Category: News

In Armenia:Armenian Assembly of America
NGO Training and Resource Center
39 Yeznik Koghbatsi St.,
Yerevan 375010
Tel.: (3-741) 54-40-12; 54-40-13; 53-92-04
Fax: (3-741) 54-40-15
E-mail: [email protected]
Website:
In the United States:
Armenian Assembly of America
NGO Training and Resource Center
122 C Street NW, Suite 350
Washington, DC 20001 USA
Tel: (202) 393-3434
Fax: (202) 638-4904
E-mail: [email protected]
Website:
*** REFUGEE PROBLEMS WITHIN THE EYESHOT OF NGOS
*** CRINGO NETWORK GENERAL ACTION
*** NEW PUBLICATION FOR YOUNG PEOPLE
*** ACTIVITIES OF THE SCHOOL OF YOUNG LEADERS
***REGIONAL CONSENSUS AND COLLECTIVE RESPONSIBILITY IN THE SOUTH CAUCASUS
*** AIDS MEMORIAL DAY COMMEMORATED
*** NGO CONTRIBUTES TO BETTERMENT OF SCHOOL COMMUNITIES
*** WORLD ENVIRONMENT DAY CELEBRATED
*** NORK INFORMATION-ANALYTICAL CENTER CJSC OPEN FOR COOPERATION
WORLD REFUGEE DAY WAS CELEBRATED
*** REFUGEE PROBLEMS WITHIN THE EYESHOT OF NGOS
On June 24, the Armenian Assembly of America’s NGO Training and Resource
Center hosted its regular Thematic NGO/Media encounter. The goal of similar
encounters, initiated by the AAA NGOC, is to introduce the problems of
vulnerable groups to the public-at-large, NGOs activities directed at
solving those problems, and obstacles encountered. This event, devoted to
World Refugee Day, was the fifth among the series of Thematic NGO/Media
encounters. The goal of this encounter was to once again draw public
attention to the problems of refugees living in Armenia. The focus was on
legal and social protection issues, as well as information exchanges with
acquaintances of the refugees in the towns they left. Greta Mirzoyan of
Zinvori Mair (Soldier’s Mother) Republican Committee NGO and Robert
Melik-Pashaev of the Back to Hayk NGO made presentations on Hope Mail
Service Between Neighbors and Equal Rights – Equal Opportunities projects,
respectively. Refugee NGOs and representatives of media, foundations,
international organizations and state structures were invited to the
roundtable. Right after the event, the participants were provided with print
information on potential donors and partners acting overseas and dealing
with refugee issues, as well as application forms of upcoming conferences.
Contact: Anahit Lazarian
AAA NGO Center
39 Y. Koghbatsi St.
Tel.: (374-1) 54-40-12, 54-40-13
E-mail: [email protected]
*** CRINGO NETWORK GENERAL ACTION
On June 20 and 21, the Danish Refugee Council funded CRINGO Network (uniting
over 60 NGOS assisting refugees and IDPs and promoting peace and stability
in the Caucasus) initiated a clean-up effort, in which participants cleaned
specific areas in Vanadzor and Kapan, planted trees, installed benches and
organized concerts. Radio programs (topic: What Is CRINGO Network?) were
aired on Hai and Hayk republican radio stations.
Contact: Karen Asatryan
CRINGO Network Coordination Council Member
Armenian Sociological Association NGO
44 Aram St.
Tel.: (374-1) 53-08-22, 53-10-96, 53-05-71
E-mail: [email protected]
*** NEW PUBLICATION FOR YOUNG PEOPLE
Since June 1, Henaran Social, Legal and Humanitarian Association NGO has
been publishing Skizb (Beginning) youth periodical to contribute to the
national education and civic awareness of Armenian youth. The periodical
presents state policies related to young people, activities of youth NGOs,
profiles on gifted young people and announcements. The official bulletin of
the ROA Ministry of Culture and Youth Issues will be included in the
newsletter. Henaran NGO allows youth NGOs, international organizations and
others to post materials in the newsletter.
Contact: Lilit Davtyan
Henaran Social, Legal and Humanitarian Association NGO
Tel.: (374-1) 64-73-57
E-mail: [email protected]
*** ACTIVITIES OF THE SCHOOL OF YOUNG LEADERS
On May 28-30, the Center of Youth Legal and Social Support NGO held a
Business, Politics, and Mass Media seminar within the framework of the first
phase of its School of Young Leaders Project. The goal of the seminar was to
promote dialogue and experience exchange between different sectors of the
society and to increase the involvement of youth in the social and political
arenas, as well as increase the awareness level of youth on issues of civil
society. Representatives of NGOs, Mass Media, business and public sectors,
political figures and active young people participated in the seminar.
Discussions were on the following topics: NGOs and Their Role; Statehood and
Civil Society; Armenian National Ideology; United Nations and Youth;
Problems of Participatory Policy in Armenia; NGOs as an Essential Element of
Civil Society; Armenian-Turkish Relations; Parties and Party Systems; Modern
Ideology Movements; World and Economic Approaches in Conditions of
Globalization and Economic Perspectives in ROA.
Contact: Lilit Hakobyan
Center of Youth Legal and Social Support NGO
15 Koriun St.
Tel.: (374-1) 54-28-56
E-mail: [email protected]
*** REGIONAL CONSENSUS AND COLLECTIVE RESPONSIBILITY IN THE SOUTH CAUCASUS
On June 2 and 3, the Institute for Civil Society and Regional Development
(ICSRD) NGO held meetings to discuss issues of regional consensus and
collective responsibility in the South Caucasus. Representatives of
international and donor organizations, National Assembly, Government, Mass
Media and NGOs from Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Nagorno Karabagh and
Russian Federation participated in the event. The spokespersons covered not
only intergovernmental, but also intrasociety issues related to regional
conflicts, democratic processes in the South Caucasus republics, raising the
institutional role of civil society in the processes of regional consensus
and collective responsibility. The participants focused on the issue of NGO
participation in decision making processes at both the micro and macro
levels. The conference results will be summarized in specific publications.
The event was sponsored by the Friedrich Ebert Stiftung Foundation with
support of the RA Ministry of Foreign Affairs in coordination with the
Conflict Studies Research Center, UK.
Contact: Aghavni Karakhanyan
Institute for Civil Society and Regional Development (ICSRD) NGO
Tel.: (374-1) 58-61-21
E-mail: [email protected]
*** AIDS MEMORIAL DAY COMMEMORATED
The AIDS Memorial Quilt program is the largest ongoing community arts
project in the world. Each of the numerous colorful panels that make up the
Quilt memorizes a life of a person lost to AIDS. On June 5, the Real People,
Real World NGO initiated the quilting event for the first time in Armenia,
jointly with the National Center for AIDS Prevention, UN Armenia and World
Vision Armenia, to speak out about the impact of the disease on the world
population and particularly those living in Armenia.
