Category: News

Hripsime Arakelyan
Public Radio of Armenia
Cyprus

Apologize, if you’re wrong. Begging pardon is not an easy thing, especially when it comes to thorny historical issues, crimes against humanity and genocides. Are the modern governments ready to apologize for crimes committed against humanity? The issue was raised during a conference at the University of Central Lancashire (UCLan) organized by Arman Sarvarian, Lecturer in Law at the University of Surrey, UK. The event brought together genocide scholars, historians, lawyers from countries that faced atrocities in the past.

The shared opinion about the Armenian Genocide was that it’s necessary to find mechanisms to make the Turkish government apologize for the greatest crime at the turn of the 20^th century.

Will Turkey ever apologize for the Armenian Genocide? What can be the consequences of that apology? According to Arman Sarvarian, the challenge is that there is no common position among different Armenian communities, no united body, which Turkey will negotiate with.

“We need a common strategy and a general understanding of what we demand and what we expect,” he said.

Expert of Turkish studies Ruben Safrastyan said the so-called apology, which Turkey tried to present as recognition was a dishonor not only for the Turkish leaders, but also for the Turkish state. “We have to do our best for larger sectors of the Turkish society to understand and condemn the essence of this heavy crime.”

“We must use all available levers provided by international law to reach reimbursement. An official apology should be the first step on that route,” Safrastyan said.

“International relations are not about now, they are about contemporary events, but those events are located in the past,” said Professor John Strawson from the University of East London.

“Apologies for the past injustice cannot be cheap,” the Professor said. As for the Armenian Genocide, he said “the fact that the international community did not deal with the issue means that it remains a burning sore in relations with partners within the region. History is something we have to be very careful with. It can come back and bite you, when you think it’s over.”

Armenia’s ex-Minister of Energy, Adviser to RA President Armen Movsisyan passed away today aged 53. He had long been fighting brain cancer.

Armen Movsisyan worked as Minister of Energy and then as Minister of Energy and Natural Resources between 2001 and 2014.

The U.S. Embassy in Yerevan and the U.S. Commercial Service in Moscow, in partnership with Ameria Management Advisory Services, organized a one-day business conference focused on franchise business opportunities on September 22 in Yerevan.

The event helped strengthen the growing commercial ties between the United States and Armenia by introducing American franchise businesses that are new to the Armenian market and already successful elsewhere in the region. The goal was to highlight these opportunities to Armenian businessmen and women who are looking to open their own businesses.

“I know there are many successes waiting to be born today,” U.S. Chargé d’Affaires Clark Price said during the event’s opening. “It is my hope that we, at the U.S. Embassy, can set the stage for success by connecting Armenian businessmen and women to American corporations. Then we can step back and let you do what you know best, build your businesses.”

“I believe that franchise is the least risky format of business for foreign companies to enter the Armenian market and understand its peculiarities, and for local investors – to employ fully-fledged and successful business technologies,” said Director of Ameria Management Advisory Services Tigran Jrbashyan.

Two U.S. corporations, Papa John’s Pizza and Tutti-Frutti Frozen Yogurts, sent representatives to Yerevan to speak to conference participants about the possibility of investing in franchises in Armenia. This event provided participants with rare and valuable early access to well-known brands eager to enter the Armenian market. Approximately 50 business representatives and entrepreneurs attended the conference.

“It is my hope that many business relationships will start today, and that in time, those relationships will grow to successful, profitable partnerships,” said Mr. Price. “We are more than happy to set the stage for economic growth through events such as today’s franchise day. But we all know, the success of your efforts will be in your hands.”

Along with presentations from each of the American franchise concepts, participants had a chance to hear from well-known Armenian organizations on topics such as business, legal, and financing considerations.

The event was organized in part to strengthen and enrich the bilateral commercial relationship between Armenia and the United States by boosting commercial ties between the two. The event also focused on the importance of Intellectual Property Rights in the further development of franchise businesses in Armenia.

Teesri Duniya Theatre, in collaboration with the Armenian Genocide Centennial Committee of Canada (AGCCC), will present Rahul Varma’s State of Denial from October 8-25 at Segal Centre Studio, reports.

This moving and unsettling play, directed by Liz Valdez, highlights the urgent need to counter denials of gendered violence, ethnic cleansing and racial rivalry. Continuing their mandate to encourage dialogue, the company will hold a talkback with invited guests after each matinee performance.

