The California
Courier Online, August 25, 2022
1- No Respect
for the Living or the Dead
In Armenia; Case
in point: Vahakn Dadrian
By Harut
Sassounian
Publisher,
The California
Courier
www.TheCaliforniaCourier.com
2- Yerevan blast: Death toll
at 16, pregnant woman and child among victims
3- Pashinyan,
Not a New Geopolitical Reality, is Armenia’s Primary Problem
4- Choosing to
become a single mother in Armenia
5- Armenia Continues Fight Against
COVID-19
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No Respect
for the Living or the Dead
In Armenia; Case
in point: Vahakn Dadrian
By Harut
Sassounian
Publisher,
The California
Courier
www.TheCaliforniaCourier.com
I write this column with great sorrow and dismay.
Vahakn Dadrian, the preeminent expert on the Armenian
Genocide, died in upstate New York
on August 2, 2019, at the age of 93. Born in Istanbul, Turkey,
he devoted his entire life to expose the Turkish denials of the Armenian
Genocide. Dadrian conducted his meticulous research in Turkish, English,
French, German and Armenian, publishing dozens of scholarly books and articles
in professional journals.
One would think that a distinguished individual such as
Dadrian would be respected, not only during his lifetime, but also after his
passing. Prime Minister of Armenia Nikol Pashinyan took the right step by
issuing a decision on August 19, 2019, to appoint a high-level State Commission
to make the necessary arrangements for Dadrian’s burial in Yerevan and allocated an appropriate budget
for the funeral expenses.
The members of the State Commission were: “A. Harutyunyan,
Minister of Education, Science, Culture and Sports; Z. Mnatsakanian, Foreign
Minister; A. Torosyan, Minister of Health; A. Janjughazyan, Minister of
Finance; H. Marutyan, Mayor of Yerevan; R. Martirosyan, President of National
Academy of Sciences; V. Terteryan, Deputy Minister of Territorial Management
and Infrastructure; V. Movsisyan, Deputy Police Chief of Armenia; Bishop Hovnan
Hakobyan, Grand Sacristan of the Mother See of Holy Etchmiadzin; A.
Iskankaryan, Director of the Special Services for the Population; H. Marutyan,
Director of the Armenian Genocide Museum; and G. Sarkissian, President of the
Zoryan Institute (Canada).” Dadrian was the Director of Genocide Research at
Zoryan.
After the Embassy of Armenia in the United States transferred Prof. Dadrian’s ashes
to Armenia,
a Memorial Service was held on August 31, 2019, at the National Academy of
Sciences, where Dadrian was a member. The Service was attended by the State
Commission members, as well as Ararat Mirzoyan, then Speaker of the Parliament,
Dadrian’s 90-year-old sister, and other dignitaries and academicians. Prof.
Dadrian’s ashes were interred at the Tokhmakh
Cemetery in Yerevan.
Recently, when Maggie Mangassarian Goschin, Director of the Ararat-Eskijian Museum
in Mission Hills, California, wanted to include a photo of
Dadrian’s grave in her museum where Dadrian’s archives are stored, no one could
locate Dadrian’s grave. After a lengthy search, Baghdig Kouyoumdjian of Paris
and Hrair Hawk Khatcherian of Canada finally found Dadrian’s unmarked grave. It
turned out that after three years of his burial, the State Commission did not
have the courtesy of placing on Dadrian’s grave a tombstone or even a plaque
indicating his name. The grave was shockingly covered with weeds and garbage.
The two gentlemen placed a temporary plaque on Dadrian’s grave and cleared the
weeds. This is the horrible treatment that this eminent scholar received in his
homeland after his death.
Prof. Taner Akcam, a well-known scholar of the Armenian
Genocide and Director of UCLA’s Armenian Genocide Research Program, was the
first to sound the alarm on his Facebook page about the deplorable neglect of
Dadrian’s grave. It is ironic that an individual of Turkish origin is more
concerned about the despicable treatment of Dadrian’s grave than the Armenian
government. Dadrian was Akcam’s mentor and collaborator on Genocide research.
