Author: Kalantarian Kevo

SYRIA: BATTLES RAGE IN ALEPPO’S GRAND MOSQUE: TWO PRIESTS MISSING

ANSAmed – Italy
February 27, 2013 Wednesday 6:01 PM CET

SYRIA: BATTLES RAGE IN ALEPPO’S GRAND MOSQUE

Two priests missing. Damascus university under shelling

BEIRUT

(ANSAmed) Battles are underway in Aleppo’s Grand Mosque between
Syrian regime soldiers and rebels, ANSAmed was told on Wednesday
by activists from the Aleppo Media Centre contacted via Skype. The
mosque is a recognized UNESCO World Heritage Site and was attacked
yesterday by rebel forces after being under government control for
weeks. It was impossible to independently verify the information.

In several non-professional video clips posted on the internet by
sources with connections to Aleppo rebels, opposition forces say they
intend to attack the Palace of Justice not far from the Grand Mosque.

Meanwhile, two Syrian priests taken hostage by unidentified armed
men in the Aleppo region are still missing, but efforts are underway
to secure their release, ANSA was told by a source from Aleppo’s
Armenian archbishopric contacted via telephone. The source confirmed
that nothing has been heard on the whereabouts of Father Michel
Kayyal, an Armenian Catholic, and Maher Mahfuz, a Greek Orthodox,
since February 9, when a bus they were traveling in was stopped by
militants and the two were forced to get out.

“We do not know who took them hostage nor in whose hands they are
now,” the source said. “But negotiations and contacts are underway
to secure their release”. Father Kayyal was an Aleppo resident while
Father Mahfuz was from the Greek Orthodox St George convent in Hmeira,
west of Homes in Wadi an Nasara (‘The Valley of the Christians’). Two
mortar shells hit the Faculty of Literature and Art of a university in
the Syrian capital of Damascus, state-run TV said Wednesday without
providing further details. The faculty is in the western part of the
city’s modern district.

Q&A WITH PETER BALAKIAN

Frederick News Post , MD
Feb 28 2013

Q&A with Peter Balakian: Author, poet and essayist will give talk on
‘memory and trauma’

By Nicholas C. Stern News-Post Staff

As part of the Hood College Colloquium series, author, poet and
essayist Peter Balakian will give a lecture at the school tonight. The
theme of the series is “In Retrospect: Time and Memory,” and Balakian’s
talk will focus on his memoir “Black Dog of Fate,” as he’ll speak on
memory and trauma. In the memoir, Balakian contrasts his suburban
childhood in 1960s New Jersey with his growing awareness of his
family’s history as survivors of the Armenian Genocide of 1915. In an
email exchange, Balakian answered some questions from The Frederick
News-Post about his book, as well as his lecture, which starts at
7 p.m. tonight in Hodson Auditorium at Hood College, 401 Rosemont
Ave., Frederick. For event details, email [email protected], or go
to

In your memoir “Black Dog of Fate” (1997), you write about growing up
in the New Jersey suburbs and the “stone door” put up by your family
about the Armenian Genocide. Can you describe a bit what that was
like? How did you feel when this barrier of silence started to come
down, and what did you do?

No one wanted to talk about the trauma of the past and the events of
1915 through which my grandparents on both sides were harshly scarred
for life. This was painful stuff and not meant for children of young
people, especially in happy, affluent suburbia of the 1950s and ’60s
in Teaneck and Tenafly, N.J., where I grew up. The wall of silence
came down slowly and much of that had to do with my own writing and
work on this history. When I started asking questions as a young
poet in the 1970s, my aunts began to talk, and things started taking
shape in the narrative about the Armenian Genocide as it impacted
our family. Their memory and testimony gave my writing about this
past a new sense of rootedness and location.

Can you explain for those who may not know much about what happened
about the Armenian Genocide, and how your family was involved?

