PRESS RELEASE
Armenian Moms and Daughters
Team 813
Revlon Walk for Cancer
Contacts: Eileen Keusseyan Tel: 818-404-5686
Alice Chakrian Tel: 818-388-6734

Armenian Moms & Daughters to Join Revlon Walk for Cancer
Women are Urged to Register for May 7 Event in Los Angeles

(Los Angeles, April 2005) – Alice Chakrian is walking in memory of her
mother-in-law, who died last year of breast cancer. Lucy Gulvartian
for heraunt, another breast cancer casualty. Tamar Mahshigian for her
close friend, Elaine, a breast cancer survivor.

Armenian women are being called upon to register in large numbers for
this year’s Revlon Run/Walk for Women, to be held Saturday, May 7,
just before Mother’ s Day, at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum. The
cost to participate is a $25 donation. Registration online is at
;eid=3D293631

`We all have our community work – helping our school, church,
organizations. But this walk to raise money for cancer research is
such an important cause, one that touches every woman, regardless of
ethnicity or religious affiliation. So we thought that it would be a
fantastic idea to join our strength as Armenian women and walk
together for this very emotional cause,’ says Eileen Keusseyan,
co-captain of Team 813, Armenian Moms & Daughters. `Ultimately, we
would like to see this become an annual event for Armenian women,
growing larger and stronger.’

This year alone more than 211,000 women in the U.S. will be diagnosed
with breast cancer, more than 22,200 will be diagnosed with ovarian
cancer and more than 57,200 will be diagnosed with other women’s
cancers. More than 69,300 will lose their lives to these deadly
diseases.

The Revlon Run/Walk for Women was launched by the Entertainment
Industry Foundation in 1993 and since then has raised an impressive
$32 million to help fund innovative cancer research, counseling and
outreach programs.

Last year, more than 50,000 women, men and children participated in
the 3.1-mile run/walk. `The first time I joined I felt the power of
unity among people with the same inner pain that I felt when my
mother-in-law, Arshalouse Chakrian, was diagnosed with breast cancer,’
says Team 813 co-captain Alice Chakrian, who has registered to walk
with her 10-year-old daughter, Rita. `The Revlon Walk became the
beginning of the healing of my pain because I felt I was making a
difference by contributing to help find a cure.’

`Each year I participate in the Revlon Run/Walk for Cancer researchI
am filled with greater hope and faith that we can make a difference
for future generations,’ says Lucy Gulvartian, who will walk with her
10-year-old daughter, Lar.

One person who lives with hope and faith is Lucy Hagopian.
`Congratulations dear Eileen and Alice. You have created a venue for
the Armenian woman and our community to merge forces in a vision for a
cancer-free society. As a woman who has survived a first encounter
with breast cancer almost 20 years ago, and a second threat in 1999, I
want to speak about hope,’ says Hagopian.

`When I was given the statistics, I did not know where I would end
up. I felt that it was no use thinking about all that so I focused on
health and thoughts of well being. I found comfort, a source of
strength and hope in The Scriptures, especially in the healings of
Christ and in the Psalms. I askedthe Lord for healing. Medicine and
doctors would do their part, I had to do mine, and Nature, which is
sacred, would take its course. And here I am today.â=80=9D

Hagopian provides a few tips on staying healthy.

1. Start your mammograms early; don’t wait until you’re 35. `I was
only 31 when I was first diagnosed,’ says Hagopian. `I have a
mammogram once a year.’

2. Make sure to include an array of naturally colorful foods in your
diet: greens, reds, orange, purple, yellow, and everything in
between. Remember to have your greens and grains regularly.

3. Find a form of exercise that you can live with, even if it’s
walking around your neighborhood three times a week and going
somewhere in nature on weekends.

4. Find a source of spiritual strength. `Reading inspirational
material has been a great help to me,’ Hagopian recommends.

