Author: Tavakalian Edgar

MKHITARIAN HIGH SCHOOL’S PUPILS AWARDED GOLD COINS FOR THEIR DRAWINGS

Noyan Tapan
June 5, 2009

Istanbul, June 5, Noyan Tapan – Armenians Today. Asmin Pulash and
Narek Meidan, pupils of the Mkhitarian High School in Istanbul, have
been awarded for their successful works in the drawing competitions.

Asmin Pulash, particularly, took part in the "Colorful World"
competition organized by the Izmir-based "Tyurk" college and won the
third prize. Narek Meidan was awarded in the competition organized
by the Mersin’s "Palmie" college. Narek’s work named "Lines in the
nature" also took the third place. As the Marmara daily reports,
both pupils have been awarded half gold coins.

SPEECH FOR THE PROSECUTION READ OUT

A1+
05:10 pm | June 05, 2009

Politics

During today’s court hearing on the case of Alexander Arzumanyan
and Suren Sirunyan, charged with last year’s post election deadly
clashes, the prosecutor demanded to sentence Arzumanyan to six years
and Sirunyan to 5 years of prison.

Alexander Arzumanyan was removed of the courtroom for "showing
disrespect for court."

Arzumanyan was simply trying to console his relatives and asked them
to ignore Koryun Piloyan’s speech for the prosecution which was hardly
audible in the courtroom.

"I’m all ears, waiting to hear the speech but I cannot understand
anything," said Arzumanyan’s spouse Mrs. Melissa Brown who immediately
left the courtroom followed by many others.

After removing Alexander Arzumanyan Judge Mnatsakan Martirosyan
proceeded with the trial in an almost empty hall.

Advocate Liparit Simonyan was also outraged by the prosecutor’s speech.

He called the judge’s attention to the fact that the prosecutor relied
on uninvestigated evidence in his accusation.

The judge silenced the advocate saying none of the sides has a right
to interrupt the other.

Accusants Koryun Piloyan and Aram Amirzadyan spoke in turn for two
hours making reference to Nikol Pashinyan’s speeches dated March 1
and deciphered telephone conversations.

"Your Excellency, I cannot understand. Are we trying Nikol here?" said
indignant Suren Sirunyan. The Judge gave Sirunyan a warning and
promised to remove him as well if he dared to interrupt the Prosecutor
again.

After the speech the advocates asked the Court for 20 working days
to prepare their speech but the Judge gave them a week.

The next court sitting is scheduled for June 12.

"I won’t attend the next sitting," announced Liparit Simonyan.

The Judge paid no attention and retired.

Meanwhile, proponents of the Armenian National Congress grouped at
the courtyard were shouting: "Terrorists, free the hostages!"

AT THE STOCK EXCHANGE

A1+
05:18 pm | June 05, 2009

Official

On April 5 NASDAQ OMX Armenia conducted a trade of 2300000 dollars
with an average rate of 370.26 drams for a dollar. The closing price
is 370.30 drams, reports the press service of the Central Bank.

LEBANON: EXPATS FLY HOME FOR ELECTIONS, BUT ON WHOSE TAB?

Los Angeles Times
d/2009/06/the-atmosphere-at-beiruts-rafik-hariri-i nternational-airport-was-unusually-festive-for-a-t hursday-afternoon-as-hundreds-of-gi.html
June 5 2009

The atmosphere at Beirut’s Rafik Hariri International Airport was
unusually festive for a Thursday afternoon as hundreds of gift-laden
friends and family awaited the arrival of their loved ones, many of
whom are returning to vote in the hotly contested general elections
Sunday.

The race between the opposition, backed by Syria and Iran, and the
pro-Western March 14 coalition is so tight, in fact, that many parties
are footing the bill for their constituents to fly home and vote.

Adon Sanjal, a 23-year-old mechanical engineer working in Dubai,
United Arab Emirates, greeted his parents sporting a huge smile and
a bright orange T-shirt, a nod to Free Patriotic Movement leader
Gen. Michel Aoun.

Sanjal, who said he paid his own fare, said many of his Lebanese
friends in Dubai are coming home for the weekend to vote.

"I usually come back several times a year anyway, but this time I
came especially for the elections," he told Babylon and Beyond.

"God willing we who support Change and Reform will win," he added,
referring to the name of Aoun’s parliamentary bloc and also the
principles on which he campaigned, which have proved especially
appealing to young people.

Marwan Naim, a 34-year-old sales executive living in Kuwait, said
he supported March 14 because he believed it offered Lebanon a more
secure future.

"We just want Lebanon to be a better country, like it was before,"
he said.

Naim also said he paid for his own ticket and had mixed feelings
about political parties flying people in.