Akcam wrote on his Facebook page: “Dadrian does not deserve this. It is
unacceptable and an immense shame that the grave of the founder of modern
Armenian Genocide research is neglected and forgotten.”
In response to Prof. Akcam’s justified outrage, Mari
Hovhannisyan, Program Coordinator of the Zoryan Institute (Armenia),
issued a statement titled, “Tempest in a teacup.” She gave the excuse that the
delay was “due to COVID-19 and the 2020 Artsakh
War, Armenia
was burying several thousand of its brightest sons and daughters, tragically
lost due to both of these crises, each requiring their own appropriate
tombstones.” This is an unacceptable excuse. Dadrian was buried seven months
before COVID-19 affected Armenia
and more than a year before the Artsakh War. That’s plenty of time to place a
tombstone or at least a plaque on Dadrian’s grave, not to mention that almost
two years have passed since the 2020 war and COVID-19 is no longer prevalent in
Armenia.
Furthermore, since Dadrian’s death, other individuals have been buried in
nearby graves and they have a tombstone!
More troubling are the attempts to cover up this scandal.
Zoryan’s Hovhannisyan wrote on her Facebook page: “We kindly request those who
have raised this issue publicly to refrain from spreading unchecked information
and making unnecessary comments, which can only lead to tempest in the teacup.”
Vahan Hunanyan, spokesperson of the Armenian Foreign Ministry, and Harutyun
Marutyan, Director of the Armenian Genocide Museum
in Yerevan,
issued similar meaningless excuses. This is the usual behavior of those who
want to cover up their embarrassing mistakes. It would have been more
appropriate to issue an apology and take immediate steps to place a tombstone
on Dadrian’s grave.
If the State Commission members, appointed by Prime Minister
Pashinyan, could not arrange to place a tombstone on the grave of a
highly-respected Armenian scholar in three years, they should have been
reprimanded by Pashinyan for their negligence and incompetence. This is a national
scandal. It is also a regrettable indication that if Armenian officials cannot
place a tombstone on a grave, how can Armenians trust their government to run a
country with so many serious problems?
Finally, Prof. Dadrian’s grave should not have been placed
in the Tokhmakh Cemetery. It would have been more
appropriate to place the urn of Dadrian’s ashes at the Memorial Wall next to
the Genocide Monument or the Komitas Pantheon,
alongside other prominent individuals. That is the least the Armenian government
could do to rectify its grave error.
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2- Yerevan blast: Death toll at 16, pregnant
woman and child among victims
Emergency workers have recovered more bodies from the site
of an explosion on Sunday, August 14 at a fireworks warehouse in Armenia,
raising the death toll to 16, the emergencies ministry reports.
Misak Sargsyan (born in 1964), Anahit Mkhitaryan (born in
1967), Jemma Nazaryan (born in 1960), Anahit Khalatyan, Vardan Kocharyan (born
in 1960) and Gayane Avetisyan are confirmed dead. Ten bodies recovered from
under the debris are yet to be identified. Emergency Minister Armen
Pambukhchyan says a pregnant woman and child are among the victims.
The explosion caused parts of the building to collapse and
injured over 60 people, 12 are still in hospital. Eighteen people remain
missing after blasts ripped through the market:
The search and rescue works continue at the site. Meanwhile
authorities noted that there were around four metric tons of explosive and
flammable materials on the premises when the blast occurred.
Preliminary investigation suggested that the blast, which
took place at 1:30 p.m. local time on Sunday, was centered at or near depot
that housed fireworks. The use, sale, storage and purchase of fireworks is not
regulated in Armenia.
Among the fatalities were a child and a pregnant woman, as
authorities were identifying the dead and attempting to account for the
missing.
The fire at the market was completely extinguished at around
5:45 p.m. local time on Tuesday, emergency officials said, according to
Azatutyun.am.
Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan declared Wednesday, August 17
and Thursday, August 18 official days of mourning for the victims of the blast.