The Ottoman Turkish government’s plan to eradicate the Armenians from
Turkey is the first example of genocide done in modern form (genocide,
of course is a crime as old as human history). The Ottoman state
used its bureaucracy, its military, national ideology and technology
(the railway and telegraph) for the purpose of eliminating a targeted
ethnic group in a short period of time; this happened between 1915 and
1918 behind the screen of World War I. The Armenians were the largest
Christian minority living on their historic homeland throughout much
(of) eastern Turkey; somewhere between 1.2 and 1.5 million Armenians
perished out of a population of around 2 to 2.2 million. The other
two Christian minorities, the Greek and Assyrians, also were wiped
out during this period. The Armenian genocide had such an impact on
Adolf Hitler that he said on the eve of invading Poland in 1939, “Who,
today after all, speaks of the annihilation of the Armenians?” And
the Polish legal scholar Raphael Lemkin, who created the term genocide
and developed the concept of genocide as a crime in international law,
was greatly influenced by what happened to the Armenians in 1915. It
was Lemkin who first coined the term Armenian Genocide in the 1940s.

What is the origin of the title of your memoir “Black Dog of Fate”?

The title takes off on a folk tale my grandmother tells me when I’m
a young boy. The reader will have to read that episode and pull the
threads of that folk tale through the book and make sense of it.

My grandmother filed a human rights claim against the Turkish
government for the losses she endured in August 1915 when the Turkish
forces murdered all of her family, from her mother and father to
brothers and sisters and to 2- and 3-year-old nieces and nephews. She
and her two infant daughters were the only survivors. Because her
first husband, who died in the genocide, was a naturalized U.S.

citizen, she filed this claim through the U.S. State Department in 1920
upon her arrival in the U.S. Nothing came of the claim in monetary
terms, but it has been a powerful text of witness to the atrocities
of 1915; it is a testimony in a young mother and woman’s voice that
is clear and precise. Much of this text appears in facsimile form in
my memoir. I didn’t discover this document until I was nearly 30.

In the memoir, you condemn the U.S. government’s policy toward Turkey,
as well as ongoing efforts to gloss over what happened to Armenians
in Turkey. Can you summarize your argument? What, if any steps,
have been taken in the U.S., in Turkey and throughout the world to
address this issue?

The Turkish government has made it a state policy to deny the Armenian
Genocide, to take no responsibility for the crime, and to falsify
the facts and narrative. This has been going on since 1918. But the
aggressiveness of Turkey’s denial is unusual in its invasive thrust
and its meddling in the free intellectual climate of other countries.

In 1980, ’85, ’89, 2000 and ’07, the Turkish government used its
military alliance with the United States to pressure the State
Department to block passage of various nonbinding congressional
resolutions affirming the Armenian Genocide, and paid lobbyists
millions of dollars annually to work against them.

In the face of Turkish denial, scholars, organizations and nations,
motivated by an ethical sense and the value of historical honesty,
have made statements of acknowledgment and affirmation of the Armenian
Genocide. The International Association of Genocide Scholars has
issued several Open Letters which underscore that the historical
record on the Armenian Genocide is overwhelming and unambiguous, and
noting Raphael Lemkin’s first use of the term genocide to describe
the Armenian case, and the applicability of the 1948 United Nations
Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.

As an ethical redress to the extremeness of Turkish denial, 20
countries, as well as the Vatican and the European Parliament, have
passed resolutions acknowledging the events of 1915 as genocide. Nobel
Laureate Elie Wiesel has called Turkish denial a “double killing”
that strives to kill the memory of the event. Noted Holocaust scholar
Deborah Lipstadt has written: “Denial of genocide whether that of
the Turks against the Armenians, or the Nazis against the Jews is not
an act of historical reinterpretation. The deniers aim at convincing
innocent third parties that there is another side of the story …

when there is no other side. Denial of genocide strives to reshape
history in order to demonize the victims and rehabilitate the
perpetrators, and is the final stage of genocide.” What Lipstadt and
Wiesel note is why perpetrator denial remains an important ethical,
human rights issue.

ARMENIAN PRESIDENT URGES FUNCTIONARIES TO SHOW HARD WORK

Vestnik Kavkaza, Russia
Feb 28 2013

Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan has attended a session of the
National Security Council, participated by the government of Armenia,
executives, Yerevan mayor, officials of the Central Bank, Chamber of
Accounts, Cassation Court, governors, News Armenia reports.

Sargsyan emphasized two positive aspects of the presidential campaign:
approval of the international society and peaceful voting.

Head of the Presidential Administration Vigen Sarkisyan reported
about the results of the elections of 2013 and about the rating of
international observers.

Sargsyan ordered Sarkisyan to publish the final report of the OSCE
ODIHR, renew operation of the working group for reforming of the
Electoral Law and procedures. The police and prosecutors were ordered
to study electoral reports.

