ARMENIANS MARK ‘GENOCIDE’ AT TURKISH EMBASSY IN TBILISI
Civil Georgia, Georgia
April 24, 2006
Dozens of representatives of the Armenian community in Georgia
gathered on April 24 outside the Turkish Embassy in Tbilisi to demand
recognition of slaughter estimated 1,5 million Armenians in 1915-1923
as genocide.
Armenians throughout the world are marking April 24 as a launch of
Armenian genocide by Ottoman Turkish government. But Turkey insists
that the number of those killed is inflated and the Armenians were
victims of World War I and not of genocide.

ARMENIAN MILITARY FORCES BREAK CEASE-FIRE AGAIN
Author: E.Javadova
TREND Information, Azerbaijan
April 24, 2006
On April 23 Armenian military forces broke cease-fire again, Trend
reports with reference to press service of Azeri Ministry of Defense.
On April 23, at 20:25 till 20:30, Armenian forces opened fire from
positions 0.8 km south of Mazamli village of Kazakh area; from 22:30
till 22:45 Armenian forces fired from their positions at Voskevan
and Shavarshan villages of Noyamberan area.
The enemy was neutralized with a back strike.

REMEMBERBING THE ARMENIANS
Amy Lee / The Detroit News
Detroit News, MI
April 24, 2006
Service marks 1915-23 genocide
Photo: The Rev. Daron Stepanian prepares to enter the ceremony,
which was attended by 600 people. The genocide claimed more than 1.5
million lives. See full image
Photo: Allan Foord of Garden City attends the service to learn more
about the genocide. See full image
Photo: Souren Aprahamian, from left, Simon Tashjian, Sarkis Demirjian
and Olive Mooradian are some of the 10 survivors of the Armenian
genocide in Metro Detroit at the Sunday ceremony at St. John’s Armenian
Church Hall in Southfield.
Spiritual reflection mixed with calls for recognition during a
somber ceremony marked the 91st anniversary of Armenian genocide,
an eight-year campaign by Turkey’s Ottoman Empire that killed 1.5
million people of Armenian descent.
On today’s date 91 years ago, members of the Ottoman Turkish
government arrested and executed 200 Armenian community leaders in
Constantinople, marking the beginning of an extermination program
that eventually claimed more than 1.5 million lives between 1915 and
1923. The Turkish government denies that the mass murders were part
of a government-backed campaign.
About 600 people, including 10 survivors who live in Metro Detroit,
reflected with prayers and by singing “The Star-Spangled Banner” and
“Mer Hayrenik,” the national anthem of Armenia, during a service at
St. John’s Armenian Church Hall in Southfield on Sunday.
U.S. Rep. Joe Knollenberg, R-Bloomfield Township, was the keynote
speaker; Knollenberg co-chairs the Armenian Congressional Caucus.
There are about 40,000 people of Armenian descent in Michigan and
1 million nationwide, according to a study issued last year by the
Armenian Research Center/University of Michigan-Dearborn.
The group mourned the victims and underscored the need to educate
the world about the genocide and its aftermath.
“Historically, there hasn’t been enough recognition that it really
happened, so they’re very dependent on the oral history from people
who were actually there,” said Gloria Baykian, whose mother, Rose,
fled Armenia as a child in 1909 when the clampdown on Armenians was
picking up steam.
Baykian and 26 others were honored on a list of survivors at St.
John’s. The 10 survivors at the ceremony received a standing ovation
from the congregation during the commemoration, said Christopher
Korkoian, co-master of the ceremony.
The present-day Republic of Turkey denies that a genocide took place,
and the United States has thus far refused to recognize the actions
as a genocide. France, Argentina, Greece and Russia, however, have
officially recognized the campaign against Armenians.
“This is one of the most important days for our culture and our
history. They were martyrs,” Korkoian said. “Our ancestors fought for
survival, but their numbers are getting smaller as time passes. Now
we’re fighting to make sure no one forgets or denies that anything
even happened. It’s something we are never going to forget.”
icle?AID=/20060424/METRO/604240311/1003

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.