Author: Khoyetsian Rose

A1+

PACE SESSION IN MOSCOW

[04:07 pm] 29 May, 2006

The cultural diversity of Northern Caucasus will be one of the issues
of the agenda of the PACE session. In the session which will take
place in Moscow today the Chechnya issue will most probably not be
discussed. PACE President Rene van der Linden and RF Foreign Minister
Sergey Lavrov will participate in the session. The latter presides
over the CE Ministers’ Committee.

The report about Northern Caucasus will be the first `peaceful’ report
in the PACE. According to author of the report Ann Braser it has
nothing to do with the defense of human rights, the issue of refugees
and the humanitarian situation. Ass Braser visited the region last
September. The PACE reporter thinks that education and culture can
have their contribution to the balancing of situation in Northern
Caucasus.

Karabakh hails Montenegrin independence vote

Mediamax news agency
25 May 06

Yerevan, May 25: The foreign ministry of the Nagornyy Karabakh
republic today issued a statement about the referendum on independence
in Montenegro. The statement says the following:

“It is a positive event that a referendum on independence was held in
Montenegro and the international community showed its readiness to
recognize its results. We are sure that the respect for a nation’s
right to self-determination exercised through a nation-wide referendum
is a cornerstone of the settlement of similar situations and is a tool
for establishing political stability in a conflict region.

“In this connection, it is expedient to recall that the disrespect for
the right of the people of Nagornyy Karabakh, who voted for
independence at a referendum on 10 December 1991, in fact resulted in
Azerbaijan’s military aggression against the Nagornyy Karabakh
republic which led to human casualties and destruction.

“In the process of settlement of the Nagornyy Karabakh conflict, the
disregard of the right of the people of Nagornyy Karabakh to
self-determination and to political independence and economic and
military security, will reduce the possibility of finding a mutually
acceptable solution and establishing lasting peace and mutual
understanding in the region.”

TV COMMERCIALS ABOUT ARMENIA CAN APPEAR ON CNN IN SEPTEMBER 2006

ARKA News Agency, Armenia
May 25 2006

YEREVAN, May 25. /ARKA/. Two 30-60 seconds-long TV commercials about
Armenia can appear on CNN as early as September 2006, RA Minister of
Trade and Economic Development Ara Petrosyan told reporters at the
opening of the 6th international tourism exhibition “The Country of
Speaking Stones 2006”.

According to him, “Armenia” and “Second Armenian Channel” TV channels
that won in the contest have already started shooting these trailers.

He also pointed out that according to the contract with CNN, the TV
commercials about Armenia will periodically be broadcast approximately
seven times a week.

Petrosyan reported that the value of one showing of a trailer will
cost about $800-1000 and that the Armenian party holds negotiations
with CNN representatives to get a rebate.

According to him, trailers about Armenia on CNN are very important
for the country, especially for the tourism development.

In 2006 the Armenian government allocated AMD 215mln (about $445,000)
for advertising the Armenian tourism industry.

The share of tourism in Armenia’s GDP structure according to the
results of 2005 reached 6-8% against 5-6% in 2004. Tourists come to
Armenia mainly from Russia, USA, EU countries; however, there are
tourists from Singapore, Malaysia and Middle East.

PRELIMINARY AGREEMENT ON KOCHARIAN-ALIYEV MEETING ACHIEVED

PanARMENIAN.Net
26.05.2006 15:39 GMT+04:00

/PanARMENIAN.Net/ A preliminary agreement on the meeting of the
Armenian and Azerbaijani Presidents in Bucharest was achieved, RA
President’s Spokesman Victor Soghomonyan told a PanARMENIAN.Net
reporter. In his words, the place, time and duration of the
meeting have not been discussed yet. It should be noted that the
Kocharian-Aliyev meeting is likely to be held within the framework of
the Black Sea Forum for Dialogue and Partnership in Romania’s capital
on June 5.

WORLD WATCHES IN SILENCE AS AZERBAIJAN WIPES OUT ARMENIAN CULTURE
By Lucian Harris

Art Newspaper, UK
May 25 2006

>From Conservation

Western governments have failed to condemn the destruction of a unique
medieval cemetery by Azerbaijani soldiers

Armenia says the Christian cemetery of Jugha, dating from the ninth to
16th centuries, has been completely destroyed by Azerbaijani soldiers.

