Category: News

Today, at the K. Demirjian Sport and Concert Compound President Serzh Sargsyan participated at the opening of the which was conducted under the subtitle Living Witnesses of Genocide
At the Forum the President of Armenia made a statement.

Statement by the President of Armenia Serzh Sargsyan at the opening of the Second Global Forum Against the Crime of Genocide

Distinguished guests,
Distinguished participants of the Global Forum,

One year ago, on the eve of the Armenian Genocide Centennial, I had the honor to declare the launching of the work of this Global Forum, with a strong faith in its mission and success. That mission was to identify the issues related to the prevention of genocide, develop the avenues for their resolution and consolidate the potential of the civilized humankind in order to register a decisive victory over the crimes against humanity in the 21st century.

Today, as one year has passed since then, I can state with the outmost certainty that we have achieved those objectives: the first forum found extensive response both with the expert community and thousands of people both in Armenia and way beyond its borders. It provided with an opportunity to the world to discuss anew genocide as the gravest crime committed by human beings. That was a reason good enough for us to make this conference a permanent platform for those individuals, genocide survivors, their successors and, of course, States and international structures that are determind and consentaneous to make their contribution to this universal struggle.

I warmly welcome you all, and I am very glad that we are united.

Ladies and gentlemen,
2015 was an important milestone for us to grasp anew the one hundred year-long struggle of our nation for its right to exist and restoration of historical justice. The Armenian Genocide Centennial was marked not by mourning but the messages of gratitude and revival that we sent out to the world, as well as determination to make the Republic of Armenia one of the pioneering forces to lead the struggle against that crime. Our vision is crystal crisp: it is necessary to instill consciousness of the absolute inadmissability of genocide in order to prevent such catastrophes unfolding.

2015 was important in that context since a number of Heads of States, Parliaments, international structures, religious organizations, prominent individuals expressed their solidarity to our joint struggle against genocide by recognizing and condemning the Armenian Genocide.

The current logics of the global development unambiguously registers that we are all interdependent, and that interdependence transforms a failure of one into a failure of all, and that is also true for a success or suffering. Today it is difficult to imagine a security challenge that threatens only one nation. Therefore, none of us can consider oneself ensured against the horrors that our ancestors went through in the 20th century, that our contemporaries are surviving in the 21st century unless we decide that we should state ‘never again’ regardless of the price that every one of us should pay. That same logics also reminds us that a genocide committed at any corner of the world should be viewed as a failure for the international community as a whole, and the prevention of it is the duty of every single one of us individually and of the humankind collectively. Hence, it is natural that those, who underwent and survived genocide and their generations shall be continuously looking at the international community and pressing for justice.

Distinguished participants,
The general heading for this year’s conference is “Living Witnesses of Genocide” that allows us to uncover the issues of outmost importance related both to addressing the consequences of genocide and its prevention. Today there are here with us living witnesses that survived genocide. People, who felt on their own skin the indescribable and unutterable horrors of genocide, irremidiable pain of loss, yearn, homeland dispossession, and at the time they should have bade farewell to their own past and future. For every single one of them it was hard to be optimistic, but they are here to register that genocide perpetrators have not won. I strongly believe that they all have gone through a valorous path and throughout that path they met people, who extended helping hand, assisted in their recovery and inspired their hopes… People, who revolted against the scourge of their time and did not bear with indifference, who neglected their very own interests since they could have not beared with injustice, who risked themselves in order to save one more human life.

Today, unfortunately, the humankind still lacks humanness. It is demostrated by the wave of denial by the genocide perpetrators and their successors. It was rightly noted by the Nobel Prize winner and Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel that to deny would be akin to killing victims a second time. In some instances denial is expressed through violation of the right to remembrance and awareness. Denial imposes constant feeling of fear unto the survivors and their successors since those who deny or justify what had happened do not directly exclude the possibility of ruccurence of that very same crime should there be aproppriate conditions for that.

Meanwhile, I believe that the international legal documents related to the crime of genocide do not pay due attention to the international legal regulation of the issues related to the genocide survivors. The same is also true for the international legal regime related to the refugees. It is critical to understand how to define a special legal status for survivors of genocide and other crimes against humanity through the improvement of the existing legal mechanisms or introduction of new legal norms; otherwise, perhaps, it would be impossible to comprehensively approach this issue.
Any reasonable adjudication of a crime requires also recognition of the rights of the victims concerning their losses and suffering. Certainly, it is also true for the survivors of genocide and other crimes against humanity. Necessary mechanisms should be installed, which will allow both recognizing that right and implementing it.

