RUSSIAN TEEN DETAINED FOR RACE MURDER
TVNZ, New Zealand
April 24, 2006
Police have arrested a schoolboy for the murder of a young Armenian in
what was widely seen as a racist killing, prosecutors said on Monday.
Witnesses to the Saturday murder said Vagan Abramyants, a 17-year-old,
was part of a group on its way to an Easter service when young men
with black jackets, boots and shaved heads jumped off a metro train
and attacked them.
The attackers, described by Russian media as skinheads, fled the scene,
leaving Abramyants dead with a knife wound to the chest.
“A young man who was born in 1989 has been detained, and has
already confessed,” a spokesman for the prosecutors told Russian
news agencies. Interfax said the arrested teenager was studying at
a Moscow school.
Racist assaults have become common in Russia, where young men are
increasingly prone to neo-fascist beliefs despite the country being
proud of its role defeating Nazi Germany.
African and Asian students are frequently targeted, along with
darker-skinned immigrants from Russia’s former colonies in the South
Caucasus and Central Asia.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

U.S. MUST DEMAND TURKEY ADMIT ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
Vahe Tazian
Detroit News, MI
April 24, 2006
A rmenians worldwide today will commemorate the 91st anniversary of
the Armenian genocide. This year’s remembrance of the massacre of
more than 1 million Armenians by the Young Turk government of the
Ottoman Empire carries particular significance.
With Turkey’s desire for European Union membership looming,
international pressure has never been stronger on Turkey to address
its own history. And Ankara’s political elites have never been so
steadfast in furthering the myths used to explain the crime.
There is no better opportunity than now to hold Turkey accountable
for the crimes of its culture’s past. In December 2005, the ghost of
the 1915 Armenian genocide appeared on the European Union scene when
French Foreign Minister Michel Barnier announced that Turkey would
be expected to recognize the event during EU accession negotiations.
“This is an issue that we will raise during the negotiation process,”
he said. “We will have about 10 years to do so and the Turks will
have about 10 years to ponder their answer.”
Perhaps Turkey already has its answer: Blame the victim and employ
tactics to confuse and divert attention from the truth.
Turkey has accused Armenians of rebelling during the war, helping
the Russians and killing Turks. But no credible evidence supports
this contention, and historians, academics and survivors agree what
happened to the Armenians in 1915 amounts to genocide.
Recently, Turkish President Ahmet Necdet Sezer said the accusations
of genocide are baseless and “upset and hurt the feelings of the
Turkish nation,” adding, “It is wrong for our European friends to
press Turkey on this issue.”
Efforts to silence those who speak of the atrocity indicate Turkey’s
denial campaign. The best-selling Turkish novelist Orhan Pamuk was
prosecuted last year for “insulting Turkish identity” by referring
to the Armenian genocide in a Swiss newspaper interview.
“One million Armenians and 30,000 Kurds were killed in these lands
and nobody but me dares talk about it,” Pamuk said.
The charges against Pamuk — for a crime punishable by up to three
years in prison — were dropped in February after considerable
international protest.
Any event relating to the genocide — film, conference, memorial,
publication — is fought by Turkish embassies, including, in some
instances, by mobilizing Turkish immigrant communities.
Such determined efforts by the Turkish government are partly the
reason why the Armenian genocide is barely known and has not been
formally recognized by so many countries, including the United States.
For too long, the United States has caved to politics, failing to
pressure Turkey for fear of upsetting an ally. Yet, its National
Archives are filled with thousands of pages documenting the
premeditated extermination of Armenians.
Thirty-six states, including California, New York and Michigan,
have formally recognized the genocide and more than 170 members of
Congress are co-sponsors of the Armenian Genocide Resolution.
Continuing to ignore the occurrence of this human tragedy is
acquiescing in Turkey’s denial. U.S. lawmakers and the international
community should join members of the European Union, demanding Turkey
finally recognize the murder of the Armenians as genocide.
The silence that has greeted calls for Armenian Genocide remembrance
must be replaced with a global outcry, as was echoed by Henry
Morgenthau, U.S. ambassador to Turkey during the genocide.
“My failure to stop the destruction of the Armenians made Turkey for
me a place of horror,” he said, “and I found intolerable my further
daily association with men who … were still reeking with the blood
of nearly a million human beings.”
Vahe Tazian is a lawyer who resides in Beverly Hills. Fax letters to
(313) 222-6417 and send e-mail to [email protected].
photo: The Armenian community in France and elsewhere held masses,
marches and memorials last year to mark the 90th anniversary of the
Armenian genocide in Turkey during the Ottoman Empire.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

