GEORGIA: DESPAIR OF LANDSLIDE VILLAGERS
By Tedo Jorbenadze in Khulo and Olesya Vartanian in Ninotsminda
Institute for War and Peace Reporting, UK
May 4 2006
The government is accused of failing the victims of environmental
disaster.
Thousands of Georgians are being displaced by landslides from the
Black Sea region of Ajaria, only to be resettled in an area where
the locals greet them with open hostility.
Landslides are destroying houses, pastures and farming land in three
mountainous districts – Khulo, Keda and Shuakhevi – in Ajaria, the
autonomous republic in south-western Georgia.
Close to 5,000 families, around 30,000 people in all, are expecting
resettlement any day now under a new government programme. However,
they are worried by the sight of neighbours who were resettled and
have now returned home.
Residents from the village of Jalabashvilebi, which has all but
disappeared under huge landslides, say they were offered a move to
Tsalka in southern Georgia, but when they arrived with their children
and belongings, there were no houses or land plots for them there.
“We were driven around like cattle,” said one villager who did not
want to give his name. “How long could our new neighbours have fed
us? We finally understood that no one would take care of us. We
borrowed some money and came back.”
Landslides first began causing problems in Ajaria, a mountainous but
densely populated region of Georgia, in the Eighties. Since then,
97 villages have been affected, with 1,500 houses collapsing and
roads and fields becoming unusable. Around 100 people have died and
more than 5,000 families have been relocated.
“Active logging over a number of years has brought the region to
the current environmental crisis,” explained Tariel Tuskia, head of
Ajaria’s geology department, saying the land was simply overpopulated.
“Not a single inch of land remains uncultivated,” he said. “People cut
wood in order to earn a living and it is impossible to blame them for
this. Preventive measures against landslides are so costly that it is
better to spend the money on buying houses for people somewhere else.
“In short, the only way out is to lighten the demographic load on
the region.”
According to Georgia’s ministry for housing and refugees, last year
252 houses were bought for people resettled from Ajaria to other parts
of the country. However the houses still belong to the government,
not the migrants.
In March, Georgian president Mikheil Saakashvili participated in
a ceremony to mark the resettlement of ten families from the Khulo
district to the Akhmeta region of north-east Georgia. He made his
official helicopter available to transport the group, and was filmed
holding two-year-old Anri Ghorjomelidze in his arms.
Two months on, the settlers – Anri’s father among them – are still
asking for help to get their belongings transported to their new
places of residence.
“The former owner of this house left nothing for us,” said Jambul
Ghorjomelidze. “Even little Anri sleeps on the floor. We have not
been given land, either, and you cannot even rent it, as all of it
has already been distributed. We now have to go round our neighbours
and persuade them to allow us to cultivate their land and share
the harvest.”
Most of the migrants have been settled in areas with predominantly
Armenian or Greek populations, causing resentment in the host
communities.
“Everyone understands this policy here,” said Sevak Yeranosyan, an
Armenian resident of Ninotsminda district in the southern region of
Javakheti. “They [the Ajarians] should without fail be resettled to
Armenian villages so that there will be a larger Georgian population
here. Their programme is to populate our region with Georgians and
Ajarians.”
Yeranosyan voiced locals suspicions about the incomers, “These people
come here unexpectedly. We residents know nothing about them. We
don’t know who they are or where they come from. Some people here even
believe that most of the new settlers are convicted criminals who get
sent here after doing a deal where they are told, ‘You go and settle
among Armenians and we will stop legal proceedings against you.'”
In March, fights broke out between local Armenians and incomers in
Tsalka. One person died and the local government offices were badly
damaged.
As a result of all these problems, many families have gone back
to Ajaria and are now living either with relatives or in their
half-ruined homes.
Kakha Guchmanidze, head of the Ajarian department for refugees and
housing, admitted to IWPR that the resettlement programme had gone
badly.
“Yes, there was no preliminary work for the programme. No land plots
were prepared for the settlers. No one calculated what each family
would need to set up its own farms and adapt normally to the new
situation,” he said.
Zaza Imedashvili, a high-ranking official in the ministry of housing
and refugees in Tbilisi, admitted that the resettlement programme is
still at a very early stage, and that only now is a database being
created to show who has been resettled to date.
This year, the ministry’s budget for purchasing houses for families
that have suffered from environmental disasters is only 1,227,000 lari
(around 500,000 US dollars). Imedashvili said this was meant to cover
victims of various disasters across Georgia.
“We still think Ajarians can be resettled in high mountain districts,
such as Tsalka, Tetritsqaro, and Akhalkalaki,” said Imedashvili.
“Houses are a lot cheaper there and it is possible to keep within
our price limits – 5,000 lari.”
Vepkhia Beridze and his young wife, who left their destroyed house
for the village of Koreti in Tsalka district, are not impressed by
these arguments. “The floor in one of the rooms of this new house of
ours collapsed on the very first day, and the wall cracked later,”
he said. “We will soon have a child but neither doors not windows
are good for anything in our house.”
Settlers also complain that they are given a one-off sum of just 50
lari (27.50 dollars) per family to help with the relocation.
However, allocation of land is the biggest problem in a region where
the locals already complain of not having enough land for themselves.
Ninotsminda journalist Levon Vartanian predicted, “There will be big
problems, as all the land plots have already been occupied and their
owners will not give up anything to anyone so easily.”
“This year, we will purchase houses with land plots for settlers,”
said Imedashvili. “We will probably buy around one hectare. It is not
much but the issue is still being considered. Ultimately, there will
probably be two or three hectares for each family.”