"If [the parties] are only flying them in to make them vote how they
want, then it’s bad, but if they are helping people who want to come
back anyways, then it’s good," he said.

But not everyone agreed. As foreign and Lebanese media scrambled to
interview new arrivals, hecklers from the crowd could be heard yelling,
"On whose tab?"

Bassem Arab, 42, who also resides in Kuwait, said he thought the
fierce competition for votes was a sign of improving democracy.

"If there weren’t [such competition], I wouldn’t be coming back,"
he said with a shrug.

Of course some are in it for the free trip. A 29-year-old Armenian
Lebanese American, who said he was flown in by a Lebanese party and
asked that his name not be used, acknowledged in a phone interview
that he knew little about Lebanese politics or the candidates for
whom he was expected to vote.

"I’d never been [to Lebanon], and there was a way to go for free,"
he said.

— Meris Lutz in Beirut

Photo: Throngs at Beirut airport await the arrival of friends and
family members, many of whom are returning home to vote in Sunday’s
general elections. Credit: Meris Lutz

SONENTZ: ON THE THRESHOLD OF A CENTENARY…
By Tatul Sonentz-Papazian

009/06/02/on-the-threshold-of-a-centenary%e2%80%a6 -2/
June 2, 2009

With the ominous noises of a crumbling world economic structure, shaken
by tremors caused by shifting financial fault lines on a global scale,
everyone is aware that historic changes are taking place and that the
search for a new world order is causing serious political tremors in
the status quo, so far defined and sustained by a declining "unipolar"
free market-based hegemony over nations, large and small.

The Armenian nation-one of the smallest, to be sure-whose recent
historic decades were marked by dauntingly trying times, commemorates
and celebrates losses and triumphs culminating in the reestablishment
of an independent, sovereign state after a long hiatus of total or
partial dependency under foreign autocratic regimes. In a region beset
by constant turmoil, our 18-year-old third republic still strives for
the recognition and realization of its demographic and territorial
integrity within viable, open boundaries, trying to hold its own in
the treacherous jungle of world diplomacy.

Just when our resurgent Homeland, hand in hand with the Armenian
Diaspora, was mustering its potential to rebuild the areas devastated
by the 1988 earthquake, it found itself constricted in the relentless
noose of the Azeri-Turkish blockade, aggravated by murderous border
clashes, an acute shortage of grain and fuel, and most of all,
the ongoing armed conflict over the status of historically and
culturally Armenian Artsakh, known to the world with its alien name
as Nagorno-Karabagh.

In those days of confrontation with brutally determined adversaries,
the contribution of each and every Armenian individual, each and
every Armenian organization, to our common national cause had special
significance. The Armenian Relief Society (ARS), as an experienced,
global Armenian organization that had gone through the crucible of the
first genocide of the 20th century, now with numerous regional entities
around the world and countless supporters-both in the diaspora and
the Homeland-felt deeply the urgency of its commitments and remained
cognizant of the very real needs of the day, and the immediate future.

In this context, the year 1991, along with the fateful years preceding
and succeeding it, was a frantic time of accelerated accomplishment
for the ARS. Surely, the numerous successful results wouldn’t have
been achieved without the total commitment of the Society’s regional
executives, its disciplined entities and their membership, and,
most of all, its ever-present friends and supporters throughout the
diaspora and the Homeland. With such united backing, the ARS family
was effectively able to assume responsibilities often considered
beyond its reach.

Naturally, there was an accumulative price tag attached to these
countless projects-all necessary, all worthwhile-albeit, way over
the Society’s means, taxed beyond its limits. As a result, today the
Armenian Relief Society looks to its devoted membership, its loyal
supporters and concerned beneficiaries to replenish its depleted
resources in order to continue its long, uninterrupted service to
our nation whose growing needs everywhere cannot be side stepped
or ignored.

AZERBAIJANI STATE COMMITTEE NOT EXCLUDE IMPORT OF FOOD STUFFS FROM ARMENIA

Journal of Turkish Weekly
June 3 2009

The current controversy over a bill in the Knesset designed to make
it illegal to commemorate Nakba Day should raise awareness of what
exactly Nakba day has come to entail, and why some elected officials
find it such a provocation.

Last Independence Day, as millions celebrated with barbecues and
family trips to national parks, another group of Jewish Israelis
were making a different sort of pilgrimage – to Kafrayn, a former
Arab village southeast of Haifa. Once there, they were joined by
Palestinians from east Jerusalem and Israeli Arab activists from
all over the country. Speeches were given and Palestinian flags were
waved. Keffiyehs were a dress code requirement.