LONDON. A delegation of European members of Parliament was last month
refused access to Djulfa, in the Nakhichevan region of Azerbaijan,
to investigate reports that an ancient Armenian Christian cemetery
has been destroyed by Azerbaijani soldiers.

The delegation of ten MEPs from the commission on EU-Armenia
parliamentary co-operation travelled to Armenia on 17 April following
a resolution passed by the EP’s conference of presidents on 6 April.

An EP spokesman told The Art Newspaper that when the party tried to
enter Nakhichevan, it was “opposed by the Azerbaijan authorities”.

Azerbaijani soldiers photographed destroying headstones at Jugha

This was despite the Muslim country’s outright denial that the
cemetery has been destroyed-and despite the fact that Azerbaijan is
a member of the Council of Europe and thus committed to respecting
cultural heritage.

According to witnesses, as quoted in Armenian reports, in a three-day
operation last December, Azerbaijani soldiers armed with sledgehammers
obliterated the remnants of the Djulfa cemetery (known as Jugha
in Armenian). Until the early 20th century it contained around
10,000 khachkars, dedicatory monuments unique to medieval Armenian
culture. They are typically carved with a cross surrounded by intricate
interlacing floral designs.

A great number of khachkars, the majority of which date from the 15th
to 16th centuries, were destroyed in 1903-04 during the construction
of a railway, and by the early 1970s only 2,707 were recorded.

Armenian culture has always had a precarious existence sandwiched
between Russia and the Islamic spheres of Turkey and Iran. The
Armenians are still fighting to get acknowledgement of the genocide
of their people by the Ottoman Turks which reached its peak in 1915.

After 1921, when the southern enclaves of Nakhichevan and Nagorno
Karabakh were absorbed into Soviet Azerbaijan, many Armenians fled
the area and much of their cultural heritage was destroyed. By the
late 1980s when the Soviet Union crumbled, less than 4,000 Armenians
remained in Nakhichevan-so few that the exclave avoided the ethnic
warfare that exploded in Karabakh where a larger Armenian population
remained under the administration of Muslim Azerbaijan.

The Azerbaijani army began clearing the Jugha cemetery in 1998,
removing 800 of the khachkars before complaints by Unesco brought
a temporary halt. But the destruction commenced again in November
2002, and by the time the incident was written up by Icomos in its
World Report on Monuments and Sites in Danger for that year, the
1500-year-old cemetery was described as “completely flattened”. It
is not clear exactly how many khachkars were left, but on 14 December
2005, witnesses in Armenian reports said that soldiers had demolished
the remaining stones, loading them onto trucks and dumping them in the
river, actions that were filmed from across the river in Iran by an
Armenian Film crew, and aired on the Boston-based online television
station Hairenik.

Armenians say the destruction of the Jugha cemetery represents the
final move in Azerbaijan’s systematic cleansing of Armenian cultural
heritage from Nakhichevan, mostly carried out between 1998 and 2002.

On a visit to Armenia in March, the director of the Hermitage Museum in
St Petersburg, Mikhail Piotrovsky, whose mother is Armenian, reacted
to the destruction by likening it to the Taleban’s obliteration of
the Bamiyan Buddhas. His comments elicited an angry response in the
Azerbaijani press. However, the lack of international condemnation
of Azerbaijan’s actions has been a source of frustration to many
Armenians. Baroness Cox, a long-standing campaigner for the protection
of Armenian heritage in Azerbaijan who has urged the British government
to take action, told The Art Newspaper that, despite the influential
Armenian Diaspora, both the US and UK administrations are more
concerned with cultivating close relations with oil-rich Azerbaijan
and its ally Turkey, than with Armenia.

A response issued by the Embassy of Azerbaijan in Brussels in
January, insisted that Armenian allegations were made “to delude
the international community” and detract attention from “atrocities
committed by the Armenian troops in the occupied territories of
Azerbaijan, where no single Azerbaijani monument has been left
undamaged”. It also contained an implied historical claim on the
Jugha cemetery stating that it was not Armenian but created by
“Caucasian Albanians”.