COALITION OF STUDENTS RALLIES FOR RECOGNITION OF GENOCIDE
By Jed Levine
Daily Bruin Contributor
[email protected]
The UCLA Daily Bruin, CA
April 24, 2006
Members, allies of Armenian community take steps to gain formal
acknowledgment of event.
UCLA students, along with Armenian students from across Southern
California, came together with the Armenian community Saturday
night for “Blinded by Injustice: Rally Against Denial” to remember
those who were killed in the 1915 Armenian Genocide and campaign for
international recognition.
Today marks the day of remembrance for the genocide that began 91
years ago and lasted for eight years, killing an estimated 1.5 million
Armenians at the hands of Ottoman Turkey.
While bodies like the California Congress, the European Union and
other nations have officially acknowledged the genocide, both the
United States and Turkish governments have not.
For Haig Hovesepian, a pharmacology graduate student who was the
UCLA representative coordinator of the event, the rally called to
support involvement in the democratic process, something he believes
is crucial to gaining formal recognition of the genocide.
“It’s not just enough to be aware and feel something about the issue,
but also to do something about the issue,” said Hovesepian.
“(We) have to continually knock on the doors of their representatives
and tell them this is important to you,” he added.
Saturday’s rally in Glendale, the hub of the Armenian community in
the U.S., was coordinated by the All Armenian Student Association
Confederation, a coalition of Armenian Student Associations from 12
universities in the Southern California area.
More than 200 members and allies of the Armenian community were in
attendance, including Congressman Adam Schiff, D-Pasadena, a longtime
supporter of the Armenian effort for genocide recognition.
Schiff spoke to the crowd about his current efforts to pass
HConRes195, which would be an official recognition of the genocide
by the U.S. Congress and would urge Turkey to seek resolution with
the Armenian people.
He questioned why Congress voted to acknowledge a genocide in Darfur
and not the Armenian genocide.
“(The U.S. is) a greater country than that, and I think it’s
tremendously important that we lead by example and that we call
genocide for what it is,” said Schiff after his speech.
A series of events last week, including Saturday’s rally and
a benefit concert held last night, have led up to a march to the
Turkish Consulate this afternoon.
Nareeneh Sohbatian, a fourth-year international development studies
and political science student, is a member of Alpha Omega Alpha,
the Armenian sorority at UCLA, which collected over a dozen sandwich
boards from other campus groups and covered them with black paper
and information about the genocide, placing them along Bruin Walk.
“It’s about continuing to educate the Armenian community and educating
the community at large,” Sohbatian said of the various events being
held around the day of remembrance.
The issue of recognition of the Armenian Genocide came to a head at
UCLA in 1997, when the Turkish government offered $1 million to endow
a Turkish studies chair.
The offer came with multiple preconditions including that the chair
would need to “maintain close and cordial relations with academic
circles in Turkey,” provisions which raised red flags among the
Armenian students of UCLA.
The current stance of the Turkish government and Turkish academics
is that a genocide did not occur and that the deaths were the result
of quelling civil unrest and fallout from World War I.
Arbi Ohanian was a fourth-year at UCLA at the time, and took part
in the campaign against the donation that resulted in a vote by the
UCLA Department of History in which the money was turned down due to
possible conflicts in academic integrity.
“It’s still a contemporary issue. It’s not just something that happened
91 years ago, as evidenced by the Turkish Study Chair (incident),”
said Ohanian while attending the rally. “It’s continued denial that’s
occurring.”
In years past, students have organized vigils on their campuses to
remember the genocide, however, this year the main event was moved
to Glendale.
Coordinators also changed the event from a vigil to a rally, as it
has evolved in placing more emphasis on politics and the democratic
process than in previous years.
“In recent years the vigil looked less like a vigil and more like a
rally. This is more like a call to action,” said Christopher Minassian,
chairman of the Genocide Recognition Committee, of the evolution of
the event.
Hovesepian said the importance of events like the “Rally Against
Denial” is that they help to keep the issues of the genocide in
people’s minds and in the public eye.
“There are individuals out there who would like to see these types
of issues dropped because they’re inconvenient,” Hovesepian said.
“So when you have individuals such as ourselves become complacent,
it gives these individuals the opportunity to erase these things like
genocide from our collective conscience. It’s not just our community
but a lesson for other communities,” he added.
Many of the people in attendance Saturday night also felt that
continued awareness was important for the Armenian community.
“I don’t think there’s a difference between April 24 and any other
day,” said Maral Karagozian, a recent UCLA graduate and former member
of the ASA.
“It should always be in our minds that (the Armenian Genocide) is a
part of us.”

