ARS Soseh Kindergarten Building Opens in Stepanakert

STEPANAKERT—The new building of the Armenian Relief Society Soseh Kindergarten officially opened in Stepanakert on Wednesday.

Artsakh President Bako Sahakian, Primate of the Artsakh Diocese, Archbishop Barkev Martirosyan, Artsakh Prime Minister Arayik Karutyunyan, Speaker of the Artsakh Parliament Ashot Ghulyan, ARS Central Executive Board Chair Caroline Chamavonian, Armenian Revolutionary Federation Bureau Mamber Hagop Der Khatchadourian, members of the Central Committee of the ARF of Artsakh, as well as ARS members from more than 10 countries were present at the opening ceremony.

Asbarez will provide complete coverage of the event in future editions. Photos in the gallery courtesy of Aparaj newspaper, our sister publication in Artsakh.

CineCulture and Armenian Studies Program to Feature Fresno State Screening of ‘The Promise’

Associate Producer Carla Garapedian

FRESNO, Calif. – The CineCulture Film Series and the Armenian Studies Program at California State University, Fresno, are sponsoring a special screening of the film “The Promise” at 5pm on September 29, in the Leon and Pete Peters Educational Auditorium (5010 N. Woodrow Ave., at the west end of the SaveMart Center, near Shaw and Woodrow Aves.), on the Fresno State campus.

Filmmaker and The Promise associate producer Carla Garapedian will be present as a discussant and to answer questions after the screening. She is the director of Screamers, a documentary film which focused on the problem of genocide in the world. The film featured the band “System of a Down,” and received international attention.

The Promise opened in theaters in April of 2017 and tells the story of the Armenian Genocide through a love story involving Michael (Oscar Isaac), a brilliant medical student, who meets Ana (Charlotte Le Bon). A romantic rivalry emerges between Michael and Ana’s boyfriend Chris (Christian Bale), a famous American photojournalist dedicated to exposing political truth. As the Ottoman Empire entered World War I and the Armenian Genocide began, their conflicting passions were deferred while they joined forces to try to protect the Armenians and survive themselves. The Promise is directed by Academy Award winning filmmaker Terry George.

Admission is free, but seating is limited. The screening is open to the public and free parking is available at any of the adjacent Fresno State parking lots (near the corner of Shaw and Woodrow Avenues).

For more information about the presentation please contact the Armenian Studies Program at 278-2669, or visit our website at www.fresnostate.edu/armenianstudies

Armenia’s Ministry of Culture Seeks Return of Ancient Armenian Church Bell from Iran

Ancient Armenian church bell (Photo: Armenpress)

YEREVAN (Armenpress) – The Armenian Ministry of Culture is planning to discuss the issue of transporting an ancient Armenian church bell back from Iran with Tehran officials.

“The ministry of culture is planning to discuss this matter with the Iranian side with the purpose of solving the issue in line with international legal norms and procedures,” Deputy Minister Arev Samuelyan told Armenpress.

The Ministry of Culture contacted the ministry of foreign affairs for comprehensive information regarding the process.

According to the deputy minister, the return of cultural values to Armenia has happened in the past. For example in 2011, an Aivazovsky painting was returned to Armenia’s national gallery after being stolen 21 years earlier.

Iranian media said an ancient bell belonging to one of the Armenian Churches of Van, which due to unknown reasons appeared in north-western Iran, will be returned to the Holy Cross Church of Akhtamar.

Turkish media said the bell was given to Van’s St. Mariam Church on July 7, 1377. The bell reportedly appeared in Iran during wartime, and is still housed in a history museum in Urmia.

Calendar of Events – 09/7/2017

                        Armenian News's Calendar of events
                        (All times local to events)
                =========================================
What:           "The Rescue, Rehabilitation and Fate of Captive Armenian 
Genocide
                Survivors in Syria: From WWI-Present"
                a lecture in Armenian is given by Professor Vahram Shemmassian
When:           Sep 17 2017 1pm
                Following Church Divine Liturgy which starts at 10:30am
Where:          Armenian Apostolic Church of Crescenta Valley
                Western Prelacy's Hall, 6252 Honolulu Ave., La Crescenta,
Misc:           Professor Shemmassian will describe the attempts and
                organizations that engaged in the rescue and rehabilitation of
                Genocide survivors in Syria, especially children and women,
                who through forced marriages and religious conversions were
                absorbed into Muslim society across Turkey and the Arab Near
                East. The talk will conclude with comments on the issue of
                Islamized Armenians, currently a hot topic in private and
                public discourse.
                Dr. Vahram Shemmassian is Professor and Director of the
                Armenian Studies Program in the Department of Modern and
                Classical Languages and Literatures at the California State
                University, Northridge. He holds a Ph.D. in History from the
                University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA).
                The event is free to the public.
Online Contact: [email protected]
Tel:            818-244-9645
***************************************************************************
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Chess: Levon Aronian continues fight for World Chess Cup

PanArmenian, Armenia
Sept 6 2017
Levon Aronian continues fight for World Chess Cup

Levon Aronian is the only Armenian grandmaster to continue fighting for the World Chess Cup, currently underway in Tbilisi, Georgia.