Similarly, the authorities in Artsakh will observe days of mourning on the same
days.
On Monday, August 15 Armenia’s Minister of Emergency
Situations Armen Pambukhchyan all but ruled out that the explosion was a result
of at terrorist act.
An investigation is still pending, but three days after the
blast, no one, including the owner of the Surmalu shopping center has been
questioned about the explosion.
The director of the market has denied any breach of
fire-safety regulations. A fire
inspection body, however, insisted after the incident at Surmalu that two dozen
violations identified during an inspection conducted in the spring of 2021 had
not been eliminated by the market’s administration.
Talking to RFE/RL’s Armenian Service briefly on the phone on
Tuesday, August 16 Irina Madatova, the manager of Surmalu, asserted that they
did eliminate the violations. She did not elaborate. The fire inspection body
said it gave Surmalu until the end of last year to comply with city planning
norms and fire-safety rules at an area of more than 3,000 square meters. After
that, no new inspection was carried out, it added.
Vardan Tadevosyan, a spokesperson for Armenia’s
Investigative Committee, said that about two dozen people, most of them
survivors of the fire, have been questioned so far. He did not say why no one
from the managers of Surmalu or the owner of the market have been interrogated.
According to the official, there are still no suspects or accused in the
criminal investigation launched after the explosion.
“Most of the interrogated are tenants who themselves
suffered in this incident. The identities of owners of pavilions operating in
the territory of the shopping center are being clarified,” Tadevosian said.
Investigators together with experts are also examining the
scene of the explosion and fire, he added. “I don’t think that investigators
can report information so quickly about what caused the explosions, as search
and rescue work is still ongoing on the scene.”
While it is still unclear what exactly caused fireworks at
Surmalu’s warehouse to detonate, Armenia’s Minister of Emergency
Situations Armen Pambukhchyan told reporters on Monday, August 15 that
authorities “practically ruled out” terrorism as a cause of the
incident.“Watching the footage of the explosion, we almost rule out such a
theory [that a bomb had been planted], because first there was smoke, then fire
covering some small area, then came an explosion,” he said. “Quite a large
amount of explosive materials was stored there.” Armenian Prime Minister Nikol
Pashinyan has declared a two-day mourning on August 17-18 in memory of the
victims
Razmik Zakharyan, an 86-year-old businessman and former
politician who owns Surmalu, was not available for comment.
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3- Pashinyan, Not a New
Geopolitical Reality, is Armenia’s
Primary Problem
By Levon Baronian
(Oragarkq)—When Pashinyan and his cronies came to power as a
result of their 2018 coup, using tactics directly out of the playbook of
Western-backed “color revolutions”, they did so on a populist agenda that promised
an end to corruption and a higher standard of living in Armenia. The majority of Armenians,
especially in the Diaspora, only nominally knew who Pashinyan was. They either
overlooked or ignored the fact that Pashinyan had made a career of printing occasionally
fake and often grossly misleading news for his family newspaper, which was
funded for years by the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), a CIA front.
For years many
unsuspecting Armenians had heard (and repeated) tales of how bad Armenia’s corruption
was, without bothering to verify many unsubstantiated, and ultimately false
claims.
Many Armenians had heard that former President Robert
Kocharyan supposedly had a net worth of $6 billion and owned a private island
and that former President Serzh Sargsyan had lost millions of dollars in a Monte Carlo casino. However, very few knew that many of
these fables originated in Pashinyan’s “Armenian Times” newspaper. Even fewer knew that Pashinyan’s annual
grants from the CIA front NED were actually to “expand its coverage of
corruption, poverty, and regional issues.”
In 2016 alone, Pashinyan’s newspaper “Armenian Times”
received $40,785 from the NED to “expand” coverage of “corruption” and
“poverty”
And so, Pashinyan, who had made a career out of exaggerated
and fake news, had a steady source of funding for his newspaper. All he had to
do was “expand” coverage of “corruption” and “poverty” in Armenia and so
that’s exactly what he did. For years, Armenians were spoon-fed a steady source
of tales about “corruption” and how poor and unfortunate they were. Never mind
the fact that Armenia
was, relatively-speaking, no more corrupt or poor than its neighbors or other
former Soviet republics.