“If this problem is not solved, I agree that it is not worthwhile
for these people to move.”
Aslan Chachanidze, a lawyer in the Ajarian capital Batumi, said the
law was too vague and that the people affected did not have adequate
welfare provision.
Experts are worrying that Ajaria’s environmental problems are getting
worse. Apart from the mountain landslides, the Black Sea coastline has
advanced by 300 metres in the village of Adlia, destroying a dozen
houses. Nearby Batumi airport is under threat too, and in stormy
weather waves reach its runway, as well as a railway line near the
town of Kobuleti.
Geologist Tariel Tuskia also predicts more problems in the mountains.
“Disasters will become more frequent… when the snow starts melting,”
he said. “In fact, the whole of mountainous Ajaria is already in the
danger zone.”
Tedo Jorbenadze is a reporter for Batumelebi newspaper, in Ajaria.
Olesya Vartanian is a reporter for the IWPR-supported Southern Gates
newspaper in Samtskhe-Javakheti.

AZERBAIJAN: PUBLIC TELEVISION HIT BY BIAS CLAIMS
By Sevinj Telmanqizi in Baku
Institute for War and Peace Reporting, UK
May 4 2006
Critics say that Azerbaijan’s new public television channel is serving
the government, not the public.
Azerbaijan’s first public television station, launched with high hopes,
is drawing criticism for accusations of pro-government bias.
Former parliamentarian Ismail Omarov, appointed in April last year,
to be the general director of ITV (as the channel is known in
Azeri) has been fiercely criticised not only by the opposition and
non-governmental organisations, but also by international experts.
Last year, Azerbaijan was the last of the three countries of the
South Caucasus to create a public television station in line with
recommendations by the Council of Europe on media freedom. The channel
was launched last August and broadcasts for 12 hours a day.
The station still relies on government funding but in theory has a
degree of autonomy and run by an independent management.
However, media experts say ITV is virtually distinguishable from its
state rivals. “It’s a great pity that we have not seen any difference
between this television channel and the others,” said Zeinal Mamedli,
a lecturer in the journalism faculty of Baku State University.
“Society has not seen a reflection of itself in this television
channel.”
Although Azerbaijan is both bigger and wealthier than its neighbours
Armenia and Georgia, it lags behind the other two for choice of
television viewing. According to figures published by the international
media development organisation Internews, in 2005 Georgia had 68
regional television stations, Armenia 28 and Azerbaijan just eleven.
Baku is now served by one state channel, the public television channel
and four private ones. Government figures argue that ITV has become
an important addition to the media market.
“The staff of ITV have proved that it’s possible in a short space
of time to create a new professional television station loved by
viewers,” said Ali Hasanov, head of the socio-political department
of the presidential administration. “ITV not only meets the cultural
needs of society but also has high-quality news programmes.”
However, media experts say that ITV is operating within the same
restricted environment as the rest of the Azerbaijani media in which
stations that offend the presidential administration risk being shut
down, as has happened with two former channels, BMTI and Sara.
Opposition politicians have been strongly critical of ITV. At rallies
of the opposition alliance Azadlyq last year, there were calls for
the dismissal of Omarov, the channel’s director.
Former prime minister Panah Huseyn, elected to parliament with Azadlyq,
said, “We all expected that public television would first of all
reflect the existing pluralism of opinion in society and periodically
give air time to different political organisations. But the most
they do is invite an opposition politician on to their discussion
programmes.
“Even some private pro-government channels are braver than ITV.
Unfortunately, public television has become another kind of state
television.”
Research last year by Azerbaijan’s National Council on Broadcasting
determined that only one per cent of airtime was taken up with
advertising and that almost a quarter was filled with films.
A monitoring study carried out by the Council of Europe identified
a pro-government bias in the channel’s news coverage. Another study
by the Najaf Najafov Foundation from last September to this January,
covering the period of Azerbaijan’s divisive parliamentary elections
in which the opposition alleged mass fraud by the government, said
most of ITV’s positive coverage was for government parties.
Sardar Jalaloglu, secretary general of the opposition Democratic
Party of Azerbaijan, blamed the channel for unfairly influencing
voters. “They have no idea what balance is,” he said. “They gave
one or two minutes to our speeches and a whole hour to slander and
attacks by YAP (New Azerbaijan Party) functionaries on us.”
In its recently published annual report on media freedom, the
international organisation Freedom House placed Azerbaijan 161st in
the world, behind Georgia, Armenia and Russia. On public television
it concluded, “The ITV’s coverage of the election campaign was
indistinguishable from other pro-government channels; an OSCE
monitoring report suggested that the ITV devoted 68 per cent of
prime-time news coverage to [president Ilham] Aliev, the government,
and the ruling party, while Azadliq received 23 per cent of the
airtime, of which 53 per cent was assessed as negative and one per
cent positive.”
Ismail Omarov rejected these criticisms. “Public television was
created not to create the impression of political balance and please
the critics who are never satisfied,” he told IWPR. “Our channel
is very remote from politics. Currently ITV works as an democratic
institution in Azerbaijan and this democratic institution was created
personally by me.”
Omarov said that his channel had a code of ethics and “we do not give
air time to appearances by primitive and mediocre singers because we
do not take bribes”.
Omarov called the monitoring research into ITV biased and comparisons
with public television stations in other countries misplaced, saying
Georgian public television was 12-13 million dollars in debt.
Public television in Armenia and Georgia has also disappointed
expectations. The Armenian channel is closely linked to the
government. Boris Navarsadian, head of the Yerevan Press Club, told
IWPR, “The station has not emerged as a public television station.
