Pan Armenian News
NKR CITIZEN SUSPECTED OF ESPIONAGE IN FAVOR OF AZERBAIJAN DETAINED
13.05.2005 05:08
/PanARMENIAN.Net/ An NKR citizen suspected of espionage in favor of
Azerbaijan was arrested in Karabakh. According to a report of the NKR
National Security State Service, the suspect kept in secret touch with the
Azeri special services. The NKR Office of Prosecutor General has initiated a
criminal case due to Article on Treason calling for 10-15 years of
imprisonment
Pan Armenian News
RA MFA DID NOT COMMENT ON INFORMATION SPREAD BY AZERI MEDIA ON `ARMENIA’S
NEW PROPOSALS’
13.05.2005 06:15
/PanARMENIAN.Net/ The Press Service of the Armenian Foreign Ministry did not
comment to PanARMENIAN.Net reporter on the information spread by the Azeri
media on `Armenia’s consent to quit at first five regions adjacent to
Nagorno Karabakh and then proceeding from the negotiation process the Lachin
and Kelbajar regions as well. To note, the Azeri media with a reference to
Turkish press reported that when commenting on the Karabakh settlement
process in Ankara Azeri Deputy Foreign Minister, President’s special
representative on the Nagorno Karabakh issue Araz Azimov stated that Armenia
put forward a new proposal on the problem resolution. In his words, Armenia
allegedly proposed to quit five Azeri regions in exchange for opening
communications with Armenia and normalizing relations between the two
states.
Contact music.com, UK
May 13 2005
MALAKIAN AMAZED BY FBI INVESTIGATION REPORTS
SYSTEM OF A DOWN guitarist DARON MALAKIAN is bemused by reports the
band are under investigation by the FBI and CIA – as he insists they
have no intention of being “dangerous”.
The Armenian American rockers were rumoured to be considered a
liability by US authorities, not only because of their Middle Eastern
roots, but also thanks to their anti-government stance on their
chart-topping album TOXICITY.
But leather-clad Malakian is keen to point out they merely want to
make a difference to society.
He says, “How dangerous we are to them (the FBI), I don’t know.
“I don’t really want to be dangerous to anyone – I just want to open
people’s minds.
“To help people understand that it’s not necessary to throw bombs at
people.
“The society we live in is f**ked.”
Armenian opposition leader pledges “peaceful” government change
A1+ web site
12 May 05
“We do not want a revolution, it is not our way, we will struggle to
change the authorities and follow a path to be chosen by our leader,”
the head of the Artashat branch of the People’s Party of Armenia
[PPA], Aramayis Barsegyan, said at party leader [MP Stepan]
Demirchyan’s meeting with members of the party.
Demirchyan confirmed that they intended to replace the authorities in
a peaceful manner. He said: “Of course, we will do everything as soon
as possible in order to implement these changes.” Asked about the
party’s plans to stage mass rallies, Demirchyan said: “This will
happen.”
A member of the PPA’s political council, Ruben Gandilyan, expressed
his dissatisfaction with resent statements by some leaders of the
[opposition] Justice bloc member parties who criticized Demirchyan for
his indecision.
[Passage omitted: minor details]
Demirchyan informed the audience of the party’s programme. “We will
take part in the elections to local governments,” he said, adding that
“the authorities will once again rig the elections”.
Deutsche Presse-Agentur
May 12, 2005, Thursday
15:48:00 Central European Time
Hungary backs Turkish E.U. push
Budapest
Hungarian Prime Minister Ferenc Gyurcsany met visiting Turkish
counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Budapest Thursday and pledged the
support of his country for Turkey’s bid to join the European Union.
“Turkey can count on Hungary,” Gyurcsany told reporters following
talks with the Turkish premier, who arrived in Hungary earlier in the
day for a two-day official trip.
Budapest’s backing comes amid concerns over Turkey’s human rights and
justice record, under the spotlight this week after the European
Court of Human Rights ruled Thursday that Turkey’s trial of Kurdish
leader Abdullah Ocalan was “unfair”.
Gyurcsany said the E.U. had provided Turkey with a clear “catalogue
of reforms” to implement before membership would be considered.
Erdogan, commenting on the Ocalan judgement, said his country’s
justice system would closely examine in the case as soon as the E.U.
