MARTIROS SARIAN, LE “FAUVE BLEU”
Le Figaro, France
30 octobre 2006
Dans la maison-musee du plus grand des peintres modernes armeniens,
Martiros Sarian (1880-1972), c’est la petite-fille de l’artiste,
Rouzane Sarian, qui recoit. Avec chaleur, elle explique la trajectoire
atypique de son aïeul, qui eut l’heur – ou le malheur – d’etre reconnu
par l’Union sovietique. “Meme si certaines de ses series, comme Reves
et contes de fees, ont ete interdites en URSS, et d’autres brûlees,
reconnaît-elle, ses bonnes relations avec Moscou expliquent peut-etre
le relatif oubli dans lequel le nouveau regime le laisse.” Ne au sud
de la Russie, dans une ville armenienne, etudiant aux Beaux-Arts de
Moscou, il travaille avec les impressionnistes, puis participe a un
groupe symboliste, rencontre Matisse, Van Gogh, Rodin, Maillol.
De chacun, il prendra un peu. De ses voyages en Egypte, il retiendra
l’obsession de l’eternite, sans pour autant adherer au mouvement
orientaliste. Fauviste, post-impressionniste, realiste pour pouvoir
survivre, son art très personnel est d’abord celui d’un coloriste non
conventionnel. “La couleur est un vrai miracle. C’est elle qui, sous
la lumière du soleil, cree l’esprit.” Ses bleus, surtout, lumineux
et purs comme dans Paysage de nuit, lui confereront le surnom de
“Fauve bleu”. Une longue et fructueuse carrière Mû par une philosophie
deiste, par un veritable culte de la nature qu’il voit “animee par le
processus du devenir”, Sarian passera sa longue et fructueuse carrière
(5 000 toiles) a chercher a restituer l’âme de l’Armenie.
Quand il peint des natures mortes où les fruits sont separes les uns
des autres, c’est son pays ecartele qu’il decrit. Sa palette a tant
de compartiments – le portrait, les scènes de genre, les paysages
caucasiens aux montagnes traitees comme des fusains multicolores
dresses vers le ciel – qu’a 91 ans, a la veille de sa mort, il
s’etait lance dans l’abstraction, avec une toile encore exposee sur
son chevalet : eclatante de couleurs, elle represente son âme partant
du soleil vers la lune, avec le grand chien roux de son enfance pour
compagnon, sans regret ni tristesse…
–Boundary_(ID_rcFHxfD6Uh+8ruTy0l1hl Q)–

THE FIRST VICTORY OF ARMENIA IN CYPRUS
A1+
[01:12 pm] 30 October, 2006
The Football national junior team of Armenia celebrated the first
victory in the qualifying round of the European championship beating
the national team of the hosts, Cyprus 1:0. In the other match of
the group Hungary beat Azerbaijan 5:0.
After the second round Hungary tops the list of the 7th group with 6
points. Armenia and Azerbaijan are in the second and third places with
3 points each. In the last round the Armenians will play with Hungary.

DEBATING NON-RECOGNITION OF THE ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
By Yasmine Ryan
Scoop, New Zealand
Oct 30 2006
Les Yeux on France: Debating Non-Recognition of the Armenian Genocide
Scoop Audio (click here to listen): to this edition of Yasmine Ryan’s
Les Yeux on France.
(AIX-EN-PROVENCE) – Two different approaches by French politicians in
the past few weeks have stirred debate in France on how Turkey might
be made to recognise the Armenian Genocide that took place during
World War One. The first is President Jacques Chirac’s symbolic visit
to Armenia; the second is a move to legislate against any denial of
the Genocide in France. A large majority of the French population
want Turkey to confront its demons, as does France’s significant
Armenian minority. And the issue is becoming increasingly relevant
as the European Union debates Turkey’s membership. Image of Yasmine
Ryan by Jason Dorday.
Back in the dying days of the Ottoman Empire, a strong Turkish
nationalist ideology was forged. Although the regime had ruled
over its diverse multiethnic populations in relative harmony for
centuries, it became increasingly suspicious of its Armenian and Greek
minorities. The Armenian separatist movement Dachnak, supported by
Russia, was seen as a threat to the nation’s very survival. Rising
tensions led eventually to the drastic decision to deport, not just
those involved in the independence struggle, but all Armenians.