AZERBAIJANI COMMUNITY IN LITHUANIA ENRAGED OVER PARLT GROUP FOR TIES WITH NAGORNO KARABAKH

Baltic News Service / – BNS
February 27, 2013 Wednesday 10:22 AM EET

VILNIUS, Feb 27, BNS – The Azerbaijani community in Lithuania issued a
communique on Wednesday, expressing indignation over the establishment
of a parliamentary group of friendship with the Republic of Nagorno
Karabakh that has not yet been recognized.

The Azerbaijani community says that the conference Lithuania and
Armenia – A Step to Close Past, which was intended to celebrate 25-year
anniversaries of democratic movements in both states, in fact “turned
out to be a manifestation of solidarity with the so-called Republic
of Nagorno Karabakh.”

“Under such circumstances, the association Lithuania-Azerbaijan
and the Azerbaijani Community in Lithuania views as unprecedented
and intolerable the conditions allowed during the conference for
an official speech by the Republic of Nagorno Karabakh’s ‘foreign
minister’ and establishment of the Seimas support group for the
Republic of Nagorno Karabakh,” reads the communique signed by chairman
of the Azerbaijani Community in Lithuania, Mahir Gamzayev, and
president of the association Lithuania-Azerbaijan, Imantas Melianas.

“This does not only discredit your parliament – it can have a sore
effect upon political, economic, cultural and other types of Lithuanian
relations with Azerbaijan and Turkey as one of the most important
Lithuanian allies in NATO. Furthermore, they clearly run counter to the
principles of the European Union’s (EU) Eastern Partnership policies
and complicate Lithuania’s role in the process,” reads the communique.

Meanwhile, initiator of the group, Liberal MP Dalia Kuodyte, said
that the group was not established to support Nagorno Karabakh’s
independence but friendship with the region, adding that there were
no contradictions to the official foreign policies of Lithuania.

In the last decade of the 20th century, Azerbaijan and Armenia were
engaged in a long brutal war for the disputed region of Nagorno
Karabakh.

AZERBAIJAN HANDS NOTE TO LITHUANIA OVER NAGORNO KARABAKH

Baltic News Service / – BNS
February 27, 2013 Wednesday 10:47 AM EET

VILNIUS, Feb 27, BNS – Azerbaijan’s ambassador has presented a note to
the Lithuanian Foreign Ministry over the event held at the parliament,
which established a group for friendship with Nagorno Karabakh,
a republic that has not been recognized by the international community.

Azerbaijan “expressed deep concern” over the event, warning it could
“can have a negative impact on our bilateral relations,” an official
of the embassy told BNS on Wednesday.

RAFFI HOVANNISIAN’S RALLY OVER IN ARMENIA’S CAPITAL(UPDATED, LIVE)

17:22 ~U 28.02.13

Rally of Armenia’s Heritage party’s leader Raffi Hovannisian kicked
off in Yerevan Liberty Square. The rally in the capital follows
Hovannisian’s provincial tour during the past three days during which
he met with the residents of towns of Armenia’s provinces.

On February 24 Raffi Hovannisian was in Aragatsotn, Lori and Shirak
provinces, on February 26 in Ararat, Armavir and Vayots Dzor.

Yesterday he was in Syunik and today in Kotayk.

Raffi Hovannisian is in the square.

The speeches continue in the Liberty square. Deputy leader of the
Heritage party Armen Martirosyan welcomed the gathered. The
representative of the youth wing of Armenia’s People’s party Narek
Varazdatyan delivered a speech saying that this fight is an
ideological, “we have united over our united idea.”

Varazdatyan said the emigration statistics shows that the young people
are emigrating not tying their future with Armenia. The student said
that the time has come for “Come Home” program to turn into “Stay at
home” program.

He informed that students have begun strikes in Gyumri and Vanadzor.

Armenian youth union of the Heritage party addressed a statement to
the Defense Minister Seyran Ohanyan, calling on him to avoid possible
orders of using the army against people. Presenting the statement,
member of the union Gevorg Karapetyan said their ‘barevolution’s wave
is becoming great and urged to avoid implementing the orders of the
authorities.

Karapetyan said on February 18 the people won by electing their
president Raffi Hovannisian and they are angry that vote of the people
has been rigged again.

