Category: News

Director of Armenian Genocide Museum-Institute Hayk Demoyan delivered a lecture at the Faculty of Protestant Theology of the Charles University in Prague on “The History and memory of the Genocides Committed in the Ottoman Empire against Armenians, Greeks and Assyrians”.

The lecture marked the start of genocide courses at Charles University.

The course is intended for BA and MA students at the faculties of history, political science, theology, anthropology, philosophy, sociology, medicine and law in Charles University. The course is being held for the first time and the lectures will be continued until the end of the academic year. Foreign and Czech experts studying genocides are invited; including; specialist of Holocaust and other genocides in history Dr. Paul Levine, and Academician Gerhard Baumgartner. During this course the students will learn about genocide causes, mass violence, history of mass genocides, and crimes against humanity.

AGMI Director handed the publications of AGMI to the faculty library.

Agreement for future cooperation has been made between AGMI and Faculty of Protestant Theology of the Charles University. –

Reality TV star Kim Kardashian got a surprise 35th birthday party from her husband Kanye West. West gathered Kim’s mother Kris Jenner and sisters Kourtney Kardashian, Kendall Jenner and Kylie Jenner for a special movie screening at the Westlake Cinepolis theatre in LA, reported Us Weekly.

Keen to not let Kim feel like the odd one out, the rapper engineered the party so that all of her friends came dressed as their ‘best pregnant Kim’ so she could enjoy her birthday surrounded by fellow bumps.

And the reality TV star was so touched by his gesture, which included hiring out a cinema for her friends and family to enjoy as well as a lavish birthday cake, she took to Twitter to gush about how lovely her husband is, according to Metro.

Kim Kardashian gushed over the attractive birthday cake via an Instagram post and called it “the flawless chill yummy food birthday.”

President Serzh Sargsyan had a meeting today with the President of the European People’s Party (EPP), Joseph Daul, in Madrid. At the outset, Serzh Sargsyan congratulated Joseph Daul on being reelected as President during the EPP congress on 21 October and wished him success, expressing the hope that under the leadership of Mr. Daul, the EPP, as the most influential political force of Europe, will continue to fulfil its mission and meet the expectations of European voters.

The interlocutors discussed issues pertaining to the further promotion of cooperation with the EPP, the prospects of RA-EU relations, the strengthening of ties between the RPA and EPP, Armenia’s collaboration with its EPP partners in international platforms, as well as to common issues and challenges which will also be touched upon during today’s broadened summit of the EPP. The RA president and the EPP president reflected upon the current stage of the Nagorno-Karabakh peace process within the frames of the OSCE Minsk Group and upon the existing problems. The interlocutors also exchanged views on the situation in the Middle East and on the refugee crisis.

Armenia’s president presented to Joseph Daul the process of RA constitutional amendments and the importance of making amendments to the fundamental law for our country.

President Serzh Sargsyan noted that he warmly recalls Mr. Daul’s visit to Armenia in April this year and his participation in the events to commemorate the Armenian Genocide Centennial, by which, Armenia’s president was certain, the EPP president reiterated his and his party’s loyalty to the universal values that underlie European integration. Stressing the importance of the resolution “The Armenian Genocide and European Values” adopted by the EPP Political Assembly, the president thanked the party leader and those EPP members of the PACE who endorsed that statement.

The RA president will also take part in the EPP broadened summit in Madrid.

Canadian Armenian filmmaker Atom Egoyan newest work, Remember, was presented at Festival du Nouveau Cinéma last week and attempts to bring a material reality to the unfathomable tragedy of genocide, reports.

After success at the Venice Film Festival, the Oscar nominee presents a tale that revolves around Zev Guttman (Christopher Plummer), a Holocaust survivor struggling with dementia. He tries to track down and kill the Nazi leader of his block at Auschwitz, who killed Zev’s family before escaping to North America under an assumed name.

Due to his failing memory, Zev must constantly be reminded of his mission through a letter written by Max (Martin Landau), a fellow Auschwitz survivor and the organizer for Zev’s journey.

“It focuses on the questions of memory and justice and how to deal with unresolved history. It’s fuelled by the notion of trauma. The two characters are both survivors,” said Egoyan.

Anti-Semitism and the formation of hate play a central role in Remember, exemplified in a powerful scene where Zev visits the home of a neo-Nazi (Breaking Bad’s Dean Norris). At first, the man believes Zev is a Nazi as well. After Zev is forced to admit that he’s Jewish, the man becomes furious, forcefully screaming threatening anti-Semitic profanities.