The Azerbaijani allegations, which claim the destruction of hundreds
of mosques, religious schools, cemeteries and museums in the Shusha,
Yerevan, Zangazur and Icmiadzin districts of Armenia, have undoubtedly
compounded the reluctance of international organisations to get
involved in a situation described to The Art Newspaper by Guido
Carducci, the head of Unesco’s International Standards Section, as
“a political hot potato”.

According to Baroness Cox, even during the war, mosques in Armenia
were generally protected by the Christian population, but with so
many emotive claims and counter claims being made, and both sides
accusing each other of rewriting history, non-partisan monitoring
and verification of all alleged cultural crimes seems more important
than ever. Speaking to The Art Newspaper, Mikhail Piotrovsky said:
“Any destruction of the cultural heritage is a crime, whether that
heritage be Armenian, Russian, Azerbaijani, or Iraqi. The cultural
heritage belongs to the entire world, not just to one nation.”

for photos: 1

Congress of Humanities and Social Sciences
Congress 2006
York University, Toronto (Ontario) Canada

The Congress encourages community participation.

Session Sponsored by the Society for Socialist Studies & co-listed by the
Canadian Women’s Studies
Title: New (Gendered) Perspectives on Genocide
When: May 31, 2006 1 PM; Where: AWC
Session co-organizers: Karin Doerr & Sima Aprahamian
Email: [email protected]; [email protected]
Full Institutional Affiliation (if applicable): Karin Doerr, Simone de
Beauvoir Institute & Modern Languages H-663
Sima Aprahamian, Simone de Beauvoir Institute & Sociology-Anthropology
H1125-58 Mailing Address: Concordia University, 1455 de Maisonneuve Blvd. West
Montreal, QCH3G 1M8, Canada

1. Isabel Kaprielian (California State University at Fresno,
Department of History)
“Girls at Risk: the Survival of Armenian girls during the Genocide”
In research and writing relating to the Armenian Genocide, great emphasis
has been placed on the political, economic, and religious factors leading
to the tragedy and on the terrible events that destroyed 1 1/2 million
Armenians. Less emphasis has been placed on the expereinces of survivors.
This paper will focus on the survival experiences of Armenian girls –
those abducted, those raped, those exploited, those who survived with
family members, and those fortunate enough to be placed in the many
orphanages set up to save them. I will be using oral sources, published
memoirs, and official reports by missionaries, Near East Relief personnel, and
League of Nations agencies.

2.Karin Doerr (Simone de Beauvoir Institute & Modern Languages H-663, Concordia

University) “A Critical Approach to Women and the Holocaust”
This paper addresses possible reasons for mainstream Holocaust Study’s
continued neglect of women’s issues and work in the field and articulates
possible solutions. It concurs with the existing critical re-examination
of work on women in the Holocaust and suggests avoiding romanticization of
the female victim or the heroine as well as an exclusionary, care-oriented
focus (Bernard, 1995; Ringelheim, 1985, 1999). It builds on the call to
explore the ethical dimension of women’s behaviour in the politically
resistive area of the “Gray Zone” (Primo Levi, 1986; Nowack, 1999; Claudia
Card. 2002) and warrants taking a closer look at the circumstances that
created the abject conditions, the fear, terror, and murder that the women
experienced and to which they responded. Moreover, since a feminist lens
allows for a multi-focal approach, we need to consider survival chances
based on nationality, class, and political or religious affiliation in
addition to gender. Finally, it argues against a continued separation of
research with Women and the Holocaust as a category of its own.

3.Victoria Rowe (Faculty of Policy Studies,Chuo University, Japan)
“Public Witnessing at the League of Nations: The Women’s Movement
and the Armenian Genocide”
This paper explores the writer Inga Nalbandian’s public witnessing of the
Armenian Genocide in her 1917 book, Den Store Jammer [The Great Misery].
Nalbandian’s status as a Danish-born woman living in Constantinople, her
marriage to an Armenian and her mothering of Armenian children, and later
her ability to be a public witness and to cooperate with European
feminists such as Henni Forchhammer, the Danish Delegate to the League of
Nations, in promoting assistance to the refugees of the Armenian Genocide
raises numerous questions which will be addressed in this paper about the
nature of identity and witnessing, as well as the intersection of
ethnicity, citizenship and gender
and the relations between European feminists and Armenian refugees.
Victoria Rowe is the author of A History of Armenian Women’s Writing:
1880-1922.