“We will fight till the liberation of the people’s will. Despite the
committed crime we have fought within the limits of the Constitution.

Tomorrow this very people and their devoted sons will defend the
homeland,” Karapetyan said.

The composer Ruben Hakhverdyan said that Armenia’s President Serzh
Sargsyan is “a person from an Azerbaijani province that has come to be
our leader.

“If your mother’s pension were 30,000 drams (about $75) a month, would
you be satisfied, Mr president?” he said.

Anahit Hovhannisyan, a member of the all-Armenian youth and student
movement, stated that the students are now standing up “for justice,
freedom, new Armenia.”

“We are standing up until the national movement ends,” she said.

Armenia’s president is Raffi Hovannisian, and the students are not
going to put up with any other, she said.

Anahit Bakhshyan, a Heritage party member, mentioned political murders
on the “threshold of the third republic” committed under three
presidents of Armenia, with none of them solved until now.

She recalled the ten deaths of March 1, 2008.

“We still remember the murders committed by the army and police on
March 1,” Ms Bakhshyan said.

She also recalled Vahe Avetyan’s murder last year. Although Armenia’s
authorities seem to have nothing in common with that crime, the fact
is that “the military doctor was murdered by an oligarchic MPs’
bodyguards only for speaking ironically of the gang.”

“That crime was as political as the March 1 crime,” she said.

Ms Bakhshyan also recalled the terrorist act in Armenia’s parliament
on October 27, 1999.

“It is clear who benefited from that heinous crime,” she said. During
the trial the perpetrators said the crime had been planned, while
Serzh Sargsyan, who was Head of Armenia’s National Security Service,
never reported anything.

Ms Bakhshyan hopes that the crimes will be solved under Raffi Hovannisian.

“If the incumbent authorities turn out innocent, I, if alive, will
apologize to them for the charges,” she said.

Heritage party Chairman Raffi Hovannisian addressed the people and
asked them to commemorate the victims of Armenians pogroms in Sumgait,
Azerbaijan, in 1988.

“Twenty-five years ago, in Sumgait, people were killed only because
they were Armenians,” he said.

“Today, who dares raise his hand against an Armenian man, citizen or
soldiers, will be punished by our citizens at once,” he said.

“No more losses any,” he added. Mr Hovannisian promises better
education, healthcare and a strong and just army. Art will be
affordable to the people, and emigration will be done away with in
five years.

Mr Hovannisian welcomed the “stronger and progressive” young people
that joined the movement toward victory.

He demands that Armenia’s President Serzh Sargsyan must resign from
the post Chairman of the Governing Council of Yerevan State
University. From April 9, Serzh Sargsyan will not be Armenia’s
president any longer.

Mr Hovannisian said that his public meetings in Armenia’s regions
realize the Armenian people’s demand that all the election riggers –
heads of village communities and governors – apologize to the people
and resign.

“I am not going to tolerate those pressuring an Armenian man, head of
a family, teacher, government official or soldier,” he said.

He also thanked social network users for activity, and invited them to
Freedom Square.

Mr Hovannisian plans to agree on his political agenda with the people
in Freedom Square.

“We need to bring power back – from village to village, from city to
city, as far as the capital,” he said.

Mr Hovannisian asked for the people’s consent to applying to Armenia’s
constitutional Court. Many of the participants in the rally raised
their hands, but many others did not. He proposed approving a final
decision on March 2.

With respect to a proposal for Armenia’s new cabinet by Nikol
Pashinyan, a member of the opposition bloc Armenian National Congress
(ANC), Mr Hovannisian said that others believe it would be an untimely
step now.

Mr Hovannisian invites the people to visit Freedom Square on March1,
with flowers. He intends to lay a wreath at the monument to Alexander
Myasnikyan to commemorate the victims of the tragic events in
Armenia’s capital on March 1, 2008.

He said that a religious service in commemoration of the victims is to
take place at Surb Sargis church at 4:30pm, March 1, 2013.

KARANIAN TO PRESENT ‘ARMENIA & KARABAGH: THE STONE GARDEN TRAVEL GUIDE’ AT ALMA

February 28, 2013

WATERTOWN, Mass.-On Sun., March 10, on the occasion of the third
edition of his travel guide for Armenia and Karabagh, author and
photographer Matthew Karanian will give a talk at the Armenian Library
and Museum of America (ALMA) about the challenges of creating the book,
with anecdotes from his decade of research.