Only a small part of its public functions are being fulfilled. On
rough estimates public television carries out 10-12 per cent of the
functions entrusted to it.”
Georgia’s public television station was founded at the beginning
of 2005 and has also been criticised for being too close to the
government. Its supposedly independent board is mainly composed of
non-governmental figures, who played an active part in the “Rose
Revolution” that brought current president Mikheil Saakashvili to
power in 2003.
The channel has low ratings and a high staff turnover. This year it
has tried to change its profile, launching a new political talkshow
called Argument in March. Experts say many of the channel’s problems
stem from the general under-funding of media in Georgia and the poor
salaries for television employees.
Despite the criticism in Azerbaijan, Omarov said he had plans to
launch a second public television channel, “By law we have the right
to open two television and three radio channels and we will gradually
aim to do that.”
Miklos Haraszti, the OSCE’s Representative on Freedom of the Media,
visited Azerbaijan last July and was critical of Omarov’s role as
head of ITV.
“Omarov is a journalist who when he worked in state television was
famous for his strong attacks on the opposition, so the OSCE has
doubts about his appointment,” said Haraszti.
Omarov still has the support of Azerbaijan’s Broadcasting Board,
who appointed him. Its chairman Jahangir Mamedli said that the board
“highly esteemed” Omarov’s work.
Rafik Husseinov, a former employee of state television, was
more pessimistic. “I didn’t expect anything from this channel
and unfortunately my forecasts were borne out,” he said. “Public
television died before it was born as serious mistakes were made when
it was founded.”
Sevinj Telmanqizi works for Yeni Musavat newspaper in Baku.

PRESIDENT HU EXTENDS CONDOLENCES TO ARMENIA
Xinhua, China
2006-05-03 17:34:32
May 4 2006
BEIJING, May 3 (Xinhua) — Chinese President Hu Jintao on Wednesday
sent a message to his Armenian counterpart Robert Kocharyan, expressing
sincere condolences to the relatives of those killed in a jet crash
early Wednesday morning.
An Airbus A-320 of the Armenian airline belonging to the air company
Armavia went down into the Black Sea near the southern Russian resort
town of Sochi at about 2:15 a.m. Moscow time (2215 GMT Tuesday),
killing all 113 people on board, including six children and eight crew.
Bad weather conditions were responsible for the air tragedy.

91ST COMMEMORATION OF ARMENIAN GENOCIDE HELD AT HEBREW UNIVERSITY
By Amihai Zippor
Judeoscope.ca, Canada
May 4 2006
Jews, Armenians Both Feel Need For Israel To Be At Forefront Of
Recognition
(IHC News, 04 May 2006) The Hebrew University in Israel held its
commemoration of the Armenian genocide at its Givat Ram Campus
in Jerusalem on Wednesday 26 April 2006 with some 200 people in
attendance.
The annual event, organized by Armenian Studies Professor Michael
Stone, came two days after 24 April, the official day Armenians mark
the deportation and murder of 1.5 million of their people between
1915 and 1917 by the Ottoman Turks.
As in previous years, the commemoration of the genocide coincided
with the State of Israel’s Holocaust Remembrance Day, which pays
tribute to the 6 million Jews murdered by the Nazis in World War II.
The striking similarity in the history of both peoples is often
spoken about in Jewish and Armenian circles as both have experienced
tragic periods and ironically, when Hitler was asked how he planned
to get away with the systematic extermination of the Jews he answered,
“who remembers the Armenians?”
However, despite overwhelming documented evidence, the genocide,
to the dismay of many Armenians, is not recognized by much of the
international community, most notably the State of Israel.
“I feel pride that the Jewish community is interested and sympathizes
with the Armenian people and it makes me happy to be a citizen of
Israel whose people really do care about the genocide,” said Jerusalem
resident Serop Sahagian whose grandparents were survivors.
“But, I am very disappointed with the government’s policy. Israel
should have been the first nation to recognize the Armenian genocide
and now they are one of the last and that is very bad,” Sahagian said.
During the course of the evening, several of the Jewish and Armenian
speakers touched on this sensitive matter.
At one point, His Excellency Mr. Tsolag Momjian, Honorary Consul of
the Republic of Armenia read a letter he received the previous week
from Prime Minister Stephen Harper of Canada that was sent to the
Armenian community.
In it Harper stated Canada’s support for Armenians and their right to
have the genocide recognized by all nations. The declaration prompted
Mr. Momjian to say, “I read this tonight because I have a question
for the Prime Minister of Israel,” referring to the Jewish State’s
official silence on the issue.
Meanwhile, Keynote speaker Yossi Sarid, a former Education Minister in
the Israeli government who fought to have the genocide placed in the
Israeli curriculum, said there were two reasons for Israel’s silence.
The first, he explained was relations with Turkey.
“Who doesn’t think we should have relations with Turkey? They are
important? But, when you are talking about the murder of a nation,
all self-interests must be overlooked,” Sarid said.
“When we talk about the democratic State of Israel, Israel must be
the state, if necessary the only state, that says to all the people
of the world ‘we won’t make considerations because we know, we were
born out of genocide,” he added.
Sarid presented the second reason as a worry in the Jewish community
that recognizing any other genocide will take away from the enormity
of the Holocaust and said, “there is no greater educational mistake
than this.”
Also in attendance was the Armenian Patriarch of Jerusalem, His
Beatitude Archbishop Torkom Manoogian who cited the Jewish US
Ambassador to Ottoman Turkey, Henry Morgenthau, and his first hand
account of the genocide as it was happening.