Contact: Hovhannes Madoyan
Real World, Real People NGO
21A Sayat Nova St., #46/6
Tel. (374-1) 54-74-75
Fax: (374-1) 53-07-71
E-mail: [email protected]
*** NGO CONTRIBUTES TO BETTERMENT OF SCHOOL COMMUNITIES
The Youth For Achievements Association (YFA) NGO awarded grants to 21
secondary schools of Armenia within its For A Better Childhood 2 and Sustain
To Advance school community development projects. Parent Teacher
Associations (PTAs) of over 100 secondary schools countrywide underwent
training programs for fundraising aimed at solving problems of the schools.
In the Small Grants Competition, participating PTAs presented project
proposals aimed at meeting the most acute needs of their school communities.
In 21 schools, playgrounds were installed, an auditorium, classrooms and
gyms were renovated, libraries were furnished and a music classroom was
created. Schools were granted computers, office and sports equipment and
musical instruments. Within the framework of the South Caucasus Youth
Councils Initiative Project, implemented in partnership with Catholic Relief
Service and YFA, three schools from Yerevan and Gegharkunik regions received
grants. Among the self-identified needs of the Youth Councils of those
schools are renovation of activity halls, as well as the creation of an Art
Club.
Contact: Varya Meruzhanyan
Youth For Achievements Association (YFA) NGO
8 Vagarshyan St.
Tel/Fax: (374-1) 27-65-69, 27-65-44
E-mail: [email protected]
Website:
*** WORLD ENVIRONMENT DAY CELEBRATED
On the occasion of World Environment Day, June 5, the UN Armenia Office
organized a series of events to increase public awareness on nature and
environmental issues, highlight current environmental issues at the national
level and promote environmental activities in communities. Find below
information on two of those events:
ž The Association For Human Sustainable Development, Armenian Forestry and
Birdwatchers’ Center NGOs and the National Academy of Sciences provided
materials for the Forests, Birds and Flowers of Armenia photo-exhibition.
During the event, photos, newsletters, bulletins and leaflets on the
environment, sustainable development, flora and fauna of Armenia were
presented and distributed.
ž During the Youth Ecoturism in Armenia event, results of the Let’s Save the
Water youth tour organized by the Burg Environmental Youth Center NGO were
presented. The tour to Armenia’s Tavush region was to shape a caring
attitude towards Armenia’s water resources among tourists and the local
population and involve them in purification and conservation activities.
During the tour, the group stopped in Goshavank, and Gosh and Parz lakes,
met with local authorities, initiated cleaning activities and placed boards
with relevant messages. Tour participants disseminated booklets on water
resource preservation among the local population and tourists and conducted
a training course for Gosh schoolchildren.
Contact: Arman Vermishyan
Burg Environmental Youth Center NGO
E-mail: [email protected]
*** NORK INFORMATION-ANALYTICAL CENTER CJSC OPEN FOR COOPERATION
ROA Ministry of Labor and Social Issues funded Nork Information-Analytical
Center CJSC carries out development and investment of information,
prediction systems, statistical analysis and information systems in the
social security field. The company operates the following systems: Paros
Poverty Family Allowance, Pyunik Disabled Database, Gorts Employment, and
Manuk Database of Children in Boarding Houses of Armenia and Subject to
Adoption. Functions of the company include: provide an information base for
evaluating operations of the social security system; prepare materials for
printing; design websites; organize computer courses; carry out actuarial
analysis in the social field; provide programs and develop computer
networks. The company is open to interested NGOs for cooperation to support
organization of the above mentioned activities.
Contact: Nork Information-Analytical Center CJSC
Tel.: (374-1) 24-75-02, 24-75-32, 24-86-18
E-mail: [email protected]
__________________________________________________________________________
Armenian NGO News in Brief is a publication of the NGO Training and Resource
Center (NGOC) issued in the Armenian, English and Russian languages for
electronic dissemination inside and outside Armenia. Primary funding for
the NGOC, which is a project of the Armenian Assembly of America, is
provided by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID).
Individual NGOs are welcome to submit information for publication to the
NGOC. The NGO Center is not responsible for the clarity of information
provided by individual NGOs.
Dear Readers,
The not-for-profit, non-governmental sector of Armenia is rich with diverse
civic initiatives and activities. This electronic publication, though far
from covering all activities of the sector per any given period of time, is
intended to contribute to raising awareness, both inside and outside
Armenia, of the activities of Armenian not-for-profit, non-governmental
organizations.
Your comments and feedback about this electronic publication are greatly
appreciated.
Thank you.
NGOC staff.

YEREVAN PRESS CLUB WEEKLY NEWSLETTER
JULY 2-8, 2004
HIGHLIGHTS:
“MEDIA GROUP” FACING THE DANGER OF LIQUIDATION
“INVESTIGATIVE JOURNALISTS” ADDRESSED THE COURT OF APPEALS
“MEDIA GROUP” FACING THE DANGER OF LIQUIDATION
On July 7 the Chamber for Civil and Commercial Cases of the RA Court of
Cassation left the decision of the second jurisdiction on the suit of
Vanadzor (Lori region) public information organization “Media Group” versus
the State Social Security Fund unchanged.
As it has been reported, the litigation between the parties started in as
far back as 2003 when “Media Group” with the assistance of “World Learning”
international organization was implementing a project “Strengthening of
Relations between the Organizations and the Community of Vanadzor”. The
representatives of State Social Security Fund, after an audit, recognized
the “Media Group” volunteers to be paid employees and in this regard
demanded the organizations to make appropriate social security payments and
pay a fine. The last court ruling of June 3, 2004 obliged “Media Group” to
cover the debt to the State Social Security Fund, but with no fine payments
(see YPC Weekly Newsletter, June 4-10, 2004).
According to the representative of “Media Group” Edmon Marukian, now,
according to the Armenian legislation, the ruling execution is to start
against the NGO, its property will be arrested to be later sold from an
auction. As Marukian said, the organization does not have any funds to cover
the liabilities to the State Social Security Fund. This is an amount of
about 500,000 drams (about $ 1,000), including the execution costs. However,
“Media Group” will continue to protect its rights and intends to address the
European Court of Human Rights.
On July 7 the employees of Vanadzor organization held a protest action
before the building State Social Security Fund in Yerevan.
