Author: Karapet Navasardian

President Serzh Sargsyan and Mrs. Rita Sargsyan attended today the re-consecration ceremony of one of Tbilisi’s oldest churches, Armenian Cathedral of St George, which was led by His Holiness Karekin II, Supreme Patriarch and Catholicos of All Armenians.

The ceremony was joined by Bishop Vazgen Mirzakhanyan, Primate of the Georgian Diocese, the donors of the church restoration program, by numerous guests and religious people of the Georgian Diocese, as well as by church benefactor Bidzina Ivanishvili, Georgia’s former prime minister, who was awarded by the Supreme Patriarch high decorations of the Armenian Apostolic Church together with the other benefactors.

The ceremony was followed by the opening of a memorial plaque bearing the names of the benefactors of the church reconstruction program.

The restoration project of the Cathedral of St George (XIII ct.) of the Georgian Diocese started in 2012, becoming one of the most important programs of the Initiative for the Development of Armenia (IDeA) and receiving the blessings of the Catholicos of All Armenians and the support of Georgian authorities.
The same year, the Foundation for the Reconstruction of the Cathedral of St. George was established with the aim of getting donations, managing financial resources, as well as of supervising the technical works to restore the church and its frescos.

During the church restoration works, both Armenian and Georgian specialists were engaged, including architect-restorer Anatoli Solomnishvili (who is also the author of the restoration projects of Avlabar’s St. Etchmiadzin Church (XVIII ct.)), restorer-builder Zurab Gachechiladze, the senior restorer of the RA Ministry of Culture, Arzhanik Hovhannisyan, head of the Research Center for Restoration of Monumental Painting, Otar Chakvetadze, head of the Technical Expertise Division of the Georgian Engineering Academy, as well as experts from the Mother See of Holy Etchmiadzin and the Matenadaran.

During the three-year restoration works, a close eye was kept on the fortification of the church, since underground waters posed a real danger to the church, wrecking the church foundation and undermining the brick wall.

During the works, the church foundation was fortified and replaced with a waterproofing foundation, a drainage system was installed, the walls and dome were reinforced, the external coating was removed and the church’s initial appearance with bricks was restored.

Special attention was paid to the restoration of the frescos and sacred images inside the Cathedral of St George. Its entrance and by-sacristy walls, arch niches and columns are decorated with the paintings of the Hovnatanians, Gevorg Bashinjaghian and unknown masters. The restoration works of frescos and sacred images were carried out by the employees of the Research Center for Restoration of Monumental Painting under the leadership of Arzhanik Hovhannisyan and with the consultative support of Fabrizio Iacobini, head of the Center for Preservation and Restoration of Cultural Heritage of Florence.

The Cathedral of St George has been restored through charitable donations. The total cost of the restoration program amounts to 3.5 million dollars. The main donors of the program are the Vardanian family, Albert Avdolyan, Sergey Sarkisov and Rusudan Makhashvili, Danil Khachaturov, as well as Bidzina Ivanishvili.

The Cathedral of St George (or the Great Church of Berd) is one of the oldest churches in Tbilisi. It was one of the Armenian spiritual, cultural and enlightenment centers of medieval times. From 14 to 15 centuries, numerous manuscripts were created in the church school which are kept in the Matenadaran. The church has been repeatedly damaged by invasions and fires and has been restored.
The yard of the Cathedral of St George houses the tombs of Sayat-Nova, Gevorg Bashinjaghian, Mikhail Loris-Melikov, Arshak Ter-Gukasov, Ivan Lazarev and Boris Shelkovnikov.

Armenian National Assembly Speaker Galust Sahakyan met with the Chairman of the Syrian Parliament Mohammad Jihad al-Laham on the sidelines of the 133^rd assembly of the Inter-Parliamentary Union.

Galust Sahakyan said it’s a great pain for Armenia to see the developments in Syria.

“We are more than friends with Syria. We never forget that Syria opened its doors for Armenians that fled genocide,” he said.

Speaking about the Armenian-Syrian inter-parliamentary cooperation, Mr.Sahakyan noted that Armenian MPs periodically visit Syria to learn about the situation on the spot and report detailed information.

Galust Sahakyan noted that wars with features of genocide continue today because the Armenian Genocide was not properly condemned by the world at the time.

The Speaker reiterated Armenia’s willingness to stand by brotherly Syria on all international platforms.

Mohammad Jihad al-Laham invited Galust Sahakyan to Syria.

The Chairman of the Syrian Parliament expressed gratitude for the meeting and said: “The Russian-Syrian coalition has already achieved serious progress.  We are grateful to you for supporting us. Please, convey President Bashar al-Assad’s thanks to Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan.”

Speaking about the assembly of the Inter-Parliamentary Union, Mohammad Jihad al-Laham said “it’s sad the international community is using double standards with regard to Syria.”

The Hayastan All-Armenian Fund has begun the construction of a state-of-the-art oncology center in Stepanakert. The project is sponsored by the fund’s French affiliate, with additional financial support from the government of NKR.