Council of Ministers had given its opinion on the matter.
“There is no doubt,” said Erdogan, “that Turkey is a constitutional
state”.
Commenting on the controversy surrounded the alleged massacres of of
Armenians by Ottoman Turks during and after the First World War,
Erdogan said the “so-called genocide” was not an obstacle to E.U.
entry.
As many as 1.5 million Armenians were killed during mass deportations
and massacres when Armenians rose up against the Ottoman Empire.
Turkey disputes the numbers killed and denies that the deaths in any
way constitute genocide, but has come under increasing international
pressure to reexamine the issue. dpa kl ch sc
Armenian minister upbeat on new pension scheme
Mediamax news agency
10 May 05
YEREVAN
The introduction of the new pension system in Armenia will make it
possible to provide decent pensions to the republic’s citizens,
Armenian Minister of Labour and Social Security Agvan Vardanyan said
in Yerevan today.
Speaking at a briefing in Yerevan today, the minister said that the
concept of the new pension system adopted by the government is based
on three main concepts:
– provision of state pensions (may apply to disabled citizens who are
unable to work for health reasons);
– ensuring of state accumulation (payments to the Pension Fund are
directly connected with the size of the future pensions);
– provision of voluntary pensions (apart from obligatory payments,
voluntary payments are made in order to increase the size of the
future pension).
Agvan Vardanyan said that the introduction of the new pension system
will make it possible to considerably increase the average pension in
Armenia, which currently equals 10,000 drams (22 dollars).
List of dignitaries planning to attending Victory in Europe Day ceremonies
in Moscow
.c The Associated Press
Dignitaries who attended Victory in Europe Day ceremonies in Moscow:
ALBANIA: President Alfred Moisiu
ARMENIA: President Robert Kocharian
AUSTRALIA: Governor General Michael Jeffery
BOSNIA-HERZEGOVINA: Chaiman of Presidency Borislav Paravac
BRITAIN: Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott
BULGARIA: President Georgi Parvanov
CANADA: Governor General Adrienne Clarkson
CHINA: President Hu Jintao
CROATIA: President Stipe Mesic
CYPRUS: President Tassos Papadopoulos
CZECH REPUBLIC: President Vaclav Klaus
DENMARK: Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen
EUROPEAN COMMISSION: President Jose Manuel Barroso
FINLAND: President Tarja Halonen
FRANCE: President Jacques Chirac
GERMANY: Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder
GREECE: President Karolos Papoulias
HUNGARY: President Ferenc Madl
ICELAND: Prime Minister Halldor Asgrimsson
INDIA: Prime Minister Manmohan Singh
IRELAND: Prime Minister Bertie Ahern
ISRAEL: President Moshe Katsav
ITALY: Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi
JAPAN: Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi
KAZAKHSTAN: President Nursultan Nazarbayev
KYRGYZSTAN: Acting President Kurmanbek Bakiyev
LATVIA: President Vaira Vike-Freiberga
LUXEMBOURG: Prime Minister Jean-Claude Juncker
MACEDONIA: President Branko Crvenkovski
MALTA: Prime Minister Lawrence Gonzi
MONGOLIA: President Natsagiin Bagabandi
NETHERLANDS: Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende
NEW ZEALAND: Governor General Dame Silvia Cartwright
NORTH KOREA: Ri Jong San, vice marshal of the North’s Korean People’s Army
NORWAY: Prime Minister Kjell Magne Bondevik
POLAND: President Aleksander Kwasniewski
PORTUGAL: Prime Minister Jose Socrates
ROMANIA: President Traian Basescu,
SERBIA AND MONTENEGRO: President Svetozar Marovic
SLOVAKIA: President Ivan Gasparovic
SLOVENIA: President Janez Drnovsek
SOUTH KOREA: President Roh Moo-hyun
SPAIN: Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero
SWEDEN: Prime Minister Goran Persson
SWITZERLAND: President Samuel Schmid
TAJIKISTAN: President Emomali Rakhmonov
TURKEY: Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan
TURKMENISTAN: President Saparmurat Niyazov
UKRAINE: President Viktor Yushchenko
UNESCO: Director-General Koichiro Matsuura.