“It’s horrifying in that moment; we understand the mechanics,” Egoyan said. “We see what triggers hate. When the trust is betrayed, he has to find a reason for his sense of pain and it converts into this extraordinarily violent anti-Semitism.”

This is Egoyan’s second film with Plummer. Their first collaboration, Ararat, also focused on themes of genocide, specifically the Armenian massacre during World War I.

From 1915 to 1918, the former Ottoman Empire was responsible for the deaths of an estimated 1.5 million Armenians in what is now the Republic of Turkey. Many of the persecuted were burned alive, drowned or given poisonous drugs. Others were subjected to death marches, where they were forced to wander toward the Syrian Desert, deprived of food and water. Raphael Lemkin used these events as a reference when he first coined the word genocide in 1943.

Egoyan said that as an Armenian, he can relate to Remember’s theme of mass murders left unresolved, especially since the institutional perpetrators have never admitted guilt, and the Turkish government still hasn’t recognized the methodical mass murders as genocide.

“I’m bringing my own sort of history, but I’m also understanding the persistence of what fuelled the Holocaust,” he said.

The Ottomans committed the Armenian genocide with the oversight of the German government. During his reign, many of Hitler’s key friends and policy makers could be directly connected to perpetrators in World War I. Evidence suggests that Hitler used tactics gleaned from the Armenian genocide as a template when executing his Final Solution.

More and more institutions are recognizing the Armenian genocide. Within the past year, Pope Francis acknowledged the genocide at his service in Rome, going as far as to say: “Concealing or denying evil is like allowing a wound to keep bleeding without bandaging it.”

Egoyan is proud that the Catholic Church supports the plight of the Armenians, though he’s more pleased to hear that the German and Austrian governments have acknowledged their roles. He feels that their admission of responsibility has opened a new constructive dialogue.

“Some extraordinary things happened this year,” he said. “People are beginning to understand [the genocide] as a template for things that happened afterwards.”

“I used to always boycott Turkey,” said Egoyan.

As a young man, the Canadian director was passionately involved in a political Armenian student group at the University of Toronto, dedicated to bring awareness to issues of genocide and a destructively selective state memory. This year, however, Egoyan attended a wedding in Turkey for the daughter of Hrant Dink, the Armenian journalist assassinated by a Turkish nationalist in 2007.

When the director entered Turkey for the first time, he discovered a community of Armenians that were never driven out, a people on the frontline of forming a new dialogue around the genocide. At the time, these groups gave Egoyan hope for a new dynamic in the conversation between the Turkish government and Armenians.

“When I went in the summer all this seemed very possible. Literally three weeks after I got back it all went to hell. It’s very scary what’s happening in Turkey right now.”

Though the dialogue process may have broken down as political tensions in Turkey increased, Egoyan believes that there are enough progressive forces to shift the discussion, just as he has witnessed in the 28 countries who acknowledge the genocide around the world.

“Since I was a student, Canada has recognized the genocide,” he said. “That was an extraordinary moment. There’s a huge shift in contagiousness.”

A masked man attacked a school in southern Sweden on Thursday before being shot by police. Health authorities said one teacher was killed and two students seriously wounded in the attack, the Associated Press reports.

Students fled Thursday morning from the Kronan school in Trollhattan, near Goteborg, Sweden’s second-largest city. In a statement, police in Trollhattan said the attack took place in the school’s cafe area.

Health authorities in Trollhattan said in a statement that one teacher died after being wounded in the attack and two students, aged 11 and 15, were seriously wounded with cuts. They said the attacker was also in serious condition.

Police earlier said four students had been wounded. It was not possible to immediately rectify the differing accounts.

The school has 400 students, ranging from pre-school to high school.

Swedish media say the school held a meeting Thursday morning to discuss teachers’ worries that the school was too open, with a cafe for adults that meant the school could not control who comes in.

The Dagens Nyheter newspaper said students must go through the cafe to reach the school’s own cafeteria and other parts of the building.

Armenian National Assembly Speaker Galust Sahakyan met with the Chairman of the Syrian Parliament Mohammad Jihad al-Laham on the sidelines of the 133^rd assembly of the Inter-Parliamentary Union.

Galust Sahakyan said it’s a great pain for Armenia to see the developments in Syria.

“We are more than friends with Syria. We never forget that Syria opened its doors for Armenians that fled genocide,” he said.

Speaking about the Armenian-Syrian inter-parliamentary cooperation, Mr.Sahakyan noted that Armenian MPs periodically visit Syria to learn about the situation on the spot and report detailed information.

Galust Sahakyan noted that wars with features of genocide continue today because the Armenian Genocide was not properly condemned by the world at the time.

