Category: 2020

OTTAWA, Canada—In a letter addressed to the Armenian National Committee of Canada on May 4, Canada’s Minister of Foreign Affairs, François-Philippe Champagne clarified Canada’s position on Artsakh.

Contrary to the diplomatically irresponsible and one-sided tweet published by the Canadian Embassy in Ankara, following the General Election held in the Republic of Artsakh on March 31, Minister Champagne clearly stated that Canada fully supports the OSCE Minsk Group Process, the peaceful resolution of the conflict and the principle of self-determination – among others – as outlined in the Helsinki Final Act.

“While I regret any concern that this tweet may have caused the Armenian National Committee of Canada and the Canadian-Armenian community, I would like to reassure you that there has not been any change to our long-standing position on Nagorno-Karabakh,” said the minister in his letter.

“We are satisfied to see that the Minister has restored the balance vis-à-vis Canada’s position on this issue of paramount importance to Armenian-Canadians, effectively overriding the lopsided and foreign-influenced tweet published by the embassy in Ankara,” said Hrag Tarakdjian and Shahen Mirakian, co-presidents of the ANCC.

“The position of Canada remains based on our strong and consistent support for the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) Minsk Group’s work toward a negotiated solution, and our position does not prejudge the outcome of this process. Canada agrees with the Minsk Group that there can be no military solution to the conflict and that any resolution must take into account the Helsinki Final Act. We want peaceful societies, and we will support the solution, when achieved,” concluded the minister in his letter addressed to the ANCC.

“There is still a lot more that needs to be done on this issue and the ANCC will continue to stand at the forefront and work with our government to ensure that the fundamental human rights of the people of Artsakh are protected and upheld” concluded Tarakdjian and Mirakian.

On April 3, the ANCC forwarded a letter to Minister Champagne, raising serious concerns regarding the tweet, asking for its retraction and for the Minister to recall the ambassador for his irresponsibility and inability to uphold Canada’s balanced foreign policy.
The ANCC is the largest and the most influential Armenian-Canadian grassroots human rights organization. Working in coordination with a network of offices, chapters, and supporters throughout Canada and affiliated organizations around the world, the ANCC actively advances the concerns of the Armenian-Canadian community on a broad range of issues and works to eliminate abuses of human rights throughout Canada and the world.

President Donald Trump on May 4 announced his intent to nominate Patrick Hovakimian, of California, to be General Counsel of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the White House reported.

Hovakimian is currently the Associate Deputy Attorney General and Chief of Staff to Deputy Attorney General Jeffrey A. Rosen at the Department of Justice.  He also served as the Department’s Director of Counter-Transnational Organized Crime and as an Assistant United States Attorney for the Southern District of California.

As a Federal prosecutor, Hovakimian prosecuted public corruption and white-collar crime, including multinational bribery and fraud conspiracies.

In addition, Hovakimian is a Commissioner of the Foreign Claims Settlement Commission of the United States, having been nominated by the President and confirmed by the Senate in 2018.
Earlier in his career, Hovakimian practiced law with Latham & Watkins, LLP, and was a law clerk for the Honorable J.L. Edmondson of the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit.

Professor Sebouh Aslanian was appointed the inaugural director of UCLA’s Armenian Studies Centers, which is housed within the UCLA Promise Armenian Institute.

The announcement was made Thursday by Prof. Cindy Fan, UCLA’s Vice Provost for International Studies & Global Engagement in a message to colleagues.

As the holder of the Richard Hovannisian Chair in Modern Armenian history, Professor Aslanian manages the academic activities of his chair and teaches courses in the department of history on such topics as the three-part “Armenia and Armenians in World History,” graduate seminars such as “Port Cities and Printers: An Introduction to Early Modern World and Armenian History,” and the survey class “The Middle East, 1100-1700: From the Crusades and Mamluks to the Age of the Gunpowder Empires.”

The Armenian Studies Center is housed within The Promise Armenian Institute (PAI), and Professor Aslanian will work closely with PAI inaugural director Professor Ann Karagozian.  PAI is a groundbreaking new entity within the UCLA International Institute.  Made possible with a $20 million gift from the estate of Kirk Kerkorian, the largest gift that the International Institute has received, The Promise Armenian Institute positions UCLA to build significantly upon its more than 50 years of history of Armenian Studies.

This new institute is the hub for world-class research and teaching on Armenian Studies including the Armenian Studies Center, and for coordinating new and ongoing research and public impact programs across UCLA, from social sciences to health sciences, from humanities to music, the arts, to engineering, and from public policy to management. The Promise Armenian Institute’s size, scope, and interdisciplinary approach make it the first of its kind in the world.

Professor Aslanian is author of the award-winning book From the Indian Ocean to the Mediterranean: The Global Trade Networks of Armenian Merchants from New Julfa (University of California Press, 2011) as well as numerous scholarly articles on Armenian History and Armenian Studies.  His recent articles include “‘Many have come here and have deceived us’: Some Notes on Asateur Vardapet (1644-1728), An Itinerant Armenian Monk in Europe,” Handes Amsorya, Zeitschrift Fur Armenische Philologie (2019); “Une vie sur plusieurs continents Microhistoire globale d’un agent arménien de la Compagnie des Indes orientales, 1666-1688,” Annales: Histoire, Sciences Sociales (2018); “From ‘Autonomous’ to ‘Interactive’ Histories: World History’s Challenge to Armenian Studies,” An Armenian Mediterranean, Words and Worlds in Motion (2018); and “The Great Schism of 1773: Venice and the Founding of the Armenian Community of Trieste,” Reflections of Armenian Identity in History and Historiography (2018).  He is currently working on two book projects.  The first is a history of early modern global Armenian print culture and is provisionally titled Early Modernity and Mobility: Port Cities and Printers Across the Armenian Diaspora, 1512-1800. Under contract with Yale University Press, the book rethinks in novel and insightful ways both the role of mobility in the early modern period in global history and the rise and development in that history of Gutenberg print culture across the early modern diasporic Armenian communities in the port cities of the Mediterranean, Atlantic, and Indian Ocean world.  The second book project is provisionally titled Signed, Sealed, and Undelivered: The Voyage of the Santa Catharina and a Global Microhistory of the Indian Ocean, c. 1738-1756.”  A narrative microhistory of trade and politics in the early modern Indian Ocean, the book relies on 2,000 pieces of mercantile and family correspondence, commercial contracts, and other papers stored on an Armenian-freighted ship, the Santa Catharina and seized by the British navy in 1748. The book unpacks these letters, now stored at the High Court of Admiralty, and probes them to understand economic, cultural, and political histories of Indian Ocean arena and emerging commercial and contractual isomorphism in the age of Empire.