For those who would like to join the Armenian Moms & Daughters team,
registration can be done online at (be
sure to put Team 813 on your registration). Donations can be made by
going to the Team 813 page on the Revlon Run Walk website and clicking
on a registrant’s name.For registration forms that can be printed and
mailed in, go to

For further information about Team 813 Armenian Moms & Daughters,
please contact Eileen Keusseyan at 818-404-5686 and Alice Chakrian at
818-388-6734.

Guess?, Inc. Announces Nomination of Alex Yemenidjian, Former Chairman
and CEO of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Inc., to its Board of Directors

LOS ANGELES, April 15 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ — Guess?,
Inc. (NYSE:_GES_ (aol://4785:GES/) ) today announced that Alex
Yemenidjian has been nominated for election at the Company’s annual
meeting of shareholders to be held on May 10, 2005 as a director for a
three-year term. Mr. Yemenidjian, age 49, served as Chairman of the
Board and Chief Executive Officer of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Inc. from
April 1999 to April 2005 and was a director of that company from
November 1997 to April 2005. Mr. Yemenidjian is currently Chairman of
the Board and Chief Executive Officer of Armenco Holdings, LLC and
also serves as a director of MGM MIRAGE (formerly MGM Grand, Inc.), a
position he has held since 1989. From July 1995 through December
1999, Mr. Yemenidjian served as President of MGM MIRAGE.

Guess?, Inc. designs, markets, distributes and licenses a lifestyle
collection of contemporary apparel, accessories and related consumer
products. At April 2, 2005 the Company owned and operated 289 retail
stores in the United States and Canada. The Company also distributes
its products through better department and specialty stores around the
world. For more information about the Company, please visit
_www.guess.com_ () .

Except for historical information contained herein, certain matters
discussed in this press release are forward-looking statements that
are made pursuant to the safe harbor provisions of the Private
Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Forward-looking statements
are only expectations, and involve known and unknown risks and
uncertainties, which may cause actual results in future periods and
other future events to differ materially from what is currently
anticipated. Factors which may cause actual results in future periods
to differ from current expectations include, among other things, the
continued availability of sufficient working capital, the successful
integration of new stores into existing operations, the continued
desirability and customer acceptance of existing and future product
lines (including licensed product lines), possible cancellations of
wholesale orders, the success of competitive products, and the
availability of adequate sources of capital. In addition to these
factors, the economic and other factors identified in the Company’s
most recent annual report on Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended
December 31, 2004 including but not limited to the risk factors
discussed therein, could affect the forward-looking statements
contained herein and in the Company’s other public documents.

Contact: Carlos Alberini President & Chief Operating Officer (213)
765-3582 Frederick G. Silny SVP & Chief Financial Officer (213)
765-3289 Wendi Kopsick Kekst and Company (212) 521-4800 SOURCE Guess?,
Inc.

04/15/2005 05:00 ET

PRESS OFFICE
Armenian Holy Apostolic Church Canadian Diocese
Contact; Deacon Hagop Arslanian, Assistant to the Primate
615 Stuart Avenue, Outremont Quebec H2V 3H2
Tel; 514-276-9479, Fax; 514-276-9960
Email; [email protected]
Website;

CANADA’S CAPITAL COMMEMORATES THE ARMENIAN GENOCIDE

OTTAWA- April 2005 marks the 90th anniversary of the first genocide of
the 20th century, the Armenian Genocide of 1915. To mark this
important date and honor the victims of the Armenian Genocide and the
victims of genocides that have tragically continued since 1915, the
Diocese of the Armenian Church of Canada held an important Ecumenical
and Interfaith prayer and commemorationservice at Notre Dame Cathedral
in Ottawa on Friday night April 15, 2005. This commemoration was
notable and received broad coverage from the media, including CTV
Night News, in depth articles in, The Ottawa Citizen, interviews on
local radio stations and many Ottawa area community newspapers,
including the Ottawa Metro.

