Author: Tambiyan Samvel

Capacity for evil is universal
In tracing the cause of the Rwandan genocide, it’s hard to know how far back
in history to go – but what happened in Africa 10 years ago is only the latest
example of humanity at its worst
ALEX SHOUMATOFF
Freelance
Monday, April 12, 2004
Ten years after one of the most savage genocides in human history, the
comprehension of how such an unspeakably horrible thing could have
happenedis still anything but clear.
The chain of causes is long and complex. How far back into Rwanda’s
history one chooses to trace it, and the relative importance one gives
to each cause, is a reflection of one’s cultural, political, and
intellectual biases.
Everyone who has examined the question (with a few notable,
rigourously impartial exceptions) has projected onto it his or her own
culture and its history, social class, politics and personal
experience, so it is important to know what the hidden agendas (even
from those who have them, in some cases) are.
There is no better laboratory than Rwanda for students in the
postmodern, deconstructionist field of historical studies known as
“the production of history.” Where does this monumental tragedy
properly begin? What is its first act and act one’s dateline? In
neighbouring Burundi in 1972, when the Tutsi there (who, unlike
Rwanda’s Tutsi, did not lose power after independence) massacred
200,000 Hutu évolués, liquidating virtually the entire educated young
generation of that ethnic group? Is it at this point that the idea of
mass extermination enters the political discourse in these two tiny,
overcrowded, ethnically riven countries? Are the Tutsi of Burundi to
some degree to blame for what happened to their Rwandan cousins 12
years later? That is what most French analysts and Western academics,
who were invested in the Rwandan Hutu’s failed post-colonial
experiment in creating an egalitarian, democratic society, think. And
not only because of this underreported, now almost forgotten Burundian
genocide, butbecause the Tutsi in both countries were an anachronistic
feudal aristocracy that became even more oppressive during the
colonial period. Privately, professional Rwandanists intimate that
“the Tutsi” got what was coming to them.
But the Burundian genocide was partly a response to the genocidal
massacres between 1959 and 1966 of about 20,000 of the Tutsi in
Rwanda, whom their Hutu serfs succeeded in overthrowing, and the
expulsion into exile of about 200,000 more.
Tutsi analysts begin the tragedy with these “pilot genocides,” the
first cases of ethnic slaughter in the region. They argue that the
original relationship between the Tutsi cattlekeepers and the Hutu
farmers was cordial, based on mutual respect. The animosity only
started after the Belgians came in afterthe First World War and
destroyed the delicate balance between the two ethnic groups, by
ruling indirectly through the Tutsi and making them oversee the forced
labour gangs of Hutu.
Many analysts, African and Western, argue that had not Rwandan society
been destroyed by colonialism, had Rwanda’s political evolution been
allowed to continue, the inequities would have eventually worked
themselves out, and the genocide would never have happened.
But if you look at the Rwanda of 300 or 400 years ago, long before
Europeans gummed up the works, there is ample evidence of at least
proto-genocidal behaviour. The mwami, or king, had the power of life
and death over all his subjects, and clans that fell into disfavour
were regularly snuffed.
When the mwami wanted to annex a neighbouring kingdom or principality,
if peaceful suasion – the offer of women and cows – failed, his
soldiers slaughtered all the men and divvied up the women and children
as booty. The mutilations that shocked the West in 1994 – impalement,
breast oblation, harvesting of testicles as trophies – had been
happening for centuries. Impalement was the punishment for cattle
rustlers until the Belgians put a stop to it in the 1920s.
But Rwanda was an expansionist state, and such symbolic acts of
humiliationhave been common on every continent at that stage of
political evolution.
In the late 19th and early 20th century, a number of fiercely warlike
Hutu kingdoms in northwestern Rwanda, collectively know as the
abahinza, were forcibly annexed by the mwami with the help of the