CONSULTATIONS WITH AZERI, ARMENIAN FMS IN MOSCOW WERE SUBSTANTIAL – US AMB AT OSCE MG
Author: E.Huseynov
TREND Information, Azerbaijan
April 24, 2006
The consultations held with the Armenian and Azerbaijani foreign
ministers in Moscow were very substantial, Russian Ambassador Yuriy
Merzlyakov, the OSCE Minsk Group told Trend. He was commenting on a
meeting held last week between the Foreign Ministers of Armenian and
Azerbaijan, Vardan Oskanian and Elmar Mammadyarov within the framework
of the CIS Council of Foreign Ministers.
“We mulled the details of further discussions (under the negotiation
process – Trend). So, the next round of talks will start shortly,”
Merzlyakov announced, hinting at the next round of talks on the level
of the Azerbaijani and Armenian foreign ministers.
According to Merzlyakov, the meeting is to be held in May, while the
term and place of talks are still to be defined. Upon the completion of
the meeting of the ministers the diplomats will mull the opportunities
for organization of a dialogue of the Presidents.
Merzlyakov noted that in the beginning of May the OSCE Minsk Group
co-chairs will set up consultations in Moscow, and after tour the
Nagorno-Karabakh conflict region.

TURKEY TO ADDRESS UNESCO WITH COMPLAINT AT FRANCE REGARDING ARMENIAN GENOCIDE MEMORIALS
Author: R. Abdullayev
TREND Information, Azerbaijan
April 24, 2006
Turkey is going to address UNSECO with a complaint at France regarding
so-called Armenian genocide memorials, Trend reports with reference
to Turkish media.
The ground for the complaint was erection of monuments in memory of
so-called Armenian genocide in Paris and Lion. Both the monuments
are erected on grounds on the list of “world’s cultural heritage”
by UNSECO.
For instance, Lion’s monument is located on historical square
Antonin-Ponchet that was claimed the part of “world’s cultural
heritage” in 1998.
The message says also Syria has addressed UNESCO accusing Paris of
demolishing historical fortress Yejjad.

ARMENIAN ARMED FORCES VIOLATE CEASE-FIRE IN GAZAKH FRONT
Azeri Press Agency, Azerbaijan
April 24, 2006
Armenian side keeps on breaking the cease-fire. Azerbaijan’s Defense
Ministry informed APA that the companies of the Armenian armed forces
from their positions in 0.8 km south of Mazam village of Azerbaijan’s
region of Gazakh fired on the opposite positions of the Azerbaijani
armed forces from 20.25 till 20.30 on 23 April.
The enemy forces from their positions in Vozkevan and Shavarshavan
villages of Noyemberyan region, Armenia, again fired on the opposite
positions of Azerbaijani forces and Gushchu Ayrim village from 22.30
till 22.45. Armenian forces from their positions located in the
north-east of Aznakar mountain, Noyemberyan, fired on the positions
of the Azerbaijani forces in Gushchu Ayrim, Gazakh, with submachine
and machine guns from 23.35 till 23.45.
The enemy was silenced by response fire. No casualties were
reported.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