“When the Turkish authorities gave the orders for deportations of
the Armenian people, they were merely giving the death warrant to a
whole race,” the Archbishop read, “they understood this and in their
conversations with me they made no attempt to hide the fact.”
The concluding remarks were given by distinguished Fulbright Scholar,
Professor Abraham Terian who warmly thanked Jewish people for their
efforts to help stop the denial of the Armenian people’s tragedy.
“We Armenians whether here in Jerusalem, in the US or wherever we
are in the world are so truly grateful to our Jewish brothers and
sisters who so conscientiously stand by us as we decry genocide and
perpetrators of inhumanity,” Terian said.
Born in Jaffe near Tel Aviv but currently the Academic Dean of a small
Armenian Seminary in New Rochelle, New York, the professor returned
to the topic of the commonality that exists between Jews and Armenians.
“We have so much in common that we speak the same language, our Jewish
brothers and sisters have theirs and we Armenians have ours but beneath
it all there is a subtext that is existentially the same,” said Terian.
“Who should know genocide or holocaust any better than people that
have experienced it and we of all people should be foremost in decrying
what is generally called genocide, something that needs no explanation
or definition anymore,” he said.
He explained that Armenians understand why at the official level,
Israeli leaders are slow to acknowledge the genocide but believe,
just as many Israeli scholars believe, that Israel it strong enough
to tell Turkey:
“In all matters of political expediency, whatever the mutual interests
are politically, all is fine. But, when it comes to denial of the
Armenian genocide, somehow it goes against the grain of Jewish
conscience after what happened to the Jewish people in their recent
past.”
Professor Terian added that for Armenians, just as for Jews, the
psychology of denial in 2006 is sometimes what hurts most. Still,
Jews and Armenians can form a concerted voice because they “understand
each other as to how it feels when they encounter those who deny the
veracity of the Armenian genocide or the Jewish Holocaust.”
Today, Turkey is a strategic ally for Israel and the United States
and while every US president has voiced support for recognizing the
genocide, none have taken that important step.
While Turkey continues to blatantly deny the atrocity ever took place,
the US and Israel are not willing to step forward and condemn the
deniers as they do when Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad calls
the Holocaust “a myth.”
However, there is renewed optimism that Turkey may soon come clean
with its past.
Turkish intellectuals are beginning to openly write about the genocide
and a milestone was achieved in March when for the first time, Henry
Morgenthau’s personal chronicle of his service as the US ambassador
and witness to the massacres was published in Turkey.
That book was first published in November 1918.
Finally, all the speakers on the evening, including Professor Terian,
reiterated that the magnitude of the Holocaust far surpasses any
genocide in the 20th century till today and that there was no intention
of drawing parallels as it was unique in human history.
However, Armenians say they expect the Israeli government not to wait
for the right time to officially acknowledge the genocide just for
acknowledgment’s sake.
In the words of Professor Terian, “if there is any country that should
be leading the way, Israel should be at the forefront of telling the
Turks how it is.”

CT JEWS SAY ‘NEVER AGAIN’ AS THEY ATTEND D.C. RALLY FOR DARFUR
By Stacey Dresner
Connecticut Jewish Ledger, CT
May 4 2006
WASHINGTON, D.C. – Just days after Yom HaShoah, the annual
commemoration of the six million Jews murdered during the Holocaust,
hundreds of Connecticut Jews made their way to Washington, D.C. to
protest another genocide – the one occurring now in Darfur, Sudan.
These participants were among tens of thousands who made their way to
the nation’s capital last Sunday to participate in the “Save Darfur:
Rally to Stop Genocide” on the National Mall near the United States
Capitol.
A large percentage of the rally participants were from the Jewish
community.
Toting signs saying, “Never again, again” and “Not on our watch,”
Jews representing Hillel groups and days schools, JCCs, synagogues
and Hadassah chapters, all came from around the country to attend
the rally, organized by the Save Darfur Coalition.
Even Sudanese participants noticed a disproportionate Jewish presence
at the rally and in relief efforts in general. “The people in Darfur
know very well and welcome the support of the American Jewish
community,” said Iessa Dahia, a Darfuri now living in Portland,
Maine. “They know the Jewish community has been through that in the
Holocaust. The Jewish community has said we cannot allow this to
happen again. That’s why they are here more than any other community.”
The rally’s speakers included Nobel Peace Prize winner Elie Wiesel,
Ruth Messinger, president of the American Jewish World Services,
Rabbi David Saperstein, director of the Religious Action Center of
Reform Judaism, Sen. Barak Obama, D-Ill., the Rev. Al Sharpton, and
actor George Clooney. Some of the most poignant speakers were Sudanese
representatives like Simon Deng, who recently walked from New York
City to Washington to call attention to the situation in his homeland.
Many of those attending the rally from Connecticut were members of
the state’s Jewish community, which has spoken out strongly against
the genocide occurring in the Darfur region of Sudan. In the past
three years, more than 400,000 people have been killed and more
than 2.5 million have been displaced due to actions by the Sudan
government-backed Arab militias against Black Africans in the Darfur
region.
Famine and disease are now endemic in the region, where refugees
subsist in makeshift displaced persons camps. Officials in Chad
nervously monitor the conflict, which they worry will spill over to
their country.
“I think it is critical that we all went to the rally because we
had to draw attention to an incredibly serious genocide that is
taking place in Darfur,” said Dr. Milton Wallach, chair of the Jewish
Community Relations Council of the Jewish Federation of Greater New
Haven. “It is incumbent upon us as Jews, remembering our own history,
to not forget what we went through and that the slogan, ‘Never Again’
has to have real meaning…By going down we were making a statement
that never again should this happen, and not only should it end in
Darfur, but it should never start in other places.”
