritage, be they
monuments, buildings or landscapes, lies at the heart of Europa
Nostra mission.

On the occasion of its 50th anniversary, Europa Nostra has launched
its new flagship programme: “The 7 Most Endangered”, with the European
Investment Bank, represented by the EIB Institute, as a founding
partner. This programme will identify endangered monuments and
sites in Europe and mobilize public and private partners on a local,
national and European level to find a sustainable and viable future
for those sites.

THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY OF THE CATHOLICOSSATE OF CILICIA MEETS IN ANTELIAS

11:06 13.06.20130

On Wednesday, 12 June 2013, His Holiness Aram I officially opened
the Assembly of the Catholicosate of Cilicia. One hundred delegates
and official guests representing the dioceses in the diaspora will
take part.

During the three-day meeting, the representatives will receive the
reports of the Executive Council and the Religious and Laity Councils.

The agenda includes the following issues: Christian Education,
Armenian language and culture, youth concerns, ecumenical and
interfaith relations and the commemoration of the 100th anniversary
of the Genocide. On Friday evening the delegates and the guests will
attend the commencement of the seminary, which will be followed by
a concert celebrating “2013 Year of the Armenian Mother.”

On Saturday, a small group will accompany His Holiness Aram I to meet
the President of Lebanon H.E. Michel Suleiman.

LE CATHOLICOS DE CILICIE SORT UN NOUVEAU CD D’HYMNES SPIRITUELS, DE CHANSONS ET DE MELODIES

Le 29 mai 2013, le directeur du Departement de l’education chretienne
et chef d’orchestre de la chorale Shenorhali le Père Torkom Donoyan,
et deux membres de la chorale ont presente a Sa Saintete Aram I,
la première copie du CD. Le CD comprend des chants, des melodies
et des chants de la liturgie armenienne et de la musique ancienne
executes par le ch~ur, l’organiste Hasmig Kasparian et la soprano
Shoghik Torossian.

Ce nouveau CD est une excellente ressource pour les chorales d’eglise.

Il peut etre commande auprès de la librairie du Catholicosat a Antelias
(Liban).

jeudi 13 juin 2013, Stephane ©armenews.com

ECHECS : TIGRAN L. PETROSIAN REMPORTE LE GRAND OPEN EUROPE

Le champion olympique Tigran L. Petrosian a remporte le premier prix
lors du Grand Open Europe qui a pris fin a Albena en Bulgarie.

Le grand maître armenien a marque 8 sur 9 points possibles pour
terminer a la première place rapporte Armchess.am.

Deux autres joueurs representant l’Armenie, Hrant Melkumyan et Avetik
Grigoryan, ont marque 7 et 6 points respectivement.

Un total de 150 joueurs a pris part a la competition.

jeudi 13 juin 2013, Stephane ©armenews.com

REVELATIONS SUR L’AFFAIRE PARUYR HAYRIKIAN

L’homme qui a avoue avoir tire et blesse Paruyr Hayrikian a insiste
mercredi 12 juin sur le fait qu’il n’avait pas l’intention de tuer
le dissident de l’ère sovietique (et qui etait egalement candidat a
l’election presidentielle).

Khatchatour Poghosian a affirme qu’il avait seulement l’intention
d’intimider P. Hayrikian. Ce dernier avait ete blesse a l’epaule
droite devant son domicile a Erevan le 31 janvier.

Poghosian, 46 ans, et un autre homme sans emploi, Samvel Harutiunian,
ont ete arretes une semaine après la fusillade qui aurait pu retarder
l’election presidentielle du 18 fevrier. Les autorites policières
disent qu’Harutiunian a ete embauche Poghosian pour tuer le candidat
a la presidentielle. Ils affirment egalement que cette tentative
d’assassinat a ete orchestree par un autre candidat, Vartan Sedrakian.

Hayrikian, qui a passe plus de 10 ans dans les prisons sovietiques
pour promouvoir l’independance de l’Armenie, a egalement declare que
la fusillade a ete l’~uvre de ” forces imperialistes russes “. Selon
lui, elles craignaient qu’il remporte la victoire a la presidentielle.

Selon la Commission electorale centrale de l’Armenie, Hayrikian a
recueilli 1,2% des voix.

jeudi 13 juin 2013, Laetitia ©armenews.com

KEEPING SCORE WITH THE KARDASHIANS! KIM’S TWEET INSPIRES WORLD CUP MINNOWS ARMENIA

Daily Mail, UK
June 12 2013

By MATTHEW FEARON

Inspired by celebrity fan Kim Kardashian and her 17.9 million Twitter
followers, Armenia equalled the biggest win in their history as they
beat Denmark 4-0 in Copenhagen.

No doubt spurred on by Kardashian’s ‘Let’s go Armenia!!!’ tweet,
the Armenians managed even more goals than Kardashian managed
exclamation marks.

The Danes were 1-0 down inside 30 seconds and had enough trouble
keeping up with their opponents; little did they know that they must
now contend with keeping up with the Kardashians.