MOSCOW HIGH SCHOOL STUDENT DETAINED IN ALLEGED RACE HATE KILLING
RIA Novosti, Russia
April 24, 2006
MOSCOW, April 24 (RIA Novosti) – Police officers have detained a high
school student in connection with the killing of an Armenian teenager
in the Moscow subway at the weekend, prosecutors said Monday.
“A 17-year-old student from a Moscow high school has been detained in
connection with the killing of an Armenian committed last Saturday,”
a spokesman for the Moscow Prosecutor’s Office said, adding that the
teenager had admitted his involvement in the incident.
Vagan Abramyants, a 17-year-old student at the Moscow Academy of
Management was attacked and stabbed to death on the platform of
Pushkinskaya metro station in the center of the capital at about 5
p.m. on Saturday.
Prosecutors launched a criminal case into the killing, which they
said could be racially motivated.
But a source close to investigation said the suspect, who has been
identified as a soccer fan, claimed that the victim had insulted his
girlfriend in a subway train and he stabbed the man to get even.
“We can now say with certainty that the slaying occurred after a
common argument and was not racially motivated,” the source said,
adding that a group of soccer fans was presumably heading to watch
a game played by their favorite club.
Nevertheless, it is the latest of a series of attacks across
the country that have affected foreigners and people with a dark
complexion.
In St. Petersburg, an African student was shot dead with a rifle marked
with a swastika on April 7, while two Mongolian students were beaten
up in the city’s subway a week later. A Chinese student was attacked
outside her apartment block this month, while a nine-year-old girl of
mixed Russian and African origin was hospitalized after being stabbed
near her apartment building March 25.
Four Chinese students, studying at Kostroma State University in
central Russia, were attacked last Friday afternoon outside a school.
These incidents have prompted Russian and foreign human-rights groups
to raise concerns over the alarming spread of racist and xenophobic
attitudes in the country.

ARMENIAN GENOCIDE DEBATE CONTINUES
By: Matthew Watkins
Texas A&M The Battalion, TX
April 24, 2006
Adan Peña, Robert Saucedo, Wade Barker – THE BATTALION. Susan Gordone
discusses photos of her relatives who experienced the Armenian genocide
that started in 1915.
Very few would doubt that Armenian-American Susan Gordone’s family
has suffered. However, what to call the cause of their suffering is
a ninety year-old debate.
In 1913, Gordone’s grandmother, Rose, was asked by her pregnant
mother to help deliver her younger sister. At the time, her whole
family lived in Turkey.
“Rose was eight years old. The baby, with its afterbirth, slipped
through her hands and died. Three days later, her mother died,” said
Gordone, who lives in College Station and is a former worker for the
Texas A&M theater arts and English departments. “A week later when
her father returned, he told the remaining members of the family that
they must leave immediately, pack into a wagon or be killed.”
Seven years after the death of her mother and sister, Rose traveled
to America to escape the danger in her home country.
“But in those seven years, she, along with my Uncle John and Aunt
Tervanda, would persevere in the death caravans, watching other family
members die along the way before arriving in Ellis Island in 1920,”
Gordone said.
On Monday, Gordone, along with the Armenian community, will observe
the 91st anniversary of the Armenian genocide, which some estimates
indicate took the lives of as many as 1.5 million Armenians. However,
others, including the Turkish Government, contend that the Armenian
genocide never happened.
The events of the Armenian genocide occurred when the Young Turks, who
had power over Turkey at the time, relocated or deported the country’s
Armenian population during World War I. Most of the Armenians were
relocated on foot causing many to die of exhaustion or starvation. Most
Armenians and many scholars contend that the deaths were genocide.
The Turkish government acknowledges the deaths of hundreds of thousands
of Armenians between 1915 and 1917, but says the deaths were the
result of a civil war and starvation that affected all members of
the Turkish population.
The debate about the events has become so heated that it has sometimes
prevented Armenians and Turks from becoming friends at A&M, said Yaman
Evrenoglu, a Turkish graduate student in electrical engineering. He
said he remembers at least five times when a personal friendship
between an Armenian and Turk was halted when the pair’s nationality
was revealed.
The most recent shake up in the controversy was an hour-long
documentary, “The Armenian Genocide,” which aired on PBS and told
the story of the genocide. The film featured many scholars, some
of whom were Turkish, telling the story of death marches in which
Armenians were pushed off cliffs, drowned, starved and exhausted. A
25-minute panel discussion about the Turkish involvement in these
deaths followed the documentary.
“(The documentary) provides a blatantly one-sided perspective of a
tragic and unresolved period of world history,” Turkish ambassador
to the United States Nabi ?ensoy said in a statement after the
documentary’s airing. “Its premise is rejected not only by my
government, but also by many eminent scholars who have studied the
period in question.”
Armenians and the myriad of scholars who contend that the genocide
is a historical fact said the panel legitimized a view that hatefully
refused to acknowledge the genocide.
“Turkish denials of the genocide are part of a state-sponsored policy
of propaganda that serves only the interests of Turkey. The historical
truth of the Armenian genocide has been established beyond reasonable
doubt by abundant documentary and eye-witness evidence from thousands
of sources,” Vako Nicolian said in an online petition he authored
and sent the vice president of programming at PBS.
As of Sunday, the petition has gathered 22,195 signees.
Gordone said she had no problem with the airing of the panel
discussion, which featured two scholars on each side of the issue,
because it simply revealed the lack of depth to the Turkish
government’s claims.
“If we are going to pretend that a stateless Christian minority
population, unarmed, is somehow in a capacity to kill people in an
aggressive way that is tantamount to war, or civil war, we’re living
in the realm of the absurd,” said Peter Balakian, a professor at
Colgate University in the debate.
Evrenosoglu said he was more upset about the debate than the
documentary.
“The documentary was much more moderate compared to ones that I
have witnessed,” he said. “It was too biased for us of course, but
at least they presented the Turkish government and the Turkish point
of view. The debate was a complete disaster because the theme of the
debate was not about discussion of the Armenian genocide but why the
Turkish government is rejecting it.”
7/news/2006/04/24/News/Armenian.Genocide.Debate.Co ntinues-1867136.shtml?norewrite200604241732&so urcedomain=
–Boundary_(ID_1Q2JEUg ClZLbxBHxGkw/yQ)–
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

