Author: Kanayan Tamar

RUSSIA APPEARS UNDETERRED BY IRAN’S GAS COURTSHIP OF ARMENIA

OilPrice.com
April 8 2014

Mystery is swirling around a deal to boost Iranian natural gas exports
to Armenia: why does the Kremlin seem to be going along with the idea?

On March 19, Armenian Energy Minister Armen Movsisian announced that
Armenia plans to increase its imports of gas from neighbouring Iran
to 2 billion cubic meters per year, an increase of nearly 75 percent
over the current annual volume. In exchange, Armenia would export
electricity to Iran.

The announcement marked a sudden turnabout for Armenia: just late
last year, officials in Yerevan rebuffed Iranian overtures concerning
additional gas sales. Armenian leaders have not commented about what
prompted them to change course. Further details are expected when the
two countries’ intergovernmental commission meets this May, and if
Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, as announced, visits Armenia “soon.”

A curious aspect to the new Iranian-Armenian relationship is the
Russian reaction, or lack thereof: Gazprom, the state-controlled
energy giant that now controls Armenia’s entire gas-pipeline system
and furnishes most of the country’s gas, has not commented on the
deal. Its current silence is a sharp departure from the behavior of
Russian officials back in 2007, when they pushed forcefully to limit
the diameter of the 140-kilometer-long Iranian-Armenian pipeline
to preclude the possibility of large-scale exports beyond Armenian
borders.

Local observers offer a variety of explanations for Russia’s current
position.

Some believe that Russia’s silence is connected with its desire
to bring Armenia into the Moscow-led Customs Union by 2015. While
the Armenian government is committed to joining the union, popular
enthusiasm for it appears to be lagging. Going along with larger and
cheaper Iranian gas sales, then, may be a way for the Kremlin to help
the Armenian government “sell” the Customs Union to the population.

>From Moscow’s perspective, the importance of Armenian membership in
the Customs Union has increased in the wake of the winter’s events
in Ukraine, where an EU-oriented government replaced the disgraced,
pro-Moscow administration of Viktor Yanukovych.

“Since it was the Iranian side who first spoke about the low prices
of their natural gas, Russia had to give its ‘permission’ to Armenia
… as a strategic ally,” said political analyst Styopa Safarian,
a member of the opposition Heritage Party. “Otherwise, it would turn
out that Moscow was not a friend, but an enemy who acted against our
national interests.”

The price of the proffered gas has not been determined, but Iranian
Ambassador Mohammad Raiesi described it as “incomparably low.”

Related Article: Pipeline to Turkey Intensifies Dispute Over Iraqi Oil

Other observers in Yerevan suggest that Moscow’s silence is the product
of the recent, radical change in geopolitical conditions: given the
widening divide between Russia and the West over the Crimea crisis,
the Kremlin is reshuffling the deck of energy cards that it plays in
order to further its diplomatic aims.

“The situation has changed and Russia has to adjust itself to those
transformations,” commented Manvel Sargsian, director of the Armenian
Center for National and International Studies.

An unanswered question surrounding the Iranian exports concerns the
potential for Armenia to re-export a portion of Tehran’s gas. Such
a possibility would seem to go against Moscow’s interests, given
that the European Union is now heavily dependent on Russian gas,
thus providing the Kremlin with considerable diplomatic leverage.

Conversely, the United States and EU likely wouldn’t mind seeing
Armenia serve as a corridor for Iranian exports to Europe, something
that would contribute to the EU’s goal of diversifying its sources
of gas imports.

“The United States seems much more willing to have Iranian gas and
oil brought to the market, as both a reward for the positive talks
with Iran and as a way to hurt Russian President Putin and exploit
Russian dependence on high energy prices,” said Richard Giragosian,
director of the Regional Studies Center.

The United States, which announced in November 2013 a six-month break
in its sanctions on Iranian crude-oil exports, has not commented
about the intended Iranian gas sales to Armenia. In recognition of
the economic impact of Turkey and Azerbaijan’s blockades of Armenia’s
western and eastern borders, Washington has tended to turn a blind
eye to Yerevan’s trade dealings with its southern neighbor, Iran.

Representatives of the Ministry of Energy could not be reached for
comment about any discussions with the US about the Iranian deal.