4.George Mouradian (Independent Scholar/ Retired Engineer & American Univ. of
Armenia)
“What Are the Perpetrators Afraid of?”
“What Are the Perpetrators Afraid Of?” is a paper that revisits past
holocausts and genocides and elaborates on the outcomes of these tragic
events. The paper searches into the methods used, the results, and the
after effects of the horrors. What happened to the perpetrators, what are
the ancestors of the perpetrators responsible for, and what are they
afraid of is covered in detail. Turkey’s denial of the Armenian Genocide
has to be a festering wound that can only cure itself by the nation’s
acknowledgement of its wrongdoing. What is Turkey afraid of? Its desire to
join the European Union and the pressures on it from civilized countries
are forcing Turkey to face up to the truth. How will the past and present
scenarios affect Turkey and other nations on what happens in the near
future?

5.Anna Elisabeth Rosmus (Independent scholar)
“Family Matters: Rape and Incest in the SA and SS”
Sodomizing a child, raping a handicapped woman, and drinking beyond
capacity: Behavior unworthy of any “Aryan”, expecially an SA or SS man? It
all happened in Lower Bavaria. The men were machos, their pants quickly
unzipped, their IQs low and their past included criminal deliquencies.
Their careers were not going anywhere. Wearing a uniform gave them status,
and power. They all trusted their secrets would
remain safe. After all, the victims were family! Who would believe them?
Personal files reveal the once unthinkable: the scum inside Hitler’s
“elite”!

6. Lisa Price (Independent Researcher)”Rape as Genocide: Findings From Rwanda”
In 1998 the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda convicted Jean-Paul
Akayesu of complicity in genocide, based in part on testimonies that he
encouraged and condoned the rape of Tutsi women by Hutu police officers
and militiamen. This precedent-setting characterization of rape as a
constituent act of genocide recognized both the intersect “ional harms
done to women in the context of ethnic conflict and the harm done to
communities through the medium of anti-woman violence. This paper will
trace the conceptual steps by which this understanding was arrived at;
will analyze debates within the feminist community around the value or
danger of differentiating genocidal rape from other forms of sexual
violence in armed conflict; and will offer some suggestions as to why
genocidal rape has not been included in the statute of the newly-created
permanent International Criminal Court.

7.Sima Aprahamian (Simone de Beauvoir Institute & Sociology-Anthropology,
Concordia University)
“The Genocide in Me” – Bearing Witness to Disappearing Traces
Dorota Glowacka notes in her study of Ida Fink’s literary testimony and
Holocaust art, “The witniss is burdened with an impossible task of
searching for disappearing traces” (2002: 106). Over ninety years have
passed since the 1915 genocide of the Armenian
people yet in spite the documentation, there continues an active denial on
the part of the perpetrators and their new allies. Araz Artinian in her
recent documentary “The Genocide in Me” attempts to seek the disappearing
traces in the perpetrators’ silences and the remains that attempt to bear
witness in a touristic tour that she takes in Eastern Turkey – historic
Armenia. This paper aims to examine through a feminist perspective of
self-reflexivity the meaning of “bearing witness” in the midst of the
perpetrators’ denials and an examination of Araz Artinian’s film.

8.Aditya Dewan (Sociology and Anthropology, Concordia
University)
“Cultural Genocide” and the Indigenous Peoples of Highland
Bangladesh – new critical perspectives on post-war and reconciliation
phase
This paper argues that Bangladesh commits cultural genocide directly or
indirectly by suppressing the indigenous peoples’ culture in the
Chittagong Hill Tracts (CHT) of Bangladesh. First, it describes the key
components of traditional cultures such as language and education,
religion, dress patterns, customs and rituals, habits, morals, traditional
medicine, and so on. Secondly, the paper examines how these aspects of
cultures have been affected by the deliberate policies followed by
successive governments of Bangladesh. Finally, the paper concludes that
the Chittagong Hill Tracts Peace Accord signed in December 1997 has also
accelerated the process of disintegration of traditional cultures of the
CHT people.