And whilst these people were being transported out between 1915 and
1917, a series of extensive massacres occurred. The Turkish government
claims the death toll was between 250,000 and 500,000 and that the
victims died mostly from cold, exhaustion and hunger, or else were
massacred by bandits acting in isolation. The evidence, however, puts
the number at approximately 1.5 million. And it is widely accepted
that the massacres were ordered from the top level of the Ottoman
regime and that they were part of a broad strategy of extermination.
ADVERTISEMENT This massive figure makes the Armenian Genocide, in terms
of shear scale, second only to the Holocaust. Indeed, Robert Fisk’s
account details how the Ottoman Empire’s ideology of extermination
had an influence on the Nazi regime. Yet the Armenian Genocide has
long been blatantly ignored by the international community, and
Turkey’s refusal to acknowledge its past has not been the subject of
much criticism.
It is this irony that has captured the French public’s attention
in recent years. Turkey’s desire to join the EU is seen as a unique
opportunity to pressure the state to change its attitude. In 2001, the
Armenian Genocide was officially recognised by the French parliament.
President Chirac’s visit to Armenia was another way to place indirect
pressure on Turkey to recognise the atrocity. The Head of State made a
series of meaningful public appearances in the small and impoverished
state from 29 September to 1 October this year. He stopped off at the
Tsitsernakaberd Memorial, which honours those who died in the Armenian
Genocide, and attended the inauguration of ‘La place de France’,
where he spoke of ‘the heroic and tormented history of this people’
and of ‘all the survivors of this tragedy who must take the path of
a heartbreaking exile’.
Significantly, Chirac stated in a press conference that he believes
Turkey must recognise the Armenian Genocide before it can be admitted
into the EU. He made the comparison with the importance of Germany’s
recognition of the Holocaust. This is the most forceful statement on
the Armenian Genocide that a Western Head of State has ever made. For
a people long accustomed to being overlooked, the visit was gratefully
received amidst much emotion.
In addition to this bold move by the French President, on the 12
October, Parliament voted in favour of a bill, sponsored by the
Socialist Party, which would outlaw any denial of the Armenian
Genocide. If it is to pass into law, the parliamentary initiative
must now be validated by the Senate. This will be more difficult.
Ankara’s anger at France’s zeal over what it considers to be a
private dispute with a neighbour is growing. The Turkish government
fears that its acceptance into the EU is at risk. While there was no
real vocalisation at Chirac’s more diplomatic gesture, the move to
legislate provoked a storm of outrage in Turkey.
Chirac managed to sooth things somewhat by phoning Recep Tayyip
Erdogan, telling the Turkish Prime Minister he was very sorry and
that he believes the existing legislation is sufficient. Erdogan was
appeased by Chirac’s promise to do what he can to prevent the Bill
becoming law. Consequently, the reaction against France was moderated:
there is merely a semi-boycott. France exports to Turkey were valued
at 4.7 billion euros in 2005.
In contrast to Chirac’s visit to Armenia, there have been widespread
criticisms of the proposed bill. For many it is a confrontational
approach that in fact undermines the cause of those pushing for
more honest dialogue within Turkey. It is ironically similar to the
Turkish repression of recognition of the Genocide, a point not lost
on Turkish critiques. ‘Liberte, egalite, stupidite’ was the headline
in the daily newspaper Hurriyët. PM Erdogan called it a ‘primitive
law’ pushed through by ‘a few stubborn legislators’. He stated that:
‘Thanks to a few stubborn MPs, the France we know as the nation of
liberties must live with this shame. If France doesn’t stop this bill,
it’s her that will lose and not Turkey.’ Even Nobel Prize winner
Orhan Pamuk, viewed as a traitor by many Turks for his recognition
of the Armenian Genocide, points out that ‘freedom of expression is
a French invention. This law is contrary to this culture of liberty.’
France should continue to encourage the recognition of the Armenian
Genocide by Turkey, but not by compromising its principles. Pushing
too hard risks fuelling Turkish nationalists and creating conflict.
Public debate on the issue is growing within Turkey, and gentle
diplomacy, such as the example given by President Chirac, could
substantially help the nation come to terms with its past.
****** Yasmine Ryan is a graduate of the University of Auckland, in
Political Studies and French language. She is currently completing a
Masters degree in International Journalism at the Institut d’Etudes
Politiques, Aix-en-Provence.
L0610/S00430.htm
–Boundary_(ID_vHarMwqF7tCvOiVNE 7Mqig)–

LILOYAN WAS APPOINTED CONSUL
A1+
[01:22 pm] 30 October, 2006
By the decree of the RA Foreign Minister on October 30 Armen Liloyan
was appointed RA Consul General in Los Angeles.