Having laid the foundations, crews are now building the ground floor of the facility, which is located on the same campus along with the Stepanakert Republican Hospital and the Stepanakert Policlinics. The Oncology Center of Stepanakert will comprise three floors, with a total area of close to 2,520 square meters, and will be connected to the Republican Hospital via the ground floor.

The center will offer the full complement of oncological diagnosis and treatment services, with the exception of radiotherapy. According to Dr. Armen Hayriyan, NKR’s top oncologist and executive director of the Oncology Center, annually more than 700 cancer patients receive inpatient care at the center’s old building, which is a run-down, 1960s structure sorely lacking modern amenities. Given the old facility’s limited capabilities, Dr. Hayriyan says, many patients opt to receive treatment in Yerevan or even abroad.

Currently a staff of medical professionals are being to receive advanced training in France. “The new Oncology Center is poised to be one of the best in the region,” Dr. Hayriyan says.

The center will comprise general and clinical-pathomorphology laboratories; X-ray, mammography, and MRI departments; and departments of surgery and intensive therapy, including chemotherapy. The facility will have 35 patient beds.

The French-Armenian community continues to sponsor major health and education projects in Armenia and NKR alike. They include the Zangezur Cardiology Center, in Armenia’s Goris Region; and the Yeznik Mozian Vocational School, in Shushi, a critically needed, ultra-modern institution which officially opened its doors some weeks ago.

Asbarez – The Executive committee of the Syrian Armenian Relief Fund (SARF) will hold a fundraising telethon in late February 2016 to provide financial assistance to Syrian Armenians who are victims of the ravaging civil war.

A special task force was formed and preliminary activities have started. The telethon will be broadcast in Southern California on cable TV channels. It will also be webcast worldwide on www.syrianarmenianrelieffund.org. More details will be provided to our community in the days to come.

Pre-telethon fund raising has already started and representatives of SARF will soon contact individuals and various organizations to secure their support.

We are confident that once again our community will rise to the occasion and do its utmost to give generously and help our suffering people.

SARF was established 3 years ago in Los Angeles and is comprised of 10 major organizations of the Armenian community in the Southland: Western Prelacy of the Armenian Apostolic Church of America, Western Diocese of the Armenian Church, Armenian Catholic Eparchy in North America, The Armenian Evangelical Union of North America, The Armenian Revolutionary Federation, The Armenian Democratic Liberal Party, Social Democratic Hunchagian Party, The Armenian Relief Society, Armenian General Benevolent Union, The Armenian Missionary Association of America.

 

 

 

Armenia has accepted 2.5thousand Syian Armenians since May, Minister of Diaspora Hranush Hakobyan said at the National Assembly today.

She said there are still 15 thousand Armenians in Syria, 7-8 thousand of them living in Aleppo.

Some international organizations provide certain assistance to countries that host migrants, Minister Hakobyan said. She added, however, that their attention is mainly focused on countries that have refugee camps, while this is not the case in Armenia.

The Diaspora Minister also attached importance to sending humanitarian aid to Syria.

La Scala Philharmonic Orchestra performed a concert in Rome dedicated to the 100^th anniversary of the Armenian Genocide. The orchestra was let by famous British conductor Daniel Harding.

The concert titled “For you, Armenia” was organized by the “Yerevan Perspectives” International Music Festival under the auspices of the State Commission Coordinating the Armenian Genocide Centennial Events and the Armenian Embassy in Italy.

In his opening remarks Armenian Ambassador to Italy Sargis Ghazaryan emphasized the role of music in uniting people around universal values. He noted that “there is no language more universal than music that can touch the human souls and tell them about a crime against humanity such as genocide.”

“The persecution of religious and ethnic minorities in the Middle East comes to prove that the issue of genocide is still urgent,” the Ambassador added.

Works by Aram Khachaturian, Beethoven and Dvorak were performed at the concert.

Attending the concert were Armenian Minister of Culture Hasmik Poghosyan, Italian culture and public figures, Ambassadors accredited to Italy, representatives of the Armenian community and journalists.

Britain has a duty to rescue Syria’s Christians, Lord George Carey, a former archbishop of Canterbury, writes in an article published by .

“The dramatic and disturbing developments of the past few days have introduced a new, heart-rending dimension to this refugee crisis. Undoubtedly, the most disturbing aspect is just how impotent Europe is proving itself to be. If the EU is not resilient in the face of this disaster, it could be torn apart,” the article reads.

According to the author, “Syria’s Christians are the most vulnerable and repeatedly targeted victims of this conflict.” “Indeed, a hundred years after the Armenian and Assyrian genocide, in which over a million Christians are estimated to have been killed by Ottoman Muslims, the same is happening today in the form of an ethnic cleansing of Christians in the region. Christians have been crucified, beheaded, raped, and subjected to forced conversion. The so-called Islamic State and other radical groups are openly glorifying the slaughter of Christians.”