Germans, the first colonizers of Rwanda. The local chiefs were put to
death and replaced by king’s kinsmen.
Most of the Hutu ideologues of the 1994 genocide and the ruling elite
that carried it out belonged to abahinza lineages. For them, the
genocide was a long-awaited revenge. So does the tragedy begin with
the subjugation of the abahinza, or in 1700, or in 1894, when the
first whites arrive and as Chinoa Achebe quotes Yeats to characterize
Nigeria’s colonial experience, “things fall apart”? But the whites
arrive just as the old king is dying, in time to witness a bloody
succession struggle and a purge of the king’s clan by the queen’s
clan, which usurps the throne.
The capacity for genocide was clearly in Rwandan culture. But no more
than it is in every society, and most of the killing at this point,
with exceptions like the abahinza, was Tutsi on Tutsi, because most of
the dozens of small kingdoms in the interlacustrine region (between
Lake Victoria and the western, lake-studded arm of the Great Rift
Valley in what is now eastern Congo) were ruled by Tutsi.
The Belgians classified everybody as Hutu or Tutsi and racialized what
had been essentially a fluid class distinction (although who exactly
the Tutsi are, to what extent did their taller, thinner somatotype
evolve in place, and what relationship they have with physically
nearly identical people in the Sahel and the Horn of Africa, are still
unclear).
Projecting the cockamamy Eurocentric race science of the day, they
embraced the Tutsi as long-lost “Hamitic” cousins, and at first
reinforced the Tutsi’s supremacy and used them to run the colony. The
Hutu, who were already being worked hard by the mwami’s chiefs, grew
to hate the Tutsi. In 1959, as the Belgians were leaving, they
instigated a peasant revolution modelled after the French revolution
that brought the ill-prepared Hutu to power. This set in motion the
developments that culminated in genocide 45 years later.
By 1990, the Tutsi exiles in the five neighbouring countries numbered
abouta million. They had been second-class citizens, perpetual
refugees, in these countries for 30 years, and in Uganda more than
60,000 of them had been massacred in the early 1980s by Milton Obote
after he overthrew Idi Amin. So they decided, like the European Jews
after the Holocaust, to take back their homeland and create a space
where they could be safe.
That fall, a guerrilla force of young English-speaking Tutsi exiles,
calling themselves the Rwandese Patriotic Front, invaded Rwanda from
Uganda. By 1992, the RPF had captured half the country and forced the
Hutu regime to the negotiating table. Had this invasion not taken
place, the genocide would not have happened, either, so this is
another major cause, another reason why some argue that “the Tutsi
brought it on themselves.” But who can blame the exiles for wanting
to have a decent life, with basic civil rights, starting with the
right not to be discriminated against, or even slaughtered, as foreign
ethnics ? There were many other causes. Overpopulation, environmental
degradation and resource scarcity were a big ones, but they have not
gotten enough attention because these issues are not in most analysts’
area of expertise. By 1986, when I made my first trip to Rwanda, to
write about the murder of Dian Fossey for Vanity Fair, the fertile
Land of a Thousand Hills had the highest birth rate on Earth – 8.2
live births per woman, and 25,000 new families needed land each year
but there wasn’t any.
In the early 1990s, there was a severe drought in southern Rwanda,
which created a great number of homeless, desperate refugees who were
easily recruited by the promise that they could have the land and the
house of anyone they killed. At the same time, the world price of
coffee crashed, and this escalated the youth unemployment.
The ignorance of the general population was another underecognized
cause. So many young men who had never been taught to think for
themselves believed whatever they were told, including the hate
broadcasts of the regime’s radio station, that the Tutsi were coming
back to enslave them again.
The Catholic Church played a reprehensible role. Much of the wholesale
slaughter took place in churches into which the Tutsi were lured by
Hutu priests with the promise of sanctuary. France, which supported
the extremist Hutu regime in the interests of maintaining a client
