Category: News

The experiences of the Armenian, Assyrian and Greek minorities of the Ottoman Empire were discussed at the conference, “World War I and Beyond,” May 21-22, 2015 at The Graduate Center, City University of New York. These experiences are today more relevant than ever because the world once again witnesses ethnic cleansing and genocide in the Middle East, reports. 

Now, as during the period 1914-1923, the Christians are subjected to the pressures of an Islamic state—the Ottoman Empire then, ISIS today. Even though at one time the Christians made up 65% of the population of the Ottoman Empire, they were second-class citizens, and were subjected to systemic violence in many ways. By 1914, Greeks represented 20% of the population and were a vulnerable minority. The Young Turk government viewed the Christian citizens (Greeks, Armenians, Assyrians) not only as inferior subjects of the Empire, but also as agents for foreign powers. Those who would not convert to Islam were deported and killed. Similarly, ISIS seeks to convert not only Christians, but also Yezidis and Shia to Sunni Islam, and has committed mass murder of those who do not convert. Kidnapping, rape, and terror are common in both cases and on a massive scale.

In a joint effort to understand the forces and factors responsible for the early genocides of the 20^th century, the Asia Minor and Pontos Hellenic Research Center, together with the Zoryan Institute and the Middle East and Middle Eastern American Center at the City University of New York (CUNY), organized this conference in order to address the experiences of the Armenians, Assyrians and Greeks in a join narrative that will be able to give us a comprehensive picture of what the objectives and strategies were of the early Ottoman campaigns. In this event, scholars from Armenia, Australia, Canada, Greece, Norway, Sweden, and the US were brought together to explore various aspects of the shared experiences of the Christian minorities, in what has traditionally been treated as three separate cases.

A comparative approach allows historians and communities to address and appreciate the historical events within a more global perspective. During such presentations as “A Zone of Extreme Violence – the Intertwining of the Armenian and Assyrian Genocides,” “The Kemalist Movement and the Christians of Pontos, in 1919-1923, from an International Politics’ Perspective,” and “The State and Fate of Jews in the Ottoman Empire during World War I,” it became evident multiple times that what was happening to one group was happening to the others, sometimes in the same places and at the same time.

It becomes now clear that the Greeks had been targeted even earlier than Armenians, in 1913 and 1914, with an economic boycott, violent persecution and deportations. Felix Sartiaux, a member of a French archaeological delegation witnesses the destruction of the Greek coastal city Phocaea, and the pogrom against its population—an event that took place within one day on June 30, 1914. Due to German pressure, the Young Turk regime temporarily suspended the deportation of the Greeks, but in the meantime, once the deportation and killing of the Armenians was in full operation in 1915, it was often said that the Greeks would be next, and indeed they were with renewed fierceness.

Another recurrent theme at the conference was the role of women during the genocides. The experiences of Armenian and Assyrian women victims, as well as American and Norwegian missionaries and relief workers, received close attention by several scholars. The issue of denial was also addressed and discussed from unusual perspectives in “State Denial, Music and Memory in Contemporary Trebizond” and “Mass Media and Denial.” The aftermath of genocide was described in these papers, as well as in “National Security Justifications for Genocidal Acts: From the Ottoman Empire to Iraq, Bosnia, Rwanda, and Darfur.” A complete list of the scholars and their presentations is available at www.hellenicresearchcenter.org

The International Association of Genocide Scholars acknowledges, in its 2007 resolution, the collective genocide of the three Christian communities of the late Ottoman Empire, introducing the term “Ottoman Genocides” in its 2007 resolution. Turkey, to this day, denies that that the genocides against the Armenians, the Greeks, and the Assyrians ever happened.

The Asia Minor and Pontos Hellenic Research Center and The Pan-Pontian Federation of U.S.A-Canada is committed to the study of these facts, and to honoring the lives lost and their memory. To this end, the Center has produced a number of publications, and organizes academic conferences and presentations for academic and wider audiences. The Center is also planning the production of a documentary to bring to light specifically the historical events of the Greek genocide, which are largely unknown to the American public.

Award-winning Armenian jazz pianist Tigran Hamasyan performed a concert on June 21 in the historic ruins of Ani, the medieval Armenian capital, the Hurriyet Daily News reports.

Within the scope of his project titled “Luys i Luso,” Hamasyan will perform in various Turkish provinces until June 30. He will also give concerts at 100 churches in Armenia, Georgia, Lebanon, France, Belgium, Switzerland,Czech Republic, England, Germany, Luxembourg, Russia and the U.S.

Hamasyan, 27, who started playing piano at the age of three and won the Montreux Jazz Festival in 2003 and the Thelonious Monk Institute piano contest at the age of 18, performs traditional Armenian music in his concerts.

The 90-minute event at the ancient ruins drew great interest from the audience. The master pianist was accompanied by the Yerevan State Chamber Music Choir under the baton of Harutyun Topikyan.