Armen Liloyan has graduated from the Yerevan State University faculty
of oriental studies. He also studied in the London Diplomatic Academy.
Liloyan has been in the RA Foreign Ministry since 1995. He had
different posts in the European department of the structure. In
1998-2002 he has worked in the RA Embassy to Great Britain. Since
2002 he has been the head of the EU department of the European
administration of the RA Foreign Ministry.

SERGUEï PARADJANOV, HOMME ORCHESTRE DE L’ART
Le Figaro, France
30 octobre 2006
n De son vrai nom Sarkis Paradjanian, cet enfant d’Armeniens, ne a
Tbilissi, en Georgie, en 1924, n’est pas seulement le realisateur
de chefs-d’oeuvre du cinema comme Les Chevaux de feu, dans lequel
il transpose l’histoire de Romeo et Juliette dans une Ukraine de
legende, et La Couleur de la grenade, allegorie de la vie du poète
armenien Sayat-Nova, où le heros et le cineaste se confondent et
le jus rouge du fruit qui coule dessine, couleur de sang, la carte
de son pays martyrise. Cineaste qualifie de “plas ticien”, a cause
de la beaute de scènes qu’il compose comme des tableaux, cet enfant
terrible de l’Union sovietique, qui se retrouva deux fois en prison
pour homosexualite – en realite pour trafic d’objets d’art -, est
aujourd’hui devenu une icône de l’Armenie independante. Justement
a cause de ses demeles avec l’ancien regime. À Erevan, un musee a
ete installe dans la maison qu’il avait fait construire et qu’il
n’a jamais habitee. C’est le Parajdanov artiste qui y est presente,
collectionneur, auteur d’invraisemblables collages surrealistes dans
lesquels entrent photos de famille, poupees et marionnettes avec
lesquelles il preparait les scènes de ses films, et des balances,
symbole de l’impossible equilibre recherche par l’Homme.
Provocations, hommage a son heros, Pasolini, metamorphoses de
La Joconde a la Marcel Duchamp. Une grande partie de ces oeuvres
inclassables sera exposee, du 13 fevrier au 8 avril 2007 a l’Ecole
nationale superieure des beaux-arts de Paris, puis, du 20 avril au
24 juin, au Musee d’art moderne, La Terrasse, a Saint-Etienne.
–Boundary_(ID_+/j94+LmVZS8hkXGrra JWw)–
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

MODERN TURKEY HAS PLENTY OF WORK TO DO – BUT STILL SETS A WORTHY EXAMPLE
The Daily Star, Lebanon
Oct 30 2006
Eighty-three years after modern Turkey emerged from the ashes of the
Ottoman Empire, questions about the country’s identity continue to
divide its citizens and confuse both friend and foe alike. Buffeted
by external factors like the Cold War and internal ones like the
struggle to define democracy, the Turkish Republic has managed to
survive several periods of pronounced instability. The land envisioned
by the republic’s founder, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, is still very much
a work in progress, but the country continues to serve as a useful
crossroads between Europe and Asia, and its experiment continues to
blaze a trail for other countries in the region.
Shortly after Ataturk established the republic in 1923, he initiated a
series of wide-ranging reforms aimed at building a modern, democratic
secular nation-state from the ruins of what had been a quintessentially
Muslim empire. Today the debate over what it means to be modern,
democratic and secular is still raging. This year’s National Day
celebrations were marred by a renewed debate over the Islamic headscarf
and the need to balance secularism with the protection of individual
and religious freedoms. The hard-line head of Turkey’s powerful
military establishment, General Yasar Buyukanit, has warned that the
existing system faces “a serious threat by reactionary movements,”
which is code for parties whose political philosophies are determined
by, or rooted in, Islam. Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s ruling
Justice and Development Party fits the latter description, and the
military has forced elected government out of office in the very
recent past, so the general’s comments are not to be taken lightly.
Turkey’s experiences with striking a balance are particularly
instructive for those Arab countries undertaking their own transitions
to democracy. The Turkish example demonstrates that the road to
irreversible change will be a long one, and that even meaningful
progress will not guarantee instant approval from some world powers. It
also illustrates that nationalist instincts can allow the actions of
one era to hinder the ambitions of the next: Modern Turkey’s continuing
failure to come to grips with the Ottomans’ slaughter of Armenians,
for instance, remains a formidable barrier to better relations
with Europe and therefore a major impediment to improved economic
performance. And as Arabs know well, Turkey’s previous status as an
imperial power still clouds its relations with former subject peoples.