Among the groups present was Zochrot, an organization whose
publications are sometimes funded by the Mennonite church, and
which hosts tours to ruined Arab villages which existed before
1948. Zochrot’s Jewish leaders, such as Noga Kadmon, have dedicated
their lives to preserving the memory of these villages, arranging
for elderly descendants to visit them, erecting signs to memorialize
them and bringing Jews to them to teach about the Nakba. They produce
small booklets about the villages in Hebrew, English and Arabic.

Another organization present at the Nakba day tour of Kafrayn was
the Defending the Displaced Palestinians’ Rights Society. Its booklet
has "Nakba 61st anniversary: We shall return" emblazoned across its
front. It is only in Arabic. Where it is produced and who supports
it are not clear. What is clear is that while the message of Zochrot
appears to be about memorializing history and understanding the
narrative of the "other," the message of DDPRS is about eliminating
Israel as a state. However the Israeli Jews present at the Nakba-day
events did not openly oppose the distribution of this anti-Israel
material.

THE TRAGEDY here is that by commemorating the Nakba on their own
Independence Day, these Israeli Jews have negated their own state’s
existence. The cynical manipulation of Nakba day to coincide with Yom
Ha’atzmaut is deliberate. Palestinians actually commemorate Nakba
day twice, once on the Independence Day which is celebrated by the
Hebrew calendar, and again on May 15, the Gregorian calendar’s date of
Israeli independence. Thus those Israeli Jews who wish to commemorate
the Nakba can actually do so on May 15 and still reserve Independence
Day to celebrate the existence of a Jewish state. That would be an
act of genuine coexistence. By choosing not to do so, these Israelis
are not preaching coexistence but merely the existence of one group
and its narrative: the Palestinians.

This profound disconnect from the story of Israel and the Jewish people
points to the tragedy of many coexistence groups. Further evidence
of the tragedy of the coexistence project is clear from examining the
village of Neveh Shalom-Wahat al-Salaam, a "binational community" of
"Jewish and Palestinian Israelis" located near Latrun, built on land
leased from the Trappist monastery and supported partly by donations
from abroad. Over the years the voting patterns at the village show
that while it was once a Meretz stronghold, in 2009, 35% supported
Hadash and 29% voted Balad (22% supported Meretz). During the Gaza
war, Shulamit Aloni addressed a "gathering to mourn and protest"
and called the IDF a "brutal and hedonistic army of conquest." The
village’s "humanitarian aid" project only gives to Palestinians.

In 2004 Howard Shippin, a resident, wrote about a "Tale of two buses"
in which he compares the hardship of waiting at checkpoints and the
security barrier with the suicide bombing of Bus 14 in Jerusalem,
in which eight people were murdered. He said the murder "can be
understood."

Coexistence is an important value. But coexisting at the expense
of erasing one’s own identity and "understanding" why someone would
murder people from your own community is not coexistence, it is simply
becoming the other, in this case a Palestinian. Those Israeli Jews who
can’t take one day a year to celebrate their state are not coexisting;
they are simply part of the nationalist cause of others.

The same is true of Neveh Shalom: It is not an "oasis of peace"
– it is an oasis of extreme anti-Israel hatred; its dialogues are
entirely composed of people speaking to those who agree with them;
and its humanitarian aid only helps one side of the conflict. Its
voting record is proof enough of the fact that coexistence has resulted
simply in Arab nationalism. That is not a model, it is a perversion
of the entire concept.

The writer is a PhD student in geography at the Hebrew University
and runs the Terra Incognita Journal blog. [email protected]

ALL PROGRAMS INITIATED BY EDUARDO ERNEKIAN IN VARIOUS SPHERES IN ARMENIA ARE IN PROCESS OF NORMAL IMPLEMENTATION

Noyan Tapan
June 3, 2009

YEREVAN, JUNE 3, NOYAN TAPAN. RA President Serzh Sargsyan met with
Chairman of the American International Airports company Eduardo
Ernekian on June 2.

It was mentioned at the meeting that in spite of some difficulties of
the international financial-economic crisis, all programs initiated
by the Argentinian Armenian businessman in various spheres in Armenia
are in the process of normal implementation.

Presenting investment programs implemented in the agricultural sphere,
E. Ernekian said that they use modern technologies, a new method of
cultivation and irrigation. S. Sargsyan attached importance to study
of these technologies and their spreading in other agricultures.

E. Ernekian said that the Fruitful Armenia program operating with
his financing has announced a competition of essays on the spheres of
agriculture and agricultural products, finances and infrastructures
in order to encourage innovation, fresh ideas and revealing Armenian
young people with new way of thinking, fulfilling their proposals.

According to RA President’s Press Office, during the talk they also
touched upon programs implemented in the banking sphere and at the
Haypost company.