state and a foothold for la francophonie in the region, was no less
despicable.
All the well-intentioned foreign NGOs that kept the Troisième
République going when it was financially and morally bankrupt didn’t
help the situation. The United Nations, which wrung its hands and did
nothing, and the U.S., which prevented the Security Council from
taking action by quibbling over the definition of genocide
(reminiscent of its inaction and thwarting of the international effort
to stop the Armenian genocide), could have stopped the killing from
spreading out of Kigali in the first few days, but instead just stood
by and watched it happen.
But the U.S., still reeling from its disastrous “humanitarian
intervention” in Somalia, wasn’t about to send its soldiers to be
killed in this “dinky little country that no one cares a rat’s ass
about,” as an American diplomat described Rwanda to me.
The “proximate” cause, the event that triggered the slaughter, was the
shooting down on April 6 of the plane carrying the Hutu presidents of
Rwanda and Burundi, although the killing had already begun in a few
places hours before. It is still not clear who did this – Hutu
extremists, French secret agents, the RPF, Burundians, Ugandans, or
five other possibilities.
This assassination, too, is another important cause, because it
ignited a pogrom of Tutsi in the countryside and retaliatory massacres
of Hutu, and drove thousands of Hutu refugees up into Rwanda. These
refugees were highly motivated to kill Tutsi and played a major role
in the genocide. So were the young Hutu of northeastern Rwanda, who
fled south when the RPF invaded. They were anonymous in Kigali, so
they could man roadblocks and kill at will.
Then there are all kinds of subsidiary causes. If, for example, the
colonial lines had been drawn differently so that Rwanda extended east
to Lake Victoria, it would have had access to east African markets and
not have become the poor landlocked country that it did, and the Hutu
and Tutsi would have been thrown in with many other ethnic groups and
might not have become so viciously polarized.
Whatever cause or set of causes one chooses to explain what happened,
the genocide had an effect opposite to the one that its architects
were hoping for: It brought the Tutsi back to power, and now the Hutu
are finding what it was like to be a Tutsi when they were running the
show.
Minority rule is never stable, and despite the commendable strides the
current regime has made at healing the country abolishing the ethnic
identity card and putting forth at least the public ideology that
Rwanda is for all Rwandans, it is still a hard-line dictatorship with
no tolerance of criticism or dissent.
Understandably it is wary of the millions of young Hutu who are
milling around and waiting for someone to come along and make it worth
their while to finish the job. Meanwhile, the virus of genocide has
spread to northeasternCongo, where two groups of similarly ethnically
distinct cattlekeepers and farmers, the Hema and the Lendu, have been
slaughtering each other for the last four years.
It will be decades before Central Africa recovers from Rwanda’s
societal self-immolation, from this appalling episode of collective
psychotic violence and its toxic fallout, The lesson to be taken from
it, rather than doling out blame (for which there is no shortage of
candidates), or brooding on the numerous what ifs, or writing off
Rwanda as one of the world’s rabid societies, is that every society,
even the most supposedly civilized ones, has committed genocide at
some point in its history, and the capacity for evil lurks within
every one of them, and each of us. What happened in Rwanda, like the
Holocaust, is just an extremecase of humanity at its worst. We need to
see history in black and white terms, as the good guys vs. the bad
guys, but it is never that way. The good and evil are layered and
mixed. It is each of our responsibilities to make sure that something
like this doesn’t ever happen again, anywhere, but it almost certainly
will, probably in some other distant, unheard of part of the world,
whose existing ethnic or religious differences have been exacerbated
by Western manipulation and exploitation.
Despite its uniquely tragic history, Rwanda certainly doesn’t have a
patent on such behaviour.
Alex Shoumatoff is a Montreal writer.
© Copyright 2004 Montreal Gazette