This despite the fact, that Armenia and Armenians had lived
through perhaps the best two decades in their modern history. For two decades, Armenia had managed to avert large scale war,
had retained control of not only its Soviet-era borders but also territories
(Artsakh) it had liberated after the collapse of the Soviet
Union. Armenia’s GDP and standard of living had improved
dramatically over the same two decades, emigration had slowed, Armenia was
enjoying international prominence, relative to its size, with successes in
sports, culture, technology, and entertainment and, albeit slowly, programs
were in place that were gradually improving Armenia’s democratic, societal, and
economic standards. Fast forward 4 years after Pashinyan’s “velvet revolution”
and Armenia
has gone through perhaps the worst period of its history since the Armenian
Genocide. In the last few years, Armenia has effectively lost
control over most of Artsakh and parts of Armenia-proper. Around 5,000 Armenian
soldiers perished in a matter of a few weeks in a “war” that Pashinyan himself
admitted could have been averted. Corruption is as rampant as ever. Democracy,
freedom-of-speech, and opposition rights have been rolled back to days not seen
since the early years of independence or the Soviet era. And Armenia
is capitulating more and more on a daily basis to Russia’s,
and even more concerning, Turkey’s
demands.
Since the disastrous war in 2020 and Pashinyan’s
capitulation, after what some claim was a fabricated war to hand over Artsakh,
several rounds of apologetic narratives have sprouted up trying to defend
Pashinyan.
One of the first apologetic narratives was that Armenia was bound to lose the war because Turkey supported Azerbaijan,
and there was no way Armenia
could stand up against a regional power like Turkey. If Armenia’s traditional allies Russia and Iran
were lukewarm in their support of Armenia, that was actually
Pashinyan’s fault too, because he was the one who damaged relations with the
two countries immediately after coming to power.
Another narrative was that Pashinyan should not be blamed
for the losses, and it was really the former authorities who were to blame, for
not keeping the Armenian military strong enough to defend Armenia and
Artsakh. This narrative is also easily dismissed. After all, the former
authorities had managed to defend Artsakh for 20 years before Pashinyan came to
power. What’s more, Pashinyan was already in charge for two years before Azerbaijan attacked, and if there were any gaps
in Armenia’s
defenses, it was Pashinyan’s responsibility to close them. Instead, Pashinyan
had wasted hundreds of millions of dollars buying fighter jets that Armenia could
not use, because the missiles for them were not also purchased. He had also
replaced dozens of top military officials with people perceived more loyal to
him.
The good news is that none of what Armenia has
gone through in the last few years is irreversible. Armenia can rebuild its military
and once again become one of the strongest in the region. Even the notorious
capitulation agreement signed by Pashinyan is reversible.
The European Union
has been trying to force a comprehensive peace treaty between Armenia and Azerbaijan,
which if signed, would basically seal the deal, and formalize Armenia’s
losses. On the other hand, each of the agreements brokered by the Russians are
effectively nonbinding, and can be reversed under different circumstances,
because they do not have the power of a treaty, which would need to be ratified
by Armenia’s
legislative and judicial branches.
The sooner Pashinyan is gone, the faster Armenia can
revert back to its time-tested foreign policy and geopolitical
orientations.
The sooner it does that and regains the trust of its
historical partners, the faster it can get off the trading block and go back to
being an integral part of a mutually beneficial regional alliance. **********************************************************************************************************************************************
4- Choosing to become a single
mother in Armenia
By Armine Avetisyan
(OBC Transeuropa)—Today in Armenia there are about 50,000
women between 35 and 53 who are single and childless. There are means for those
who want to be a mother while remaining single, but the choice is rooted both
in the individual and in societal norms.