Set in contemporary Canada and Turkey of 1915, State of Denial links the Turkish-denied Armenian genocide of 1915 with the 1995 genocide in Rwanda, connecting them through the Canadian diaspora experience. When Odette, a Rwandan-born Canadian filmmaker, travels to Turkey to investigate stories of genocide and hidden identity, she interviews Sahana, an elderly and respected Muslim woman who has devoted her life to assisting Armenian survivors. On her deathbed, Sahana confesses a chilling secret that challenges a long-standing state of denial that Odette promises to make public at any personal cost.

Director Liz Valdez finds the work incredibly important in this era when we believe we are so aware and well-informed, yet there are devastating historical events that most people don’t know anything about.

For Mher Karakachian, Chairman of AGCCC, denial has been rightly considered as the last phase of the crime of genocide, “Survivors and scholars alike have repeatedly reminded us that that forgetting or denying such a monstrous crime kills the victims twice. State of Denial vividly portrays this tragic fact and in the most creative ways, brings the ongoing ploys of denialism under the spotlight. On the somber occasion of the centennial of the Armenian genocide, Varma’s play lights a beacon to confront the darkness that still looms in many corners of the globe.”

Liana Bdéwi is an Armenian actor who plays Sinam. She grew up learning about the genocide, “It’s been ingrained in me since I was a kid and is a topic that is still so sensitive, despite the 100 year anniversary this year. I’m excited to have the opportunity to represent my heritage and community in an impactful and artistic way.”

The Getty Museum will keep eight brilliantly illustrated table of contents pages from a 750-year-old Armenian Bible after settling a long-running lawsuit brought by an American branch of the Armenian Apostolic Church, the reports.

The church contended they had been illegally separated from the rest of the book amid the Armenian genocide during World War I.

The Getty and the Western Prelacy of the Armenian Apostolic Church of America jointly announced the settlement Monday. Both sides said they were happy with the outcome, but for very different reasons.

The Getty gets to keep the art, and the church gets recognition that all along it has been the rightful owner of the pages, which were separated about 100 years ago from a complete Bible called the Zeyt’un gospels.

The rest of the book is at the Matenadaran, a museum and library for manuscripts in Yerevan, the capital of Armenia. The Getty bought its pages in 1994 from an Armenian American family for $1.5 million in today’s dollars.

Under the settlement, attorneys said, the church will donate the eight pages, known as a “canon table” that prefaces the rest of the Bible, to the Getty on Jan. 1, 2016. The Getty will pay all legal expenses from the suit the church had brought in 2010 – a sum attorneys for the two sides declined to disclose.

“It’s a resolution both sides are equally happy with, a win-win,” said Timothy Potts, director of the Getty Museum. “It’s an acknowledgment of their ownership, but maintains the work as an integral part of the collection here.”
Potts said that the Getty will keep custody of the manuscript pages until it officially takes ownership.

They were created during the mid-1200s by a renowned Armenian artist, T’oros Roslin, but were separated from the rest of the Zeyt’un Bible sometime during the upheaval caused by the Armenian genocide of 1915 to 1918. It claimed the lives of about 1.2 million Armenians under the Ottoman Empire, which became the modern republic of Turkey. The Turkish government disputes that a genocide took place.

Lee Boyd, the attorney for the Armenian church, said its main objective was not to wrest the pages from the Getty, which it feels has been a good custodian and offers continuing access to a Southern California public that includes a large number of Armenian Americans.

The foremost goal, she said, was to set the historic record straight and draw attention to the fact that there is much unfinished legal business for heirs of Armenian families or institutions that lost property during the genocide.

“This is the first restitution of an artwork from the Armenian genocide,” Boyd said. “I hope it’s not the last. The case was brought to acknowledge the ownership of the church and [establish] recognition that they were taken during the Armenian genocide. It had devastating effects felt for generations, including much loss of cultural patrimony, particularly of the Armenian church.”

Before the settlement, according to court files, the church had sought the pages’ return, along with damages of at least $35 million. But both sides would have been on unpredictable legal terrain had the case proceeded, complicated by what Potts described as “lots of gray areas and facts we don’t know” relating to the manuscript pages’ whereabouts during and immediately after World War I.