Tamar Nalci, the project coordinator at Anadolu Kültür, which organized Hamasyan’s concerts in Turkey, said the first concert of the program was performed in Ani, and continued:

“Hamasyan is famous Armenian jazz pianist. He gives mini concerts in historic places and churches in many parts of the world, accompanied by the Armenian State Chamber Choir. This is a church music concert. He is taking the stage with a team of 25 persons. At the same time, a documentary film is being made on this process. The documentary team records these concerts. What is happening here is a historic moment because Armenians have an emotional time due to their past in Ani.”

 

Gita Elibekyan
Public Radio of Armenia
Tbilisi

Head of the Georgian Alliance of Patriots Party David Tarkhan Mouravi has called on the Georgian Government to recognize the Armenian Genocide, reports.

“Not a single acre in Turkey belongs to Turks, everything belongs to Greeks, Armenians and Georgians. What happened in 1915 was really genocide, Armenians were killed simply for being Armenian,” David Tarkhan Mouravi said.

He added Georgians were also subjected to genocide, although no one speaks about it.

The Alliance of Patriots was formed a few years ago and is preparing to run fo parliament at the next elections.

The rise of Brenda Shaffer as a scholar and oft-quoted expert in the field of energy politics illustrates just how vulnerable the American foreign policy establishment is to manipulation by foreign agents, accoridng to a report published by the .

Till Bruckner, Advocacy Manager for Transparify, which promotes greater integrity in policy research, reveals that “supported by an overseas regime and an assorted network of overt and undercover lobbyists, she used oil money to build her academic credentials, then in turn used those credentials to promote Azerbaijan’s agendas through Congressional testimony, dozens of newspaper op-eds and media appearances, countless think tank events, and even scholarly publications.”

Shaffer first walked into Congress in 2001 to testify before the House of Representatives’ Committee on International Relations.

She was introduced as “the director of the Caspian Studies Program and a post-doctoral fellow in the international security program at the Belfort [Belfer] Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government”.

Addressing lawmakers, she asked them to repeal a section of the Freedom Support Act that barred direct US aid to the Azerbaijani government. “They have extended their hand to the US. They have huge expectations that the policy of this country is based on some sort of morality and high ideals,” she told them, and reinforced this in written testimony she also submitted.

Challenged about Azerbaijan’s democratic record, she replied: “There is a lot of room for improvement in terms of democratization. However, every six months, every year, things are getting better and better.”

“What lawmakers listening to Shaffer didn’t know was that the Caspian Studies Program she headed at Harvard was set up in 1999 through a $1 million grant from the US Azerbaijan Chamber of Commerce and a consortium of oil and gas companies led by Exxon, Mobil, and Chevron, all of which had commercial interests in the region. The chamber of commerce is a pro-Azerbaijan pressure group whose Board of Directors includes a vice president of SOCAR, the Azerbaijan state-owned energy company, and top lobbyists for BP and Chevron,”
Till Bruckner writes.

Shaffer led the Caspian Studies Program until 2005. During her tenure, she wrote 14 op-eds for leading US and Israeli newspapers including the International Herald Tribune and the Jerusalem Post. Most called on American policy makers to pay more attention to the region. One exhorted the US to stop funding for Nagorno-Karabakh.

 

Today, at the Presidential Palace in Athens, Hellenic Republic President Mr. Prokopis Pavlopoulos received a joint delegation of European Armenian Federation for Justice and Democracy (EAFJD) and Armenian National Committee of Greece (ANC Greece), comprising EAFJD President Kaspar Karampetian, ANC Greece Chairman Hagop Hovaguimian, and ARF – Dashnaktsutyun representative Kerop Ekizian.

In her newly published memoir of her 2010-2013 term as American Ambassador to Hungary, Eleni Kounalakis discusses the U.S. State Department’s loss of faith in the administration of Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, according to a June 19 review by the

In what the Post describes as a “far more forthcoming book — personally and analytically — than one would expect from a diplomat”, Kounalakis details her disappointment at what she saw as the Hungarian governmentʼs backsliding toward a more totalitarian government, similar to the one Hungary had under communism. Instead of the “New Deal” that they had anticipated, Kounalakis writes, Hungarians were getting “the Old Deal, with government having too much control over the people of Hungary all over again.”

According to the Post review: “It took the release of an ax murderer to raise alarms in Washington. In late August 2012, Orban suddenly repatriated Ramil Safarov, an Azeri serving a life term in Hungary for hacking an Armenian soldier to death during a NATO-sponsored training program. To nobody’s surprise, Safarov received a hero’s welcome in Azerbaijan and was immediately pardoned, promoted and given a new apartment. Armenia cut off diplomatic ties with Hungary, and tensions escalated in Nagorno-Karabakh, over which Armenia and Azerbaijan had fought a war in the early 1990s.”

“Don’t they realize that their little trick could cause a war?” Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Marie Yovanovitch asked Kounalakis on the telephone.

“Who will clean it up — Hungarians? No, Hungarians won’t clean up the mess. We will! We will be the ones left to fix it!”