Galust Sahakian, a senior member of President Serzh Sargsyan’s
Republican Party of Armenia, told EurasiaNet.org that any US objections
would be “a matter for negotiation.”

Responding to a query from EurasiaNet.org, a US Embassy representative
in Yerevan emailed the following statement: “We have direct discussions
with the Armenian government concerning US and international sanctions
against Iran. We are in constant communication on what activities
and transactions are sanctioned and what are not, and we appreciate
Armenia’s cooperation in this area.”

Related Article: Iran’s Return Prompts Changes to Saudi Arabia
Energy Strategy

Armenia’s reason for seeking “cheap” Iranian gas is clear: the consumer
price of Russian gas is a painful issue for Armenians.

Consumers currently pay 158,000 drams or $391 per 1,000 cubic meters,
a huge sum for a country where one-third of the population of roughly
2.97 million people lives in poverty. Adding irritation to frustration,
that price is at least 7.5 times higher than consumers pay in Belarus,
a non-gas-producing member of the Customs Union.

Prices could soar still higher if an expected 4.2-percent-increase
in the wholesale price of Russian gas goes through on July 1.

Already skittish about demonstrations after election-related political
upheaval last year, the Armenian government has no interest in seeing
energy again become a cause for protests. Nonetheless, questions
still persist about how Armenia can import a large volume of Iranian
gas and keep Russia, its prime economic and military partner, happy.

On March 28, President Sargsyan described the border price ($189) paid
for Russian gas as ” the lowest possible price that Russia sells to
any country,” and claimed that “no one” talks anymore about the price
of gas. He called on Energy Ministry officials to do a better job of
raising public awareness that the cost of overhauling infrastructure
is responsible for the dramatic difference in the border price and
consumer cost, the Regnum news agency reported.

With no attempt at irony, Sahakian, the senior Republican Party
official, called Iranian gas Armenia’s “reserve program.”

Analysts doubt that Yerevan makes any decisions on its own about gas.

Even if Iran, as promised, supplies bargain-basement-priced gas to
Armenia, Gazprom, with its control of distribution, will influence what
consumers ultimately pay. “The real question is how much freedom and
flexibility Moscow will allow Yerevan to have in terms of expanding
its relations and energy deals with Tehran,” said Giragosian.

By Marianna Grigoryan

DEATH MARCHES IN WORLD HISTORY

Rappler, Philippines
April 9 2014

The Bataan Death March, commemorated every April 9, is not unique
to Philippine history. Here are a few other similar tragedies in
world history.

MANILA, Philippines – For Filipinos, the term death march conjures
images of the Bataan Death March, where 78,100 exhausted Filipino and
American prisoners of war were forced by the Japanese to march 128
kilometers from the tip of Bataan province to waiting prison trains
in San Fernando, Pampanga.

A death march is a forced march, usually by prisoners, in which
many of the marchers suffer and die through multiple factors, such
as exhaustion, starvation, exposure to the elements, abuse inflicted
by their guards, or all of the above.

Legally, death marches are war crimes under the Geneva Conventions
for the treatment of prisoners of war and protection of civilians
in wartime. Non-wartime death marches, meanwhile, are crime against
humanity under inhumane acts and forcible transfer of populations
clauses.

Despite its infamy, the Bataan Death March is not the only case of
such an event in history. Here are other tragic episodes that were
considered death marches in world history.

REMEMBERING THE TRAIL. Route of the Trail of Tears outlined by the
US National Park Service. Picture from Southern Spaces/NPS

Trail of tears

The “Trail of Tears” is the forced removal of Native American tribes
in Southeastern US to relocation sites in present-day Oklahoma and
Arkansas following the passing of the Indian Removal Act of 1830.

While some native tribes complied with the relocation, others resisted
through a series of wars, but were defeated and forcibly removed as
prisoners of war.

Overseen by the US military, the relocations followed land and river
routes, with those who took the land route suffering the most, having
to deal with starvation, blizzards, freezing winters, diseases among
those marching, and other privations. The forced removals occurred
from 1830 to 1847. Of approximately 61,000 Native Americans forcibly
relocated, around 8,000 to 16,000 died along the way.