ROBERT KOCHARIAN: ARMENIAN AUTHORITIES HAVE RESOURCES NECESSARY TO BRIDLE
LAW AND ORDER DISTURBERS
08.04.2004 18:38
/PanARMENIAN.Net/ Armenian authorities have resources necessary to bridle
law and order disturbers, Armenian President Robert Kocharian stated today
in an interview with the Public TV Company. In the state leader’s words,
over one million of citizens of the country, who have elected him, already
address the authorities, asking to sanction their meetings in response to
opposition actions. “However, I always refuse to such initiatives, as I do
not consider it advisable to stir up Armenian citizens against one another,”
the President said. In R. Kocharian’s words, at present the opposition
struggles not so much against the President, as among each other for the
title of “the greatest pan-Armenian oppositionist.” “By criticizing me, the
opposition fulfills its tasks and via its excessive aggressiveness tries to
gain the support of the constituency,” the President noted. In his words,
when opposition, or rather “the aggressive political minority” at last
elects a leader, everything will calm down.

Three killed in cable car accident in Armenian capital
Public Television of Armenia, Yerevan
2 Apr 04
[Presenter over video of a crashed cable car] At least three people
have been killed in a Yerevan cable car accident. The tragic accident
took place at 1420 [0920 gmt] today. Seven people were injured and
rushed to hospital. One of them died on the way to hospital. According
to witnesses, the cable car, which was coming down from Nork hill to
the city centre, came off the cable and fell down from a height of
15-20 m into a courtyard.
Many ambulances have arrived at the scene. Employees of the State
Emergencies Department arrived at the scene recently. People from
nearby houses rendered first aide to the victims. Details of the
accident are being clarified.

Armenian president briefs European envoys
Public Television of Armenia, Yerevan
1 Apr 04
[Presenter over video of meeting] President Robert Kocharyan has met
the ambassadors of the EU member countries accredited to Armenia, the
representative of the European Commission and Polish charge
d’affaires.
Robert Kocharyan welcomed Armenia’s involvement in the Wider Europe:
New Neighbourhood programme.
The participants in the meeting touched also upon the republic’s
domestic situation. They agreed that the main task is to preserve
stability in the country, which is the guarantee of current and future
development.
The president also outlined the current situation in the settlement of
the Karabakh problem and official Yerevan’s approaches to it.

PRESS OFFICE
ARMENIAN CHURCH OF NORTH AMERICA WESTERN DIOCESE
3325 North Glenoaks Blvd.
Burbank, CA 91504
Tel: (818) 558-7474
Fax: (818) 558-6333
E-Mail: [email protected]
Website:
Dear Friends,

We are so grateful for Archbishop Hovnan Derderian’s visit on
Wednesday. As promised, here are my reflections on the program.

Thank you for sharing your gifted and inspiring spiritual leader with
the Jewish community.

With God’s blessings of peace,

Rabbi Mark S. Diamond
Executive Vice President

The Board of Rabbis of Southern California
6505 Wilshire Boulevard, Suite 415
Los Angeles, CA 90048
323-761-8600
323-761-8603 (fax)
[email protected]

Torat Malakhim
(Torah from the City of Angels)
March 27, 2004 5 Nisan 5764
Rabbi Mark S. Diamond
Executive Vice President
The Board of Rabbis of Southern California

Torah Portion: Vayikra (“The Eternal One called …”)
Leviticus 1:1-5:26

Haftarah Portion: Isaiah 43:21-44:23

The weekly Torah portion details a elaborate set of mandated sacrifices
through which our ancestors worshiped God. The Hebrew word for
sacrifice, korban, bears the connotation of “drawing near” or “coming
into close contact” with the Holy One. In his masterful Torah
translation, The Five Books of Moses (Schocken Press), Dr. Everett Fox
renders the second verse of the parashah, “When one among you
brings-near (yakriv) a near-offering (korban) for YHWH…”
Nearly two thousand years after the cessation of formal animal
sacrifice, we demonstrate devotion to God in alternative ways. Prayer,
Torah learning and mitzvot have supplanted sacrificial rites in the
Jewish tradition. Furthermore, we are bidden to demonstrate our love of
God by manifesting love and respect for our fellow men and women, the
highest forms of Divine creation.
The more I travel throughout our community, the more I realize how
little we really know about the religious beliefs and practices of our
neighbors. Earlier this week, I had the great pleasure to bring a
cherished friend and colleague to speak at the Milken Community High
School of Stephen S. Wise Temple. Our special guest was Archbishop
Hovnan Derderian, Primate of the Western Diocese of the Armenian Church
of North America. As Primate, Archbishop Derderian oversees a region
with more than 600,000 Armenians and dozens of congregations and
church-affiliated schools. Two-thirds of the Armenian community lives
here in greater Los Angeles.
The Archbishop was warmly welcomed in private meetings with Rabbi Eli
Herscher and Head of School Dr. Rennie Wrubel, and enthusiastically
received by students and faculty at an open forum. We noted several
fascinating points of commonality between the Jewish and Armenian
communities–a burgeoning day school movement, pressing issues facing
new immigrants to this country, and the special challenge of maintaining
religious, ethnic and national identity among second and third
generation Jewish and Armenian Americans. Archbishop Derderian
spearheads a project to bring young people on trips to Armenia, a
program that reminds me of our own acclaimed Birthright Israel.
I watched and listened with pride and joy as the Milken students and
staff peppered the Archbishop with questions. What was the religious
significance of the robe and necklace he wore during his visit? Did he
believe that the Jews were responsible for Jesus’ death? How does
Armenian Orthodoxy differ from Roman Catholicism? Do Armenian priests
have to take vows of celibacy? What happened during the Armenian
genocide, and what parallels can we draw with the Nazi Holocaust? How
does the Archbishop feel about Israel? Muslim-Armenian relations? A
return of Armenians to their homeland?
As we prepared to leave the campus, Archbishop Derderian was surrounded
by a crowd of inquisitive students who greeted him with more questions.
As before, the Archbishop responded to each query with warmth, love and
respect. The Milken students did not want to let this distinguished and
dynamic spiritual leader leave their campus. Their enthusiasm and
hospitality were matched by the Archbishop’s keen interest in prolonging
his first visit to a Jewish school.
I’m uncertain who enjoyed and appreciated this interfaith program the
most–the hosts or the guest. One thing I do know–on that day, the
Jewish and Armenian communities took a small step closer to God, and to
one another.
* Shabbat Shalom *