Armenia’s Hrant Melkumyan and Robert Hovhannisyan were left out of the tournament.

The first game of Round 2 will be held on Wednesday, September 6, with Aronian set to meet China’s Hou Yifan.

Aronian won the Stavanger-hosted Norway Chess tournament in June, 2017, also snatching victory at the Saint Louis Rapid and Blitz tournament two months later.

BAKU: Another attack of West on Azerbaijan, or when there is nothing else to write about

AzerNews, Azerbaijan
Sept 6 2017

By  Trend

Some Western publications seem to have an editorial rule – they write about Azerbaijan whenever they don’t know what to write about, especially if their articles are well-paid.

One can write not only about Azerbaijan, but also about Russia, or any other country a Western reader is not aware of enough to make up his or her own opinion and not to believe in the nonsense of Western journalists.

For many years in a row, officials of Russia, Azerbaijan and some other countries attacked by Western journalists from time to time, cite facts of obvious manipulation of information allegedly obtained by pseudo-journalists, demonstrate the evidence to the contrary and demand refutation, but everything is in vain.

Yet another provocative, anti-Azerbaijani fake news concocted by The Guardian with reference to own investigation is the continuation of a long-term campaign against Azerbaijan. Let us explain for an inexperienced reader that the term “own investigation” means that an article is based on rumors, gossip, lack of facts and evidence of what is described in it.

One immediately remembers the sensational story of one US female journalist from one of the most famous US TV channels, who brought a photo of a Syrian boy allegedly killed by the Russian Armed Forces to a meeting with Russian foreign minister. The boy was found alive and safe one year later. The Russian Foreign Ministry still every week demands the TV channel to refute the results of its “own investigation”, but to no avail.

It is clear that the Western media have long not stooped to anything in order to promote the interests of those who pay them rather than the authors’ own interests.

However, let us return to the anti-Azerbaijani article by The Guardian and the question “who benefits?”

Planned hostile campaigns and attacks against Azerbaijan have long become a usual method of fighting some external centers of power, which use considerable means, including financial ones, to create the necessary anti-Azerbaijani mood in the Western press. Azerbaijan receives totally arbitrary accusations usually when the country achieves successes by holding sporting and humanitarian events, a song contest or any elections that, in fact, only concern the Azerbaijani people.

For many years, Baku has tried to prove that the accusations being brought against the country are a heap of such monstrous lies, falsification of facts and fiction that it is not even worth denying them. However, an unaware reader prefers to believe in what is written, and not to recheck the facts.

It has long been known that the anti-Azerbaijani network paid by George Soros, a notorious architect of color revolutions in different parts of the world, and the Armenian lobby, operates in Europe.

At the beginning of the year, the European Strategic Intelligence and Security Center (ESISC) published a comprehensive report, which discloses the “Armenian Connection” network within the PACE, which “has led a merciless propaganda campaign against Azerbaijan to benefit Armenia.”

By the way, the report cites even more interesting facts related to George Soros. It turns out that he was linked by tender friendship and long-term partnership with representatives of the ubiquitous Armenian diaspora in the US. The report provides information, for example, on cooperation of Soros with Berge Setrakian, president of the Armenian General Benevolent Union (AGBU).

It is not surprising that a petition calling for US President Donald Trump to declare Soros a terrorist instantly gathered the necessary 100,000 signatures to be considered in the presidential administration.

It is clear that billionaire Soros and the non-poor Armenian diaspora have extra funds to buy two or three journalists. Though, it is not necessary to buy them, judging by the authors of the articles. It is unlikely that Dina Nagapetyants, the obviously Armenian author of the article published in The Guardian, would take money to drag Azerbaijan, the eternal Armenian enemy, through the mud.

However, the accusations of The Guardian are so absurd that it is probably not worth commenting on them. For all the years of independence, Azerbaijan regularly faced double standards of the West, because the country refused from the policy imposed on it and didn’t want to be someone’s colony as a whole.

The fact that the small country that gained independence only 24 years ago, wants and can be on an equal footing with the world powers, surely worried the West, which was accustomed to some subordination of small countries and all these years for many times tried to destabilize the civil society in Azerbaijan. Fortunately, all the attempts were unsuccessful.

One can only hope that eventually the West will finally realize the futility of exerting political pressure on Baku, and the Western countries won’t turn a blind eye to the obviously slanderous activity of their authoritative publications under the guise of the “freedom of speech” notion.