While the US military took measures to ensure the safety of the
displaced natives, it was still considered a death march as it
was a forced removal of a population over inhospitable terrain
and conditions. Furthermore, US government agencies handling the
relocation were neglectful of the needs of the relocated natives,
with their poor logistical decisions and the inadequate shelters they
provided causing misery and death.

ARMENIAN ATROCITY: Male Victims of the Armenian Genocide and
Deportation. Photo from the University of Columbia.

Armenian genocide and deportations

Armenians were one of the Christian subjects of the Muslim Ottoman
Empire (modern day Turkey). The empire gave way to an ultranationalist
Turkish revolution, which viewed the Armenians as roadblocks to their
eastern expansion and their ideal of a unified Muslim Turkish nation.

At the outbreak of World War I, the ultranationalists joined with the
Central Powers and at the same time moved against the Armenians. On
the pretext that they were aiding Turkey’s Russian enemies, thousands
of Armenian men and community leaders were rounded up, imprisoned,
and slain.

In 1915, Armenian communities were relocated en masse by the government
to a village in Syria under the pretext that they were being moved
to a demilitarized zone for their safety. What happened next were a
series of death marches.

The caravans of Armenians were made to pass through difficult and wild
terrain, and Turkish policemen guarding the caravans were believed
to have allowed bandits to attack the caravans. The bandits not only
stole from the Armenians, but they also committed rapes, murders, and
kidnappings of Armenian girls whom the bandits sold to prostitution
or domestic slavery.

Even the policemen were said to have participated in the atrocities,
joining in the rapes and kidnappings. They forced the march to continue
even when food and water ran out and anyone who lagged behind was
beaten, while those who could not continue were shot.

The ordeal of the Armenians ended in 1918. A million Armenians died of
the genocide, with 80,000 from the deportations. With the perpetrators
largely unpunished, the genocide remains a sensitive issue for both
Turks and Armenians to this day.

MOBILE HOLOCAUST: Prisoners of Nazi Death Camps marching under the
gaze of German guards. Photo from the US Holocaust Memorial Museum.

Holocaust death marches

Death camps are the common image of the infamous genocide of millions
of Jews and others by the Nazis during World War II, but death marches
were also held.

With the war going badly for the Germans in 1944, the Nazis started
evacuating prisoners from outer prison camps into the German interior.

This was done so the prisoners would not fall into the allies’ hands
and reveal full details of German atrocities. They were also used
as hostages.

Most of the evacuations were initially done via railways or ships, but
because of the allies’ advance and air superiority, these evacuations
were unsafe. Prisoners were then instead ordered to evacuate on foot
or via small boats and box trains.

Strict orders were given to kill those who could not travel. Already
weakened by maltreatment in prison camps, some of them were slain
before the evacuation could even begin. Along the way the Nazi guards
killed stragglers and anyone who collapsed from exhaustion.

Evacuation atrocities reached their height during the winters of
1944 and 1945, when many of the prisoners died of exhaustion or froze
to death. It also weakened many individuals who were then killed by
their Nazi guards. Even those in the transports weren’t so lucky, as
the open trains exposed them to the cold winter. Those in small boats
were mistaken by the allies’ planes for German military transports.

The evacuation was never completed and continued almost until war’s
end in 1945, with some bands of prisoners rescued by the advancing
allied armies as they marched.

DOOMED DRAFTEES: Fears that men such as these would be drafted into
the North Korean Army forced South Korea to Draft them first as part
of the National Defense Corps. File Photo from Wikimedia Commons.

Korea’s national defense corps

During the war between North and South Korea, the North gained an
early advantage. To prevent North Korea from getting more recruits,
the South Korean Army rounded up men aged 17 to 40 near North Korea
in a program called “National Defense Corps” in 1951.

Around 400,000 men were rounded up and organized into 49 units for
training.

Early South Korea is known for the prevalence of corruption in
government. With the US’ generous funding programs for South Korea’s
defense during the war, there was a lot of money to be embezzled. And
money for the National Defense Corps program was stolen by its top
officers, leading to deprivation among men in training.