“Britain should make Syrian Christians a priority because they are a particularly vulnerable group. Furthermore, we are a Christian nation with an established Church so Syrian Christians will find no challenge to integration. The churches are already well-prepared and eager to offer support and accommodation to those escaping the conflict,” Lord Carey writes.

– The 14th Istanbul Biennial, Saltwater: a Theory of Thought Forms, opened this week amid calls for all participating artists to suspend their work for 15 minutes in support of Turkey’s Kurdish minority.

Most notable is the focus on Armenia and the Armenian genocide, an atrocity not recognised by the Turkish state. At the press opening on 2 September, Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev, the curator of this year’s biennial, said it was “very timely” to speak about what happened 100 years ago, as well as the “traumas and ethnic cleansing” that has occurred in other parts of the world throughout history, including Australia, Syria, Poland and Germany.

In what Christov-Bakargiev described as a “diplomatic act”, the Dilijan Art Initiative, which sponsored the Golden-Lion winning Armenian pavilion at the Venice Biennale this year, is supporting 13 artists in Istanbul who are either Armenian, of Armenian descent or have made works relating to Armenian history.

They include the Modernist painter Paul Guiragossian, who was born to survivors of the Armenian genocide and has 14 works on show in Istanbul Modern. A self-portrait from 1948 bears witness to Guiragossian’s itinerant life: a shell destroyed the artist’s Beirut studio in the 1970s, damaging many canvases. The self-portrait was repaired, but the scar across his cheek remains.

“My father was born in Jerusalem and his work often deals with displacement and marginalised people,” says Manuella Guiragossian, the president of the Paul Guiragossian Foundation.

At the Galata Greek School, the Lebanese-born artist Haig Aivazian is presenting a performance of a folkloric song by the Armenian-Turkish oud master Udi Hrant Kenkulian, whose family survived the genocide and lived in Istanbul from 1918 onwards. Titled Wavy Wavy Is the Sea of Bolis, O Mother, the work combines “two complex sets of melodic, cultural and linguistic creolisations” that echo the “transition of the Ottoman Empire to the Turkish republic”, says Aivazian, who is also exhibiting in the Armenian pavilion in Venice.

Upstairs, the Iraqi-Jewish artist Michael Rakowitz is showing The Flesh Is Yours, The Bones Are Ours. The newly commissioned installation consists of plaster friezes moulded from architectural details crafted by Armenians throughout Istanbul. “[The friezes] show the traces of Armenian hands and fingers, which bear silent witness to what happened in the city in 1915 when the Armenians were annihilated and dispossessed,” Rakowitz says.

Several other works that refer to Armenian history are dotted around the city—the biennial covers more than 30 venues this year. For example, the Belgian-born artist Francis Alÿs is presenting a new black and white film, Silence of Ani, which depicts children from Eastern Anatolia playing bird songs on whistles and flute-like instruments.

Despite the potential for backlash over the Armenian question, Christov-Bakargiev says she encountered no censorship in the lead up to the biennial. Indeed, the curator sees hope in the transformative power of art. “With and through art we mourn, commemorate, denounce and try to heal and commit to the possibility of joy,” she says.

Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan will meet with his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin as part of a working visit to Moscow, President’s Press Office reports.

The leaders of the two countries will discuss a wide range of issues related to Armenian-Russian bilateral relations, cooperation in the political, economic and humanitarian spheres.

They will exchange views on issues of cooperation within the framework of integration processes after Armenia’s accession to the Eurasian Economic Union and will refer to the future programs.

Matthew Karanian, the author of ‘Historic Armenia After 100 Years,’ will present his groundbreaking new book in Canada during a three-city tour of the country in September.

The Canada book tour is organized under the auspices of the Embassy of the Republic of Armenia to Canada, and commemorates the Centennial of the Armenian Genocide.

‘Historic Armenia After 100 Years’ (Stone Garden Press, 2015) is the first-ever historical guide to the ancient Armenian homeland. The book includes 125 color photographs and maps that show Western Armenia as it appears today.

The premiere Canada event is at 9 pm on Friday, Sept. 11 at the Tekeyan Center, 825 Rue Manoogian, St. Laurent, Quebec. This event is hosted by the Tekeyan Cultural Association.

Karanian will also speak at 1 pm on Saturday, Sept. 12 at the Armenian Embassy, 7 Delaware Ave., Ottawa, Ontario. The event at the Armenian Embassy is hosted by Ambassador and Mrs. Armen Yeganian.

The concluding event for ‘Historic Armenia After 100 Years’ is at 2 pm on Sunday, Sept. 13 at the Armenian Community Center, 45 Hallcrown Place, Toronto, Ontario.

The Toronto event is co-hosted by the Armenian General Benevolent Union (AGBU) of Toronto, the Hamazkayin Educational and Cultural Society of Toronto, The Toronto Hye Agoump; and Bolsahay Cultural Assocation Toronto.

The entire tour is under the auspices of the Armenian Embassy in Canada.