“INVESTIGATIVE JOURNALISTS” ADDRESSED THE COURT OF APPEALS
On July 6 “Investigative Journalists” public organization and its chairman
Edik Baghdasarian challenged with the RA Court of Appeals the decision of
the court of primary jurisdiction of Center and Nork-Marash communities of
Yerevan on the suit versus the Yerevan municipality. As it has been
reported, on June 21, 2004 the court of primary jurisdiction declined the
suit of “Investigative Journalists”. The plaintiff demanded that the
municipality provide the resolutions of the city administration of 1997-2003
on the construction in public green zone around the National Theater of
Opera and Ballet, necessary for a journalistic investigation. The judge
motivates her ruling saying the organization did not attempt to receive the
necessary information from other state institutions before addressing the
municipality and the inquiry was not specific enough (see YPC Weekly
Newsletter, June 18-24, 2004).
“Investigative Journalists” demand that the ruling of the primary
jurisdiction court be abolished and the actions of the municipality be
qualified as a refusal in information. Along with this, the organization
addressed a new inquiry to the municipality of Yerevan, listing all the
enterprises operating on the territory around the Theater of Opera and
Ballet and of interest to “Investigative Journalists”.
N.B. Dear readers, please note that YPC Weekly Newsletter will next be
issued in early September, 2004.
When reprinting or using the information above, reference to the Yerevan
Press Club is required.
You are welcome to send any comment and feedback about the Newsletter to:
[email protected]
Subscription for the Newsletter is free. To subscribe or unsubscribe from
this mailing list, please send a message to: [email protected]
Editor of YPC Newsletter – Elina POGHOSBEKIAN
____________________________________________
Yerevan Press Club
9B, Ghazar Parpetsi str.
375007, Yerevan, Armenia
Tel.: (+ 374 1) 53 00 67; 53 35 41; 53 76 62
Fax: (+374 1) 53 56 61
E-mail: [email protected]
Web Site:

PRESS RELEASE
The National Citizens’ Initiative
75 Yerznkian Street
Yerevan 375033, Armenia
Tel: (+374 – 1) 27.16.00, 27.00.03
Fax: (+374 – 1) 52.48.46
E-mail: [email protected]
Website:
July 8, 2004
National Citizens’ Initiative Determines Trends of Armenian Economic Growth
Yerevan–The National Citizens’ Initiative (NCI) today convened a
specialized policy roundtable on “The Trends of Economic Growth in Armenia.”
The discussion, focusing on the challenges of this vital issue of public
concern, brought together government officials, academic circles, experts of
the field, public figures, and the media community to define the priorities
and development opportunities in the economic sphere, to make realistic
assessments of the current state of affairs, and to address the imperative
of a true struggle against corruption and the shadow economy.
Karapet Kalenchian, director of administration of the Armenian Center for
National and International Studies (ACNIS), greeted the audience with
opening remarks. He stressed the significance of economic reforms and
pointed to several mechanisms for achieving the objective. “In order to
settle a number of issues of strategic importance, in particular
strengthening the new independent state system and improving the living
standards of the population, we need to create prerequisites for the
proportional development of modern industry, the agricultural sector and
other fields of the economy, to improve tax policy, and to provide sustained
economic growth so that every Armenian family really enjoys its benefits,”
Kalenchian said.
Gagik Vardanian, the Republic’s deputy minister for trade and economic
development, addressed “The Strategic Directions of Armenia’s Economic
Development in Light of the Global Information Revolution,” detailing key
issues of efficiency and productivity in the Armenian economy. In his
opinion, information technologies provide great access and thus facilitate
quick orientation in the market as well as application of state-of-the-art
networks and electronic equipment, all of which lead to sustained progress
in the economy. “Given their efficiency in all spheres of life, the Armenian
government attaches primary importance to ITs. It has worked out a
development concept and a program of activities to face the challenges of
the world market,” he noted. “The government of Armenia has adopted
strategic programs for the country’s sustainable regional economic
development in order to play an active role in integrating into the global
information field.”
Gagik Makarian, director of the “Haiconsult” firm, delivered an illustrated
paper on “The Key Obstacles to Armenia’s Economic Growth and the Ways to
Overcome Them.” “It is senseless to speak of sustained economic growth
unless we struggle against corruption and the shadow economy, make a due
assessment of the operational branches of industry, provide mechanisms for
an attractive investment climate, make export volumes predictable, and draft
appropriate tax and customs legislation,” Makarian opined. According to him,
there are about 20 negative factors that impede economic growth in Armenia
in view of the relevant transportation expenses, unfair and unequal
competition, poor marketing experience, the political situation in the
country, and a number of other circumstances.
Yerevan State University economics professor Gagik Galstian entitled his
presentation “The Anatomy of Armenian Economic Growth.” “Economic growth is
not an end unto itself.” he said. “If there is growth there should be
prosperity, whereas the living standard of the population as measured by
substantive food intake per capita has been reduced twice over the last
decade.” An analysis of the data from 2003 brought Galstian to a pessimistic
conclusion: Armenia’s living standard is today on par with that of 1977 in
terms of its Gross Domestic Product, with 1980 in terms of its industrial
productivity, and with 1956 in terms of its cargo transportation and
residential construction. Thus, society is lagging behind by more than 25
years.
The formal interventions were followed by exchanges of views and policy
recommendations among the public figures and policy specialists in
attendance. Noteworthy were contributions by MP Shavarsh Kocharian of the
National Democratic Party; former minister of state Hrach Hakobian;
economist Edward Aghajanov; Artak Zeinalian of the Republic Party; Stepan
Mantarlian of Armaveni consulting company; Alexander Butaev of National
Democratic Union; Petros Makeyan of the Democratic Fatherland Party; Ruzanna
Khachaturian of the People’s Party of Armenia; law professor Hrair
Tovmasian; and many others.
ACNIS analyst Hovsep Khurshudian closed the meeting with summary remarks.
“Unfortunately, it is difficult to conclude the seminar on an optimistic
note regarding Armenia’s economic growth,” he said, underlining that
economic growth remains erratic, illusory, and narrow-based despite
government assurances. “Moreover, the authorities have demonstrated little
or no political will to struggle against corruption, as they are mired in
the very clan system which impedes competition.”
The National Citizens’ Initiative is a public non-profit association founded
in 2001 by former foreign minister Raffi K. Hovannisian, his colleagues, and
fellow citizens with the purpose of realizing the rule of law and overall
improvements in the state of the state, society, and public institutions.
The National Citizens’ Initiative is guided by a Coordinating Council, which
includes individual citizens and representatives of various public,
scientific, and educational establishments. Five commissions on Law and
State Administration, Socioeconomic Issues, Foreign Policy, Spiritual and
Cultural Challenges, and the Youth constitute the vehicles for the
Initiative’s work and outreach.