Speaking out
Buses headed for the D.C. rally took off as early as 4 a.m. that
morning from synagogues from around Connecticut, including Emanuel
Synagogue in West Hartford, Congregation Mishkan Israel in Hamden,
and Temple Israel in Westport.
Rabbi Herbert Brockman of Mishkan Israel took 60 people on his bus –
congregation members, six members of the nearby First Presbyterian
Church, and a dozen members of Mishkan Israel’s confirmation class.
Before the rally the group went to tour the U.S. Holocaust Memorial
Museum.
“We connected the two,” Brockman said. “Having been through the
experience of genocide – in fact the word having been created because
of that experience…it was very important as Jews that we speak out
against the first genocide of the 21st century.”
Thirty-eight people went on Emanuel Synagogue bus – both members of
the congregation and some students from the University of Hartford.
“Our local effort was truly grass-roots. Our members came forward
and said, ‘We want to run a bus.’ Louise Rosenberg and Jamie Zeff,
members of B’Yadeynu, our social action committee, organized the bus
and got the word out,” said Rabbi David Small of the Emanuel Synagogue.
In all, four buses left for the rally from the Hartford area, two
busloads left from the JCC of New Haven for the rally, and around
40 members of the greater Hartford Jewish community, as well as
other members of the Connecticut Coalition to Save Darfur, a group
of secular and non-secular organizations from across the state, flew
out from Bradley International Airport to participate in the rally.
Robert Yass, chair of the JCRC of the Jewish Federation of Greater
Hartford, flew down to Washington to be a part of the rally.
“I was impressed by the number of people willing to come down and
express their concern about people different from themselves,” Yass
said. “I think it always helps when we can express concern about
an issue beyond what might be considered ‘our issues’ as a Jewish
advocacy organization. And I think it is important to engage with the
wider community and supportive of issues when we have a common agenda.”
The Hebrew High School of New England sent its own bus to the rally,
filled with 45 students, and a bus sponsored by Young Judea New England
picked up a number of local teens on their way to the nation’s capital.
“I feel a big sense of responsibility, not only as a Jew, but as
a person. I feel like everybody has a responsibility to help out
if there is a mass genocide going on,” said Carly Abrabanel, 16,
of Springfield, Mass., a junior at Hebrew High School of New England.
This was the first rally Abrabanel had ever attended, and she came
back inspired to do more. She is now selling wrist bands to benefit
Save Darfur.
“I thought the rally was really amazing,” she said. “It was incredible
that there were so many people working toward the same cause.”
‘A feeling of unity’
Much of the work done to organize rally-goers in Connecticut was
done by members of the Connecticut Coalition to Save Darfur, which
counts as its members the Hartford, New Haven, Bridgeport and Western
Connecticut Jewish Community Relations Councils, the Connecticut
Regional Office of the Anti-Defamation League, the Jewish Federation
Association of Connecticut the Archdiocese of Hartford’s Office of
Black Catholic Ministries, the Waterbury NAACP, and the Episcopal
Archdiocese. Representatives from each of these groups attended
the rally.
“I thought the rally was extremely well-planned,” said Robert Fishman,
executive director of JFACT. “It was the combination of music, the
atmosphere, certainly the wide-range of speakers, but also the people
in the crowd. There was a delegation of Sudanese students with their
own signs. There were lots of different clergy from Sikhs to Armenian
Catholics to Protestants, Evangelicals, and rabbis.
“I am just glad to have gone,” Fishman said. “I think it is something
we will remember. I am just hopeful we made a difference.”
Lauri Lowell, director of the Jewish Community Relations Council of
the Jewish Federation of Greater New Haven, was struck by the number
of clergy at the rally.
“It was a very spiritual event,” she said. “There was lots of prayer
at the beginning. I think there was a sense that we were asking G-d’s
blessing for this and that what is going on in Darfur is not only
an outrage to the greater community but to G-d as well. There was a
beautiful feeling of unity.”
Rabbi Eric Polokoff of Congregation B’nai Israel in Southbury, who
has been active in the Darfur issue, attended the rally with his wife,
his 13-year-old daughter Ariel, and other members of his congregation.
“I think that there was a sense at the rally that you were around
other people who had come out to Washington and really cared about
this. You could feel this empathy and compassion. The absolute rallying
cry was ‘Never again,’ and how it somehow now has to actually mean
“Never again.'”
–Rachel Silverman and David Silverman of the JTA contributed to
this report.

SOCHI’S ARMENIAN DIASPORA WEEPS
By Carl Schreck
Staff Writer
The Moscow Times, Russia
May 4 2006
Pavel Yeremyan, left, Vram Cholokyan, center, and an unidentified
man lamenting the crash Thursday near Sochi.
SOCHI — Pavel Yeremyan had been drinking and smoking cheap Yava
cigarettes for hours.
“This is a terrible tragedy for us,” Yeremyan, a subsistence farmer,
said Thursday of the Armenian airliner that went down a day earlier
off the coast of this Black Sea town.
The crash killed all 113 people on board and has left the local
Armenian community stunned. With 125,000 ethnic Armenians in Sochi,
out of a total of 400,000 people, the community is one of the largest
in the country.
In Yeremyan’s village of Baranovka, like many of the 20 mostly
Armenian villages in the hills above Sochi, you don’t have to look
far to find people who knew someone, or knew someone who knew someone,
on the late-night flight from Yerevan.