The Moscow Times
Friday, Mar. 26, 2004. Page 1
Selling the House Where Tolstoy Lived
By Kevin O’Flynn
Staff Writer
Mike Solovyanov / MT
Two of Alexei Tolstoy’s writing desks, standing as they did in his study at
2 Ulitsa Spiridonovka, where he lived from 1941 to 1945.
The museum dedicated to Alexei Tolstoy, one of the Soviet Union’s most
famous writers and a distant relative of 19th-century novelist Leo Tolstoy,
came under threat Thursday as it was discovered that the house in which it
stands, one of Moscow’s finest art nouveau buildings, has been sold to a
construction company.
Occupying the rooms at 2 Ulitsa Spiridonovka in the heart of old Moscow,
where Tolstoy lived from 1941 until his death four years later, the museum
is in the grounds of Ryabushinsky House, the home of the more well-known
Gorky Museum.
The house, named after Stepan Ryabushinsky, a rich merchant who fled Russia
after the 1917 revolution, is in one of Moscow’s most prestigious locations,
between Pushkin Square and Stary Arbat.
Turning up for work Thursday, museum workers were shocked to read a letter
telling them the museum was no longer responsible for paying its communal
bills.
Quite to the workers’ surprise, it turned out that the building had been
sold to construction company Evro- Stroi on Dec. 30.
Evro-Stroi’s general director, who would only identify himself by his last
name, Simonyan, said the building’s previous owner, a charitable fund called
The Society for the Support of the Arts, had bought the building from the
Moscow city government.
The museum and its supporters have decried the deal, saying that it is
illegal and simply a real estate grab.
But Simonyan said the sale was legal and that Evro-Stroi had no plans to
harm the museum. It just wanted to carry out some repairs and use part of
the building as an office, he said.
“Have you seen the ceiling, the walls, the roof?” he said. “They are in
complete disrepair.”
But Simonyan also said the museum did not need the 300-plus square meters it
now occupies, as Tolstoy’s apartment was only 80 square meters when he lived
there.
“We appreciate culture,” he said.
The State Literature Museum, which is in charge of the Tolstoy museum,
called the purchase “criminal,” saying it would fight the purchase in the
courts. The Moscow city government has set up a commission to examine how
the building was sold.
Mike Solovyanov / MT
The entrance to the Tolstoy museum is around the corner from Ulitsa
Spiridonovka, in part of what was the Ryabushinsky estate.
Museum workers were in shock Thursday as the news spread through the city’s
literary community, fielding phone calls and visits from outraged Muscovites
coming to show support.
“Everyone is worried,” said museum director Inna Andreyeva, who has worked
at the museum since it opened in 1987.
Alexei Tolstoy came to live on Spiridonovka after he became one of the
Soviet Union’s establishment writers under Stalin. He had left Russia after
the 1917 Revolution, but returned in 1923.
Tolstoy’s serious novels, such as “Peter I” and “The Road to Calvary,” are
less read now. But his children’s novels, particularly “The Adventures of
Buratino,” a Russian version of the Pinocchio tale, remain very popular.
Tolstoy’s reputation dimmed in recent years, amid accusations that he was an
apologist for Stalin’s regime. But the family’s literary tradition has been
continued by his granddaughter, Tatyana Tolstaya, also a novelist.
Tolstoy’s wife lived on in the house until her death in 1982, keeping it
much as it was when the writer died, complete with its valuable collection
of paintings and antique furniture intact.
In the museum, Tolstoy’s study has his writing desks kept as they were. The
writer always used all four desks when working, switching from one to
another as he researched his stories, typed them up on a classic Underwood
typewriter, and checked his manuscripts.
The museum also has a small but valuable art collection, including a work by
Karl Bryullov, the artist most famous for his “Last Day of Pompeii,” which
hangs in the Russian Museum.
The building is not just important as a museum, but “as a cultural center
which is alive,” Andreyeva said, listing the concerts, lectures and other
events that take place at the museum, such as the concert of chamber music
and reading of Spanish poetry in translation planned for Sunday evening.