Nona, 41, has been visiting one of the fertility centers in
the capital Yerevan
for the past six months. She is planning the birth of her first child. The
woman is not married, she does not have a partner; the pregnancy will take
place through artificial insemination, with the help of a donor. She says she
thought a long time before taking this step.
“I had been dreaming of having a baby for 5 years. The
moment came when I realized that I don’t want to get married, but I want to
become a mother. At first I was looking for my child’s father among my
acquaintances, I thought I would find the right one there, to just get
pregnant. Then I realized that this right guy could have misunderstood me. It
is difficult to live in Armenia
and say to a man: ‘Hi, I want to have a child with you, let’s have sex and
goodbye,’” says Nona.
Nona she started looking for a clinic that specializes in
fertility issues. She chose a doctor, and made an appointment for the first
visit. She says she was a little worried that the doctor did not understand her
desire to become a mother without having a husband, but she was amazed when the
doctor not only understood her very well, but also received her warmly and
supported her at every stage.
“When I decided to become a single mother, I shared my idea
with some friends and relatives. Unfortunately no one supported me, everyone
said it would be difficult, that I shouldn’t do it, that I would meet my man
anyway. Given all this I thought that the doctor would say to me: ‘Go home,
find your other half’, but he has helped me a lot.”
In recent months she has taken all the necessary medical
tests and is ready for future motherhood, artificial insemination will take
place in the next few days.
“You cannot imagine what a moment this is for me! Today I
entrust myself only to God and my doctor, I dream of the moment when I will
feel my baby move under my heart…”.
Lilit, 38, has been enjoying motherhood for 3 years already.
Unlike Nona, she got pregnant naturally, but she broke up with her partner as
soon as it happened. “When I told my partner about my pregnancy he asked me to
have an abortion and when I refused, he disappeared,” says Lilit, whose parents
did not welcome the news of her pregnancy.
“My family was against me being a single mother. They said
people would label me immoral. It was hard to get their support, but I
insisted. Even today, people who surround me do not fully accept the fact that
I am a mother without a man by my side. Many think that I am an ‘easy’ person,
but it does not matter to me. The important thing is my child, who today lives
a healthy and good life,” says Lilit, adding that she does not rule out asking
for help from doctors in the future to have a second child through artificial
insemination. “My child needs a sibling, I don’t want them to be alone in the
world. It is not likely for me to meet the right man, I will not wait forever,
then I will grow old, it will be difficult.”
There are not many women like Nona and Lilit in Armenia, ready
to be single mothers and who do not fear the judgment of society, although
things have improved in recent years.
Every year, several dozen unmarried women become mothers
through artificial insemination at the “Fertility Centre” in Yerevan. Eduard Hambardzumyan, director of
the centre and a gynecologist specializing in fertility, says that the single
patients have recently increased. “If 8-10 years ago there were very few women
who turned to us, today there are many more who manage to find the necessary
courage. They have learned not to take into account everyone’s opinion, not to
ask the permission of the whole nation, to make their own decisions and to
contact us,” he says.
Today it is mainly women between 40 and 45 who turn to
specialists. Hambardzumyan advises not to postpone and to act before reaching
the age of 45, because afterwards functional problems appear and the pregnancy
becomes complicated.
“Women under 45 can get pregnant with the help of donor
sperm, this is so-called artificial insemination, an affordable option which
costs around $200 dollars, while artificial fertilizations costs around $2,500,
depending on the clinic and the complications,” he says.
According to the specialist, if the service is made more
accessible, the number of women who will turn to it will increase. “After
becoming a mother, there is no woman who does not say it was the best decision
of her life. If a woman wants to become a mother, I repeat, she must not put it
off. The years go by, no matter how miraculous the doctors are, nature does its
job.”
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5- Armenia Continues Fight Against
COVID-19
More than 2.2 million doses of the coronavirus vaccine have
been administered in Armenia
since commencing the vaccination program a year ago, authorities said on August
22. Armenia
has recorded 431,361 coronavirus cases as of August 22.
Armenia
has recorded 8,643 deaths. There are 9,057 active cases; 412,661 have
recovered.
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