Honorable Ed Broadbent, former leader of the New Democratic Party,
first president of the International Human Rights Centre, and current
MP for Ottawa Centre, delivered a powerful speech as the ceremony’s
guest speaker. Mr. Broadbent conveyed to the congregation that “The
massacre of Armenians in 1915 was a clear undisputed act of genocide.
While it is hard to imagine anything worse than war, genocide is,
because people are selected for systematic murder not for what they
have done or for the territory they occupy – but simply for who they
are”.

Spiritual leaders from 28 different Church denominations and
Interfaith groups offered their prayers for the victims of genocide
and all violence. Salutations were also offered by Ven. Dr. Thero
Sirisumana Walasmullage of the Buddhist community of Ottawa, and by
Mr. Pon AdcharaMoorthy of the Hindu Community of Ottawa.

Rabbi Reuven Bulka of the Jewish community of Ottawa provided the
salutation of his community, remarking “As you contemplate the great
evil that was heaped upon your community, you cannot even be offered
the comfort that the world has learned a lesson, and this was the last
genocide. Far from it. The holocaust unfolded not too long after the
Armenian genocide. And most recently, we know all too well what
happened in Rwanda, and what is happening in Darfur, even as we
speak. We need to say a loud, thunderous NO to the slightest bigotry,
the smallest hate, the most minute racism.”

Dr. Imam Gamal Suleiman of the Muslim community of Ottawa provided his
prayer that “We should strive to learn the truth about the past and
learn from it, not to create or perpetuate hatreds or build walls
between us but to learn from history, seek forgiveness, cleanse our
hearts, and love other creations of God as our larger family.”

The Primate of the Canadian Diocese of the Armenian Holy Apostolic
Church, His Eminence Bishop Bagrat Galstanian, led the commemoration
service. The Bishop emphasized that “we are here to join our hands
with the people of good will and raise up our voice against those who
perpetrated the Holocaust, the massacres and ethnic cleansings in
Africa, Poland, the Ukraine, Paraguay, Bangladesh, Cambodia, Rwanda,
East Timor, among other countries, and to say: NEVER AGAIN.”

Bishop Galstanian also proudly stated “we are here not to mourn but
rather to celebrate the martyrdom of a people who has finally
liberated itself from the shackles of a victim and emerged from the
ashes as a victorious nation.”

The service exuded a sense of triumph, and an overwhelming feeling of
hope for the future. One of the few remaining Armenian genocide
survivors, Mrs. Hrachoui Brown, provided a touching and poetic
connection to the tragic past. Mrs. Brown expressed her heartfelt
thanks to Canada for accepting refugees and immigrants and providing
them with a safe and free environment in which to grow and flourish.

Mrs. Brown lit the candles of four young members of the new generation
of Armenians, Chatigne Tachdjian (age 6), Raffi Avedissian (age 7),
Rita Dukmajian (age 10), and Arees Aharonian (age 13). This flame of
remembrance was then passed from these young torchbearers to each
person throughout the church, as the lights in the Church were brought
down to create, a beautiful visual portrait and deep spiritual sense
of peace.

The keynote speaker of the evening was the Archbishop of the Roman
Catholic Archdiocese of Ottawa, His Eminence Marcel Gervais.
Archbishop Gervais echoed the theme of memory and forgiveness, stating
that “memory can feed vengeance and hatred and it can also support the
resolution that such crimes should never happen again, “never again”
to anyone, anywhere.” The Archbishop also quoted the words of the
late Pope John Paul II, who wrote in his message onWorld Day of Peace
2002, ‘Peace is essential for development, but true peace is made
possible only through forgiveness. No peace without justice, no
justice without forgiveness.”