The draftees were made to march south to South Korean bases. Due
to the freezing Korean winter and the lack of food and inadequate
clothing, approximately 50,000 to 90,000 recruits died during the
march. Afterwards, the National Assembly of South Korea disbanded the
program and investigated the incident. 5 of the top officers involved
in the embezzlement of funds were executed. – Rappler. com

TURKEY LOSING PROPAGANDA WAR OVER SYRIAN ARMENIANS

Al-Monitor
April 8 2014

Author: Amberin Zaman
Posted April 8, 2014

“The bearded men came to our home. They spoke Turkish. They rifled
through our belongings and asked if we had guns.” This is how Sirpuhi
Titizyan, a refugee from Kassab, a mainly Armenian village in northern
Syria that was overrun by jihadists fighters on March 21, described
her ordeal to Agos, an Istanbul-based Armenian weekly.

The frail octogenarian blamed Turkey’s prime minister, Recep Tayyip
Erdogan, for Kassab’s fall. “Had Erdogan not cleared the path to
Kassab, this many evil men would not have come,” Titizyan said. “May
Allah blind Erdogan,” she thundered in a separate interview with Aris
Nalci, a Turkish-Armenian blogger.

But readers of the mass circulation daily Hurriyet, which
disingenuously claimed to have interviewed the sisters first,
were offered a completely different version of events. When asked
to respond to allegations that Turkey had helped to orchestrate the
attack against Kassab, Sirpuhi was quoted as saying: “If this were so,
why would the [Turkish] government be helping us?”

Sirpuhi and her sister Satenik have become the unwitting tools of a
propaganda war pitting Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s regime and
members of the Armenian diaspora against Turkey and its rebel proteges.

The Islamist fighters promised the women, who were among a handful
of elderly people left behind, that they would help them join their
fellow villagers in regime-controlled areas of Latakia and Tartus. But
they handed the pair over to Turkish authorities in the neighboring
province of Hatay instead.

The sisters have since been resettled in Vakifli, the sole
Armenian-inhabited village left in Turkey since 1915.

That was when more than a million Armenians were slaughtered by
Ottomans in what most historians concurred was the first genocide
of the 20th century. Much of the violence took place as hundreds of
thousands of Armenians were uprooted from their homes and ordered on a
“death march” to the Syrian desert in Deir al-Zor.

Coming just weeks before the 99th anniversary of the genocide on April
24, the campaign in Kassab was bound to bruise Turkey’s image. And that
is why, wrote Agos editor-in-chief, Rober Koptas, Turkey intervened
with opposition fighters to prevent them from moving against Kassab
in the past. So what prompted the change? he asked.

Most Armenians, Koptas notes, would give the shortcut answer that it
was “to harm Armenians.” But as he said, any harm suffered by Kassab’s
Armenians would harm Turkey, too. The more likely reason that Turkey
did not stand in the way of the rebels this time was because the
conflict was tipping in the regime’s favor. Kassab would give the
rebels a strategic foothold in Latakia and unprecedented access to
the Mediterranean Sea. But at what price?

Claims that the jihadists had desecrated churches and beheaded
Christians in Kassab have been debunked. And there has been only one
civilian death reported so far. Yet, the Armenian National Committee
of America (ANCA) called on US President Barack Obama “to immediately
press Turkey to stop facilitating attacks on civilians in Kassab,
and to investigate Turkey’s reported assistance to foreign fighters
associated with US-designated terrorists groups.”

ANCA is at the forefront of a long-running campaign to get the US
Congress to formally recognize the Armenian genocide. Armenia’s
President Serzh Sargsyan was quick to draw parallels with 1915.

Speaking in The Hague on the sidelines of the World Nuclear Summit,
Sargsyan said: “All of us remember the history of Kassab very well.

Unfortunately, in the course of the past centuries it has been rich
in hellish realities of deportations of Armenians.”

Armenian-American celebrities like Kim Kardashian and Cher have waded
in with tweets to “Save Kassab.”

Turkey denies it had any role in the fall of Kassab. In a statement
on April 6, the Turkish Foreign Ministry declared that it had taken
“swift measures to ensure that the people of Kassab were kept out of
harm’s way.” Turkish authorities were coordinating with the Armenian
Patriarchate to facilitate passage for those Armenians who wished to
come to Turkey.

