Armenia’s Foreign Ministry

Armenia’s foreign ministry on Wednesday called fake claims of an “Azerbaijani Genocide” by Armenians in 1918 “hostile and unfounded narratives,” rejecting Baku’s assertions that such events took place.

Azerbaijan’s foreign ministry on Tuesday issued a statement calling for the recognition of the so-called “Azerbaijani Genocide.” Baku claimed that in March 1918 6,000 “armed units of Baku Soviet,” with the assistance of another 4,000 members of the Armenian Revolutionary Federation carried out massacres against Azerbaijani ahead of the both Armenia and Azerbaijan declaring independence in May of that year.

Armenia’s foreign ministry spokesperson told Armenpress on Wednesday that such claims are part of “hostile and unfounded narratives” that have developed over decades of conflict and continue to be used in Azerbaijan, including at the state level.

“We hope that the peace established between Armenia and Azerbaijan will not only contribute to stable, peaceful coexistence and the development of good-neighborly relations between the two states and societies, but will also put an end to fabricated claims and eliminate hate speech,” she said.

The spokesperson also pointed to commitments made by the leaders of Armenia and Azerbaijan, recalling an agreement reached in Washington. According to Badalyan, the declaration signed on August 8, 2025, includes a provision emphasizing the intention to close the chapter of hostility between the two peoples and to move toward building good-neighborly relations following years of conflict.

Badalyan underscored that advancing peace should go hand in hand with abandoning divisive rhetoric and fostering mutual understanding between the two societies.

Baku’s latest revision of history comes as Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan last week said he had had “enough” of historical justice, adding that any pursuit of the principle was “anti-Armenian.”

Meanwhile Turkey Defense Ministry announced that it will not allow the “genocide committed by Armenians against Azerbaijanis” to be forgotten.

“In those tragic days, which remain a black mark in history, Armenian armed groups mercilessly killed thousands of innocent Azerbaijanis. We have not forgotten the genocide committed against our brothers, we will not forget it, and we will not allow it to be forgotten. We honor the memory of our martyrs with gratitude and humility,” the Turkish defense ministry said in statement posted on its website.

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A screen capture from Dr. Oz’s racist video targeting Armenians

An Armenian market owner in Los Angeles has filed a lawsuit against Dr. Mehmet Oz saying a racist video, in which President Trump’s Medicare and Medicaid Administrator, is accusing Armenian businesses of fraud has damaged her reputation and business.

Anna Ivanyan, who owns the Tigranakert Meat Market in Van Nuys said in the lawsuit that Dr. Oz trashed her reputation by featuring her business in the racist clip about alleged fraud in the Armenian community.

In late January, Dr. Oz posted a video on the official Health and Human Services social media accounts that ethnically profiled Armenian-owned businesses in Los Angeles. The video showed him riding in a car and posing outside businesses, claiming billions of dollars in healthcare fraud — including alleged hospice schemes — are tied to what he describes as the “Russian Armenian Mafia.”

Ivanyan’s lawsuit claims the video reached millions of viewers and that Oz’s defamatory statements were also amplified by L.A. local news outlets, which added fuel to the fire.

As a result, Ivanyan claims the alleged defamatory statements spread rapidly — reaching her customers and the broader community. She says the video hurt her business and reputation and she’s now seeking damages.

Governor Gavin Newsom was quick to condemn Dr. Oz’s actions across multiple public statements. He then announced his office was filing a civil rights complaint with U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Office for Civil Rights, stating Dr. Oz “spewed baseless and racially charged allegations targeting the Armenian community in Los Angeles.”

Several federal, state and local elected officials also condemned Dr. Oz’s racist statements, with Senator demanding an independent review into Dr. Oz’s racist and baseless targeting of Armenian Americans in Los Angeles.

“I strongly urge you to open an independent investigation into this incident, which should include an inquiry into misuse of taxpayer dollars and flagrant targeting of communities based on ethnicity. These allegations peddle a racist conspiracy about California’s Armenian American community and undermine Armenian Americans’ civil rights.” Senator Schiff wrote on February 2.

Within minutes of Dr. Oz posting his video, ANCA Executive Director Aram Hamparian publicly called out this discriminatory conduct: “Dr. Oz is painting Armenians with a broad brush, tarring our entire Armenian American community for the alleged crimes of a few individuals. This sort of ethnic scapegoating against Americans of Armenian heritage is as toxic as it is dangerous, all the more so when done by a dual Turkish citizen – an unapologetic genocide denier who served proudly in Turkey’s armed forces.”

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ARS Central Executive Board meets in Watertown, Mass. on Mar. 22

The Central Executive Board of the Armenian Relief Society convened its plenary session at its headquarters in Watertown, Mass, from March 19 to 22, during which it decided to allocate $440,500 to vital projects in the homeland and the Diaspora.

The ARS Central Executive Board announced that financial allocations were approved in support of various institutions and programs. This unanimous decision reflects the Board’s firm conviction that ARS structures throughout the Diaspora, along with the diverse organizational and individual initiatives implemented in Armenia, play an essential role in strengthening the collective life of the Armenian people.