The combination of the presence of the participating spiritual
leaders, the thoughtful messages of the speakers, the candle-lighting
ceremony, and the beautiful ancient Armenian hymns, sung by the choir
of St. Gregory the Illuminator from Montreal left the capacity
audience in the large thousand people Notre Dame Cathedral,
contemplating the history of genocide and a renewed hope for the
future. The Diocese was honoured to have among the invitees,
representatives from some 30 embassies and corresponding number of
ethnic community leaders. Bishop Galstanian acknowledged their
participation. Notable among these was H.E. Ara Papian, Ambassador of
Armenia to Canada and his family.

The ecumenical service in Ottawa is part of a Canada-wide
commemoration campaign organized by the Canadian Diocese of the
Armenian Apostolic Orthodox Church in association with religious
figures of many denominations and faiths. Similar interfaith services
will be held in Montreal, Toronto, and Vancouver.

* * * * * * * * *

Annex

Representatives of many religious denominations offered their prayers
for the victims of genocide, including Rev. Dr. John Gibaut and
Rev. Fr. Graig Bowers of the Anglican Diocese, Rev. Fr. Francois
Beyrouti and Exarch Habib Kowaiter of the Melkite Catholic Church,
Rev. Fr. John Scratch of the Orthodox Church in America, Archdiocese
of Canada, Rev. Fr. Jacques Faucher and Rev. Fr. Jacques Kabangu of
the Roman Catholic Archdiocese, Rev. Fr. Cedric Pettigrew of The
Presbytery of Ottawa, Fr. Alex Michalopoulos of the Greek Orthodox
Church, The Rev. Dr. James Taylor Christie and Rev. Dr. Grant
Dillenbeck of the United Church, Rev. Dr. Barton Beglo of the
Evangelical Lutheran Church, Mgr. Andre Drouin of the Catholic Church,
Rev. Fr. Shenoudu Doss Boutros of the Coptic Orthodox Church, and
Rev. Fr. Roger Steinke of the Anglican Church.

Many embassies accepted the invitation to attend the ceremony,
including: Armenia, Algeria, Argentina, Bangladesh, Belarus, Bolivia,
Bulgaria, Costa Rica, Ethiopia, Gabon, Greece, Holy See (Vatican),
Ivory Coast, Jordan, Latvia, Lebanon, Macedonia, Netherlands, Poland,
Russian Federation, Rwanda, Slovenia, South Africa, Syria and Uruguay.

Present at the crowded service were members of the Ottawa Armenian
community, MP Marlene Catterall (Ottawa West – Nepean), the Ambassador
of Armenia, Ara Papian, representatives of other foreign governments
from Ottawa’s diplomatic community, members of the inter-faith
community of Ottawa, and other Canadian government officials.

Many countries around the world have had governments, parliaments, and
other legislative bodies recognize the Armenian genocide – Cyprus,
Russia, Greece, Belgium, Sweden, Lebanon, Vatican City, Italy, France,
Council of Europe Parliamentary Assembly, European parliament,
Switzerland, Uruguay, Argentina, Canada, Slovak Parliament, and
Holland.

The Armenian community remains grateful to the Members of Parliament
of Canada who followed their conscience, and voted in favour of
recognizing the events of 1915 as genocide.

New York Times
April 17 2005

Mr. Bush, Take a Look at MTV
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF

When Turkey was massacring Armenians in 1915, the administration of
Woodrow Wilson determinedly looked the other way. The U.S. ambassador
in Constantinople sent furious cables to Washington, pleading for
action against what he called “race murder,” but the White House
shrugged.

It was, after all, a messy situation, and there was no easy way to
stop the killing. The U.S. was desperate to stay out of World War I
and reluctant to poison relations with Turkey.

A generation later, American officials said they were too busy
fighting a war to worry about Nazi death camps. In May 1943, the U.S.
government rejected suggestions that it bomb Auschwitz, saying that
aircraft weren’t available.

In the 1970’s, the U.S. didn’t try to stop the Cambodian genocide. It
was a murky situation in a hostile country, and there was no perfect
solution. The U.S. was also negotiating the establishment of
relations with China, the major backer of the Khmer Rouge, and didn’t
want to upset that process.