UNITED NATIONS: Secretary-General Kofi Annan
UNITED STATES: President George W. Bush
UZBEKISTAN: President Islam Karimov
Former heads of state
CYPRUS: President Glafcos Clerides
POLAND: Gen. Wojciech Jaruzelski
ROMANIA: Former King Michael
05/09/05 12:05 EDT
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Armenian National Committee of America – Western Region
104 North Belmont Street, Suite 200
Glendale, California 91206
Phone: 818.500.1918 Fax: 818.246.7353
[email protected]
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
PRESS RELEASE +++ PRESS RELEASE
For Immediate Release: Thursday, May 5, 2005
Contact: Hovig Dimejian
Tel: (626) 523-3454
PASADENA UNIFIED SCHOOL DISTRICT JOINS IN COMMEMORATING THE ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
PASADENA, CA – Members of the Pasadena Unified School District’s (PUSD)
Board of Education moved unanimously on April 26, 2005 to adopt a
resolution marking the 90th commemoration of the Armenian Genocide.
The resolution was conveyed to members of the Pasadena Armenian
National Committee and the Pasadena “Nigol Touman” Armenian Youth
Federation chapter who were in attendance at the Board Meeting.
On April 11, 2005, the Pasadena City Council unanimously adopted
a resolution that marked the Armenian Genocide and decried ongoing
attempts to deny the first genocide of the 20th century.
The resolution passed by the PUSD not only recognizes the crime of
genocide committed against the Armenian people, but also encourages
the District’s teachers to integrate the Armenian Genocide into
their curriculum. Specifically, the resolution praises local State
Assemblywoman Carol Liu and the Pasadena ANC for sponsoring, last
year, an all-day training seminar on the Armenian Genocide for the
District’s teachers.
“We are appreciative that the Pasadena Unified School District’s
Board Members, led by their President Ed Honowitz, have joined
our community and the human rights community in remembering the
Armenian Genocide,” commented Pasadena ANC Chairman Hovig Dimejian.
“The work of our School District in educating schoolchildren about
the crime of genocide is essential. We would be doing our kids in
Pasadena a great disservice if we did not have an active human rights
curriculum in our schools that provides instruction on the Armenian
Genocide and other crimes against humanity.”
The Pasadena ANC has had a longstanding and positive working
relationship with the PUSD. The Pasadena ANC works closely with
Suzanne Berberian, a Community Liasion officer with the PUSD. She has
worked tirelessly to ensure that the Armenian American community
in Pasadena is able to directly share its concerns and convey its
support to the PUSD and its Board Members.
The City of Pasadena is world renown as the home of the Tournament
of Roses Parade, the Rose Bowl, the Jet Propulsion Laboratories and
the California Institute of Technology. The city also is home to a
thriving Armenian American community, which under the leadership of
the Pasadena ANC, is increasingly taking a leadership role in the
civic affairs of the municipality. Pasadena is home to a number of
Armenian day schools and has active chapters of the Armenian Relief
Society, Hamazkayin Armenian Cultural and Educational Society, the
Homenetmen Armenian General Athletic Union, and the Pasadena “Nigol
Touman” Armenian Youth Federation.
The ANCA is the largest and most influential Armenian American
grassroots political organization. Working in coordination with a
network of offices, chapters, and supporters throughout the United
States and affiliated organizations around the world, the ANCA actively
advances the concerns of the Armenian-American community on a broad
range of issues.
#####
The Guilty One is Talat Pasha
by MEHMET KAMIS
ZAMAN, Turkey
May 5 2005
Yeghisapet Kesabian is 105 years old. He lives in Lebanon; one of the
last eyewitnesses of the expulsion. She is fluent in Turkish. During
the expulsion of 1915, he came from Hatay to Syria, which then belonged
to the Ottoman Empire.
During the journey, he says, they went through great hardships;
they walked for days and the soldiers protected them from attacks. A
year after settling in the Bekaa Vallley, Kesabian and his relatives
returned to his hometown, Samandag. He married and dwelled there for
23 years. When Hatay was included in Turkey in 1939, he returned to
Lebanon upon French ecouragement.
In the last issue of Aksiyon weekly news magazine, the “Other
Armenians” dosier penned by Hasim Soylemez and photograohed by
Selahattin Sevi will make you change your point of view a great deal.