Distinguished colleagues,

As recent crises in the Middle East have demonstrated, nowadays the issue of genocide prevention remains urgent and topical. Lately, the world has been watching with repulsion how the terrorists of the Islamic State have been torturing, beheading and mutilating innocent people, including women, children, and elderly people. The world is shocked with the barbarities that are carried out by a gang of thugs, who can hardly be called to justice and can be fought against barely with missiles.
Nevertheless, if the thugs that carry out atrocities are fought with missiles, a question comes up: what kind of responsibility should bear a State, a subject of international law, for condoning and carrying out similar crimes?

What would you say of a country, a fully-fledged subject of international law, a member of the UN, Council of Europe and various other structures, a signatory of the humanitarian conventions, whose script is not much different from that of the Islamic State? Just a few weeks ago, during the large-scale offensive unleashed by Azerbaijan against Nagorno Karabakh, Azeri soldiers were not content with just shooting their arms: they mutilated elderly people, Armenian soldiers, decapitated them and cut off their ears and presented those actions in the social networks as a manifestation of heroism. It was all evidently encouraged by the Azerbaijani authorities. Is not it bizarre that a country that pursues such barbaric policy and violates all the norms of civilized conduct, these days is going to host a conference under the rubric of “Alliance of Civilizations?” Is this an approach to be tolerated? We must get to the point, when a display of such hatred shall not be tolerated, when any government shall refrain from such conduct mindful that it may be hold responsible for it.
We as the international community must swiftly and resolutely eradicate all such instances of genocidal conduct wherever they should occur, as it was done some days ago by the leadership and public of Sweden with regard to the hate speech directed against Armenians by the Turkish nationalist Barbaros Leylani. This requires our concerted effort, perhaps even subordination of geopolitical interests, ability to voice strict and targeted condemnation. Unless we are able to nip such conduct in the bud, we will have to deal with the elimination of their various and unpredictable consequences; we will continue to face various crimes nourished by hatred – crimes, among which are the terrorist activities that gain new range and scale on our continent.

Ladies and gentlemen,
On the Armenian Genocide Centennial the Armenian nation sent out a message of gratitude to the entire world. The Hundred Lives initiative and the Aurora Prize were launched on behalf of the survivors and as a token of appreciation to those who in the direst times came to the Armenian people’s rescue. I congratulate and express my admiration to the nominees of the Prize. All your stories are very touching; at the same time, those are inspiring and encouraging. I thank the founders of this project – Vartan Gregorian, Noubar Afeyan, and Ruben Vardanian, organizers of the award ceremony, as well as all those who have contributed to the implementation of this momentous initiative.

I wish all of us productive work. I also wish that future generations learn about crimes against humanity only from books.

The negotiation process cannot continue as long as there is shooting or threat of shooting in the direction of Nagorno Karabakh, Armenian Deputy Foreign Minister Shavarsh Kocharyan told reporters today, as he commented on the results of the Russian Foreign minister’s visit to Armenia.

According to Kocharyan, the first and most important outcome was the reiteration of the fact that the 1994 ceasefire agreement remains in force, and the utmost goal today is to ensure peace and stability.

The Deputy Foreign Minister attached special importance to the statement that concrete measures reinforcing the ceasefire regime should be initiated not only by the Co-Chairs, but also the German Presidency of the OSCE.

Referring to Sergey Lavrov’s remarks on Kazan document, Kocharyan said: “There are two platforms. The first one is the Madrid document, which led to Kazan, which Azerbaijan turned down. The second platform are the proposals targeted at reinforcement of the ceasefire regime, implementation of confidence-building mechanisms,” Shavarsh Kocharyan said.

The Deputy Foreign Minister confirmed that the Madrid Principles envisage concessions, but it’s up to Nagorno Karabakh to make a decision. “No Armenian official will ever be able to solve the issue of territories and status for Artsakh,” he concluded.

A ceremony Friday at Fresno City Hall commemorated the 101st anniversary of the start of the Armenian genocide, in which as many as 1.5 million Armenians were killed by the Ottoman Empire over several years, the reports.

For the oldest members of the Armenian diaspora in Fresno and the San Joaquin Valley, the wounds and memories of the genocide are particularly acute, as it was their parents and grandparents who lived through the systematic deportations and killings in their historic homeland. But Friday’s ceremony also held special meaning for younger Armenians carrying on efforts to maintain their ethnic identity and strive for recognition of what their ancestors endured.

Young Armenian Homenetmen scouts raised the U.S., California and Armenian Republic flags on the City Hall flagpoles as about 250 members of the Valley’s Armenian community gathered on the lawn. The ceremony included speeches by Rep. Jim Costa, D-Fresno; Danny Tarkanian, son of former UNLV and Fresno State basketball coach Jerry Tarkanian; and Raffi Hamparian, national chairman of the Armenian National Committee of America.

Hagop Minasyan, a 16-year-old student at Fresno’s Central East High School, was one of several boys holding signs declaring “Turkey guilty of genocide” in front of City Hall. His great-grandparents were genocide survivors, and his parents were the first generation of his family to come to the U.S.

Michael Rettig, 24, of Fresno held a sign with a picture of his maternal great-great-grandfather, Mgrdich Dinjian. “He was hacked to death early in the killings,” Rettig said. “He worked in one of the churches, and the story is that he had a lot of books, that he was an intellectual.” He added that the activism of younger Armenians is sparked “especially when we find a personal connection, like this photo of my great-great-grandfather, who was killed along with two-thirds of the Armenians” in Turkey.

He and others are upset not only with Turkey’s longstanding denial of the genocide, but also with the cultural “erasure” of Armenian culture in Turkey. “Armenians lived there for thousands of years, and now there’s no trace of us,” Rettig said. “That is why we have to protest.”

The popularity of social media is also making the genocide more relevant and meaningful to younger Armenians, said Tanya Toramasian, a 20-year-old college student who recently moved with her family from Chicago to Fresno. She watched the ceremony and listened to speakers with an red, blue and orange Armenian flag draped over her shoulders.

“I personally met my great-grandmother who was a genocide survivor, so it touches me even more because I actually met her and heard her stories about what she went through,” Toramasian said. “Our voice is the loudest thing, and with social media, everyone is learning now about the Armenian genocide. … We’re the youth, and we need to make sure everyone knows about it. That’s why there are so many of us here today.”

That’s the sort of enthusiasm that Hamparian – who lives near Pasadena and works in government affairs for the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transit Authority – sought to inspire with his remarks.

Hamparian recited the names of seven Armenian soldiers who died in fighting earlier this month between Azerbaijan and Nagorno-Karabakh in the region of Artsakh, historically one of the last Armenian kingdoms and now part of Nagorno-Karbakh. After each name, Hamparian declared that “he died three weeks ago in defense of Artsakh. He died to prevent another Armenian genocide. He died for me and for you.”

“It is fair and reasonable for us today here in the diaspora, here in California, in the abundant Central Valley, to ask ourselves: Can we have heroes here?” he said. “Yes, we do have heroes here, who make our community work (and) who remind a new generation to rise and raise others.”

He invoked the title of the hit movie “The Revenant,” and explored the French origins of the word meaning “to come back.” “This word is especially relevant to us. … We are, after all, a people who have come back from annihilation.”

Costa spoke of his empathy for the memory of genocide from growing up among Armenian families in the Rolinda area west of Fresno. “While I may be an ‘odar’ (an Armenian word for non-Armenians), today we are all Armenians,” he said.

“Through the recognition of the Armenian genocide, we pay tribute to the perseverance and the determination of those who were able to survive, as well as the Americans of Armenian descent who have helped strengthen this country,” Costa added. “As we reflect this day, it is fitting that we honor the thousands of Armenian men and women who began lives in the U.S. after witnessing unspeakable tragedies.”

One of those was Tarkanian’s paternal grandmother, Rose, who was a child when Ottoman Turkish soldiers raided her village. Her mother put her in a dress with coins sewn into it, put Rose and her brother on a horse and sent them out of town before the soldiers arrived. Rose’s father and older brother were both beheaded by soldiers, he said, “and the rest of the villagers were herded into the church where the soldiers burned them alive.”

And Hamparian exhorted the crowd to fight “in a very American way” to push for presidential recognition of the genocide and changes in U.S. policy toward the conflict over Artsakh by strengthening Armenian churches and community organizations “to fight for your diaspora to be in the arena.”

“To change U.S. policy on Artsakh will not be easy. To change U.S. policy on the Armenian genocide will not be easy,” he said. “But nothing in life that is worthwhile, that has value, is ever easy.”

Roughly 30 individuals joined hands on the steps of Sproul Hall on Friday afternoon to commemorate the 101st anniversary of the Armenian Genocide, the reports.

The annual event, called United Hands Across Cal, was hosted by the Armenian Students’ Association, or ASA, to bring attention to the history of the killing of about 1.5 million Armenians in 1915, an event that is widely viewed by historians as a genocide.

Despite the heavy rain, students came together for an hour of speeches, poetry and special singing performances conducted in both English and Armenian. Members clasped one another’s hands, with some attendees crying, throughout the event.

“Holding hands was important because instead of being a bunch of people by ourselves, we were united as one,” said ASA president and campus senior Maria Elvajyan.

The Armenian Genocide typically refers to the deaths that began with the killing of a large population of Armenian intellectuals living within what was the Ottoman Empire, which is now modern-day Turkey. The official date associated with the beginning of the Armenian killings is April 24, 1915.

Turkey and other countries, including the United States, do not use the word genocide to describe the killings. To date, more than 20 countries worldwide have officially recognized the massacre as a genocide.

“The purpose of the event today was to denounce denial,” said Levon Korganyan, cultural chair of ASA and a campus senior. “Mostly it is a celebration of our resounding presence here and the fact that we are still thriving and so alive and so passionate about both the past and also the perpetuation of our culture into the future.”

Many wore matching T-shirts for the event and hung an Armenian flag to honor their ancestors. Behind the circle of people stood 10 painted wooden boards that formed a world map depicting other genocides and crimes against humanity.

“There is a sense of injustice that Armenians feel,” said Hasmig Seropian, campus Armenian language lecturer. “And this will not go away no matter what generation it is.”

The Friday event occurred toward the end of Armenian Genocide Awareness Week, a weeklong event hosted by ASA each year. Members of ASA camped out on Memorial Glade at night all week and hosted a number of events, including a cultural show and movie screenings.

The theme of this year’s event is Mnayun, which translates to “eternal”  in Armenian. It also means “We are. We will always be,” Elvajyan said.

ASA ended the event on an upbeat note, with a group dance to an Armenian song.

“We are celebrating the fact that we are here after 101 years … dancing to our music and appreciating our culture,” Elvajyan said. “Our culture is alive and we are very proud of it.”

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has issued the following statement on the 101st anniversary of the Armenian Genocide;

On this day, we mark the 101^st commemoration of the tragic loss of life of the Armenian population during the waning days of the Ottoman Empire in 1915.

Both the Senate of Canada and the House of Commons have adopted resolutions referring to these events as genocide.

We preserve the memory of those who lost their lives, and those who suffered during this genocide and pay our deepest respects to their descendants, including those who now call Canada home.

In solemnly acknowledging this event, let us use this moment as an opportunity to look forward and strengthen our collective resolve to ensure such acts are never again repeated.

While we must never forget the lessons of history, we must also be reminded that past injustices do not serve our communities if they divide us. Canadians of all backgrounds and faiths stand together in reaffirming our collective commitment to the values of pluralism, human rights, and diversity.

On this anniversary, please join me in my hope for a peaceful future based on tolerance, respect, and reconciliation.

AFP – As the world prepares to mark the Armenian genocide, filmmakers and musicians are attempting to raise awareness among an American public largely ignorant of one of modern history’s darkest episodes.

It is 101 years on Sunday since Turkey’s Ottoman government began arresting minority community leaders and setting in motion a campaign of systematic slaughter that had left 1.5 million Christian Armenians dead by the early 1920s.

Turned out of their homes and sent on death marches through the Mesopotamian desert, they were stripped naked and forced to walk until they died of thirst or collapsed and were shot dead.

At the same time, the ruling “Young Turks” created death squads to drown countless thousands in rivers, throw them off cliffs, crucify them and burn them alive, raping women and forcing them to join harems or serve as slaves.

The collective trauma has been transferred from the original victims to every subsequent generation of Armenians who have carried the unresolved suffering of their ancestors to their new homes across Europe and the United States.

On Sunday thousands of Armenians are expected to rally in Los Angeles — home to the largest diaspora community in the world — to demand that the Turkish government finally recognize the massacres as a genocide.

Yet there is frustration among the campaigners that ordinary Californians may not have even heard of the events they refer to as “Medz Yeghern” — or “The Great Crime.”

French-Armenian filmmaker Robert Guediguian’s “Don’t Don’t Tell Me The Boy Was Mad,” which gets its US premiere on Friday at COLCOA, the world’s largest festival of French film, staged annually in LA, aims to change that.

“I don’t think the rest of America is conscious of what happened. But it’s not only America, it’s also Europe and a lot of Western countries. They are ignorant of the story. They are not aware,” he told AFP.

“It’s only in places where there is a big Armenian community where people have their voices heard about this subject… Cinema can absolutely educate people and make them aware of what is happening in the world.”

“Don’t Tell Me The Boy Was Mad” is set around the Armenian diaspora in 1970s and 80s Marseille, France and follows a wave of bombings and assassinations perpetrated by Armenian radicals against Turkish targets across Europe in response to the genocide.

Guediguian based his story on “The Bomb,” an autobiographical novel by Jose Antonio Gurriaran, who was semi-paralyzed by an Armenian terrorist attack in Madrid but became a leading advocate for international recognition of what he called “the forgotten genocide.”

Despite a history of support for laws formally recognizing the Armenian genocide, US President Barack Obama — accused of kowtowing to Turkish sensitivities — hasn’t used the term to refer to the killings while in office.

“Barack Obama took the stand that most people in politics do. They come to the community and say ‘we will absolutely recognize that your community or people have been in a genocide.’ But then once they are elected and become president they don’t,” said Guediguian.

Many of the stories of abuse related by characters in the film are derived from the 62-year-old’s own family history, passed down from his grandparents’ generation.

“In the movie Anoush tells the story of her mother who had been raped several times before she made it to France. This story really happened, to my great aunt,” Guediguian told AFP.

The director, who describes reaction to his movie as “very warm,” is looking for a US distributor while in Los Angeles for the nine-day COLCOA.

Meanwhile a second film about the genocide, “Armenia, My Love,” had its premiere in Pasadena, California last week, also opening at several Los Angeles locations including Glendale, home to around 80,000 of the 200,000-plus Armenians in Los Angeles.

Written and directed by Romanian American Diana Angelson, who also stars, the film tells the story of a family living in the occupied territory of the Armenian homeland, now eastern Turkey, in 1915.

Angelson says that while she needed to depict the horror of the massacres, it was the film’s “strong messages of hope, love, faith, perseverance and strength” that she wanted to prevail.

“Hopefully it will travel the world and it will teach many people kindness,” she added.

Friday also sees the release of Grammy Award-winning Los Angeles-based Armenian American musician a thriller inspired by the events of the genocide which was released last year.

“Genocide has become the defining factor of the Armenian character worldwide,” Tankian, whose heavy metal band System of a Down has sold over 40 million records worldwide, told students at the American University of Armenia in Yerevan after the film’s release.

“That is a good thing and a bad thing. No culture, no people, want to be known as victims forever. We have a very old, amazing, gorgeous culture to share with the world.”

“The conduct of the Seventh Forum of the United Nations Alliance of Civilizations in a country, where xenophobia, Armenophobia, intolerance are flourishing, raises a number of questions,” Armenian Foreign Minister Edward Nalbandian told a joint press conference with visiting Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov.

“The Alliance of Civilizations is called to support high civilizational universal values. Holding the forum in a country, where those values are violated, disrespected and ignored is unacceptable,” he said.

He said, Armenia has not only refused to attend the forum, but has also vetoed the Declaration of the Seventh Forum of the UN Alliance of Civilizations.

The Nagorno Karabakh Republic Human Rights Defender has published an on the atrocities Committed by Azerbaijani Military Forces Against the Civilian Population of the NKR and the Servicemen of the NKR Defence Army on 2-5April 2016

On April 02, 2016 Azerbaijani military forces breached the Ceasefire Agreement of 1994 by a well-planned large-scale massive attack. The most serious and bloody military operation along the entire NKR-Azerbaijani line of contact for the last 20 years was initiated, that resulted in gross mass violations of human rights.

Today, the Interim Public Report of the NKR Ombudsman on Atrocities Committed by Azerbaijani Military Forces against the Civilian Population of the NKR and the Servicemen of the NKR Defence Army on April 2-5, 2016 has been published.

The Report is in English and it analyses the Azerbaijani hatred policy towards people of Armenian origin and its horrific consequences that violate all international human rights standards with certain examples of torture and humiliation. The Report provides international human rights organizations’ objective assessments of Azerbaijan’s policy of inciting hatred and violence towards people of Armenian ethnicity. It also presents hate speech in the Azerbaijani mass media and social networks. The Report also reveals Azerbaijani high officials and other public persons activities aimed at spreading hate speech and incitement to violence.

The Report presents the violations of international human rights law and international humanitarian law; cases of attacks on civlian population of NKR, cases of inhuman treatment, as well as cases of torture and mutilation of the NKR Defence Army Servicemen.

The Report will be sent to international human rights organizations, ombudsmen’s international institutions and to respective foreign institutions.

I would like to thank the human rights NGOs of the Republic of Nagorno Karabakh for their assistance in drafting the Report, as well as all mass media representatives that have revealed in their publications the brutal cases of gross human rights violations.