Only 14,784 turned up in Copenhagen to watch Denmark’s World
Cup-qualifying humiliation but, thanks to Kardashian’s tweet, a further
17,883,120 people were glued to the events in the Danish capital.

The American socialite, TV celebrity and pregnant mother to Kanye
West’s child achieved fame through the highly successful reality TV
show, Keeping Up with the Kardashians.

West and Kardashian’s combined wealth is reported to be in excess of
£51 million.

By contrast, Henrik Mkhitaryan, scorer of Armenia’s record-equalling
fourth goal, cost Shakhtar Donetsk just £4 million.

Armenia’s population may be five-and-a-half times smaller than
Kardashian’s twitter following but that hasn’t stopped them putting
a big dent in Denmark’s hopes of qualifying for Brazil 2014.

While Kardashian was rejoicing in Armenia’s success, Denmark coach
Morten Olsen called the loss ‘the worst night of my footballing life’.

The Danes now sit in fifth place in Group B, with Italy top of the
table, ahead of only last-placed Malta with four matches remaining.

Conversely, Armenia’s win keeps alive their slim chances of reaching
a first World Cup in their 21-year history.

If they should reach Brazil, expect Kardashian and her well-stocked
wardrobe of bikinis to be out in full force on Copacabana beach.

Kardashian’s Armenian heritage can be traced through her father’s
side. Robert Kardashian, who achieved fame as O. J. Simpson’s defense
attorney, was a third-generation Armenian American.

His great-grandparents, Sam and Harom Kardaschoff, were ethnic Armenian
Molokan Jumpers from Kars in what is now Turkey), who emigrated to
the United States in 1913.

LIVERPOOL TARGET HENRIK MKHITARYAN SCORES GREAT SOLO GOLAZO FOR ARMENIA

Fanatix
June 12 2013

Posted by Dan Kilpatrick 12th June 2013, 12:06pm

Armenia, ranked 89th in the world, pulled off a staggering 4-0 World
Cup qualifying win in Denmark on Tuesday, with Liverpool target Henrik
Mkhitaryan scoring the pick of the goals.

The attacking midfielder has been linked with a move to Anfield
this week and the 24-year-old showed his class with his eleventh
international goal.

With the demoralised hosts 3-0 down, Mkhitaryan cut in from the right
frank and showed great compuse to keep the ball and finish under the
Denmark keeper.

Sign him up, Brendan!

BELARUS, ARMENIA CELEBRATE 20TH ANNIVERSARY OF DIPLOMATIC RELATIONS

Belarusian Telegraph Agency, Belarus
June 12 2013

11.06.2013 09:25

MINSK, 11 June (BelTA) – President of the Republic of Belarus
Alexander Lukashenko has sent greetings to President of Armenia
Serzh Sargsyan as the two countries celebrate the 20th anniversary
of the establishment of diplomatic relations, BelTA learned from the
presidential press service.

“The cooperation between our countries based on eagerness to develop
friendly ties, common history and mutual respect of the two brotherly
nations has a deep and comprehensive character,” the message of
greetings reads.

“Over two decades we have managed to make headway in a number of
mutually beneficial areas, conceive a wide range of concrete projects
which are good examples of strategic partnership,” Alexander Lukashenko
noted.

IWPR’S COUNTRY DIRECTOR HAD BOOK CONFISCATED JUST BECAUSE IT WAS PUBLISHED IN ARMENIA.

Institute for War and Peace Reporting, UK
IWPR Caucasus Reporting #691
June 12 2013

Bad Books in Azerbaijan

By Shahin Rzayev – Caucasus
CRS Issue 691,

The frontier guard sounded almost exultant when he discovered the
book in my luggage.

“You’re importing extremist literature,” he said, holding the offending
item under my nose.

It was June 9, and I was at the Boyuk-Kesik border crossing, on the
train back from Georgia to my own country, Azerbaijan.

I had just been in the Georgian capital Tbilisi for a seminar
organised by the Conciliation Resources group, which was making a
film about the Nagorny Karabakh war. At the event, I met an Armenian
writer called Tatul Hakobyan, who had just launched his new book,
“Armenians and Turks”. I took the opportunity to buy this book as
well as his previous work, “Karabakh Diary, Green and Black”.

Annoyed that a book should be branded extremist just because they
it was written by someone from Armenia, I produced my press card and
demanded to see the unit commander.

“Why have you decided that the book is extremist when you haven’t
even read it?” I asked the officer, Nazim Azizov.

He replied, “The whole world knows that the Armenians are waging a
propaganda war against us.”

I countered, “Well, if that’s the case, don’t we have to study their
propaganda so as to counteract it? How can we respond if we don’t
read what they’re writing?”

Azizov said he was just following orders, and that his superior had
told him what to do by phone.

At this, I got off the train and went along the platform to the
frontier guards’ office. There was only one other traveller in
a similar fix, a man trying to import more fruit than is legally
allowed into Azerbaijan.