For further information, please call (3741) 27-16-00 or 27-00-03; fax (3741)
52-48-46; e-mail [email protected]; or visit
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

PRESS OFFICE
Diocese of the Armenian Church of America (Eastern)
630 Second Avenue, New York, NY 10016
Contact: Jake Goshert, Coordinator of Information Services
Tel: (212) 686-0710 Ext. 60; Fax: (212) 779-3558
E-mail: [email protected]
Website:
July 8, 2004
___________________
CHELTENHAM CELEBRATES ORDINATION ANNIVERSARY OF PRIEST
By Jake Goshert
The call came early for Fr. Tateos Abdalain — when he was just 8 years
old, holding candles on the altar of St. James Church of Watertown, Ma.
“It was something that was just a natural thing for me. I received the
support of my pastor and the parishioners. I was fortunate growing up
in that area where there were many survivors of the Genocide, they were
there as a support mechanism, to encourage all the little kids to serve
and go to church,” Fr. Abdalian said.
And on Sunday, June 6, 2004, hundreds of faithful from his current
parish, the Holy Trinity Church of Cheltenham, PA, gathered to celebrate
the 20th anniversary of his ordination.
“The priesthood is neither an individual journey nor an individual
vocation. True, it is the one person who is ordained — but for it to
be accomplished, it involves the entire Church. It is a communal
journey,” Fr. Tateos told his parishioners. “It begins with a young boy
growing up in the faith in his home, nurtured by his parents in the
teachings of Christ, being taught to live a decent and good life. It is
being in a good parish, being influenced by his pastor, or other priests
to come and to sing in the choir, serve at the altar, be a part of the
parish. It is a young man being encouraged by his fellow parishioners
to pursue the goal of priesthood. It is his family who gifts the person
to God for service.”
SERVICE TO COMMUNITY
Fr. Tateos has been serving the Cheltenham community since July 2003.
Before that he worked with the Diocesan mission parish and youth
ministries, and he also previously served as parish priest for the St.
John the Baptist Church in Greenfield, WI, where he helped build a new
church building; St. George Church in Hartford, CT, and Sts. Sahag and
Mesrob Armenian Church of Providence, RI.
“What is it that inspires a man to dedicate his life to the ministry of
God’s flock? There are many answers, and different ones for different
people,” Archbishop Khajag Barsamian, Primate of the Eastern Diocese
during the celebrations at Holy Trinity. “For Der Tateos, I think the
answer is clear: a feeling of love, which issues from a pure heart, a
good conscience, and sincere faith.”
Fr. Tateos’ route to the priesthood was not quite direct. After working
in the business sector and he began a job as administrative director of
the St. James Armenian Church of Watertown, MA. While there, Fr.
Garabed Kochakian, a then-recently ordained priest, stayed in Watertown
during the 40 days of seclusion following ordination.
“As I grew up, I continually served, I just didn’t see becoming a priest
as a feasible choice, because we had no St. Nersess at the time. But
Der Garabed gave me inspiration,” Fr. Tateos said. “I’ve found being a
priest has moments of total jubiliation and frustration, peaks and
valleys.”
CONTINUING THE FAITH
Fr. Tateos sees being a priest as a continuation of centuries of
tradition and faith carried out by his ancestors. It’s a faith that
remains strong because each generation works to nurture it, despite
challenges and difficulties.
“I keep saying one of the mistakes the Turks made was to allow my father
to live, because he had a son who became a priest and strengthened our
church. That gives me a sense of satisfaction,” he said.
It’s a faith he works to continue in future generations by trying to
bring children into the parish family. It’s an uphill climb today, with
them falling under the influence of secular pop culture, but Fr. Tateos
believes it is vital. And building the next generation of Armenian
Christians is not one he shoulders alone.
“Kids have problems today. They’re facing evil from the very
beginning,” he said. “Kids have problems. That’s why it is so
important that we work to strengthen St. Nersess Seminary, and Sunday
Schools, and St. Vartan Camp, and ACYOA, we need to pay attention to
these things rather than having them as social organizations and fun
places to go.”
Working to build young leaders in his parish, Fr. Tateos took the
opportunity of his anniversary celebration to highlight young people’s
contributions. Two young brothers, Michael and Tavit Murray, who are
culinary students prepared the whole meal. The music was provided by
the Mockingbird String Quartet, a group made up of high school students
including his young parishioner Karinne Hovnanian.
“It was a family day, and that’s the part I was really happy about,” Fr.
Tateos said of his anniversary celebration. “It was a day of
celebration. We weren’t just honoring one person, we’re honoring the
whole church.”
He has been married since 1969 to Yn. Margaret, and they have one son,
David; one daughter, Alicia; and two grandchildren.
— 7/8/04
E-mail photos available on request. Photos also viewable in the News
and Events section of the Eastern Diocese’s website,
PHOTO CAPTION (1): Fr. Tateos Abdalian, joined by Archbishop Khajag
Barsamian, Primate of the Eastern Diocese, and his family, marked his
20th anniversary on Sunday, June 6, 2004, with a banquet bringing
together hundreds of faithful from his current parish, the Holy Trinity
Church of Cheltenham, PA.

South Caucasus MPs condemn forces preventing Azeri-Armenian cooperation
Public Television of Armenia, Yerevan
7 Jul 04

[Presenter] South Caucasus parliamentarians have condemned all the
facts that prevent cooperation between the peoples of three countries
[Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia]. This applies mainly to Azerbaijani
nationalists who staged a protest rally against the Armenian
servicemen attending a NATO planning conference in Baku. The Armenian,
Azerbaijani and Georgian parliamentarians discussed this at a session
of the South Caucasus Parliamentary Initiative which was held in the
Bulgarian capital.
[Correspondent] Armenia took over the presidency of the South Caucasus
Parliamentary Initiative on 1 July and will assume responsibility for
the implementation of programmes within the framework of the
initiative under a six-month rotational system. As a presiding side,
our delegation has drawn up a six-month programme on cooperation. The
presiding side has suggested holding an interparliamentary session on
integration into Europe for parliamentarians of the South Caucasus,
western and central European countries in autumn. Tigran Torosyan
[Deputy Speaker of the Armenian National Assembly] described as
productive the second session held in Sofia and also expressed his
satisfaction with cooperation with the Azerbaijani delegation.
[Tigran Torosyan] There was sufficient agreement on issues that were
discussed with the Azerbaijani delegation.
[Correspondent] The final document of the session, as a general
requirement of the three countries, according to Tigran Torosyan,
pertains the shameful reception of the Armenian servicemen in Baku.