ARMENIANS LAUNCH CAMPAIGN AGAINST PRO-TURKEY MEPS

Today’s Zaman
June 2 2009
Turkey

In the run-up to this week’s European Parliament elections,
a Brussels-based Armenian diaspora organization has launched a
campaign against pro-Turkey members of the European Parliament (MEPs)
while lobbying for MEPs known to be in favor of claims that Anatolian
Armenians were victims of genocide at the hands of the Ottoman Empire.

The European Armenian Federation for Justice and Democracy (EAFJD)
has released a report on the European Parliament’s last legislature
between 2004 and 2009, which, it said, "enlightens the positions
adopted by the various political groups on the issues relating to
foreign affairs, such as Turkey’s accession, the European Neighborhood
Policy, the relations between the European Union and Armenia [and]
the destruction by Azerbaijan of the Armenian cultural heritage."

The EAFJD, founded in 2000 in the EU capital, describes itself as a
"nongovernmental organization representing the European citizens of
Armenian origin at the European institutions."

The 19-page report accused some MEPs of acting as a "lobbyists" in
favor of Turkey, while praising the European United Left Group (GUE)
— known to be close to the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK)
— calling it "the most coherent group," in regards to Turkey’s EU
accession issue.

The European Green Party "started defending the Turkish immigrants from
discrimination and progressively moved to the unconditional support of
the Turkish accession by the dissimulation of the justified obstacles
which impedes the accession process. Consequently, it constitutes
today a real [Turkish] lobby within the European Parliament," the
report states.

"The GUE has the most coherent position, which is in favor of Turkish
accession by principle and at the same time it firmly expresses the
preliminary demand of respect for European values, among which is
the recognition of the genocide," it says.

The European People’s Party (EPP) got its share of harsh criticism
from the EAFJD, particularly due to the stance of its member Ria
Oomen-Ruijten of the Netherlands who has acted as the rapporteur for
Turkey for the last two years.

"The position of the EPP group got considerably worse, in particular
under the influence of Mrs. Ria Oomen-Ruijten, which showed a singular
leniency towards Ankara in general and was resolutely hostile to
any clear mention of the Armenian issue in particular. Mrs. Ria
Oomen-Ruijten notably said publicly offensive remarks about the
Armenians on several occasions. Her attitude pleased some EPP members
who continuously supported the idea of Turkey’s accession and who
always showed reluctance to mention the Armenian Genocide such as
Mr. Geoffrey Van Orden [the United Kingdom], Mr. Vitautas Landsbergis
[Lithuania] or Mr. José Salafranca Sánchez-Neyra [Spain]."

TURKISH PREMIER: IT IS TIME TO PUT AN END TO KARABAKH CONFLICT

Today.Az
cs/52733.html
June 1 2009
Azerbaijan

"The time has come to put an end to the Karabakh problem, which
hinders the development of the South Caucasus", said Prime Minister
Recep Tayyip Erdogan while speaking to public, according to CNN-Turk.

According to him, the Karabakh conflict is also a problem for
Turkey. "We have said this in open to our Russian, American and
European partners and called on them to settle this conflict as soon
as possible. This problem is a major obstacle in the development of
the region", he said.

The Turkish Premier expressed his optimism about the upcoming meeting
of the Presidents of Azerbaijan and Armenia in Saint Petersburg.

"My friend and brother Ilham Aliyev is a worthy politician and I think
that he is actively defending Azerbaijan’s interests. Everything in
this issue depends on constructive stance of Armenia and MG co-chairs,
who assumed the mission to resolve this conflict", said Erdogan.

"Turkey and Azerbaijan are brother countries and our interests
are united.

Our only problem is the Karabakh conflict, whose solution requires
a principled stance of the international community. We want the
Co-Chairs to understand their responsibility in solving this problem",
said the Prime Minister.

JHANGIRYAN’S FATHER PASSED AWAY

A1+
02:19 pm | June 01, 2009

Politics

Ex Deputy Prosecutor General Gagik Jhangiryan was sent home yesterday.

Jhangiryan’s father Vrej Jhangiryan, 80, deceased suddenly today
morning.

Yesterday evening after it became known that Vrej Jhangiryan was
at death’s door, Gagik Jhangiryan’s advocates motioned the Court
of Criminal Appeals for Jhangiryan’s short release. Judge Arshak
Khachatryan decided to release Gagik Jhangiryan by 8 p.m. June 3.

"In the given circumstances we shall request the court to prolong
the terms of release," said Advocate Erwand Varosyan.

Remind that Gagik Jhangiryan’s mother died last year.

Gagik Jhnagirian has been jailed since February 23, 2008. He was
charged with violence against a government representative and was
sentenced him to three years’ imprisonment