Mike
Solovyanov / MT
Since opening in 1987, the museum has hosted many literary and musical
events.
The museum is in a corner of Moscow that is very special for Russian
writers, Andreyeva said, pointing out Maxim Gorky’s house next door and the
church a few meters away where Alexander Pushkin got married.
Other famous literary residents nearby included Alexander Blok, who lived on
the street when he first came to Moscow, and Ivan Bunin, who used to stay up
all night playing cards at his friends’ a bit further down the road.
In another part of the grounds, nearer to Malaya Nikitskaya Ulitsa, is the
Gorky apartment museum, where Gorky lived from 1931 until his death in
mysterious circumstances in 1936.
Reactions Thursday to the sale from the literary community ranged from anger
to resignation.
“Some con merchants, some bandits bought the building behind our backs,”
said Natalya Shakhalova, the director of the State Literature Museum.
As a national culture and architecture monument, it cannot be sold without
the permission of the federal government, she said.
Other museum workers, including the worried head of the Chekhov apartment
museum, phoned during the day to offer their solidarity.
And despite the assurances of the new landlord, museum workers and many
Muscovites fear for the fate of the building and the museum. Hundreds of
historical buildings, many supposedly protected by the state, have been
knocked down over the last decade.
One customer brought three flowers, saying that she hoped that it wouldn’t
be two the next time. Russians give an even number of flowers only at
funerals.
“It shows that the people in charge of Moscow couldn’t care less. Look what
they have done to Moscow,” said one visitor, trying out the antique
Chippendale wooden chair in the staff room at the museum, who did not want
to give his name. “They have destroyed the Arbat, Ostozhenka and
Prechistenka. Now they’ve gotten to Spiridonovka.”
But Evro-Stroi insists it has no plans to do any work on the building this
year.
Kommersant quoted the head of the commission investigating the sale,
Vladimir Avekov, as saying that it was unclear which part of building had
been sold. He said he believed the sale affected 450 square meters out of
the building’s total area of 800 square meters.
Avekov said the charity that bought the building first had been founded in
1999, and that one of its backers was the State Literature Museum.
“It seems as if they sold it to themselves,” the paper reported Avekov as
saying.
But Shakhalova denied Thursday that the State Literature Museum was a
founder of the fund.

Los Angeles Times , CA
March 23 2004
Martirosyan returns home a local hero

Boxing: Glendale resident honored by Homenetmen Glendale Ararat
Chapter after qualifying for 2004 Summer Olympics.
By Charles Rich, News-Press
LOS ANGELES – Outside the boxing ring, he’s shy.
Flashbulbs popped inside the Baghdararian-Shahinian Hall of the
Homenetmen Glendale Ararat Chapter on Monday night to catch a glimpse
of Vanes Martirosyan, who was flanked by family members, city
councilmen and former international boxers in honor of him earning a
spot on the 2004 United States Olympic boxing team.