Some 18 Kassab Armenians have been brought over to Turkey and joined
the Titizyan sisters in Vakifli, where the Turkish Red Crescent
was tending to them. But Agos editor Koptas believes it’s more of a
public relations exercise than a humanitarian mission. “It is clear
to us that the rebel assault against Kassab was launched from Turkish
soil,” Koptas told Al-Monitor, echoing eyewitness reports from the
Turkish-Syrian border. “Turkey is now in an extremely difficult
position and is trying to repair its image,” he said.

It’s easy to see why Turkey’s actions have triggered such controversy.

The horrors of 1915 are never far from the Armenians’ collective
memory. In Kassab, which overlooks Turkey, “the feelings for Turkey
were not of yearning but of dislike,” recalled Nigol Bezjian, a
Syrian-Armenian filmmaker who as a child spent summers in Kassab.

“From what I remember there was talk about the genocide and there was
talk about inhumane violence, but there was also a sense of pride
in that Kassab along with a few other Armenian villages — Aramo,
Ghnemieh and Yacoubieh — continued to be inhabited by Armenians
after the genocide,” Bezjian told Al-Monitor.

Turkey denies that there was a genocide, and has pumped millions
of dollars into a largely unsuccessful campaign to peddle its own
narrative which proposes that, swept up in the chaos of the collapsing
Ottoman Empire, the Armenians mostly perished as a result of famine
and disease.

Ankara’s credibility with the Armenians was further dented when it
junked a set of protocols it signed with Armenia in October 2009 that
were supposed to have established diplomatic ties and reopened its
long-sealed land border with the former Soviet republic.

The ink on the documents had barely dried when Turkey declared that it
could not implement them unless Armenia withdrew from at least some of
the territories it had seized from Azerbaijan during a bitter six-year
war over the disputed Nagorno-Karabakh enclave that ended in 1994.

Turkey’s minister for European Union affairs, Mevlut Cavusoglu,
asserted in a recent interview that Armenia had delivered “a verbal
pledge to withdraw from territories under its occupation” before the
protocols were signed. “But they failed to keep their promise; it is
Armenia’s fault,” Cavusoglu insisted. But Western diplomats who were
close to the negotiations say that Nagorno-Karabakh never came up.

There is no mention of the issue in the protocols, and it is widely
assumed that Turkey’s volte-face was a result of Azerbaijan’s threats
to cut off vital oil and natural gas sales.

Despite the freeze in official ties between Turkey and Armenia, civil
society initiatives to heal the wounds of the past are flourishing. A
growing number of Turkish academics and intellectuals are rejecting
the official account of what happened in 1915. A commemoration of
the tragedy will be held April 24 in Istanbul’s central Taksim Square.

Now many fret that Turkish meddling in Kassab will undo such progress.

Some Armenian intellectuals, in turn, worry that disinformation about
Kassab may hurt the Armenian cause.

“Kassab is the heart and soul of the Syrian-Armenian community, a
surviving artifact of life we had before the genocide. Losing it feels
a bit like a final erasure,” explained Elyse Semerdjian, who teaches
Middle East and Islamic History at Whitman College, in an interview
with Al-Monitor. But Semerdjian cautions against linking the events
in Kassab to 1915 “to attack Turkey’s role in the Syrian conflict as
well as agitate further for Armenian genocide recognition.” She said,
“Genocide recognition is a noble cause, but it should not come at
the expense of Armenian credibility on human rights.”

Bezjian agrees that the Armenian community must not allow itself to
be manipulated by the warring sides. “When things were good and Assad
vacationed with Erdogan, all books about the Armenian genocide were
confiscated from the bookstores by Syrian secret service agents,”
Bezjian recalled. “Now that things have turned the other way, Assad
talks about the genocide to justify his own conduct.”

ROUHANI REITERATES PEACEFUL SETTLEMENT OF NAGORNO-KARABAKH DISPUTE

Fars News Agency, Iran
April 9 2014

TEHRAN (FNA)- Iranian President Hassan Rouhani underlined Tehran’s
resolve to utilize its experiences to maintain peace and security in
the region, including settlement of the dispute between Azerbaijan
and Armenia over the Nagorno-Karabakh region

“We are by all means ready to resolve the regional problems,
including the one in Nagorno-Karabakh region, within the framework
of international regulations and justice,” President Rouhani said,
addressing a joint press conference with his visiting Azeri counterpart
Ilham Aliyev in Tehran on Wednesday.