Much the same happened in Bosnia and Rwanda. As Samantha Power
chronicles in her superb book, “A Problem From Hell: America and the
Age of Genocide,” the pattern was repeated over and over: a slaughter
unfolded in a distant part of the world, but we had other priorities
and it was always simplest for the American government to look away.

Now President Bush is writing a new chapter in that history.

Sudan’s army and janjaweed militias have spent the last couple of
years rampaging in the Darfur region, killing boys and men,
gang-raping and then mutilating women, throwing bodies in wells to
poison the water and heaving children onto bonfires. Just over a week
ago, 350 assailants launched what the U.N. called a “savage” attack
on the village of Khor Abeche, “killing, burning and destroying
everything in their paths.” Once again, there’s no good solution. So
we’ve looked away as 300,000 people have been killed in Darfur, with
another 10,000 dying every month.

Since I’m of Armenian origin, I’ve been invited to participate in
various 90th-anniversary memorials of the Armenian genocide. But we
Armenian-Americans are completely missing the lesson of that genocide
if we devote our energies to honoring the dead, instead of trying to
save those being killed in Darfur.

Meanwhile, President Bush seems paralyzed in the face of the
slaughter. He has done a fine job of providing humanitarian relief,
but he has refused to confront Sudan forcefully or raise the issue
himself before the world. Incredibly, Mr. Bush managed to get through
recent meetings with Vladimir Putin, Jacques Chirac, Tony Blair and
the entire NATO leadership without any public mention of Darfur.

There’s no perfect solution, but there are steps we can take. Mr.
Bush could impose a no-fly zone, provide logistical support to a
larger African or U.N. force, send Condoleezza Rice to Darfur to show
that it’s a priority, consult with Egypt and other allies – and above
all speak out forcefully.

One lesson of history is that moral force counts. Sudan has curtailed
the rapes and murders whenever international attention increased.

Mr. Bush hasn’t even taken a position on the Darfur Accountability
Act and other bipartisan legislation sponsored by Senators Jon
Corzine and Sam Brownback to put pressure on Sudan. Does Mr. Bush
really want to preserve his neutrality on genocide?

Indeed, MTV is raising the issue more openly and powerfully than our
White House. (Its mtvU channel is also covering Darfur more
aggressively than most TV networks.) It should be a national
embarrassment that MTV is more outspoken about genocide than our
president.

If the Bush administration has been quiet on Darfur, other countries
have been even more passive. Europe, aside from Britain, has been
blind. Islamic Relief, the aid group, has done a wonderful job in
Darfur, but in general the world’s Muslims should be mortified that
they haven’t helped the Muslim victims in Darfur nearly as much as
American Jews have. And China, while screaming about Japanese
atrocities 70 years ago, is underwriting Sudan’s atrocities in 2005.

On each of my three visits to Darfur, the dispossessed victims showed
me immense kindness, guiding me to safe places and offering me water
when I was hot and exhausted. They had lost their homes and often
their children, and they seemed to have nothing – yet in their
compassion to me they showed that they had retained their humanity.
So it appalls me that we who have everything can’t muster the simple
humanity to try to save their lives.

Zaman, Turkey
April 16 2005

Armenians React to Erdogan’s ‘Joint Research Commission’ Offer
By aa

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has conveyed his proposal
to form a joint commission to investigate the events of 1915 to the
Armenian Minister of State in an official letter.

According to a statement from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs,
Erdogan emphasized, “Turkish and Armenian people share a common
history and geography in a sensitive area of the world. We have lived
together for many years but there are differences in evaluating and
commenting upon a period of their shared history.

These differences, which left bitter memories for both nations in the
past, do not make the relations between the two countries any easier
today either,” said Erdogan adding these views are shared by main
opposition Republican People’s Party leader Deniz Baykal also.