According to court documents, the Zeyt’un Gospels were housed at a church in a traditionally Armenian area of what’s now Turkey. As chaos broke out, members of the Armenian community removed the prized Bible from the church for safe keeping. At some point the front pages with the most beautiful art were separated from the rest.

They wound up in possession of an Armenian man who immigrated to the United States in 1923, settling in Massachusetts. That family handed them down through generations until the Getty bought them more than 70 years later.

The pages became a highlight of the Getty’s collection of illuminated manuscripts. The materials – paint on vellum, a parchment made from calf’s skin — are too fragile and light-sensitive to be on permanent or frequent display, Potts said. But as delicate medieval manuscripts go, the Zeyt’un canon tables have been in heavy rotation, with one or more pages displayed in 11 exhibitions since 1997 – 10 at the Getty and one at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art.

They will have been out of view for 19 months when all eight pages go back on display Jan. 26 in the Getty’s exhibition “Traversing the Globe Through Medieval and Renaissance Manuscripts.”

The church’s legal position got a boost in December 2013 from a ruling in another art-restitution case brought against a Spanish museum, involving California heirs of a family that lost a painting by Camille Pissarro during the Holocaust.

The U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals refused to declare unconstitutional a special 2011 California law that extends the statute of limitations for claims to recover allegedly stolen works held by museums and art dealers. That took away some of the Getty’s legal ammunition.

But Boyd, the Armenian church’s attorney, said that pushing forward rather than settling the suit would have meant fighting additional procedural battles over whether the church had waited too long to sue.

In court documents the Getty had pointed to articles published in 1943 and 1952 that showed church officials were fully aware that the family in Massachusetts possessed the canon tables, and did not take action to get them back.

Also important to the settlement, Boyd said, was the knowledge that the Getty can give the artworks the best scholarly attention and technical care. “The Matenadaran has expanded its preservation abilities, but [Armenia] is still an emerging economy and the resources are not there as they are at the Getty,” she said. Boyd said “there are hopes this resolution will forge a relation between the Getty and the Armenian church” in which the Getty, which has an international program for art conservation, would take on projects in Armenia.

Potts said that “it could happen…but that hasn’t been a part of the [settlement] agreement.”

The museum director said another future possibility is a joint exhibition in which the Getty would loan its pages to the Matenadaran for an exhibition of the entire Zeyt’un gospels in Armenia, and in turn the full book would be shown at the Getty.

More likely in the near term, Potts said, is a ceremony to mark the church’s donation of the art to the museum.

“It’s an important moment for both parties, and we would love for there to be some such event,” he said.

 

 

 

The Bundestag may consider an Armenian Genocide resolution this fall, but the concrete timing is yet to be confirmed, German Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary to Armenia Matthias Kiesler told reporters today.

Ambassador Kiesler said hearings on an Armenian Genocide bill pending at the Bundestag are under way. “I cannot say, however, when the measure will be discussed and be put on a vote.”

The Ambassador participated today in the discussion of the results of the “Acting Together” initiative, a program funded by the German Federal Foreign Office, which aims at building bridges between the people of Turkey and Armenia through adult education, journalism, oral history and art.

As part of the project twenty young people and two writers from Armenia and Turkey are taking in a joint road trip from Armenia to Turkey, retracing the routes of 1915.

Next year in Turkey they will look for signs of former Armenian life and its extinction in the collective memories of peoples with different ethnic, religious and cultural backgrounds. Amng other places the participants will visit Istanbul and Haydarpasha station from where Armenian intellectuals were deported on April 24^th, 1915, and Aydash, a former concentration camp near Ankara.

On September 22, 2015, Prime Minister Hovik Abrahamyan met with China State Council Chairman (Prime Minister) Li Keqiang in Beijing, RA Government’s Press Service reported.

Welcoming the Prime Minister of Armenia, the Chairman of the State Council of China thanked him for accepting the invitation to visit China and attend the Eurasian Economic Forum. Highly appreciative of the Armenian-Chinese relations, Li Keqiang expressed confidence that his Armenian counterpart’s visit might help promote the development and strengthening of bilateral cooperation.