In the middle of Beirut, the story of 100,000 Armenians who speak
Turkish, follow Turkey step by step, and continue Turkish traditions
and customs they learned while they lived in Anatolia will shock you.
The Armenian neighborhood in Beirut is a place where every single
person from the age of seven to seventy knows Turkish, eats kebap,
admires the footballer Hakan Sukur, listens to Turkish singer Ibrahim
Tatlises, roots for Turkish football teams, and watches Turkish
television on cable network.
The early 1900s were indeed unfortunate years in the Ottoman Empire.
Nationalist movements instigated by the great powers along with World
War I, which was made worse for us by simple-minded administrators
looking for adventures, cornered the Ottomans and meanwhile
encouraged Armenian nationalists in Russia. Eastern Anatolia was in
chaos. Tashnak gangs incited by Russia spread fear. These stories
are all known. There was a problem in the air; however, the solution
of this problem was nonesense. A group led by Talat Pasha decided to
expel all the Armenians living in Eastern Anatolia to the south and
apply the decision regardless of the consequences.
Talat Pasha is the man who, though formerly a postman, came to power
through deposing Sultan Abdulhamit, and then carried the empire into
World War I and caused the disintegration of it into pieces. Talat
Pasha is the one who perpetrated illegal actions to force all the
Armenians including the elderly and children out instead of punishing
the Tashnak gangs to solve the chaos in the East. Following the
Ottoman defeat in the war he fled to Germany.
Described as pro-Sabetay in the book “Efendi” by Soner Yalcin,
Talat Pasha caused all the trouble for us but was not satisfied with
this, today even some years after his death, his memoirs survive,
exaggrating his deeds and causing us more trouble. While according
to even the most exaggrated statements of some historians, the number
of expelled Armenians was no more than 500,000, Talat Pasha’s memoir
gives the figure 924,000. This was another goal of Talat Pasha’s.
What happened in Bosnia-Herzegovina is still fresh in our memories.
Exactly 110,000 Bosnians were massacred before the eyes of history
and the world. Without counting women and children, thousands of
people were martyred. Then what happened? Serbians just happened
to kill Bosnians and then by calling Milosevich a a war criminal,
they are trying him at The Hague. What will be his punishment? It is
totally symbolic. Milosevich was tried but all Serbia was exonerated.
The West gets away with clearing itself of any wrongdoing by blaming
a few for each of its historic embarrassments.
The Armenian expulsion is not the problem of the Ottomans or the
Turks. It is the problem of Talat Pasha and his close circle. A
problem that should have been solved at that time but became the
problem of all Turks and Turkey. The followers of Talat Pasha have
succeeded in making the entire state and nation guilty. The Republic
of Turkey should have solved this matter then by questioning Talat
Pasha and the supporters of the Tashnaks.
Turks and Armenians who lived together for a millenium left deep
wounds on each other. They fail to heal even though they want to.
WILL MUSLIM HAMSHEN ARMENIANS BE BANISHED FROM KRASNODAR REGION?
AZG Armenian Daily #081, 05/05/2005
Diaspora
“Hamshen” NGO expresses concern over the fate of Hamshen Armenians
converted into Islam. President of “Hamshen”, Ivan Krbashian, told
Yerkramas newspaper of Krasnodar (Russia) that the authorities of
Krasnodar region have refused for the 4th time to register “Hemshliner”
cultural union of local Muslim Armenians.
Krbashian thinks that the religion they practice is the main reason for
refusal. It’s not a secret that the representatives of International
Organization for Migration transporting Meskhet Turks to the USA
already talk of sending Hamshen Armenians the same direction together
with Kurmanji-speaking Kurds.
In 17th century, Armenians of Hamshen region of Western Armenia
were forcefully converted into Islam, and a new ethno-religious group
speaking Hamshen dialect of Armenian came into being. There were around
600 Muslim Armenians in Ajaria (Georgia) in 20s of 20th century. In
1944 Hamshen Armenians together with Meskhet Turks and Kurds were
exiled to Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan. In 70s, part of them resettled in
the region of Krasnodar, and today around 1000 Muslim Hamshen Armenians
live in Apsheron, Belorechensk and other settlements of the region.