The 17-year-old Martirosyan, a Glendale resident, won the gold medal
in the welterweight division when he beat Haiti’s Andre Berto, 25-21,
in a four-round decision in Tijuana. The 6-foot, 152-pounder
qualified for the Olympics – which will be held in Athens – on
Thursday after he beat Adam Trumpish of Canada in a semifinal bout.
“I’m shy, but I’m going for the gold medal,” said Martirosyan, a
senior at Verdugo Hills High. “It hasn’t hit me yet that I’ll be
competing in the Olympics, and I feel like I’m living a dream.
“I’m so happy to be back home. To come back to Glendale after being
in other countries, you feel the love.”
Martirosyan, who sported a small welt under his right eye, had
several trophies and victory belts displayed on a small circular
table. He was given a plaque by the Homenetmen Chapter, commemorating
his accomplishments.
Martirosyan received plenty of advice, including some from Glendale
City Councilman Bob Yousefian.
“You’ve achieved such a high goal,” Yousefian said. “You can achieve
what you dream in this country.
“We are proud that you are Armenian, American and from Glendale.”
The support didn’t stop there.
Burbank resident Vazek Gazarian, who spent nine years on the Iran
National Team, said Martirosyan could win the gold medal.
“I’m so glad for him,” said Gazarian, who fought in the 1960 Summer
Olympics in Rome after he won a silver medal at the 1958 Asian Games
in Tokyo. “I hope he’s got a good chance.
“In any fight, you’ve got to have good luck.”
Martirosyan’s father, Norik, introduced him to boxing in 1994.
Martirosyan said he’ll be flanked by his family – in the United
States and Greece – when the Olympic boxing competition begins in
August.
Until then, there will be many practices to prepare Martirosyan for
Athens.
“You can’t be shy in the ring,” said Martirosyan, who was one of
seven U.S. boxers to qualify for the Summer Olympics. “I’m already
getting advice on using my jabs more.”

PRESS RELEASE
March 15, 2004
Embassy of the Republic of Armenia
2225 R Street, NW, Washington, DC, 20008
Tel: 202-319-1976, x. 348; Fax: 202-319-2982
Email: [email protected]; Web:
International Festival of Armenian Films to Be Held in Armenia in June/July
The first international festival of Armenian films, Golden Apricot, will be
held in Yerevan, Armenia on June 30 – July 4, 2004. The festival is
organized by the Benevolent Fund for Culture Development, the Armenian
Association of Cinematography, and the Armenian Ministry of Culture and
Youth.
The objectives of the festival are to present new works by the film
directors and producers in Armenia and foreign cinematographers of Armenian
descent and to promote creativity and originality in the area of cinema and
video art. Any feature films, documentaries, and animation created between
2002 and 2004 is eligible to be presented at the festival.
The deadline for applications is April 15, 2004. For detailed inquiries and
application forms, please contact the Embassy of Armenia, or the organizers
of the festival (The Benevolent Fund for Culture Development, Byron Street,
#5, Yerevan, 375009, Armenia, Tel. (+374-1) 564484, email:
[email protected]).

Military aid to Azerbaijan to guarantee Caspian security – US official
Trend news agency
13 Mar 04
BAKU
Trend correspondent S. Agayeva: As a co-chairman of the OSCE Minsk
Group for the Nagornyy Karabakh settlement, the USA cannot take
anyone’s side in the conflict, and it is impossible to use US military
aid in the conflict, Trend news agency has quoted US Assistant
Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs Elizabeth Jones
as saying.
Jones said that US military aid to Azerbaijan is to guarantee the
security of the Caspian Sea. “There is a danger today that the Caspian
Sea may turn into a transit area for terrorists, a route for the
transportation of materials to produce weapons of mass destruction and
other transnational threats. We have to increase the possibilities of
Azerbaijani marine border guards to carry out a struggle against these
threats,” she said.
According to Jones, the modernization of an Azerbaijani air base,
which is used by US aircraft for flights to Afghanistan, is another
purpose of military aid. All this is to help the USA’s fight against
terrorism, she added.
Jones believes that Armenia should not protest against military aid to
Azerbaijan. “Neither Armenia, Russia nor any other regional state
wants the Caucasus to be used for helping terrorists,” she said.
The US Department of State proposes to the Congress to allocate 8m
dollars to Azerbaijan and 2m dollars to Armenia as military aid in the
fiscal year 2004.