Despite these and other difficulties, today’s Turkey is an increasingly
important player on the regional and even the world stage. For it to
consolidate its growing influence, however, it would be helpful if
the balancing act could be replaced by a realization that in fact,
Islam and democracy are not incompatible at all: They just haven’t
spent much time together.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

“AZERBAIJAN WILL NOT COMPROMISE WHEN IT COMES TO TERRITORIAL INTEGRITY”
A1+
[02:46 pm] 30 October, 2006
“The ten-year negotiations have resulted fruitless because of the
approach of Armenia which does not want to respect international
laws”, said President of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliev during the meeting
with representatives of foreign Mass Media accredited in Russia.
But Aliev also said that the Prague process can create chances for
peaceful settlement of the conflict, day.az reports. The President of
Azerbaijan announced that the territorial integrity of Azerbaijan is
not subject to negotiations and that Armenia must fulfill the four
resolutions of the UN Security Council which demand to take out the
Armenian armed forces from the territory of Azerbaijan.
“The approach of Armenia is based on wishes and expectations. They
think that the temporary success they had in military operations with
the help of another country gives them the right to think about taking
Karabakh away from us. It will not happen.
That’s why the RA authorities must understand that Azerbaijan will
never compromise when it comes to its territorial integrity”, announced
Ilham Aliev.
He also announced that the approach of Azerbaijan is that the Armenians
and Azeris of Nagorno Karabakh who will return there will be given
the highest possible sovereignty in the world.

THE FALLEN BRIDGE OVER THE BOSPORUS
By Spengler
Asia Times, Hong Kong
Oct 30 2006
Not since Boris Pasternak refused the Nobel Prize for literature
in 1958 has a Nobel laureate regarded the award with such mixed
feelings as Turkish novelist Orhan Pamuk. He set out to be a political
dilettante, as befits a postmodern European novelist, and to his
profound consternation has had to become a man of principle. That in
no way diminishes the poignancy of Pamuk’s position, but it makes him
more interesting than the average martyr, in a postmodern sort of way.
I reviewed his most important book Snow two years ago, [1] and
have just read it again, working through a box of oval Turkish
cigarettes. Unlike Austrian pornographer Elfriede Jelinek, 2004’s
winner, or last year’s laureate, the tedious Harold Pinter, Pamuk
richly deserves his award. British playwright and critic Simon
Gray produced the definitive critique of Pinter, who wrote gnomic
verses and sent them to various literati. Pinter sent a poem to Gray
that reads in its entirety: “I saw Len Hutton in his prime/Another
time/Another time.” After some weeks he called Gray to ask his opinion;
Gray returned, “I am sorry, Harold, but I haven’t finished it yet.”
Whatever the political motivations of the Swedish Academy might have
been, Snow is an indispensable tale of civilizational tragedy. The
pity is that Pamuk’s own case would have made an even better novel;
in the best self-referential fashion, he has become the protagonist
of his own fiction in the theater of the real. Jorge Luis Borges
would have been amused.
When Pamuk told a Swiss interviewer in February 2005 that Turkey had
massacred “a million Armenians” during World War I (the actual number
was more than twice that), he joined a number of Turkish academics who
broached the great taboo of Turkish history. But he underestimated
his country’s swing toward political Islam under Prime Minister
Recep Erdogan. The following June, Turkey enacted the notorious
Article 301 making it a crime to “insult Turkishness”, and Pamuk was
charged retroactively. A storm of international protest persuaded
the Turkish government to drop the charges, but Pamuk now lives in
effective exile in New York, where Columbia University shelters him
with a visiting professorship.
During a June 2004 visit to Turkey, US President George W Bush
offered: The Turkish writer Orhan Pamuk has said that the finest view
of Istanbul is not from the shores of Europe, or from the shores of
Asia, but from a bridge that unites them, and lets you see both. His
work has been a bridge between cultures, and so is the Republic of
Turkey. The people of this land understand, as that great writer
has observed, that “what is important is not [a] clash of parties,
civilizations, cultures, East and West”. What is important, he says,
is to realize “that other people in other continents and civilizations”
are “exactly like you”.
The bridge has fallen, leaving Pamuk gasping for breath on the
Western shore. Turkey’s Western loyalties were founded upon a secular
nationalism that sought to bury Islam under modernizing reforms.