“The young woman who lived in that house was on the plane,” said
Yeremyan’s friend, 69-year-old Vram Cholokyan, who wheezed as he
pointed to a two-story, white concrete house. “She was about 22 and
had a young child. I saw them walking around here just before Easter.”
Both Yeremyan and Cholokyan have lived in the village their entire
lives. Their families came here in the early part of the last century
to flee the Turks. Today, they live off the fruits and vegetables
they grow on small plots of land. Whatever they don’t eat is sold at
market, Cholokyan explained in a raspy, almost inaudible voice.
Grach Makeyan, deputy head of the Sochi branch of the Union of
Armenians in Russia, said only 26 of those who died in the plane
crash were permanent Sochi Armenians. Most of the victims, he said,
were among the seasonal workers who come to Sochi from Armenia for
the vacation season, which lasts until November.
“But we’re all Armenians, even if we’re not relatives,” Makeyan said
in his office at the Kamelia Hotel. “There aren’t that many of us, so
almost everybody knows somebody who died, even if indirectly through
friends or neighbors. We are all in mourning. This will be a very,
very difficult time.”
A priest from Sochi’s Holy Cross Armenian Church, known to all
simply as Father Komitas, said all the Armenians in the community
felt personally affected by the crash.
“Around 70 of the victims were citizens of Armenia and didn’t have
relatives here,” Father Komitas, 38, said Thursday in his cramped
office decorated with his own sculptures and drawings. “But this
terrible tragedy is all of ours.”
Makeyan noted that a close friend of his had invited several of the
people on Wednesday’s flight for a birthday celebration.
“Genocide, the war in Karabakh, the earthquake, and now this,”
Makeyan said. “Every time we get our heads just above the water,
something like this happens. But we will stick together. Armenians
are the people most capable of enduring tragedy after tragedy.”
Because of their heavy smoking and poor diet, Armenian men tend to
age rapidly. Many in their thirties look twenty years older.
Lev Dashchyan, 28, a cab driver from Sochi’s Adler district, home to
about 80,000 ethnic Armenians, said war, natural disaster — and now
the plane crash — had exacerbated local Armenians’ plight.
“My father-in-law’s friend lost his wife and children in the
earthquake,” Dashchyan said, referring to the 1998 Spitak disaster.
“They never even found the bodies. Then he remarried, and his new wife
and child died in the plane crash. He has suffered a lot. He’s 55,
but looks like he’s 70.”
Dashchyan belongs to the Hamshen Armenian community. His ancestors,
Makeyan said, fled across the Black Sea from Turkey to settle in
the Krasnodar region and Abkhazia in the early 19th century. Hamshen
Armenians comprise most of Sochi’s Armenian population; while they
speak an old dialect featuring many Turkish words, they are close to
other Armenians.
Komitas looking at a photo album.
“Sometimes we have a difficult time understanding each other because of
our different dialects,” Karina Mardvitskaya, 37, a Hamshen Armenian
and a florist, said of her friend, non-Hamshen Armenian Violeta
Muratyan, who tends the bar at an outdoor cafe on Kurortny Prospekt,
Sochi’s main drag.
Mardvitskaya, a Sochi native, and Muratyan, who came to Sochi from
Stavropol three years ago to find work, said Wednesday evening that
they had been frantically calling friends to find out if anyone they
knew had been killed in the plane crash.
“I was on the phone all day,” Muratyan said. “Everyone was calling
trying to figure out who had heard what. Luckily, no one close to me
was on the plane.”
But Muratyan said a young Armenian woman who frequented the cafe had
apparently died in the crash.
“Some customers came in today and told me she was on the plane,”
Muratyan said. “I remember her face clearly. She must have been
around 21.”
Other Armenians spent the better part of Thursday finding out that
people who had been a part of their lives for years were now gone.
Flipping through a photo album, Father Komitas turned to a group
picture of several of his congregants, pointing to a middle-aged
blonde woman.
“She came to church regularly,” he said of the woman, who had been
on the flight. “It’s important now that we find the bodies so they
can be put to rest, hopefully in Armenia, in their homeland.”

KEAN BACKS STEM-CELL RESEARCH ON AN ‘INTIMATE’ TRIP TO ISRAEL
by Gil Hoffman
NJJN Israel Correspondent
New Jersey Jewish News, NJ
May 4 2006
JERUSALEM – State Sen. Tom Kean Jr., who is running for the Republican
nomination for the United States Senate, expressed support for
controversial embryonic stem-cell research on a visit to Hadassah
Hospital in Jerusalem last week.
Kean, visiting Hadassah at the culmination of a weeklong trip to
Israel, told hospital officials that he supports such research and
reported about problems obtaining approval for state initiatives in
New Jersey. He also spoke to Hadassah director-general Professor
Shlomo Mor-Yosef about the hospital’s collaboration with Robert
Wood Johnson University Hospital in New Brunswick in preparing for
mega-terrorist attacks.
Mor-Yosef said the hospital’s stem-cell research had cured mice
with Parkinson’s disease and that testing on monkeys and then humans
would soon follow. He said Hadassah was an international pioneer in
stem-cell research and had even secured funding for the research from
the U.S. government.
Kean was visiting Israel for the first time on what he termed an
educational visit. He was following in the footsteps of his father,
former NJ Gov. Thomas H. Kean, who visited Israel three times. The
younger Kean viewed a plaque at the Yad Vashem Holocaust Museum
honoring his grandfather, Robert Winthrop Kean, one of the earliest
members of Congress to warn the United States about the impending
Holocaust.