Thankful for the warm welcome, Prime Minister Abrahamyan pointed out that the development of relations with China is a foreign policy priority for Armenia. Stressing that there is great potential for cooperation in the economic sphere, Hovik Abrahamyan expressed conviction that his visit would give fresh impetus to bilateral ties and economic cooperation.

Stating that a high-level political dialogue had been nurtured by the two countries in recent years, the interlocutors hailed RA President Serzh Sargsyan’s State visit to China in March, 2015, which elevated the two nations’ friendly relations to a qualitatively new level and boosted the momentum of the Armenian-Chinese interaction.

“I wish to emphasize that strong with the outcome of the meeting held between the leaders of Armenia and China, we are actively working toward boosting bilateral relations and implementing the agreements reached,” Hovik Abrahamyan said.

Both sides stressed the importance of continued cooperation in the fields of infrastructure development, energy, transportation, chemical industry, agriculture, tourism, science, education, culture and civil aviation. In this context, they noted the importance of the Armenian-Chinese intergovernmental commission on trade and economic cooperation. Prime Minister Abrahamyan said to be pleased with the fact that bilateral trade had been on the upgrade in recent years leading to a significant increase in trade turnover (more than half a billion dollars).

Chinese Premier Li Keqiang noted in turn that cooperation was developing effectively in all sectors – political, economic and humanitarian, and his country was keen to deepen and strengthen them ahead.

As the two prime ministers discussed Iran-Armenia Railroad and North-South Road Corridor investment programs, the Chinese Premier reiterated his country’s interest in them. He expressed readiness to implement joint projects in infrastructure, industry, humanitarian and other spheres. Li Keqiang advised that Armenian students’ scholarship was going to be raised in China next year.

At the end of the meeting, Hovik Abrahamyan invited his Chinese counterpart to make an official visit to Armenia. The invitation was accepted with pleasure.

OSCE Minsk Group co-chairs managed to achieve progress in the negotiations  with Azerbaijan and Armenia on elements of a comprehensive agreement on the Karabakh conflict and helped  reduce tensions along the contact line, following increased violence late last year, James Warlick, the Minsk Group’s US co-chair,told Trend Sept. 22.

He was commenting on the work done by the OSCE Minsk Group since early 2015 regarding the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict settlement.

Warlick said the co-chairs look forward to bringing the foreign ministers of Azerbaijan and Armenia together at the UN General Assembly to continue preparations for the next presidential summit.

“We hope the presidents will agree to meet before the end of the year,” he added. “The co-chairs will discuss these plans with the foreign ministers at the UN General Assembly, and we stand ready to bring the presidents together anytime.”

Commenting on the influence of a tension in relations between the US and Russia on the Nagorno-Karabakh settlement process, the co-chair said the two countries share the same objective on Nagorno-Karabakh, i.e. a peaceful, negotiated resolution of the conflict.

“Despite disagreements in other areas of the US-Russian relationship, we work closely in the co-chair format to make progress towards our common goal of reaching a lasting settlement that would transform the South Caucasus,” said Warlick.

On the occasion of Armenia’s Independence Day, Armenian Consul General to Aleppo Tigran Gevorgyan visited the Armenian home for the elderly in Aleppo.

Tigran Gevorgyan toured the nursing home accompanied by its director, members of the board of trustees and the leader of Syria’s Armenian evangelical community and talked to the elderly people that live there.

The Consul General congratulated them on the 24^th anniversary of Armenia’s independence and assured that issues of Syrian Armenian, especially the aged people and children, are always in the focus of attention of the Armenian authorities.

Tigran Gevorgyan expressed gratitude to the staff of the nursing home for their devoted work.

The same day the Consul General visited the Armenian orphanage. He congratulated its young residents on the occasion of the start of the new academic year and wished them every success in their studies. He assured that the Consulate General would maintain its cooperation with the orphanage.

The Consul General and the leadership of the orphanage discussed the possibility of organizing the summer rest of the children in Armenia.

Tigran Gevorgyan conveyed donations from Armenian benefactor Vardan Sermakesh to both the nursing house and the orphanage.

The Central Bank of Armenia (CBA) has kept its key refinancing rate at 10.25 percent.

Annual inflation in Armenia was at 3.6 percent in August, down from 4.2 percent in July, according to CBA data.

The government forecasts annual inflation in a range of 2.5-5.5 percent in 2015, the same as last year’s target.