[Tigran Torosyan] It is said that the members of the South Caucasus
Parliamentary Initiative condemn the acts of the groups which create
obstacles to cooperation between the peoples of the three
countries. This is mainly about the events in Baku, which were
organized against our servicemen.
The delegations of the three countries regretted that some activists
creating such obstacles are getting in the way of cooperation.
[Correspondent] The parliamentarians’ next meeting will be held in
autumn to discuss the venue and timing of the third session of the
South Caucasus Parliamentary Initiative.
Nune Aleksanyan, “Aylur”.

Armenian premier, EU envoy discuss Karabakh
Mediamax news agency
8 Jul 04
YEREVAN
Armenian Prime Minister Andranik Markaryan met Janez Potocnik,
commissioner in charge of the EU’s European Neighbourhood Policy, in
Yerevan today.
The press service of the Armenian government told Mediamax news agency
that Janez Potocnik said at the meeting that the preparation of
reports on each of the three South Caucasus countries has started
within the framework of the European Neighbourhood Initiative.
The EU commissioner noted that the European Union hopes for the
Armenian authorities’ assistance in this process because an individual
action plan will be implemented in the future on the basis of the
report. Potocnik said that the EU is ready to finance all programmes
of mutual interests in the spheres of the economy, trade, scientific
technologies, justice, the fight against terrorism, etc.
The Armenian prime minister and the EU commissioner also discussed the
situation in the South Caucasus, noting that without solving the
existing problems, the process of the region’s integration into Europe
cannot be complete. Andranik Markaryan and Janez Potocnik discussed
the prospects for establishing normal relations between Armenia and
Azerbaijan, and Armenia and Turkey, and touched on a settlement to the
Nagornyy Karabakh conflict.

Mothers of detained Azeri anti-Armenian protesters ask presidential pardon
MPA news agency
8 Jul 04
BAKU
The mothers of the KLO [Karabakh Liberation Organization] members,
Mursal Hasanov, Manaf Karimov, Rovsan Fatiyev and Ilkin Qurbanov, who
were detained for protesting against the involvement of Armenian
officers in NATO’s conference on 23 June have appealed to President
Ilham Aliyev.
They said in their letter that the presence of the occupying army’s
officers in the republic could not but stir up emotions. The women
said that one could understand the detainees but could not understand
police officers who used force against the protesters. They asked the
president to show humanity and release their sons, saying they are
ready to bear responsibility for their sons’ guilt.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

PRESS OFFICE
Diocese of the Armenian Church of America (Eastern)
630 Second Avenue, New York, NY 10016
Contact: Jake Goshert, Communications Officer
Tel: (212) 686-0710; Fax: (212) 779-3558
E-mail: [email protected]
Website:
July 8, 2004
___________________
Week of July 2 to July 8, 2004
* * *
SATURDAY IS FEAST OF 12 APOSTLES
Saturday (7/10), the Armenian Church commemorates the dedication of the
apostles of Christ. Two of those apostles, Thaddeus and Bartholomew,
were instrumental in bringing Christianity to Armenia. To learn more
about all of the apostles, and for resources to help teach your
children, click to our website:
(Source: Diocese of the Armenian Church of America (Eastern), 7/7/04)
* * *
DIOCESE DISCUSSES IRAQI ARMENIANS WITH OTHER ORGANIZATIONS
The Eastern Diocese and other Armenian community organizations have
asked the leadership of the Armenian Diocese in Iraq to create a
prioritized list of needs. Once that is created, the Diocese and other
groups will work to aid the Iraqi Armenians. For more on this effort,
and to learn about the historic Armenian community in Iraq, click to our
website:
;selmonth=7&sely
ear04
(Source: Diocese of the Armenian Church of America (Eastern), 7/7/04)
* * *
CAMPERS SETTLE INTO NEW HOME
The campers at this year’s St. Vartan Camp are settling into their new
home, the beautiful Ararat Center in the heart of the Catskill
Mountains. To read updates from the campers and see photos, click to
our website:
(Source: Diocese of the Armenian Church of America (Eastern), 7/7/04)
* * *
COME TO THE ARARAT CENTER CONSECRATION
Come to the free Saturday, July 24, consecration and open house for the
Diocese’s new Ararat Center, in Greenville, NY, 30 miles south of
Albany, NY. The fun runs from noon to 5 p.m. Archbishop Khajag
Barsamian, Primate of the Eastern Diocese, will perform the consecration
at 2 p.m. Free food and live music will round out the fun.
Many parishes are organizing buses or car caravans to the festivities.
Check with your local parish.
RSVP by Saturday (7/10) by e-mailing [email protected] or
calling (212) 686-0710 ext. 43.
To learn more about the Ararat Center, click to our website:
;selmonth=6&sely
ear04
(Source: Ararat Center, 7/7/04)
* * *
ARMENIAN TEACHERS HEAD TO DIOCESE
Armenian School educators from around the Diocese will be in New York
City next week for the Diocese’s Teacher’s College. Participants in the
week-long session, which begins Sunday (7/11), will explore ways to
teach the Armenian language, history, religion, and literature, and will
be able to ear college credit from St. Peter’s College. For more on
this and other events happening throughout the Diocese, click to our
website’s Calendar of Events:
(Source: Diocese of the Armenian Church of America (Eastern), 7/8/04)
* * *
FIND PERFECT ARMENIAN GIFTS ONLINE
Looking for help learning to speak or write Armenian? Want a gift with
Armenian flavor for a wonderful cook? Trying to find a way to say “I
love you” to that special Armenian in your life? Find the perfect gift
for anyone online at the St. Vartan Bookstore website,
Shopping online is easy, quick, and safe. New items are added regularly
to the website,
Browse hundreds of gift items, without leaving your bedroom. Just click
today to:
(Source: , 7/8/04)
* * *
LEARN ABOUT THE BADARAK
Want to learn more about the Badarak’s history and meaning to better
understand the service? Click to our website:
# # #

Chronicle of Higher Education
May 7, 2004
1.htm
How a Poet Writes History Without Going Mad
By PETER BALAKIAN
On a recent book tour for The Burning Tigris: The Armenian Genocide and
America’s Response, I was asked by an eminent Armenian psychiatrist how
I was able to write about massacre, deportation, rape, and torture
without becoming depressed or even incapacitated. He told me that in his
own course on trauma he found it nearly impossible to teach about the
Armenian Genocide because it caused him such pain.
My response was not psychological. I would imagine that any writer who
writes about the worst things human beings can do to each other has to
deal, in a personal way, with the weight of those realities. Working in
such domains can be depressing and even traumatic. You can feel as if
you are living in an alternate universe. In my own case, many of my
ancestors perished in the massacres and death marches carried out by the
Ottoman Turkish government in 1915. About 1.5 million Armenians died
during the 20th century’s first modern episode of race extermination,
and another million were permanently exiled from their homeland of 2,500
years.
In writing The Burning Tigris, I wrote about two histories — the
genocide and the American response to it — and entwined them. My major
discovery was that during the period of America’s ascension to
international prominence, at the turn of the 20th century, the U.S.
response to Sultan Adbul Hamid II’s massacre and decimation of about
200,000 Armenians in the 1890s, and then to the genocide of 1915, was
America’s first human-rights movement. The movement, which helped to
define the nation’s emerging identity, spanned more than four decades,
from 1894 into the 1930s. Intellectuals, politicians, diplomats,
religious leaders, ordinary citizens, and grass-roots organizations came
together to try to save the Armenian people. The passionate commitments
and commentaries of a remarkable cast of public figures — including
Julia Ward Howe, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Clara Barton, Alice Stone
Blackwell, Theodore Roosevelt, John D. Rockefeller Sr. and Jr., Spencer
Trask, and Ambassador Henry Morgenthau Sr. — made a difference. They
and other courageous eyewitnesses recorded their accounts of massacre
and deportation, and often risked their lives to save men, women, and
children in the killing fields of Turkey.
The crisis of the “starving Armenians” became so embedded in American
popular culture that, in an age when a loaf of bread cost a nickel, the
American people sent more than $100-million ($1.25-billion in today’s
economy) in aid through the American Committee on Armenian Atrocities
and its successor, Near East Relief.
Given that extraordinary history, it is dismaying that Congress has not
been able to pass the most basic commemorative resolution on the
Armenian Genocide. There has been intense pressure from America’s NATO
ally Turkey, which denies the genocide and is engaged in a propaganda
campaign to cover it up. Such is the irony that the United States lacks
the moral courage to affirm its own first international-human-rights
movement.
What keeps one going through the research and writing about massacre,
torture, sexual mutilation, rape? During the Armenian Genocide, the
Turks and Kurds performed some of the most hideous acts of violence in
recorded history. Often they did so in the name of Allah and with the
ideology of jihad as a rationale; teenage girls were raped with
crucifixes made from tree branches; clergymen and teachers, professors
at Protestant missionary colleges, had their eyes gouged out before they
were beheaded. On the deportation marches the mobile killing squads —
the chettes — and gendarmes often sliced off women’s breasts, or
slashed open pregnant women and dashed their babies on the rocks.
Thousands of women were raped, abducted, sold into harems. Women
committed suicide, often in large numbers, to avoid such fates. As
Christians they believed they were going to a better world.
Ambassador Morgenthau, a Jew trying to save this Christian minority,
appealed to the Turkish minister of the interior, Talaat Pasha, more
than once to stop the massacres. Morgenthau described in his memoir the
torture and cruelty, like the practice of bastinado, in which Turkish
gendarmes would beat the soles of the feet of an Armenian prisoner until
he fainted, revive him, and begin again. Sometimes the victim’s feet
later had to be amputated. Sometimes “they would extract his fingernails
and toenails; they would apply red-hot irons to his breast, tear off his
flesh with red-hot pincers, and pour boiling butter into the wounds. In
some cases the gendarmes would nail hands and feet to pieces of wood —
evidently in imitation of the Crucifixion, and while the sufferer
writhed in his agony, they would cry: ‘Now let your Christ come help
you!'” Morgenthau said.
“One day,” he wrote, “I was discussing these proceedings with a
responsible Turkish official, who was describing the tortures inflicted.
He made no secret of the fact that the government had instigated them
and, like all Turks of the official classes, he enthusiastically
approved this treatment of the detested race.”
In the face of such horror, can a writer even suggest there is pleasure
and excitement in doing the work, in the act of writing? I came to The
Burning Tigris as someone who has spent most of his life writing in the
rhythms and image language of the lyric poem and, at the time, was
finishing a book of new poems. In the 1990s I wrote a memoir, Black Dog
of Fate, about growing up Armenian-American in the suburbs of northern
New Jersey in 1950s and ’60s and gradually awakening to the history of
the Armenian Genocide my grandparents had lived through. One of the
challenges for me in crossing genre boundaries was to find the ways I
could bring along the appropriate aspects of my craft. In writing a
memoir, I discovered that the past could be opened up by finding images
in memory that, like a thread, could unravel into a once-forgotten
experience.
So in writing The Burning Tigris, I had to find a way to allow my own
literary process whatever life it could have within the confines of
writing history. Otherwise I could not write the book. Writing the
history demanded relentless digging in hundreds of documents, hundreds
of books, and hours of taped interviews with genocide survivors and
others who remember that period. It demanded problematizing history and
creating interpretive perspectives. Yet I began my project believing
that a good history had to be readable, even pleasurable, no matter how
horrible the subject. I was committed to crafting a coherent story, to
giving to the mass of facts a shapemeandering or shifting as it needed
to be, but a shape. Given the dual history of the book, it would have to
be a complex shape. Like a cat’s cradle the story would have to move
back and forth across the Atlantic with some elasticity. There would
have to be as much texture as possible, a texture of time and place.
There had to be scenes etched with vivid images; voices alive and
speaking. If I couldn’t create that — the more joyous dimensions of
writing — I wouldn’t be able to write the book.
There are moments in the shape of the narrative and the drive of the
history when opportunities present themselves, when you must resist the
expository voice that is first instinct to those trained in purely
academic ways. Those opportunities often revolve around a character, or
an event that has expansive possibilities, a place connected to that
event, a place you can inhabit with images of locale, narrative detail,
voice, and dialogue.
In the midst of the massacres and deportations in the autumn of 1915,
the American consul Leslie A. Davis was stationed on the eastern plateau
of Turkey. Like many other U.S. consuls posted in the Ottoman Empire,
Davis was an ordinary American boy. He had grown up in Port Jefferson, a
rural town on the north shore of Long Island, attended Cornell
University, taken a law degree at George Washington University, worked
as a journalist for a while, and then decided to make a dramatic career
change. Like many of his colleagues in Turkey — Edward Nathan in
Mersina, Oscar Heizer in Trabzond, George Horton in Smyrna, W. Peter in
Samsoun — Davis had been raised in a peaceful America, in a decade
often referred to as the “gay ’90s,” and had signed up for the Foreign
Service with a sense of excitement about seeing the wide world. In 1915
these young American men found themselves in Turkey in the midst of what
Davis would call “one of the greatest tragedies in all of history.”
Overnight they and their consular staffs and the missionaries also
stationed in Turkey became rescuers of Armenian men, women, and
children. They hid them in consulates, churches, and houses; they
provided them with food, and saved their movable wealth when possible.
The consular staff members also wrote — they wrote letters and
dispatches back to their boss, Ambassador Morgenthau, stationed in
Constantinople, and to the Department of State. They wrote, in a manner
that discloses how well men in government used language at an earlier
time in our history — clear, vivid, elegant, and in many ways
clinically austere prose. They wrote in ways that Ernest Hemingway might
have learned from.
After reading hundreds of pages of Davis’s dispatches and reports about
the Armenian Genocide, and after reading his particular account of
riding by horseback around a remote lake miles from Harput, I decided to
devote a chapter to his experience of that journey. His own account of
his ride to Lake Göeljük was, I believed, of major importance to
understanding something profound about the Armenian Genocide. I called
my chapter “Land of Dead.”
In the summer of 1915, the deportations and massacres claimed the vast
majority of Armenian lives; the arid Anatolian plain and the Syrian
desert were the epicenter of the story. Faced with that unfathomable
moment, I decided not to write a chapter in the expository voice of
academic synthesis. Rather, I decided to slow time down, to take the
reader into the summer of 1915 through the kaleidoscopic perspective of
key witnesses who were stationed in various parts of Turkey. That could
provide a panoramic view of the meticulously planned process of race
extermination that happened all across Turkey. Furthermore, given the
Turkish government’s assiduous denial of the facts of this history, it
seemed all the more important to pause here and go slowly; to allow the
reader to sink into it, section by section; to loop back over
deportation routes; to get the feel of geography, weather, the epic haul
of death marches. One of my witnesses was Leslie Davis.
Before I could get Consul Davis on his horse with his guides — one trip
was taken with a Turkish guide and another with an Armenian survivor —
I wanted the reader to feel the uniqueness of place, the rocky highlands
of Harput, a place I have been to only in my mind. In digging deeper to
find out about the geography and flora and fauna of the region, I felt I
could connect the reader with the scene, the moment in history more
fully. Using Davis’s account as my basis, I opened this way:
On an early autumn day, the sky high and blue on Turkey’s eastern
plateau, Leslie Davis and his companions rode toward Lake Göeljük,
through a region where thousands of Armenians lived in dozens of
villages and towns. Harput (the Armenian name of the city and the
vilayet means “stone fortress”) is rugged highland sliced by ridges,
ravines, and valleys. Davis and his friends rode past fig and
pomegranate orchards and through the broom and thyme flanking the
dirt roads. The calls of hoopoes and larks, or a black hyena
rustling the brush, broke the silence now and then. They pushed on
under that seemingly endless pure blue sky until night, when they
chose to sleep on the rooftop of the khan because they so feared the
typhus-carrying lice in the rooms below.
Having created a sense of place, I wanted to let Davis tell as much of
his story as my narrative could allow. He had a good eye and a clean,
clipped sense of syntax, owing perhaps to his brief career as a
journalist. When he reached the first destroyed Armenian village on the
way to Lake Göeljük, his descriptions were arresting in their
understatement and minimalism. In the village of Bozmashen, the houses
were destroyed — doors and windows smashed, walls crumbling into the
streets. Davis noted that they saw “no other living creatures in this
once prosperous village … except a few hungry looking cats.” He
conveyed a sense of absence that embodied the horror of the race
extermination to which he was bearing witness.
As he went on in his report to the State Department, he noted the names
of the dozens of villages he visited — villages that were decimated;
Armenian villages turned into ghost towns in a matter of weeks in the
summer of 1915. A decade later, Hemingway’s protagonist Frederic Henry
would say in A Farewell to Arms, as he defected from World War Ifeeling
betrayed by the war, its atrocities, and hollow rhetoricthat only the
names of towns had meaning: “There were many words that you could not
stand to hear and finally only the names of places had dignity. Abstract
words such as glory, honor, courage or hallow were obscene beside the
concrete names of villages, the numbers of roads, the names of rivers.”
Davis felt, in some intuitive way, the same. He understood the stark
dignity of listing the villages that were now destroyed and emptied of
Armenians. Huseinik, Morenik, Harput Serai, Upper Mezre, Kessrik,
Yegheki, Sursury, Sursury Monastery, Tadem, Hooyloo, Shentelle, Garmeri,
Keghvenk, Kayloo, Vartatil, Perchendj, Yertmenik, Morey, Komk, Hoghe,
Haboosi, Hintzor, Hinakrak, Tcherkeny, Visian, Korpe, Hagop, Mezre,
Dzaroug, Harsek, Mollahkeuy, Pertag. “All of the purely Armenian
villages were in ruins and deserted,” he noted. In those with mixed
populations, “the Armenian homes were empty.” The names carried the
texture of place and culture: the guttural sounds, the piling of certain
consonants, the k’s, the z’s, the y’s. Some names Turkish, some
Armenian.
With each paragraph of his report, his voice accrued more richness and
authority. “Everywhere it was a scene of desolation and destruction,”
Davis wrote, “the houses were crumbling to pieces and even the Christian
churches, which had been erected at great expense and with much
sacrifice, had been pulled down.” In their “fanaticism,” he said, the
Turks and Kurds “seemed determined not only to exterminate the Christian
population but to remove all traces of their religion and even to
destroy the products of civilization.” At the time Davis didn’t know
that he was writing about the template for modern genocide.
His voice kept taking me to the place. Where was this lake, why was it
an epicenter of killing, a repository for corpses? There was an
Auschwitz sense about it. A remote place, a beautiful pastoral setting,
where humans would do the worst things imaginable.
Lake Göeljük was some five hours to the southeast of Davis’s consulate
by horseback, and he went there on this particular trip with a Turkish
guide. Within miles of leaving Harput they began to see dead bodies
strewn all over the road. “They had been covered with a few shovelfuls
of dirt,” Davis wrote, “as the gendarmes found it easier to do this than
to dig holes for them. The result was that in almost every case one
could see the arms or legs or even the heads sticking out of the ground.
Most of them had been partially eaten by dogs.”
At the village of Mollahkeuy they moved onto the plain, where they found
several hundred bodies scattered over the dry ground, nearly all of them
women and children. As they surveyed the landscape, they saw that some
of the bodies had been burned. “I thought at first this had been done as
a sanitary measure,” Davis wrote, but his Turkish friend explained that
the gendarmes and the Kurds would burn the bodies in search of gold
pieces that many Armenians swallowed for safekeeping.
They climbed a steep mountain and descended into a valley that led to
Lake Göeljük — a spot that Davis recalled having been a favorite summer
camping ground for the American missionaries and Foreign Service
officers. A large and beautiful lake, Göeljük was the only significant
body of water in the region, a source of the Tigris River. Its name,
meaning “little lake,” is a Turkish translation of the Armenian Dzovuk.
The banks were high and steep, with deep ravines. The men rode around
the lake, looking down at “hundreds of bodies and many bones in the
water below.” It was rumored that the Armenians had been pushed over the
cliffs by the gendarmes — a rumor “that was fully confirmed,” Davis
wrote, “by what we saw.”
He perceptively realized how cleverly the Turks had exploited the chasms
in the rocky and remote topography in order to carry out the mass
killings. Around Lake Göeljük, he noted, the ravines were “triangular in
shape and shut in on two sides by high precipitous banks which the
people when attacked were not able to climb. Two or three gendarmes
stationed on each side could prevent a multitude from escaping that
way.” At the bottom, of course, there was nothing but water; as Davis
put it, “a row of 15 or 20 gendarmes” could keep the Armenians from
escaping into the water along the narrow paths around the lake.
The consul’s descriptions can bring us close up in a way that witnessing
with precise language can:
One of the first corpses that we saw was that of an old man with a
white beard, whose skull had been crushed in by a large stone which
still remained in it. A little farther along we saw the ashes of six
or eight persons, only a few fragments of bones and clothing
remaining unburned. One red fez was conspicuous. There were also
some skull bones, as they are the strongest and always the last to
be destroyed. These ashes were about 20 feet from a tree under which
there was a large red spot. This upon closer examination proved to
be blood, which appeared to have been there for two or three weeks.
The tree had a number of bullet holes in it, indicating that the men
whose ashes we saw had probably been stood up against it and shot.
The ghoulish images seemed endless. As they approached the next ravine,
they saw “a row of 20 or 30 heads sticking out of the sand at the edge
of the water.” Just the heads. Davis wrote that “the gendarmes with
characteristic Turkish negligence had buried the bodies in sand at the
edge of the lake because it was easier to dig and the sand had washed
off and been blown away, leaving the heads exposed.” Everywhere he
looked there were corpses: corpses piled up on the rocks at the foot of
the cliffs; corpses in the water and on the sand around the lake;
corpses filling up the huge ravines. As they passed a clump of trees
covered with vines and bushes in the middle of a ravine, Davis’s Turkish
guide told him to look in, and he saw “about 15 or 20 bodies under the
trees, some of them sitting upright as they had died.” In one ravine
Davis estimated that there were about a thousand corpses, in another
about fifteen hundred. “The stench from them was so great” that he rode
as high up on the ravine as he could, but he couldn’t escape it.
Davis learned that because the Muslims considered “the clothes taken
from a dead body” to be “defiled,” all of the Armenians were forced to
strip before being killed, and he described “gaping bayonet wounds on
most of the bodies.” Because bullets were so precious, it was “cheaper
to kill with bayonets and knives.” The bodies, he learned, were of
Armenians who had been marched from distant places. In other parts of
Turkey the same methods of massacre by butchery were occurring because
the Turks didn’t want to waste ammunition. In Ankara and its
surroundings, only a couple of hundred miles east of Constantinople, the
killing was done with “axes, cleavers, shovels, and pitchforks,” the
priest Krikoris Balakian wrote. The carnage around Ankara was so
horrible that Talaat Pasha, the interior minister, ordered more than
40,000 corpses to be quickly buried in mass graves. Still, the stench of
death and the mounds of bodies overwhelmed the landscape.
South of Harput, Davis and his companion left the lake, traveling
through the village of Keghvenk, and again the stench of rotting corpses
overwhelmed them. As they rode from Keghvenk back to Mezre, they saw
thousands of corpses half-buried, and later they learned that many of
them were men who had been imprisoned before the deportation. Within 10
miles of Mezre the travelers saw the remains of Armenian camps where
thousands had been held before they were massacred. Arriving home at
about 9 o’clock in the evening, Davis wrote: “I felt that I understood
better than ever what the ‘deportation’ of the Armenians really meant.”
I don’t wish to suggest that all of my book is like this chapter. Nor am
I making an argument for writing something that might be called
exclusively narrative history. As a scholar I’m trained to create
analytical lenses to evaluate political and social conflict and
historical change, and I am trained to use hard documents and enjoy the
depth and authenticity of those records. Reading hundreds of pages of
U.S. State Department documents and British Foreign Office records, as
well as German, Austrian, French, and Turkish official records in
translation, I found the voices of history alive in human ways. They
were more than bureaucratic; they were the drama of history in motion.
And this one moment, when Leslie Davis described his journey around a
lake, was a fabulous opportunity for me, as a literary writer, to seize
a deeper way into what the Armenian Genocide was.
The artistic challenges of locating the events, the characters, and
their voices in sensory, human time was an energizing force that kept me
writing when the darkness of the subject could have shut me down.
Peter Balakian is a professor of English and the humanities at Colgate
University. He is the author of five books of poetry and of The Black
Dog of Fate (Basic Books, 1997) and The Burning Tigris: The Armenian
Genocide and America’s Response (HarperCollins, 2003).
Section: The Chronicle Review
Volume 50, Issue 35, Page B10

Armenian Assembly of America
122 C Street, NW, Suite 350
Washington, DC 20001
Phone: 202-393-3434
Fax: 202-638-4904
Email: [email protected]
Web:
July 8, 2004
CONTACT: Christine Kojoian
E-mail: [email protected]
Asssembly Interns Meet With Congressman Pallone
———————————————–
Photograph available on the Assembly’s Web site at the following links:
-066-1.jpg
CAPTION: Armenian Assembly summer interns met with Congressional Caucus on
Armenian Issues Co-Chair Frank Pallone, Jr. (D-NJ) on Capitol Hill July 8 to
discuss issues of concern to the Armenian Diaspora, as well as current
legislation to extend permanent normal trade relations (PNTR) to Armenia.
The legislation, introduced by Armenian Caucus Co-Chair Joe Knollenberg
(R-MI) and Congressman Pallone in the House of Representatives last year,
would remove a provision requiring Armenia to obtain presidential approval
for continued access to low tariffs. The meeting with Congressman Pallone,
a staunch supporter of Armenian-American issues, is part of the Assembly’s
Capitol Ideas program which gives interns the opportunity to meet with U.S.
Senators and Representatives.
The Armenian Assembly of America is the largest Washington-based nationwide
organization promoting public understanding and awareness of Armenian
issues. It is a 501 (c) (3) tax-exempt membership organization.
NR#2004-066