The Speaker reiterated Armenia’s willingness to stand by brotherly Syria on all international platforms.

Mohammad Jihad al-Laham invited Galust Sahakyan to Syria.

The Chairman of the Syrian Parliament expressed gratitude for the meeting and said: “The Russian-Syrian coalition has already achieved serious progress.  We are grateful to you for supporting us. Please, convey President Bashar al-Assad’s thanks to Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan.”

Speaking about the assembly of the Inter-Parliamentary Union, Mohammad Jihad al-Laham said “it’s sad the international community is using double standards with regard to Syria.”

The has published an article titled “Armenian Genocide and Beyond: The Road to Deir al-Zor,” in which author Benny Morris refers to the Armenian Genocide, the comemoration of its centennial, Turkey’s move to mark Gallipoli anniversary on April 24. Below is an excerpt form the article:

This year Turkey moved its Gallipoli anniversary commemoration, traditionally marked on April 25—the day the Allies landed on the peninsula just west of Istanbul—to April 24. April 24, of course, is the day on which Armenians around the world have traditionally commemorated the slaughter of their forefathers by the Ottoman Turkish government. That day, in 1915, the police in Constantinople rounded up some 250 Armenian leaders for deportation and death. This act was followed by systematic mass deportations and massacres.

This year was the centenary of both World War I events. President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, with his wonted crudity and cynicism, moved the Gallipoli remembrance by a day in order to overshadow the Armenian commemoration and divert international attention away from the Turks’ crime against humanity, considered by most historians to be the first genocide of the twentieth century.

All Turkish governments since World War I have denied Turkish responsibility for the mass murder and, indeed, have usually denied that it actually took place, explaining that a much smaller number of Armenians had died (much, incidentally, as Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian “president,” in his PhD thesis claimed that “only” several hundred thousand Jews had died during the Holocaust). Instead, Turkish governments have claimed that the Armenians, a disloyal people, had rebelled against the country and tried to stab it in the back during the war; that the Armenian victims were the result of clashes between armed rebels and the empire’s security forces; and that, if massacres occurred, they were the doing of overzealous local officials and/or Kurdish tribesmen, rather than a product of the policy of the central government, which had merely ordered the removal of Armenians from war zones.

Few, if any, of the foreign dignitaries who attended Erdogan’s festivities at Gallipoli, including princes Charles and Harry from Great Britain and the prime ministers of Australia and New Zealand, whose troops had participated in the landings on the peninsula, were probably aware of the grim irony that undercut the Turkish celebrations.

Click for the full article.

The Azerbaijani side violated the ceasefire about 60 time last night, the NKR Ministry of Defense reports.

The rival fired more than 900 shots from weapons of different caliber, including 60 mm mortars in the direction of the Armenian positions.

The front divisions of the NKR Defense Army have given a worthy response to the rival’s actions and confidently continue with their military duty all along the line of contact.

By Hannah Hess

From Ankara to Istanbul, Capitol Hill lawmakers and staff took 159 privately sponsored trips to Turkey during the 113th Congress, putting the nation second only to Israel in popularity as a foreign destination.

But a recent report suggests hidden sources, never vetted by the House Ethics Committee, footed the bill for five-star hotels and dining during some members’ all-expenses-paid jaunts.

Rep. Yvette D. Clarke, D-N.Y., accepted an $8,700 nine-day trip, paid for by the Council of Turkic American Associations, according to documents filed with the Ethics Committee. She flew business class in May 2013 and stayed at Istanbul’s Crowne Plaza & Hagia Sophia and the Rixos Grand Ankara.

Clarke’s itinerary included a three-day conference in Baku, Azerbaijan, which later attracted the attention of ethics investigators and became the focus of a probe into alleged state-funded travel.

The New York-based nonprofit also paid for Rep. Leonard Lance, R-N.J., to travel in Turkey before attending the conference. He stayed at the Ciragan Palace Kempinski, a former palace converted into a luxury hotel with suites that promise “the exclusive ambiance that was once enjoyed by the majestic Sultans of the Ottoman Empire.”

Rep. Michelle Lujan Grisham, D-N.M., and her fiance accepted a similar package, paid for by the Turquoise Council of Americans and Eurasians. In addition to hotel stays, the nonprofit spent $1,500 on meals and taxis for the couple and the congresswoman’s plane ticket. The TCAE did not cooperate with ethics investigators.

The Office of Congressional Ethics talked to the CTAA’s president, Furkan Kosar, and three other nonprofit group leaders, who admitted they used the Bosphorus Atlantic Cultural Association of Friendship and Cooperation (BAKIAD) to arrange and finance domestic expenses for the side-trips some members and staffers took to Turkey.