In his letter, Erdogan suggested that as a joint proposal from the
ruling party and main opposition party, a group consisting of Turkish
and Armenian historians should investigate the events of 1915 not
only in Turkish and Armenian archives but also in the archives of the
third countries related to the topic and to share the data with the
international community.

In response to Erdogan’s proposal, some from the Armenian parliament
put forward the precondition that “the claims should be recognized
first”. One of the coalition partners in power, Tasnaksutyun Party
Parliamentary group leader Levon Mkrtchian asserted that the alleged
Armenian genocide should be recognized and condemned by the whole
world. The Justice Block Secretary Victor Dalakian also alleged that
Turkey should recognize the genocide claims and offer an apology to
Armenians adding, “We can hold a dialogue with Turkey about all other
issues.”

Sporting Life, UK
April 16 2005

AJAX SNAP UP TRIALIST

Ajax have signed Pyunik FC striker and former trialist Edgar
Manucharyan on a three-year deal.

The Armenian will make the move to the Amsterdam giants on July 1, in
time for their preparations for the new season.

The 18-year-old was on trial at Ajax in December 2004 and featured in
the club’s friendly match against Barcelona although he was forced to
leave the pitch after just 14 minutes because of a foot injury.

Manucharyan, who also plays for the Armenian national team, stayed in
Amsterdam to recover from his injury and is now back to full fitness.

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

WorldNetDaily, OR
April 16 2005

Christian soldier beaten, imprisoned
Punished for sharing faith, literature with colleagues

By Michael Ireland
© 2005 Assist News Service

Baptist conscript Gagik Mirzoyan — who is conducting unarmed service
in the army of the unrecognized Nagorno-Karabakh republic — has been
beaten and punished with more than 10 days in detention since the
beginning of April for sharing his faith with other soldiers and
possessing several Christian calendars.

Felix Corley, writing for Forum 18 News Service, says Mirzoyan’s
relatives and friends told Forum 18 from Nagorno-Karabakh Thursday
that before being transferred to an unknown location, Mirzoyan was
threatened with a prison sentence of two years.

Nagorno-Karabakh is disputed terrority that lies between Armenia and
Azerbaijan in the former Soviet Union.

Forum 18 says it has been unable to reach V. Davidov, commanding
officer of Mirzoyan’s former unit in Nagorno-Karabakh’s south-eastern
Hadrut region, to find out why he ordered or allowed one of his
troops to be beaten and detained merely for expressing his faith and
possessing religious calendars.

“Forum 18 also tried to find out from the defense ministry why
Mirzoyan has been punished, but an official at the ministry told
Forum 18 from the capital Stepanakert yesterday that the minister,
General Seyran Ohanyan, was out of the office and that no-one else
was immediately available. Telephones also went unanswered at
Nagorno-Karabakh’s foreign ministry,” Corley writes in his report.

Corley said that on Monday, relatives and friends went to military
unit 42009 in Hadrut to see Mirzoyan after hearing that he had been
beaten and given 10 days of detention at the guardhouse.

“When we got there he had already been held under arrest for 12 days
but still had not been freed,” they told Forum 18.

They reported that when they were able to see Mirzoyan, the “results
of beatings” were visible on his face. Military personnel at the base
told the visitors Mirzoyan would be freed the following day, Tuesday,
and they would then be able to talk to him.

Corley writes: “Despite these promises, Mirzoyan continued to be
detained and during the day was threatened by the head of the unit’s
political department and by an official of the prosecutor’s office
that a case against him would be drawn up, handed to the prosecutor’s
office and he would be sentenced to two years’ imprisonment. Forum 18
has been unable to discover what charges are being or might be
levelled against Mirzoyan.”

Mirzoyan’s relatives and friends told Forum 18, “Through the grace of
God we were later able to have a 10-minute meeting with brother Gagik
and discovered that he is being persecuted for preaching the Gospel
and because they found several Christian calendars in his possession.
Now he has been taken away to an unknown destination and they are not
saying where he is and what has happened to him.”