Author-Photographer Matthew Karanian in southern Armenia Karanian
depicts Armenia’s national heritage through his many photographs
of monasteries and fortresses, taking the reader off the beaten
path to ancient sites that are rarely seen by tourists, and to
environmental treasures such as Shikahogh, Teghut, and Sevan. Many of
the book’s photographs were created along with co-photographer Robert
Kurkjian. Images from the historic and ancient diasporan community
of Jerusalem, which is the subject of a future book by Karanian,
will also be shown.

Matthew Karanian is a native of New Britain, Conn. He practiced law
for about a dozen years in Hartford, and now has his own law firm
in Pasadena, Calif. Karanian first traveled to Armenia in 1995, to
work at the American University of Armenia (AUA). He later served
as Associate Dean of the law program at AUA, and as director of the
university’s Legal Research Center. He and his law students founded
Armenia’s first English-language law journal, the Armenian Law Review.

The event begins at 2 p.m. at ALMA, located at 65 Main St. in
Watertown. It is free and open to the public ($5 donation suggested).

Refreshments will follow the presentation, and Karanian will be
available to sign copies of the guidebook.

For more information, e-mail [email protected] or call (617) 926-2562
ext. 4.

PUTIN AND HOLLANDE TO DISCUSS NEW OPTIONS OF RESOLUTION OF SYRIAN ISSUE OVER A BOTTLE OF GOOD WINE

20:05, 28 February, 2013

YEREVAN, FEBRUARY 28, ARMENPRESS: At the meeting with Russian President
Vladimir Putin in Moscow, French President Francois Hollande made
several new proposals on the settlement of the situation in Syria. As
reports Armenpress, referring to Interfax, Putin told at joint press
conference with Hollande. Putin admitted that the discussion of the
Syrian issue at the meeting in the Kremlin drew heated debate.

“It seemed to me that this issue can’t be resolved immediately without
a bottle of vodka, let alone a bottle of good wine. We will have to
sit and think,” Putin said.

“It’s better to do it over a bottle of port,” Hollande responded.

Putin, in turn, said that “Mr. President made some new proposals
during the meeting, which I think we could discuss with all partners
and implement.”

Russian President Vladimir Putin has warned against “international
terrorists” exploiting the Syrian conflict for their own ends.

In accordance with UN data, Syrian clashes lasting about 23 months
have claimed the death of about 70 000 people, including about four
dozen Syrian Armenians.

– See more at:

RAFFI HOVHANNISYAN IS FOR THE ACTIONS

07:53 PM | TODAY | POLITICS

Today during the rally in “freedom” square Raffi Hovhannisyan
mentioned;

“Whoever oppresses the student, the citizen, threaten with the
job resignation; he will withdraw from the university, and not our
youth-our future leaders”.

“RA third president also should withdraw from the University, and he
is no longer a president. Together we will discuss whether he is a
convenient candidate for the YSU council”.

Raffi Hovannisian said that Serzh Sargsyan should be an example
and should give a resignation from the University to Baghramyan
-26(presidential residence).

“Secondly, during our regional visits we implement the requirement
of the Armenian nation, that is to make every violator to leave their
positions and to the people. And it refers to all the governors. They
will have to answer to the people and as for the recognition of the
different countries I will not speak now.

I am thankful to all the social networks for very active participation
in social networks. But I just ask you, as long as we are taking
this fight to the victory, let us be in the square and participate
not with the words or comments, but with the actions in the square”.

“STOP” EMIGRATION AND START “GREAT RETURN”

07:12 PM | TODAY | POLITICS

“Those who have ever felt some kind of uncertainty in my speech,
let listen to me carefully, there is no ” give up” ,- said Raffi
Hovannisian in Freedom Square.

The presidential candidate continued. “Together we already know that we
are a winning nation, we have become a nation and a state. We have said
that we will serve the nation 5 years with the greatest tesponsibilty”.

“There has to be a great return and that great return has started. All
the Armenians are together, under one national flag and the first
one who has started that great return is an artist, intellectual,
who has arrived here from Paris to support his nation, welcome Vardan
Petrosyan”,- he said.

“Vardan Vardan” ,- the gathered crowd was vocalizing when Vardan
Petrosyan appeared on the stage.