Pamuk’s theme in Snow is the horrible emptiness of secular Turkey,
with its poverty, inertia, bureaucratic sclerosis and official
brutality. Thoroughly secular in upbringing and outlook, Pamuk
nonetheless evinces profound sympathy for the Islamic loyalties of
the Turkish poor, as well as the terrible attraction that political
Islam holds for Turkey’s disappointed elite.
The poet Ka, the novel’s protagonist, has fled Turkey for Germany
after a military cracked down on left-wing intellectuals. His poetic
faculties dry up in Germany, but reawaken during a winter’s journey
to the eastern border city of Kars, where he has traveled to report
on a wave of suicides by young women. Depression lies as heavy upon
eastern Anatolia as the snow that isolates Kars from the rest of the
world. Dead-eyed, the jobless spend their days watching television
in tea-houses. Young women expelled from schools for refusing to
remove the Islamic headscarf in keeping with Turkey’s secular law
hang themselves in protest.
Kars, as I noted in my 2004 review, was an Armenian city when World
War I broke out. The Armenians were butchered, and their churches,
some a thousand years old, remain as a ghastly admonition to the
impoverished and largely idle Turkish inhabitants. “The Turks of Kars,”
I wrote, “live on foreign ground, buffeted by the Westernizing ideas
of Kemal Ataturk and the Arabic ideas of the Koran. Ultimately they
have nothing of their own, and dwell on the idea of suicide.”
There is a museum of “Armenian massacres”, Pamuk’s narrator notes
dryly, which surprises the odd foreign visitor, for it represents
the genocide as Armenian murder of Turks.
Ka has an ulterior motive, to seek out the beautiful Ipek, a schoolmate
who recently divorced and might be available. Her former husband
Muhtar has become the leader of the local Islamist party, and tells
Ka about his conversion from secular leftist to impassioned Muslim:
Years went by, the military took over and we all went to prison, and
like everyone else, when I was released I drifted like an idiot. The
people I had once tried to imitate had changed, those whose approval I
once wanted had disappeared, and none of my dreams had come true, not
in poetry or in life … It was as if I’d been erased from history,
banished from civilization. The civilized world seemed far away
[from Kars] and I couldn’t imitate it.
Muhtar resolves to die by freezing, but is interrupted by followers
of a Sufi sheikh whom he meets and resolves to follow. His poetic
faculty returns and he reverts to politics, but as an Islamist rather
than a Marxist.
Contact with people of Islamic faith rekindles Ka’s long-dead poetic
voice as well. He becomes embroiled in the vicious intrigues between
the Islamists and the local security forces, who use him to flush out
a notorious Islamist terrorist nicknamed “Blue”. Blue, it emerges,
has dallied with Ka’s beloved Ipek. Wearing a tape recorder with
the police on his heels, Ka meets with Blue. He tells the terrorist,
“Before I got here, I hadn’t written a poem in years … But since
coming to Kars, all the roads on which poetry travels have reopened.
I attribute this to the love of God I’ve felt here.”
Blue responds, “In a place like this, if you worship God as a European,
you’re bound to be a laughing-stock. Then you cannot even believe you
believe. You don’t belong to this country; you’re not even a Turk
anymore. First try to be like everyone else. Then try to believe
in God.”
The security forces kill Blue in a night of grotesque violence. Ipek
abandons Ka in disgust. Ka returns to Germany distraught, where he
is gunned down in the street some time later. The cycle of poems Ka
has composed in Kars is lost forever. At first this struck me as an
irritating conceit: if poetry is the subject of the novel, one might
expect the author to provide some actual poems. But there is a deeper
and more disturbing point. There is no “there” in modern Turkey,
Pamuk seems to say. The Islamism of Muhtar and even Blue is not the
Islam of the past, but a vehicle for ex-Marxists who have lost their
intellectual compass. The Islam of the brutalized and brutal Anatolian
peasants is a protest against a world in which they have no place.
Blue, the doomed terrorist, demands that Ka “be like everyone else”
rather than masquerade as a Turk while his soul resides in Europe.
But Blue is as globalized as Ka, or indeed the author. He eschews the
cigarettes of his own country in favor of Marlboro Reds, an expression
of globalized American taste as insipid as California Zinfandels
or Ralph Lauren suits. Blue not only smokes them, but praises them
in panegyrics: “Ah, the best thing America ever gave the world were
these red Marlboros. I could smoke these Marlboros for the rest of
my life.” That is as close to poetry as we get in Orhan Pamuk’s Snow.