REPS OF TURKISH, AZERI DIASPORAS RALLY IN DEFENSE TO ANKARA’S POSITION ON ‘ARMENIAN GENOCIDE’
Author: R.Abdullayev
TREND Information, Azerbaijan
April 24, 2006
Representatives of the Turkish and Azerbaijani Diasporas of the United
States held a rally in Washington in defense to Ankara’s position on
the ‘Armenian genocide’ in Osman Empire, Trend reports citing the
Turkish media. Over 250 people participated in the rally staged in
front of the Turkish embassy.
Participants in the action held flags of Turkey and Azerbaijan,
scanning ‘Go away from Turkey’, ‘Enough Armenian lies,” etc.
Meanwhile, the Turkish embassy in the United States set up
consultations with members of the US Senate with respect to remove
from agenda three documents on the so-called ‘Armenian genocide’
of 1915. A resolution by the speaker of the senate is required to
remove any issue from the agenda.
One of the similar documents had been submitted former US President
Bill Clinton, who is refused to ratify it.
The Turkish authorities on behalf of Prime Minister Erdogan had sounded
a proposal on the necessity of study of the events developing upon
the collapse of the Osman Empire by the Armenian-Turkish scientific
commission, whilst Yerevan came out against it.

ARMISTICE BREACH ANEW FIXED IN ARMENIAN-AZERBAIJANI FRONTLINE
Author: E.Javadova
TREND Information, Azerbaijan
April 24, 2006
On 23 April the units of the Armenian armed forces dislocated in
0.8km south of Mazamli village of Gazakh District fired from 22:30pm
to 22:45pm the positions of the Azerbaijan National Army placed in
the opposite, Defense Ministry told Trend.
The same day the Armenian armed forces placed in Voskevan and
Shavarshan of Noyamberian District fired the Azerbaijani positions
dislocated in Gushchu Ayrim village of Kazakh District. From 23:35
to 23:45 the Armenian troops in the northwest of Aznakar mountain in
the territory of Noyamberian District from guns and machine-guns the
Azerbaijani positions near Gushchu Ayrim village of Kazakh District.
Reply fire was opened. No causalities were reported.