The visit’s first day coincided with Holocaust Memorial Day,
during which a two-minute siren sounded nationwide to memorialize
the victims. As Kean approached the luggage carousel at Ben-Gurion
International Airport, the siren went off, and Kean joined Israelis
standing in painful reflection.
“The most moving experience on the trip for me was seeing everyone
stop and pray during the siren,” Kean told NJJN in an interview at
his Jerusalem hotel. “It was extraordinarily memorable for me to
experience Holocaust Day so intimately, to be part of such a special
moment in time and then go to Yad Vashem that afternoon.”
Kean came with a delegation of NJ Republican pro-Israel activists,
including Short Hills publisher Steven Klinghoffer; Livingston
resident and Corporation for Public Broadcasting chair Cheyl Halpern;
Lakewood attorney Sean Gertner and his wife, Marla; and Johnson &
Johnson company group chair Gerald Ostrov of East Brunswick.
Also along were Teaneck attorney Martin Fineberg; Mark Levenson,
president of the Jewish Federation of Greater Clifton-Passaic, and his
daughter, Hadassah; and Justin Richards, an assistant to the senator.
Kean, hoping to unseat Sen. Robert Menendez in November, said he came
to Israel to get a feel for its terrain and geography.
“Starting next year in the U.S. Senate, I will be very involved with
issues that relate to Israel and the Mideast in a direct fashion,”
Kean said. “I have been a strong supporter of Israel throughout my
career. I am glad I got to meet with many Israelis, from members
of parliament to ordinary citizens. Coming with people who have had
strong and varied experiences with Israel was also an important part
of the trip.”
When Menendez came to Israel last year, as a member of the House
International Relations Committee, he led the last congressional
mission that met with former Prime Minister Ariel Sharon before his
career-ending stroke.
When Kean visited the Knesset, the highest-ranking official he met was
Meir Sheetrit of the Kadima Party, who was Education and Transportation
minister at the time and was named Construction and Housing minister
on Monday. He also met former Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom of Likud
and Labor Member of Knesset Colette Avital.
Kean met with victims of Palestinian terrorist attacks and with
Jews who had been evacuated from Gaza Strip settlements. He toured a
military base outside the Gaza Strip with IDF commanders and viewed
land where Israeli settlements stood until recently and that is now
being used by Palestinians to fire rockets at the southern Israeli
city of Ashkelon.
As Kean looked out over Gaza, he saw black smoke emanating from Deir
El-Balah, south of Gaza City. He later found out it was the result
of what the Israeli army said was an Israeli aircraft attack on two
cars packed with rockets. Israel said the attack killed one Islamic
Jihad militant and critically wounded another.
“Seeing this made it very real and enabled me to understand with a
real perspective the threats Israeli citizens live with each and every
day of their lives,” Kean said. “I felt it was imperative for me to
come to Israel so that as a U.S. senator I will have that real-life
experience.”
Kean said he had always supported foreign aid allocations and he is
sure he would continue in the Senate.
In Jerusalem’s Old City, Kean toured the Western Wall tunnels, visited
Christian holy sites, and met the Armenian Christian patriarch of
Jerusalem. He also visited several communities that have partnered
with United Jewish Communities of MetroWest NJ, including the Sha’ar
Hanegev Regional Council and Kibbutz Erez outside the Gaza Strip,
the Gush Etzion bloc of West Bank settlements, and the low-income
Ramat Eliyahu neighborhood of Rishon Letzion. Klinghoffer is a former
president of UJC MetroWest, although organizers emphasized the trip
was privately sponsored and not an official mission of any federation.
In Rishon, Kean met with people involved with Project Atzmaut, UJC
MetroWest’s pioneering program to help improve the lives of Ethiopian
immigrants. Perhaps the saddest part of the trip was a meeting with
American immigrants Seth and Sherri Mandell, whose young son Koby was
murdered by terrorists near their home in the West Bank community of
Tekoa in 2001.
The Israel activists who accompanied Kean on the trip said that during
the visit with the Mandells, they watched his facial expressions and
saw that he was deeply moved. They said they were glad that he proved
himself able to relate to people on a human level and not merely as
a politician.
“He is a real mensch,” Klinghoffer said. “This guy is the real deal.
He came with the right background, and having this personal experience
reinforces the senses and the feelings that he already had. I’ve
dealt with many candidates and elected officials. Tom stands out in
the way he relates to Israel.”
Ostrov said he was glad to expose the senator to Hadassah Hospital,
where he and his wife are major donors.
“I have been impressed with him the whole trip,” Ostrov said. “He’s
gotten a knowledge base that he can use to govern. He has asked good
questions that show that he understands.”
Kean faces Bergen County financial data analyst John Ginty in the June
Republican primary. A Quinnipiac University poll last week predicted
that Kean would win the primary by a landslide but it found that he
trailed Menendez by six points.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

BODIES, FLIGHT RECORDERS SOUGHT IN BLACK SEA
By Mike Eckel / The Associated Press
Sergei Karpukhin / Reuters
The Moscow Times, Russia
May 4 2006
Relatives grieving at an identification procedure at a Sochi morgue
Thursday.
SOCHI — Searchers combed the waters off the resort city of Sochi on
Thursday, looking for bodies and a flight recorder from an Armenian
passenger jet that slammed into the Black Sea in bad weather and
ripped apart, killing all 113 people on board.
Anguished relatives and friends gathered at a central hotel and at a
city morgue, where many stared ashen-faced at grotesquely disfigured
faces and bodies appearing in coroners’ photographs.