He underlined that Iran does not accept any change to the geographical
borders of the region, and said, “We should all try to settle these
differences in a political and peaceful manner.”

The Iranian president pointed to his talks with his Azeri counterpart,
and said, “W share common views on energy, gas and the petrochemical
sectors as well as water, power and technical cooperation”

President Rouhani said that during his meeting with Aliyev they talked
about expansion of bilateral ties in the future.

“We agreed to facilitate reciprocal visits of the two countries’
nationals,” the Iranian president said.

Rouhani noted that he and Aliyev had common views on religious and
Islamic issues, including the point that extremism under the name of
Islam is a threat to the region and in order to restore stability
to the region there is no way other than moderation and fighting
extremism and terrorism.

“The two countries share views on international issues and their
mutual cooperation and the Azeri president in the meeting underlined
Iran’s peaceful nuclear rights,” the Iranian president said.

The Azeri president, for his part, underlined the need for maintaining
the territorial integrity of his country, and said, “Iran’s stance
in this regard is closer to justice and fairness and I thank Iran
for this.”

On December 2013, a senior Azeri political activist underlined Iran’s
experiences and abilities in facing regional crises, and called
for Tehran’s assistance to end the Nagorno-Karabakh dispute between
Azerbaijan and Armenia.

President of Vahdat (Unity) Political Party and former member of
Supreme Council of Azerbaijan Republic Taher Karimli said that the
Minsk Group (Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, Minister for
European Affairs of France Thierry Repentin, US Assistant Secretary of
State for European and Eurasian Affairs Victoria Nuland) have expressed
their pleasure in Iran’s mediation to solve the Nagorno-Karabakh
conflict.

Karimli stressed that Azerbaijan Republic Vahdat Party has always
supported Iran’s mediation to find a peaceful solution to the conflict
between Baku and Yerevan, because of many historical, cultural and
religious commonalities existing between Iran and Azerbaijan.

Armenia and Azerbaijan have thus remained officially at war over the
Nagorno-Karabakh and the dispute is a major source of tension in the
South Caucasus region wedged between Iran, Russia and Turkey.

No country – not even Armenia – officially recognizes Karabakh as an
independent state.

The mountainous rebel region has been controlled by ethnic Armenians
since it broke free of Baku’s control after a fierce war in the early
1990s that killed 30,000 people.

ARMENIAN GENOCIDE SURVIVORS TELL THEIR STORY

17:53 09.04.2014

Armenian Genocide

On April 5, the New York Armenian Home held its annual meeting at
which two Armenian Genocide survivors spoke with the media to tell
their story about the annihilation of the Armenian people almost 100
years ago, the Western Queens Gazette reports.

The interviews were given in conjunction with the upcoming 99th
anniversary commemorating the Armenian Genocide that resulted in more
than 1.5 million Armenians murdered by the Ottoman Empire during a
deliberate and planned slaughter of men, women and children, because
of their ethnicity.

“The Armenian Genocide, carried out by the leaders of the Ottoman
Empire and continued by the Young Turks, was a motivation for Adolf
Hitler and the German Third Reich to murder more than six million
Jews and more than 11 million in total throughout Europe,” the
author reminds.

The New York Armenian Home in Flushing is a senior nursing home like
no other. Started in 1948, around the same time as the start of the
United Nations, it provided a home for Armenian Genocide survivors
who could no longer take care of themselves. At its height it served
more than 90 survivors. Today there are about 45 residents of Armenian
descent. The home receives no governmental funding. All support comes
from private fundraising projects and the generosity of the survivors
and their descendants.

One hundred and four year old Perouze Kalousdian and 99 year old
Azniv Guiragossian told their harrowing stories with the assistance
of translators. Both women have seen their share of atrocities against
their families, as well as against the Armenian people. The atrocities
included persecution, arrests, exile from their homes, confiscation
of their homes and personal property, false arrests and ultimately
death at the hands of Turkish death squads.

Both survivors were very young when chaos broke out around them.

They were both forced to leave their homes and were separated from
their families. Kalousdian was six when she witnessed some of the
atrocities during the Armenian Genocide. She reported that the Turks
took males over the age of 15, including her two uncles, tied them up
two by two and threw them from a bridge into the Euphrates River. She
and her mother were forced to become servants for Turkish leaders.