Mirzoyan was called up in December, Corley said.

Corley writes: “After refusing to serve with weapons and swear the
military oath because of his faith Mirzoyan was beaten and pressured
by the commander of the unit to which he was transferred and Fr.
Petros Yezegyan, the unit’s Armenian Apostolic military chaplain.
Both the defence minister, General Ohanyan, and Fr. Yezegyan
emphatically denied to Forum 18 that Mirzoyan had been beaten.”

The army later agreed that Mirzoyan could serve in a non-combat role
and he was transferred to the unit in Hadrut region, Corley reported.

According to Corley: “Nagorno-Karabakh has no provision for
alternative service for those who have religious or other
conscientious objections to participating in the armed forces. On
Feb. 16 a court in Stepanakert handed down a four-year prison term to
Areg Hovhanesyan, a Jehovah’s Witness who had refused to serve
because of his faith but had expressed a willingness to perform an
alternative civilian service.

Baku Today, Azerbaijan
April 16 2005

OSCE MG co-chairs issue new statement on ceasefire breaches

Baku Today 16/04/2005 09:52

The OSCE Minsk Group co-chairs issued a statement on Friday over the
ceasefire breaches on the Armenia-Azerbaijan frontline.

The co-chairs Yuri Merzlyakov of Russia, Steven Mann of the United
States and Bernard Fassier of France are concerned over the
persistent ceasefire violations, casualties on both sides, calls for
war and the increasing hatred between the two countries’ residents,
the document reads.

“At a time the Minsk Group is close to the initial steps in achieving
an agreement between the conflicting sides, the co-chairs call on
Armenia and Azerbaijan to observe the ceasefire on the frontline,
according to the commitments they assumed, and refrain from any
public statements that may lead to exacerbating the tensions, as well
as to prepare the peoples of both countries for an agreement that may
be reached through negotiations and would require mutual
compromises,” the statment read according to Assa Irada.

The co-chairs also said that resumption of hostilities would hamper a
long-term settlement of the Karabakh conflict and lead to
considerable human casualties, destruction, an inflow of refugees,
and economic crisis.

New York Times
April 16 2005

‘Forgotten Armies’: Their Lousiest Hour
By BENJAMIN SCHWARZ

FORGOTTEN ARMIES
The Fall of British Asia, 1941-1945.
By Christopher Bayly and Tim Harper.
Illustrated. 555 pp. The Belknap Press/ Harvard University Press.
$29.95.

EVERAL hours before the attack on Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941,
Japanese troops stormed the beaches of southeastern Thailand and
northern Malaya. Their goal was Singapore, some 400 miles south,
among the world’s richest and most cosmopolitan cities, and, along
with Gibraltar, the most heavily defended piece of land in the
British Empire. Just over two months later that supposedly
impregnable fortress was in Japanese hands. A garrison of more than
85,000 troops had surrendered to a Japanese assault force numbering
about 30,000. Singapore’s capture, Winston Churchill said, was ”the
worst disaster and largest capitulation in British history.” By
April the Japanese were bombing Calcutta, and India was preparing to
be invaded. Britain’s ”great crescent,” which had stretched from
India’s border with Burma down the Malay peninsula, was lost.

In ”Forgotten Armies” Christopher Bayly and Tim Harper, two
Cambridge historians, explore these events and their intricate and
often terrible repercussions from the perspectives of both the
British and the Asian peoples of the region. A work at once scholarly
and panoramic, it is as precise in dissecting, say, the logistical
problems the Japanese Army confronted during the 1944 campaign in
northern Burma (”the worst defeat in Japan’s military history”) as
it is arresting in examining such sweeping events as the 1942 trek of
some 600,000 Indian, Burmese and Anglo-Indian refugees from Burma
through the high passes of Assam into India, fleeing the advancing
Japanese.