Transportation Minister Igor Levitin said just 28 bodies had been
identified so far, out of a total of 53 recovered.
Levitin told reporters that searchers had located a large part of
the plane’s fuselage that was emitting a radio signal believed to be
from a flight recorder. But he said the piece of debris lay in some
680 meters of water and that authorities did not have the equipment
to raise the wreckage.
“We will turn to other countries that have experience in raising
objects from the depths,” he said.
The Airbus A320 plunged into the sea in the pre-dawn hours Wednesday
in heavy rain and poor visibility as it was approaching the airport
in Adler, about 20 kilometers south of Sochi. Searchers found wreckage
spread over a wide area about 6 kilometers offshore.
“We are not considering any working theory until we get a better
understanding of the events that took place, and that will require
deciphering the black boxes,” Levitin said earlier.
Prosecutors dismissed the possibility of terrorism, and other officials
pointed to the rough weather or pilot error as the likely cause.
The head of the Georgian air control agency, which covered 90 percent
of the Armavia jet’s final flight, said the crew had begun to return
to the Armenian capital, Yerevan, because of weather conditions around
Sochi but that when it was over the Georgian city of Kutaisi, Russian
air controllers announced the weather at Adler airport had improved.
“And since they had enough fuel, the pilot decided to fly back to
Adler,” agency chief Georgy Karbelashvili said.
Interfax, citing a source in the Russian commission investigating
the disaster, said there was information indicating the crew was
informed just 5 to 6 kilometers from the runway, when the plane was
at an altitude of 300 meters, that landing was “not recommended.” The
source said the plane was turning back when it hit the water.
In televised comments, President Vladimir Putin told Prosecutor General
Vladimir Ustinov to work fast to determine the cause of the crash,
but acknowledged that it would be difficult without flight recorders.
At a Sochi morgue, grim-faced relatives — mostly men — peered at
a nearly 2-meter-high wooden board in the courtyard holding coroner
photographs, some showing barely recognizable corpses and faces.
Forensic authorities emerged from the building periodically, asking
if anyone had recognized a person in the photographs.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

JEWISH COMMUNITY ASSISTS FAMILY OF PLANE CRASH VICTIM
Federation of Jewish Communitites of CIS, Russia
May 4 2006
SOCHI, Russia – Last night, an A-320 airplane routed to fly from the
Armenian capital of Yerevan to the Russian Black Sea resort of Sochi
ended up crashing in the sea just 500 meters off the coast. Upon
arriving at the accident site, the Russian search and rescue team
discovered that all of the 105 passengers and 8 crew members have died.
Rabbi Arie Edelkopf, the Chief Rabbi of Sochi and a Chabad Lubavitch
emissary, arrived to the site together with the rescue team. He
discovered that one Jewish person, who happens to be a citizen of
Armenia, was among the passengers to die on this tragic day. “With
the help of the rescue team, we will find the remains of this person
in order to bury him in accordance with Jewish national traditions,”
said Rabbi Edelkopf in reaction to this tragedy and the local Jewish
community’s response.
The Chief Rabbi of Armenia, Rabbi Gersh Burshtein, has already been
in contact with the family of the Jew whose life ended with this
airplane accident. He informed them about the carrying out of the
search for their loved-one at the accident site and promised to
provide the family every assistance possible.
Because of the catastrophe, Armenia and Russia have declared May,
5th the day of national mourning.
Both the Jewish communities of Armenia and the Jewish community
of Russia send their condolences to the families of this terrible
accident.
From: Baghdasarian

ARMENOUHIE NAZIKIAN, 96, BENEFACTRESS FOR ARMENIAN CAUSES
Pasadena Independent, CA
Arcadia Weekly, CA
May 4 2006
Aram and Armenouhie Nazikian’s memory lives on setting an example
for others to follow. God bless their souls.
In 1985, Mrs. Armenouhie Nazikian read an article in the newspaper
about the difficulties the newly formed Western Region of the Armenian
Relief Society (ARS WR) was having regarding funding for an ARS WR
headquarters. This was the first of several serendipitous moments in
the life of Armenouhie Nazikian.
She had just lost her husband Aram and wanted to do something special
in his name. The rest is history. Her call to the Regional Executive
led to a contribution of $50,000. This generous donation became the
down payment of the ARS Aram and Armenouhie Nazikian Home. The ARS WR
celebrated the opening of the Center on December 4, 1988. Four days
later, the world was shocked by the Armenian Earthquake. The Home
became the center for donations and relief efforts from the Western
United States.
The ARS-WR was saddened that this kind unassuming woman recently was
laid to rest at Rose Hills. Members from the ARS-WR attended the
modest funeral where her nephew, Robert Sarkis Lion presented the
ARS-WR with a large framed wedding picture of Aram and Armenouhie
Nazikian. Nazikian was born April 18, 1910, in Sebastia (Sivas),
one of the Armenian provinces in the Ottoman Empire, to Azniv and
Hagop Samuelian. After surviving the genocide, she married Aram
Nazikian and lived in South America, New York, San Diego and finally
settled in Montebello, California. Her last years were spent at the
Ararat Home. Armenouhie Nazikian is survived by her nephew, Robert
Sarkis Lion (Aslan) and his wife, Maria; her grandnephew, Charlie and
grandniece, Michelle Poladian; who just gave birth to Jasmine Liona
Poladian. Coincidentally, Armenouhie was born in 1910, the year ARS
was born and she was buried on what would have been her 96th birthday,
which was also the date for the burial of her husband, Aram.