Many of her fellow Armenian women were also forced to work without pay
for the Turks. Many were raped, tortured and ultimately killed. Her
grandfather smuggled her father out of the country. He fled to the
United States and later returned to find her and her mother before
bringing the family to America.

Guiragossian, born in Urfa, Turkey was made an orphan during
the Armenian Genocide. Her daughter, Arpi Nardone and son Shahen
Guiragossian, who accompanied their mother for the interview, explained
that when they were growing up their mother constantly spoke about her
childhood and feeling hungry, and cold after being separated from her
parents. Their mother told them that she lived with a Turkish family
after the death of her parents. She witnessed her mother giving birth
to a child who died in the Syrian desert and the death of her mother,
two months later. Guiragossian was sent to an Armenian orphanage,
where she later met her husband and was married at age 16 in an
arranged marriage, to a man twice her age (32).

Armenians worldwide will commemorate the 99th anniversary of the
Armenian Genocide on Sunday, April 27. In New York City thousands of
Armenians will gather in Times Square from 2 p.m. to 4 p.m. to remember
and tell the stories to the world about what happened to their people
beginning Apr. 24, 1915. The genocide lasted from1915-1923, when 1.5
million Armenians were killed and more than 500,000 were exiled from
the Ottoman Empire.

By the conclusion of 1923, the entire Armenian population of Anatolia
and Western Armenia had been either killed, deported or became refugees
in other countries.

AZERBAIJANI MEDIA DISTORTED WORDS OF IRANIAN LEADER

April 09, 2014 | 15:07

The visit of Azerbaijani president Ilham Aliyev to neighboring Iran
became an occasion for another attempt of spreading Azerbaijani
misinformation.

Azerbaijani media once again tried to deceive listeners and readers
by imposing their point of view, including the statement made by the
President of the Islamic Republic of Iran Hassan Rouhani.

During a join press conference with his Azerbaijani counterpart,
Rouhani touched upon Karabakh conflict, noting that no change will
be acceptable in regional geopolitics.

He once again voiced Tehran’s readiness to help solve regional
problems, including that of the Karabakh region within the frameworks
of international laws and justice, Iranian IRNA agency reported.

All must help settle disagreements through diplomatic and peaceful
ways, said the Iranian President.

Azerbaijani media outlets misinterpreted Rouhani’s words, saying he
allegedly spoke about inadmissibility of changing the geographical
boundaries in the region.

News from Armenia – NEWS.am

“FOREIGN PROPHETS” WILL NOT HELP

April 9 2014

U.S. President Barack Obama was born in Honolulu, the capital of Hawaii
islands. The islands, known we know, received the status of American
island only in 1959. And two years later, the current president of
the United States was born. During the campaign, Obama’s opponents
were spreading rumors that he was not actually born in Honolulu,
and therefore he cannot qualify for the position of the president
of the country. The law in the U.S. is strict in this regard. And
there is a logic in it: to lead the country you need to live with the
concerns of this country. The law in Armenia is not so strict. And
today, when there are rumors of bringing a prime minister or even a
president from abroad, I recall this very logic. Let me immediately
say that the matter is not about the “Karabakh people”. He how
thinks that Artsakh is not Armenia in terms of history and culture,
he actually agrees with our neighbors, who are looking for “grounds”
of how to attack that part of Armenia. I am talking about bringing,
for example, Ara Abrahamyan and Armen Sargsyan from abroad and giving
a high position here. I do not know Ara Abrahamyan, although we can
conclude from his speaking that he is not Socrates. I know Armen
Sargsyan and I have a deep sympathy and respect for him.

But regardless of this or that individual’s personal characteristics,
it is important that they have been cut off from the reality of Armenia
for decades, and the problems which we encounter are not technical and
“managerial”. Any managerial experience acquired abroad or memorizing
all intelligent books in the world about the subject will not help
the foreigners to correct the situation. Because our problems are
political, psychological and I would even say spiritual.