9.Susanne Luhmann (Women’s Studies, Thorneloe College at Laurentian University)
“Ethical Trauma? On the Ethical Implications of Using Trauma Theory
and Holocaust-Study Frameworks to Study Legacies of Perpetration”
Can trauma be ethical? What are the ethical limits of studying
perpetration itself through the conceptual lens of trauma? My paper
considers some of the ethical dilemmas and implications that arise from
using Holocaust and trauma studies to study the after-effects of national
trauma not upon the victims and their descendents but upon those who trace
their heritage to the perpetrators, collaborators, and bystanders of these
national crimes.
Central to both trauma studies and Holocaust studies have been key
concepts like transgenerational haunting (Abraham and Torok 1994), memory
effects (Apel 2002), secondary witnessing (Apel 2002). Trauma and
Holocaust studies have developed a sophisticated analysis of the
pervasiveness of the psychic structure of trauma and its contiguous
affects such as guilt, denial, shame etc. The psychic structure of
national trauma, differently from the legal and political questions, is
not limited to the victims. However, using these concepts also poses
ethical risks and dilemmas that need to be addressed when expanding the
insights of Holocaust and trauma studies to the aggressors and their
descendents.

10.-Amira Bojadzija (York)”Sense Memory in Charlotte Delbo’s Auschwitz and
After”

Body as the primary site of suffering occupies an important place in Charlotte
Delbo’s Auschwitz et Après (1961), in which physical pain, thirst, hunger and
experience of cold are rendered in a particularly vivid manner as sense memory.

Sensible is the arch-phenomenon upon which subjectivity is built. Merleau-Ponty
writes that a being capable of sense-experience could have no other mode of
knowing. I argue that Delbo’s text exposes the incompatibility of the
rationalist discourse of dignity and justice with the image of a naked, filthy
subject, embodying pain. I suggest a new reading of Auschwitz and After as a
text that questions the hierarchy of the ordering of human experience, and the
philosophical and cultural consequences that derive from it.

KARABAKH ISSUE DISCUSSED IN AZERBAIJAN

A1+
[03:52 pm] 24 May, 2006

Co-chairs of the OSCE Minsk group Yuri Merzlyakov, Bernard Fassier and
Steven Mann met the heads of the Foreign Ministry of Azerbaijan. The
meeting lasted 1.5 hours but no statement followed, agency “Trend”
reports.

Deputy Foreign Ministers of Russia and France and assistant of the US
State Secretary Daniel Fried also participated in the meeting. The
co-chairs will meet the President of Azerbaijan today after which
they will make a statement about the course of the settlement of the
Karabakh conflict.

The sides are to take decisive steps for the final settlement of
the conflict, but final clarification of the negotiation process
will be done at the end of the week, Daniel Fried announced. He
reminded that this is the third time he has visited Azerbaijan for
the last 6 months. “My aim is to find ways for the settlement of the
conflict. The population of the region has the right of peace.” Daniel
Fried underlined that “the states are to take steps in that direction”.

“President of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliev and President of Armenia Robert
Kocharyan are able to settle the conflict peacefully,” the American
diplomat thinks.

THE RUSSIAN SIDE WORKS VERY WELL, RA AMBASSADOR TO RUSSIA CONSIDERS

ArmRadio.am
22.05.2006 15:22

The recent pessimistic statements from Russia about the search for
the black boxes of the crashed A-320 create the impression that there
isn’t the earlier interest in finding the recorders of the plane and
revealing the real reasons of the disaster. The opinion is not shared
by RA Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary to Russia Armen
Smbatyan, who said in his interview to ” Radiolur” correspondent Zara
Sargsyan, “The Russian side is working very well. They apply every
effort to extract the black boxes. I’m sure that at least one of the
boxes will be lifted.”

Commander in Chief of the Air Forces of Russia Vladimir Mikhailov
declared on May 16 that the Armenian A-320 crashed because the pilots
did not consider the weather conditions.

In his words, the captain of the plane took a completely correct
decision to return to Yerevan.

“They had to return,” Vladimir Mikhailov said.

He declared also that the expenses for extracting the black boxes of
the crashed plane are not justified.

It has been a week already that we know only the scarce information
that the recorders lie 496 meters deep in the water and the distance
between the black boxes is five meters.

According to the data provided by the operative staff, RT-1000 robot
was applied, which came across “fragments resembling those of the
black boxes of the crashed A-320.” Some fragments are suck into mud,
which slows down the search works. The search works are hindered also
because of weather conditions.

Besides, the devise cannot operate long under water. The specialists
have to extract the devise from the water to clear the camera and
the searchlights of mud.

It is not known how long the search works will last. 17 days have
passed since the disaster. In 13 more days it will be useless to
speak about the extraction of the black boxes and decoding of the
information, since in a month the radio beacons stop to produce
signals.

RUSSIAN HISTORIAN: TURKEY SHOULD RECOGNIZE THE ARMENIAN GENOCIDE

Yerkir
23.05.2006 15:57

YEREVAN (YERKIR) -Turkey should recognize the Armenian Genocide of
1915, as the fact is grounded by undisputable proofs, head of 19th
century department at the State Historical Museum, PhD in history
Viktor Bezotosny has told a REGNUM correspondent.

According to him, the question of recognizing the “historic truth” is
a question of time. “The whole world knows about the events of 1915
and calls them Genocide. It strange, that only one country rejects
it and tries to misinterpret and escape from historic facts.

There good and bad pages in history of any country. Well, they should
maker bold and take responsibility to tell the truth, otherwise
memory of those killed in those awful years is being defiled,” Viktor
Bezotosny is quoted as saying. The historian believes that the Armenian
Genocide of 1915 and the Holocaust are results of domestic policies
pursued by countries that committed such villainy.

It is worth mentioning, Russia recognized the Armenian Genocide
officially.

Fact of the Genocide was recognized by many countries, including
France, Uruguay, lower chamber of the Italian parliament, several
US states, parliaments of Greece, Cyprus, Argentina, Belgium, Wales,
Swiss National Council, Canadian House of Commons and Polish Seym.

IN ALL PROBABILITY, RPA AND ULP CANDIDATES TO BE NOMINATED FOR NA VACANT RULING POSTS

Noyan Tapan
Armenians Today
May 22 2006

YEREVAN, MAY 22, NOYAN TAPAN – ARMENIANS TODAY. For the present,
the National Deputy MP group is not inclined to assume any post in
the executive and legislative bodies that are or will be vacant as a
result of the Orinats Yerkir (Country of Law) Party representatives’
resignation from their posts. Group member, MP Hakob Hakobian
from Echmiadzin electoral district N 26, said this in response to
Noyan Tapan correspondent’s question. According to him, it is not
expedient to assume responsibility for the things done or not done
by their predecessors in the short period before the forthcoming
parliamentary elections. The parliamentary opposition, the Ardarutiun
(Justice) and National Unity factions, have already made decisions
not to take part in the nomination of candidacies and voting for the
vacant parliamentary posts. The two parliamentary coalition forces,
the ARF Dashnaktsutiun and the Republican Party of Armenia, as well
as the United Labor Party prefer not to disclose the agreements on
nominating candidacies for the vacant parliamentary posts for the
present motivating this by the fact that the discussions are not over
yet. According to unofficial information, an agreement has been reached
on nomination for the NA Speaker’s post: it was reserved for RPA, which
intends to nominate the candidacy of NA and party Vice-Chairman Tigran
Torosian. Recently some MPs discontent with this nomination did not
exclude that against the agreement they will nominate and will support
the candidacy of RPA faction head Galust Sahakian. But in response
to journalists’ question on May 22 G.Sahakian said that in case of
such development of the events he will withdraw his candidature.

In case of T.Torosian’s election as RA NA Speaker the post of RA NA
Vice-Speaker will also remain vacant. Besides, the parliament should
elect Chairmen of Standing Committees on Defence, National Security
and Internal Affairs, as well as on Social, Healthcare and Nature
Protection Issues. In the coming days both of these posts will be
announced vacant when the resignations of OYP members Mher Shahgeldian
and Gagik Mkheyan are considered accepted. According to our reliable
information, an agreement has been already reached on nomination of
ULP faction candidate for the post of the Chairman of NA Standing
Committee on Defence, National Security and Internal Affairs. The
candidacy of Artur Petrosian, member of the above-mentioned faction
and committee, will be nominated for this post. The ARF Dashnaktsutiun
does not aspire to the leading positions at NA and intends to remain
loyal to the agreements to be reached finally.