Note 1. In defense of Turkish cigarettes, August 24, 2004. Snow by
Orhan Pamuk. Faber and Faber Ltd, August 2004. ISBN: 057121830X. Price:
17 pounds (US$31.85), 448 pages.

U.S. DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE HOLDS TRAINING ON EUROPEAN COURT OF HUMAN RIGHTS
Panorama.am
12:55 30/10/06
The United States Department of Justice (DOJ) has organized a seminar
to educate trainers for Armenian prosecutors, judges, and advocates
on the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) and on advanced case
studies. The seminar will be led by the Honorable Richard G. Stearns,
United States District Court Judge; Gediminas Sagatys, Senior Advisor
to the Parliament of the Republic of Lithuania and Professor of Law
at Mykolas Romeris University in Vilnius; and Henrikas Mickevicius,
Executive Director of the Human Rights Monitoring Institute in
Vilnius. The training seminar will last a day and a half and will
be held on October 30-31, as well as November 1-2, 2006. The seminar
will include advanced discussions and case studies of Articles 5 and 6
from the European Convention on Human Rights, as well as a comparative
analysis of the recent amendments to the Armenian criminal procedure
code with the ECHR. There will also be discussions on how the ECHR
has changed the constitutional, legislative, and case law landscape
in Lithuania, and lessons learned from this transition.
Armenia has been a signatory to the European Court of Human Rights
since 2002. This training is especially relevant since the number
of Armenian petitioners who have made applications to the Court has
increased from 89 in 2003 to 340 in 2005. This will be Judge Stearns”s
second trip to Armenia at the invitation of the U.S. Government. In
June, 2006, Judge Stearns conducted training sessions for Armenian
judges, the Prosecutor General”s Office, and the Armenian Police
Department on trafficking in persons issues, and specifically on
victims” rights and the protection of witnesses.

“TRACING BACK OUR CULTURE” PERFORMANCE GIVES CENTER STAGE TO CHILDREN WITH SPECIAL NEEDS
Reuters, UK
Oct 30 2006
Source: World Vision Middle East/Eastern Europe office (MEERO)
Over 30 children with special needs, living in especially difficult
circumstances presented a stunning two hour historical review of
Armenia through a theatre performance under the title ‘Tracing back
our Culture’ in Gyumri, Armenia recently.
‘I know the story of many of these children, and it is unbelievable
that they play in such a delightful performance’, said Hasmik
Dzvakeryan, a teacher of the Gyumri Children House- one of the numerous
guests of the event.
‘Such programs are of multifaceted importance, we not only try
to integrate these children into our society, but also prepare
the society, acquaint it with the existence of these children and
their capabilities to assist integration,’ says Zara Aslanyan, Child
Protection Programme (CPP) Senior Social Worker, World Vision Armenia.
The children explored the complete history, culture, traditions and
the legends of Armenia including Shirak marz, west-north region of
Armenia, and the 10th century Marmashen monastery which provided the
setting and inspiration for the event.
‘Unless you learn the history and the culture of your own nation,
you’ll be unable to recognize the whole world’, was the slogan of
the organizers.
‘We want to teach these children the history and the culture of their
homeland and thus help them become fully integrated members of this
society’, said Karine Kurghinyan CPP Coordinator of the Gyumri Area
Development Programme (ADP).
‘I am surprised how well these children know the history of their
church. Now I am sure that future generation is able to build a truly
Christian community’ said, Archbishop Michael Ajapahyan, the head of
Shirak diocese of Armenian Apostolic Church, the honorable guest of
the event.
The Armenian Apostolic Church can be traced back to the time of the
Apostles and is one of the oldest denominations in Christianity.
‘It’s so amazing when the children themselves were asking to rehearse
the performance whenever they have spare time. I was so happy to see
‘my’ children reciting and playing their parts as well as real actors
would do’, said children’s tutor Ervandanush Asatryan – ‘Aunt Anik’,
as the children lovingly call her.
Currently, 72 children and their parents attend Gyumri ADP Community
Centre. They are assisted by psychologists, speech therapists, social
workers and a special educator. They also take part in a number of
art classes organized by the World Vision Armenia CPP department.
The ‘Tracing back our culture’ program will continue in the following
months with further performances being dedicated to other monasteries
and historical monuments of Armenia.