“The sponsors believed that BAKIAD’s funding comes from donations from Turkish nationals,” stated the report released by the OCE on Oct. 7. “One sponsor thought BAKIAD might receive commissions from hotels and restaurants for using their services.”

BAKIAD handled transportation to and from the airport, currency exchange, hotel reservations, guides and sightseeing, without asking for repayment from the nonprofits. But BAKIAD’s involvement was not disclosed in pre- and post-travel documents submitted to the House Ethics Committee for vetting.

“Some red flags were missed,” said Public Citizen’s Craig Holman, alleging the committee did not ask enough questions of the nonprofits.

After an interview with OCE, Kosar disclosed the Istanbul-based BAKIAD’s involvement. He later wire-transferred $2,280 to repay BAKIAD for the amount listed on the disclosure forms.

House Ethics Committee staffers appear to have done their due diligence, under the rules and laws Congress has created to vet privately sponsored travel. The committee’s own report on Azerbaijan shows staffers emailed reported travel sponsors to confirm statements and itineraries on pre-travel forms.

“The committee’s report was very clear that they appear to have been lied to, and they’ve referred it to [the Justice Department] for criminal prosecution,” said Dan Schwager, former chief counsel of the House Ethics Committee. “I don’t know how much more seriously you can take it.”

“Do they want the committee to polygraph sponsors?” Schwager chided, in response to watchdogs’ concerns. He said auditing the books of any group who wanted to sponsor a trip is not a “reasonable exercise” under current rules.

According to its biennial report, the House Ethics Committee received 4,593 travel requests during the 113th Congress.

BAKIAD was established in 2006 to oversee and coordinate trips and events related to North America. According to the OCE, the group may have funded and coordinated the privately sponsored congressional travel within Turkey dating back several years.

Groups that admitted coordinating with BAKIAD have paid for at least $136,000 in travel and 38 trips for members and staff, according to a travel disclosure database maintained by LegiStorm.

A 2007 overhaul of congressional travel rules, prompted by the scandal that sent lobbyist Jack Abramoff to prison, put stricter rules in place to prevent special interests from footing flying lawmakers around the world. But the rewrite left one “loophole” in place, said Campaign Legal Center’s Meredith McGehee.

While lobbyists, lobbying firms and foreign principals are prohibited from arranging or financing trips, members can accept free travel paid by nonprofits, who are not required to disclose their contributions.

But the Azerbaijan case “is like drawing a roadmap about how to evade the limits in the law for who can pay for travel,” McGehee said in an interview.

Holman suggested Congress needs to carefully review how nonprofit sponsors plan to pay for overseas journeys, like the heavily scrutinized trip to Azerbaijan.

“Members and staff who go on these trips are going to suffer the political consequences,” Holman said.

Asbarez– Some of the biggest names in music, among them System of a Down lead singer Serj Tankian, have come together to give thanks for one of the most influential albums of the past 40 years, all to benefit a great cause.

The album “Entertainment!” by UK post-punk band Gang of Four came out in 1979 and steered many young musicians down their artistic path.

“It [the album] completely changed the way I looked at rock music and sent me on my trip as a bass player,” said Flea, of the Red Hot Chili Peppers in praise of “Entertainment.”

Celebrity Auction Doctors circulated a copy of this CD to many artists who also have been outspoken about the significant impact this album has had on them. Each artist was asked to personalize a section of the CD artwork in their own creative way.

Some of the artists joining Tankian in the auction are REM’s Michael Stipe; Gwen Stefani of No Doubt; Rage Against the Machine and Audioslave’s Tom Morello; Mark Mothersbaugh, Bob Mothersbaugh, and Jerry Casale of Devo; and Bush frotman Gavin Rossdale.

The band Gang of Four has selected the UK-based women’s rights charity as the beneficiary of the auction. Womankind Worldwide is an international women’s rights charity that helps women and girls improve their lives in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. The auction is being hosted by eBay Giving Works from October 15 to 25 at .

Celebrity Auction Doctors produced an exclusive interview with Gang of Four’s guitarist Andy Gill for the auction. In the interview, Andy talks about Gang of Four’s influences, their latest album, and the charity Womankind Worldwide. Andy will also personally call the auction’s top bidder to offer thanks. Andy was recently voted #12 in Spin Magazine’s 100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time.

Celebrity Auction Doctors is an interview-and-auction charity webisode created by Auction Doctors, Inc. For more than twelve years, Auction Doctors has organized global charity auctions for national organizations, including over $2 million raised for ESPN and the V Foundation for Cancer Research.