Thus, financial assistance was allocated to the AYF Camp Haiastan in Massatchussets (U.S.); the AYF Camp in California (U.S); the Armenian Blue Cross camp of “BelleFontaine” in France; the Hamazkayin M. & H. Arslanian Jemaran and ARS “Norsigian” Kindergarten (Lebanon); the “Sosseh” Kindergarten in Bulgaria; the ARS elderly homes in Argentina and Brazil; the United Armenian College in Bourj Hammoud (Lebanon); the United Armenian School and Karen Jeppe College in Aleppo (Syria), the “Hot Meals” programs in Syria and Lebanon; ARCL A. Boulghourdjian Socio-medical center in Lebanon for obtaining new Carestream-CR Classic for X-ray equipment; the care program for children with disabilities from Artsakh; and the production of a documentary film dedicated to the distinguished diplomat and public figure Diana Abcar.

The plenary session also featured a comprehensive agenda encompassing a wide range of topics related to the organization’s multifaceted activities. All matters were examined in depth, and corresponding decisions were duly adopted.

“The ARS Central Executive Board reaffirms its strong belief that national, youth, educational, and philanthropic institutions play an essential role in advancing the well-being of our people and in shaping future generations. These allocations stand as a tangible _expression_ of that commitment,” a statement from the organization said.

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BY VAHE KIENTS

YEREVAN — New York–based actress Nora Armani appeared on Yerevan’s stage with a striking one-woman performance: “The Key Collector”, written by Samvel Tor Martirosyan and directed by Hakob Ghazanchyan. The production’s brief run, which opened on November 29, left an impression far greater than its duration. Like a comet crossing the theatrical sky, it arrived unexpectedly, burned brightly, and vanished—yet not without leaving a lingering trace in the memory of its audience.

That resonance carried forward to March 23, when Armani returned to Yerevan to present the work to the jury of the 25th Annual Artavazd Awards and the Yerevan audience. The response was as powerful as the opening performances, though the jury withheld its verdict until the official ceremony.

The production’s impact was confirmed at the Artavazt Awards held at the Konstantin Stanislavski Dramatic Theatre, on International Theatre Day, March 27, when “The Key Collector” was nominated for Best Chamber Production. By decision of the Artavazd Awards jury, actress Nora Armani was awarded the prestigious Artavazd Prize for her performance of the lead role in “The Key Collector.”

As noted in his speech by Hakob Ghazanchyan, chairman of the Union, the production is the result of homeland–diaspora collaboration, with Nora Armani’s contribution being especially significant. Each time Armani visits Armenia, she engages in various theatrical activities—from acting to teaching and conducting masterclasses at higher educational institutions.

Staged at the Union of Theatre Practitioners of Armenia, the 45-minute chamber piece unfolded with emotional precision and quiet intensity. The audience responded with palpable empathy—for homeland, for faith, for cultural inheritance. Their warm, sustained applause, along with the bouquets presented to Armani and the ten young performers from the Galya Novents Theatre School, testified to the performance’s powerful resonance.

At the center of the play is a blind woman—known as the key collector—whom Armani portrays with layered sensitivity. Confined to a wheelchair for much of the performance, the character inhabits a sharply bounded world. Her journey is not expansive but cyclical: from a dimly lit home in a border village to the ruins of a nearby church, and back again.

Those ruins—reduced to two columns and a fractured lintel beam—form both the physical and symbolic core of the play. The heroine tends to them as if they were whole, preserving the illusion of continuity amid collapse. It is here that she rises, leaves her wheelchair behind, and begins her ritual: gathering keys scattered among dust and gravestones.

These keys are not inert objects. Though stripped of practical use, they carry memory, presence—perhaps even a kind of spiritual residue. The key collector understands this. So too do the unseen treasure hunters who haunt the ruins in search of relics. Their presence, though never fully revealed, introduces a quiet but persistent tension—a moral and existential opposition that unfolds beneath the surface of the performance.

A history teacher by profession, the heroine stands as both witness and guardian. Against the pressures of war, displacement, and personal limitation, she asserts her right to remain—to endure. Her blindness, far from diminishing her perception, becomes a source of heightened awareness. Through touch and imagination, she reconstructs a world that others, even with sight, fail to fully grasp.

Director Hakob Ghazanchyan amplifies this inner world through radical minimalism. The stage is bare—devoid of physical set, props, or visual markers. Even the keys exist only metaphorically or through suggestions using different objects, their imagined sound echoing across an empty space. Yet the absence of material scenery gives rise to something richer: a mental architecture formed through movement, gesture, and light.

This is where the ensemble of ten students from the Galya Novents Theatre School becomes essential. Through choreographed motion and physical _expression_, they conjure the ruins—the fallen stones, the arches, the ghost of a once-rising dome. At times lyrical, at times stark, their presence shapes a visual language that is both abstract and deeply evocative.

The result is a layered theatrical experience in which imagination and reality exist in constant tension. The ruins are not only architectural but psychological; the conflict, though unseen, is unmistakably human.

As playwright Samvel Tor Martirosyan suggests, “The Key Collector” resists confinement to a specific time or event. It speaks instead to enduring national anxieties—an unbroken thread of cultural survival set against forces of erasure. Beneath its quiet surface lies a pressing question: how does one reclaim the meaning of origin, of belonging, of purpose?

The answer, the performance implies, is neither simple nor singular. But it begins with recognition—and with resistance. 

The production endures where it matters most: in the shared pulse between stage and audience, memory and meaning. We expect it to return to the Armenia and Diaspora stages in the near future. We wish the creative team well and congratulate Ms. Armani on her award.

Vahe Kients is the author of various journalism and creative media articles, working across genres ranging from simple news reporting to TV, digital, and print reportage, as well as essays, commentary, and political and cultural analysis. He is based in Yerevan.

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