As I argued my case in the office, I told the border guards that I
regularly collaborated with journalists from Armenia and had done
so for more than a decade. I had even had a meeting, together with a
group of Armenian journalists, with the late president Heydar Aliyev,
whose son Ilham now rules the country.

None of this made any impression on the border guards, and they handed
me a chit to sign, although they did change “extremist literature” to
“published in the Republic of Armenia” as the reason for confiscation.

However, this new reason raised as many questions as it answered.

“What if I tried to import a Yerevan edition of Pushkin’s Yevgeny
Onegin?” I asked. “Would you confiscate that, too?”

Azizov replied, “We’ll make that decision when you import it.”

Back in Baku, I asked lawyer Rashid Hajili, director of the Media
Law Institute, what he made of the incident.

Hajili said it was a case of censorship, and a breach of citizens’
right to obtain and distribute information. He explained that even
books that are subject to a legal ban could still be imported as long
as they were single copies for personal use.

Furthermore, he said, customs officers did not have the right to take
this kind of decision by themselves.

“A ban on distributing any kind of literature, even when the aim
is to prevent extremist propaganda, can only be issued by a court,”
the lawyer explained. “In any case, such decisions prohibit only mass
distribution, not single copies.”

I have brought Armenian goods – books, drinks and cigarettes – into
Azerbaijan on many occasions. I have also been to Armenia seven times
and interviewed leading politicians there. Never before have I run
into this kind of problem.

The reason why tighter rules are being imposed on importing
print materials probably has a lot to do with the approach of the
presidential election in Azerbaijan, due on October 16 this year. Yet
in the internet age, regulations of this kind make absolutely no
sense. They will not make any difference at all, except to stop me
reading a book I wanted to read.

Shahin Rzayev is IWPR’s Azerbaijan country director.

JUNE-JULY EDITION OF THE MIDDLE EAST IN LONDON HITS NEWSSTANDS

European Union News
June 11, 2013 Tuesday

SOAS, University of London, UK Government has issued the following
news release:

Considering the deadly sectarian violence in the Middle East, including
the attack on the main cathedral in Cairo and the refugee crisis
in Syria, a special issue on Middle Eastern religious minorities
could not be timelier. London is home to a wide range of Middle
Eastern religious minority communities, including Zoroastrians, Jews,
Christians (Coptic, Armenians, Orthodox, Assyrians and Evangelical),
Baha’ís, and Shi’as (Twelvers, Ismailis, and Alevis).

This issue looks at the historical and contemporary conditions of some
of these groupings, and explores how their institutions and cultural
practices continue to be shaped by social and political dynamics in
the region.

Sami Zubaida’s Insight piece presents the complex and varied history
of confessional identifications and solidarities in relation to wider
political processes across the region. George Joffe, concentrating
on the history of Ibadi communities of Algeria, Tunisia and Libya
and North Africa’s Jewish communities, delivers a rich account
of these largely unknown, and for North African Jews, virtually
extinct communities. His reference to the drafting of the first Arab
Constitution in Tunisia in 1860 echoes current, heated debates on
the place of religion in the new constitutions in the region. Hadi
Enayat’s article, focusing on Egypt and Turkey, engages with a number
of thorny issues in recognising communal rights of religious minorities
in constitutional reform.

Turning to London, Alyn Hine highlights the development of the
Arabic-speaking Orthodox Christian community who left (and continue to
flee) the Levant due to ongoing economic and political tensions. His
visit to St George’s Cathedral near Regent’s Park shows how the
Orthodox community, despite internal national and linguistic divides,
strives to maintain a communal identity in this country. Dan Wheately’s
piece on London’s Baha’í community traces the history of Baha’ís in the
UK and introduces a few of its charitable activities in London. Fadi
Dawood recounts Assyrian-British relations that date back to 1837 and
the political violence in Iraq that led to the Assyrian diaspora in
the UK.

Middle East religious minorities have found diverse and creative ways
to remain connected to their histories and homelands while establishing
a strong communal and public presence in the UK. Susan Pattie looks
at the increasing exposure of Armenian art forms, such as poetry,
music and dance, and their continued renewal in relation to Armenian
identity discourses in the diaspora. Sarah Stewart writes on the
Zoroastrian community in London and the making of an exhibition due
to open in the Brunei Gallery later this year, The Everlasting Flame:
Zoroastrianism in History and Imagination. Sami Zubaida provides a
historical and contemporary account of Middle Eastern Jews, and their
inroads to London life. Kathryn Spellman-Poots, focusing on a campaign
spearheaded by a group of young British Shi’as, takes a generational
look at ways Shi’as are trying to build a public profile in the UK
and beyond.

And finally, among book reviews and the listings of Middle East events
in London, is the Profile piece on Dr Ruba Saleh. Ruba provides
a moving account of her life in the Palestinian Diaspora and how
she ‘developed an academic passion for the study of “difference”
and a commitment to scholarship on justice and rights of the
disenfranchised’.

For further information please visit: