Author: Nalchajian Markos

ARMENIAN ASSEMBLY COMMENDED SENATORS

DeFacto Agency, Armenia
April 3 2007

The Armenian Assembly of America commended Senator Richard Durbin
(D-IL), along with Senators Tom Coburn (R-OK), Patrick J. Leahy (D-VT)
and John Cornyn (R-TX) as legislation, which they introduced, had
passed the U.S. Senate last week. The Genocide Accountability Act,
S. 888, closes a legal loophole that prevented the U.S. Justice
Department from punishing perpetrators of genocide who find safe
haven in the United States.

"There is no safe haven for the hundreds of thousands of Sudanese
facing genocide in Darfur and yet our country is providing a safe
haven for their killers," said Senator Durbin, who chairs the Senate
Judiciary Subcommittee on Human Rights and the Law. "The current
loophole in our genocide laws has real-life consequences. While
genocide rages in Darfur, the United States must commit to holding
those guilty of genocide accountable."

"The extraterritorial jurisdiction contained within the Genocide
Accountability Act upholds the spirit of the United Nations Convention
on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide," said
Assembly Board of Trustees Chairman Hirair Hovnanian.

"We commend Senators Durbin, Coburn, Leahy and Cornyn for bringing
much needed attention to this important human rights issue,"
Hovnanian added.

The legislation allows foreign nationals, who enter America, to
be prosecuted for committing the crime of genocide outside of the
United States.

"In America we are blessed with the most effective and just legal
system in the world. It is contrary to our system of justice to allow
perpetrators of genocide to go free without fear of prosecution,"
said Senator Coburn, the Ranking Member of the Subcommittee on Human
Rights and the Law. "Fundamentally, we must decide if genocide is a
bad enough crime, no matter where it happens, that it warrants the
same treatment as terrorism-related crimes."

This is the first piece of legislation to be produced by the
Subcommittee on Human Rights and the Law, which has jurisdiction
over all human rights laws and policies and follows a hearing held in
February entitled "Genocide and the Rule of Law", where the Armenian
Assembly submitted testimony. The Genocide Accountability Act has been
endorsed by the Save Darfur Coalition, Genocide Intervention Network,
American Jewish World Service, Armenian Assembly of America, Armenian
National Committee of America, Human Rights First, Human Rights Watch,
Alliance for Justice, Refugees International, and ENOUGH.

MAYOR OF ARMENIA’S SECOND LARGEST CITY ATTACKED, 3 KILLED, 6 INJURED

Regnum, Russia
April 3 2007

Mayor of Gyumri, Armenia’s second largest city, Vardan Ghukasyan
was attacked yesterday in Armenia. As a REGNUM correspondent report
citing data received in the hospital, where the mayor is undergoing
treatment now, three persons who were accompanying Ghukasyan were
killed in the attack, six others received severe injuries.

Contradicting reports are coming about the deputy mayor, Gagik
Manukyan. Under some data, he died, according to other sources,
he is in poor condition.

Vardan Ghukasyan’s motorcade, consisting of two cars, a Mercedes and
a Volga, was moving by the Yerevan-Gyumri road at about 10:00 p.m.,
when a an SUV-car without license plates blocked the road near the
town of Ashtarak and attackers opened fire. Under most recent reports,
life of the mayor is not under threat. He was injured in his back,
and doctors are now performing a surgery on him. There are a lot of
people in the hospital yard, including acting Defense Minister Serzh
Sargsyan, members of the Armenian Republican Party (RPA) and members
of the parliament.

Vardan Ghukasyan was participating in the RPA council session in
Yerevan that proposed to President Robert Kocharyan to appoint Serzh
Sargsyan as prime minister’s post that has been vacant since Prime
Minister Andranik Margaryan died on March 25.

RPA COUNCIL NOMINATES SERGE SARKISYAN FOR ARMENIA PM.

Itar-Tass, Russia
April 3 2007

YEREVAN, April 3 (Itar-Tass) – The Council of the Republican Party of
Armenia has nominated Serge Sarkisyan, Defence Minister and Secretary
of the National Security Council, as a candidate for the office of
the country’s premier.

This decision was taken at the RPA Council meeting on Monday night.

The meeting was attended by 66 members of the 69-member Council.

There were no other proposals, an official in the RPA press service
has told Itar-Tass.

PUBLIC COMMISSION SAYS INTERNATIONAL ORGANIZATIONS CONTRIBUTE TO ELECTION FRAUD

Panorama.am
20:53 02/04/2007

Public Commission Monitoring Legality of Elections held a round table
to discuss violations of election law. Ruben Torosyan, member of the
commission, said, "The official election campaign has not started yet.

However, some TV channels and print media make political
advertisements." He said ALM, Kentron, H1, H2, Shant and AR are the
TV channels most frequently violating the election right. Torosyan
has applied to district courts reporting on election fraud. He has
submitted 50 applications since February 5.

Torosyan said the courts have rejected the applications saying no
violation has taken place. He applied to Review Court, which refused
to discuss the cases. However, the Appeal Court ruled out that the
cases in fact include violations of election right.

Mr. Torosyan also said the international organizations largely
contribute to election fraud in our country.

One of the participants of the round table suggested that the
commission files cases against such structures in the European Court.

NATIONAL LIBRARY WEEK TO BE HELD FOR SIXTH TIME ON APRIL 9-16 IN
ARMENIA

YEREVAN, APRIL 2, NOYAN TAPAN. National Library Week will be held for
the sixth time on April 9-16 in Armenian libraries. The week being
held on the initiative on Armenian Library Association this year will
be held under the motto Library – House of Science.

As Noyan Tapan correspondent was informed from Armenian National
Library’s Press Office, exhibitions, book fairs, events dedicated to
the mother tongue, as well as meetings with prominent figures of
science, culture and literature will be organized within the framework
of the week.

Earthwatch Institute
3 Clock Tower Place, Suite 100
Maynard, MA 01754
Phone: (978) 461-0081
Email: [email protected]
Web:

Earthwatch Institute helps Armenia to rebuild its past

~ New 2007 volunteer opportunities ~

Maynard, Massachusetts. 28 March 2007. Earthwatch, the international
environmental organization, is pleased to announce the launch of a new
research expedition in Armenia, which aims to preserve the country’s unique
heritage with the help of international volunteers.

In 1988 an earthquake damaged or destroyed 80 percent of the buildings in
the Armenian city of Gyumri, leaving half a million people homeless.* Nearly
twenty years later, attempts to rebuild this historic city are finally
moving forward.

As part of this effort, Earthwatch will recruit volunteers to help document
the region’s ancient architecture. This information will then be passed on
to local planners, architects, and designers.

Armenia has been a crossroad of cultures for more than 2,000 years with
Greeks, Romans, Russians, and Turks leaving their mark on its land and
people. The country’s tenacious cultural identity has been preserved in its
distinctive architecture, but without careful documentation of remaining
buildings, these features may be lost.

`The new buildings, constructed after 1988, do not reflect Armenia’s
distinct heritage and character’, says Earthwatch researcher Jane Britt
Greenwood. `I hope that this project will help them to preserve their
history and prove useful for managing future city growth and economic
development.’ **

The project will provide members of the public with the extraordinary
opportunity to gain an intimate knowledge of Armenian culture. Volunteers
will spend their days in the Kumayri Historic District sketching, measuring,
and photographing historic buildings alongside local architects. They will
also speak with local homeowners about interior and external architectural
features before the earthquake.

Earthwatch needs volunteers for 11 days from June 12 – June 22, June 26 –
July 6, July 10 – July 20 and July 24 to August 3 2007. The project costs
$3049, which is a tax deductible donation that supports the research and
covers accommodation in a local hotel, food and training.

For more information about this project visit

Fo r more information about Earthwatch visit

For press enquiries, images and interviews contact Zoe Gamble, Earthwatch PR
Manager, [email protected] / + 44 (0) 1865 318852 / + 44 (0)
7725690469.

Editor’s Notes:

* Gyumri was founded in 5th century B.C. by the Greeks. However,
archaeologists have found remnants of human life dating back 100,000 years
that suggest almost continuous habitation. Gyumri has had a series of names
and hosted a multitude of cultures over the years, which have lent the city
its unique conglomeration of architectural styles.

** In the early 1990s, Jane Britt Greenwood AIA was hired as the University
Architect for the newly founded American University of Armenia (AUA) located
in Yerevan, Armenia. During the eighteen months she spent in Armenia she was
the architectural liaison between the University of California and the
Armenian Armstate project on the design and development of a Master Plan for
an American-style university. In the 12 years since Ms. Greenwood lived in
Armenia, she has maintained old, and established new, professional contacts.
Since 2002 she has made yearly trips to Armenia and in 2004 co-founded
Historic Armenian Houses, an NGO that aims to identify, research, restore,
and preserve the residential vernacular architecture of Armenia. Since 2005,
she has been a consultant with City Research Center writing architectural
content and providing English language editing for the Alexandrapol project.

§ Earthwatch Institute is an international non-profit environmental
organization whose mission is to engage people worldwide in scientific field
research and education to promote the understanding and action necessary for
a sustainable environment.

§ Earthwatch Institute was founded in Boston, USA, in 1971. Affiliate
offices are based in UK, Australia and Japan.

§ Earthwatch currently supports over 130 environmental research projects in
50 countries by providing funds and paying volunteers who work alongside
leading field scientists and researchers.

§ Since 1971 the worldwide organization has recruited over 81,000
volunteers in support of 2,800 field research projects in 118 countries.
These volunteers have contributed over 10 million hours to essential field
work.

Deseret News, UT
April 1 2007

‘Devil Came on Horseback’ details genocide in Darfur

By Dennis Lythgoe
Deseret Morning News

THE DEVIL CAME ON HORSEBACK: BEARING WITNESS TO THE GENOCIDE IN
DARFUR, by Brian Steidle and Gretchen Steidle Wallace, Public
Affairs, 230 pages, $29.95

Genocide, the systematic destruction of an entire race of
people – or an ethnic or religious group – has been practiced around
the world for centuries. Often it is ignored by the rest of the world
because it seems too complicated to intervene.
During the past century we saw documented examples of genocide
when the Turks killed more than a million Armenians in 1915, Hitler’s
Nazis slaughtered 6 million Jews during the Holocaust, Indonesia
purged hundreds of thousands of alleged Communists in the 1960s, the
Khmer Rouge conducted huge massacres in Cambodia in the ’70s and ’80s
and tribe-on-tribe slaughter overwhelmed Rwanda in 1994.
Now it is happening again in Darfur.
Brian Steidle, a former U.S. Marine, was one of three Americans
hired by the African Union to document the situation in Darfur, which
had been classified as genocide by September 2004, the month he
arrived. He thought that if he witnessed and documented numerous
incidents of genocide, outside governments would intervene and stop
it.
When it didn’t happen, Steidle resigned his position and began
an effort to educate people around the world to the atrocities he has
seen. Essentially, "The Devil Came on Horseback" tells the story of
the Arab government’s systematic destruction of its black African
citizens, during which, allegedly, anyone of any age who is
considered "too dark" must be killed.
Steidle wrote the book with his sister, Gretchen Steidle
Wallace, as part of his campaign – and a documentary played at the
Sundance Film Festival this year. It’s a seamy, horrendous account of
massive killing with impunity.
The author swears to the accuracy of his descriptions of what
he witnessed, as recorded in audio journals, e-mails, recollections
of phone conversations from Sudan, still photographs, notes, maps and
sketches written in many notebooks.
In graphic terms, Steidle describes the huddling together of
children who were then burned alive; he saw large groups of men also
burned alive because they were trying to protect their families; he
met a woman carrying a wounded child, a child shot through the back
before her mother was brutally killed.
Incident after incident – and he had no power to stop it.
The question he asks is why doesn’t the United Nations and/or
the United States jump into this catastrophic situation before
millions more are killed?
The book is sobering and disturbing.

Dailyrecord.com, NJ
March 31 2007

Energy healer Kandarjian tells how to overcome stress
BY LORRAINE ASH
DAILY RECORD
Saturday, March 31, 2007

Robert Kandarjian, a Morristown energy healer, told 20 people at the
Rockaway Township Free Public Library Tuesday night they could add 10
years to their lives by stopping the mental chatter in their heads at
least a few minutes daily.

His free presentation was "Five Ways to Address Daily Stress."

The 52-year-old Kandarjian, originally from Lebanon, speaks three
languages — Armenian, Arabic and English. He practiced chiropractic
for years but grew frustrated trying to help people solve physical
problems with psychospiritual causes. Like stress.

So 12 years ago Kandarjian, who also earned a degree in English
literature because he loves it, decided to bring his "spiritual bent
to the surface." He trained in healing touch with the American
Holistic Nurses Association and today that’s what he practices. He
helps people, one on one and in gatherings like this, learn how to
calm down.

Why? Because somebody has to do it, he said, and because hardly
anyone in American culture is invested in this type of education. The
kind that reaches caregivers, spouses, workers, mortgage-payers,
parents, average citizens such as those who showed up Tuesday.

Kandarjian told a story about his favorite Manhattan diner where he
savored his omelets in the quiet until the owner installed a
television in each corner.

"I was being forced to watch the news while I ate my eggs,"
Kandarjian said. "The culture is active and aggressive. It is in your
face. We don’t know how to be alone. We don’t know how to slow down.
We don’t know how to be still."

Stop that head chatter, he said, and the voice of intuition,
stillness, God — it goes by many names — will surface in the center
of the self. And it will speak wisdom. Having been raised Christian
in a Muslim district of Beirut, Kandarjian concerns himself with
transcending definitions like Christian or Muslim.

"What my faith helps me know is there is a divine will that operates
in all people," he said. That is the will that counteracts stress.
That is the place to go to make life decisions.

"Be in your head when necessary," he said. But some of the time, he
advised, listen to Mozart, behold the ocean. He led the group in
quiet time. Lynne Mandeville of Flanders said it was difficult.

"My brain is trained to react faster than my center," she said.

The presentation was about retraining. In another exercise Kandarjian
directed the 20 to envision an empty/full gauge in their mind to
represent their energy level. Silently they asked what they could do
to up their energy and then waited for an answer to rise within them.
It was different for everyone.

Dottie Martin of Rockaway Township responded to Kandarjian’s
preference: going to the woods and listening to birds. "That is an
excellent sound," she said.

Other countercultural ideas presented:

– "Being disconnected from your purpose in life automatically creates
stress."

– "If you don’t have faith in a spiritual force, you’re going to play
God all the time and create stress."

Robert Kandarjian can be contacted through his Web site,
He will present a workshop noon-6 p.m.
April 14 at Six Degrees of Wellness, 25 Bloomfield Ave., Denville.

Condolences of the Ukrainian PM

ArmRadio.am
26.03.2007 17:28

`It was with great sorrow that we in Ukraine learned about the death
of the Armenian Prime Minister Andranik Margaryan ` a glorious son of
the Armenian nation, whose life was an example of self-sacrificing
devotedness to motherland at the stage of its revival and
establishment of Armenian statehood,’ says the message of the
Ukrainian Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovich to the Armenian Government,
the whole Armenian nation, relatives and friends of Prime Minister
Andranik Margaryan.

AUTHORITIES-OPPOSITION RELATIONS TO GET MORE COMPLICTED AFTER ANDRANIK
MARGARIAN’S DEATH, FORMER RA PRIME MINISTER ARAM SARGSIAN SAYS

YEREVAN, MARCH 26, NOYAN TAPAN. "Andranik Margarian was an
individuality having unique political handwriting." As Aram Sargsian,
the Chairman of the "Hanrapetutiun" (Republic) party, former RA Prime
Minister mentioned in the interview with the Noyan Tapan correspondent,

"the ability to listen was one of his greatest and most important
characteristic features, as well as the fact that he did not change as
a person when working at such a high post. "It is a serious ordeal,"
he mentioned. In A. Sargsian’s words, there are unfortunately very few
of those people in the ruling pyramid of Armenia who have "positive
fillings, some humane characteristic features, tolerance, ability to
forgive, and Andranik Margarian was the first in that list."
A. Sargsian expressed sorrow that after Andranik Margarian’s death,
"type of such people" will at all be pushed out of the political
arena, what he characterized as a very negative phenomenon. "There are
people among the authorities as well who have positive fillings but
they can not protect themselves without Andranik Margarian and they
will be pushed out of the political arena just for it," he
mentioned. Former RA Prime Minister especially attached importance to
the circumstance that Andranik Margarian was able to keep normal
relations "without spite" with the opposition. In A. Sargsian’s words,
the authorities-opposition relations will become more serious and
difficult in some sense.