To solve them, one should not only know and comprehend them, but also
feel. This can be done only by a man who has lived in the country over
these 24 years. The Ministry of Culture did not find a better option
than to appoint the head of the National Opera and Ballet Theatre a
bureaucrat who had worked in Russia’s diplomacy, who has not lived in
Armenia for at least 12 years. I do not know this person, maybe he is a
very brilliant young man. However, opera is not a football team, where
you can invite a foreign coach, it is one of the spiritual centers of
Armenia. To do something there, it needs not only the trust of the
artists and musicians, but the audience as well. The problem is not
that the director of the opera should sing, dance, or conduct. The
problem is that he should experience what our audience actually needs.

That is what the Russian official cannot do. Wasn’t such person found
in Armenia?

ARAM ABRAHAMYAN

Read more at:

TER-PETROSYAN: PM’S RESIGNATION WAS HISTORIC MOMENT

15:32 * 09.04.14

In an interview with iLur.am, first President Levon
Ter-Petrosyan described the prime minister’s resignation
as a historic moment resulting from the opposition’s
pressures.[]

Asked to comment on Tigran Sargsyan’s decision to quit office, the
former president said he thinks that the move was too important and
serious to be understood properly now.

“Abstracting from the prime minister’s personality, it is first of
all necessary to treat his resignation as a move within the historic
context, which I don’t think has been properly realized by the society
and even the political parties. Over the period of independence,
our country is facing the first ever government change resulting from
the opposition’s pressure. Hence, all the rumors saying that it isn’t
possible to achieve a constitutional change in Armenia vanish into
thin air. And the process of impeaching the government is nothing more
than a regular mechanism of constitutionality applied in democratic
countries,” he said.

DAVID BABAYAN: AZERBAIJAN IS ENGAGED IN BLACK PR

By raising the subject of hazardous waste, Azerbaijan is engaged
in black PR against Armenia and Nagorno Karabakh, David Babayan,
the spokesman for the President of Nagorno Karabakh, told Aysor.am
when commenting on the Azerbaijani president’s statement.

Ilham Aliyev said at the recent Nuclear Security Summit that Armenia
has turned Nagorno Karabakh into a nuclear waste repository.

“Imagine what would happen if Azerbaijan were in control of Karvachar
where the majority of Artsakh rivers head. Azerbaijan would poison
the pure water springs and later shift the blame onto Armenia, which
allegedly turned Artsakh into a waste repository,” D. Babayan said.

According to him, Azerbaijan paves the way for implementing its
‘ecological terrorism’ scenarios, attributing the blame to Armenia.

01.04.2014, 17:22

Aysor.am

RUSSIA TO SEND HUMANITARIAN AID TO SYRIAN ARMENIANS ABUSED BY MILITANTS IN KESSAB

18:46 02/04/2014

BEIRUT, April 2 (RIA Novosti) – Russia will send humanitarian aid to
Syrian Armenians who suffered abuse from local militants in Kessab
within several days, Sergei Stepashin, Chairman of the Imperial
Orthodox Palestine Society (IOPS ), told RIA Novosti Wednesday.

“At a meeting with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad we were informed
that humanitarian aid collected by IOPS will be sent to Syrian
Armenians who became victims of violent attack on their village
[Kessab],” Stepashin said.

IOPS delegation headed by Stepashin held a meeting with Syrian
President Bashar Assad, Prime Minister Wael al-Khalq, and members of
the Syrian Cabinet on Tuesday.

“We have already sent $2.5 million in aid,” Stepashin asserted.

He also added that all the funds were collected by Russian citizens.

Home to over 2,000 ethnic Armenians the town of Kessab is located in
Syria’s Latakia province. The town fell into rebels’ hands on March
21 when al-Qaeda backed militants crossed into Syria from Turkey and
seized the village after a brutal battle with Syrian troops.

The Armenian government later called on the UN to protect Kessab.

Russian Foreign Ministry also expressed concern over militants’
attack on Kessab.

“The seizure by extremists of the town of Kessab elicited a broad
response in Armenian communities throughout the world,” Russian
Foreign Ministry said in its March statement.

Moscow has previously directed humanitarian aid to crisis-hit Syria,
accusing the US of encouraging extremists who are financing terrorism
and supplying terrorist groups with weapons.

Spending on foreign aid by Russia reached $458 million in 2012,
while the world’s major aid donors spent $125.6 billion, according
to the country’s finance ministry.