Kounalakis reveals that this diplomatic fracas was ultimately what “ended Hungary’s two-decade status as a reliable strategic partner of the United States,” according to the Post.

That little trick, Kounalakis says, ended Hungary’s two-decade status as a reliable strategic partner of the United States.”

The 16th edition of the International Human Rights Film Festival () organized by the DerHumALC Multimedia Institute and sponsored by Grandmothers of Plaza de Mayo, Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo, Relatives of the Disappeared and Detained for Political Reasons and the Armenian National Committee of South America was launched on Wednesday June 17th, reports

One of the festival sections will be the “Focus on Armenia”. The Armenian films that will be screened are “A World Without Men”, “Beyond the Ararat”, “Memories without Borders”, and “Tevanik”. Carolina Karagueuzian, Director of the Armenian National Committee of Buenos Aires and one of the jury members of the festival, said that the films related to Armenia “are materials that account the current consequences of this genocide that even today, after almost a century, remains unpunished and continually denied by its perpetrator, the Turkish State and, in recent years, with the support of its strategic partner, Azerbaijan.”

“It is important to remember in this festival, which focuses on the Armenian Genocide, that the genocide was completely unpunished. There were trials, but there was also denial,” added Vera Jarach, member of Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo. Florencia Santucho, the festival director, detailed that they will screen 112 films from 39 countries in a total of eleven cultural centers.

The opening ceremony was attended by important figures and defenders of human rights, like the President of Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo Estela de Carlotto, Vera Jarach and Nora Cortinas, representatives of Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo, the organizations that search the stolen and illegally adopted children of the Argentine Dirty War. The event was also attended by Judge Daniel Rafecas, Undersecretary for Human Rights and Cultural Pluralism of the City of Buenos Aires Claudio Avruj, member of Human Rights Secretary of Argentina Carlos Pisoni, along with Alfonso Tabakian and Carolina Karagueuzian, from the Armenian National Committee of South America.

DerHumALC Multimedia Institute is an organization created in 1999 in Argentina to “strengthen the treatment and study of topics on human rights from civil society.”

David Lemieux of Montreal knocked down Frenchman Hassan N’Dam four times and won the vacant International Boxing Federation middleweight title with a unanimous decision early Sunday morning, reports.

Lemieux (34-2) dominated the bout, flooring N’Dam (31-2) once in the second round, twice in the fifth and again with a left hook in the seventh to win the title.

Lemieux’s impressive performance in a fight broadcast in the U.S. on the Fox network may earn him some high profile bouts. There is already talk of a clash with WBA champion Gennady Golovkin, or a bout with the winner of a proposed match in November between WBC champ Miguel Cotto and Mexican star Saul (Canelo) Alvarez.

David Lemieux (born December 22, 1988 in Montreal, Quebec, Canada) is a Canadian professional boxer. Lemieux fights in the middleweight division. He is the current IBF Middleweight Champion and former WBC International Middleweight Champion.

According to , Lemieux is of French and Armenian descent. He began boxing at the age of nine.

Lemieux’s mother is Lebanese Armenian, her last name is Khavloudjian. He speaks fluent Armenian.

Woman who abandoned Down Syndrome baby in Armenia has reunited with the child, the reports.

The wife of a New Zealand father who abandoned him and their newborn baby in Armenia after discovering the baby had Down Syndrome has denied she is now back living with them both because of the huge amount of cash raised for their cause.

Samuel Forrest, from New Zealand, made international headlines in February when he started a fundraising campaign to help raise baby Leo after his Armenian wife Ruzan Badalyan abandoned them in Armenia where he ran his own business. 

More than $600,000 was raised. But since then Ms Badalyan has returned to her husband and child despite filing for divorce a week after Leo was born in her home country.

The fact Mr Forrest is now $600,000 richer thanks to the money that was raised for Leo, is not the reason why Ms Badalyan changed her mind, she told 3News. She is just delighted to be reunited wither her son.

‘It was the happiest day,’ she says. ‘He was so small, so cute. I remember I hugged him. He started making some noises. He was so cute. I was very happy.

‘I undressed him and skin to skin, he did that noise. He’d do it a bit for me, but in his sleep he did it for a whole hour like a little kitten. He knew he’d found his mummy.

‘I was afraid he wouldn’t remember me. It was very scary but hopefully he did. At that moment I realised I could never let him go.

‘I’m not an ideal mother; I’m simply a mother. But I’m doing my best.’

She has asked not to be judged by New Zealanders – it has not been revealed exactly where in the country they are living – but that they can just be left alone to get on happily as a family.

Armenian international Gael Andonian is expected to sign his first professional contract with Olympique de Marseille, La Provence said Sunday.

In coming days Olympique de Marseille will sign professional contracts with three young players from the second team – Gael Andonian (20), Bill Tuiloma (20) and Stéphane Sparagna (20).

Andonian currenly plays as center back at  Olympique de Marseille 2 and his contract expires on June 30.

Andonian debuted for the Armenian national team in a EURO 2016 qualifier against Albania on March 29.