Hundreds of monographs have examined aspects of this story, but Bayly
and Harper’s is the only history that matches the scope and nuance of
novels like J. G. Farrell’s ”Singapore Grip,” Paul Scott’s ”Raj
Quartet,” Anthony Burgess’s ”Enemy in the Blanket,” Orwell’s
”Burmese Days” and Amitov Ghosh’s ”Glass Palace.” Their 70-page
prologue is a triumph of scene setting. The great crescent between
Calcutta and Singapore was, Bayly and Harper show, a multinational
and multiethnic stew. Indians, Chinese, Malays and Burmese toiled in
the factories and oil fields of Burma and the rubber plantations and
tin mines of Malaya; Chinese merchant princes ruled the trading
houses of Penang and Malacca; Japanese owned shops in virtually every
small town on the Malay peninsula, controlled Malaya’s iron mines and
dominated Singapore’s fishing fleet.

At the apex of this world, of course, the British ruled. ”Forgotten
Armies” artfully evokes their prewar idyll: the string of posh
hotels; the mountaintop golf courses carved out of the jungle; the
torpor of the hill stations (exacerbated by chronic gin-swilling),
where expats speaking an ”outmoded English slang” saw to it that
”the ova of trout were carted up on ice” to stock the streams; and,
most memorably, what Lady Diana Cooper characterized as the
”Sino-Monte-Carlo” atmosphere of Singapore — a strikingly clean
and modern city of snobbish clubs, air-conditioned cinemas and a glut
of playing fields, populated by Arabs, Armenians, Jews, Parsis and
White Russians, as well as Indians, Malays, Burmese, Chinese,
Japanese and their British overlords.

The ignominious British and Australian rout down the length of the
Malay peninsula (the retreating soldiers sardonically adopted the
theme from the Hope and Crosby movie ”The Road to Singapore” as
their marching song) and Singapore’s subsequent fall have already
been described, memorably, in Farrell’s novel and in a host of
military histories, most notably Alan Warren’s ”Singapore 1942,”
but Bayly and Harper’s account is both vivid and authoritative. One
of their great contributions lies in their stinging appraisal of the
debacle — all but inevitable given Britain’s competing strategic
priorities, but made worse in every conceivable way by the
fecklessness, dithering, incompetence, jealousies and cowardice of
commanders on the spot. A second is their chronicle of the nearly
complete moral collapse of British colonial society and civil
administration throughout the great crescent. That collapse, they
convincingly show, began just eight days after the Japanese invasion,
with the shameful European evacuation of Penang, in which Britons
abandoned the Asians they ruled to an utterly vicious conqueror.
British imperialism certainly had its high-minded and responsible
aspects, but at the time and place ”Forgotten Armies” recounts it
revealed itself to be selfish, unlovely and, in the parlance of the
time, unmanly.

This British failure of nerve enormously strengthened the region’s
national independence movements during and after the war. The
Japanese, of course, tried to exploit anti-imperialist sentiment in
the name of pan-Asian solidarity, but Bayly and Harper, though
plainly unsympathetic to Britain’s imperialism, make clear that
Japan’s was incomparably worse. The Japanese systematically executed
70,000 ethnic Chinese in Singapore and southern Malaya. They sexually
enslaved well over 50,000 of the great crescent’s women, and raped
tens of thousands more; 14,000 Allied prisoners of war died as slave
laborers on the Thailand-Burma railway (an ordeal made famous in
”The Bridge on the River Kwai”), along with possibly 20 times as
many Indians, Burmese, Chinese and Malays, who were starved and
worked to death. (Bayly and Harper should be praised for making plain
a grim fact of war that nearly always goes unsaid: ”The scale of
animal fatality was colossal.”) The British of course temporarily
took back their Southeast Asian empire, but only with the help of
their erstwhile subjects (Asians and Africans made up 70 percent of
the soldiers in William Slim’s victorious 14th Army). In the terrible
choices war gave the inhabitants of the great crescent, the craven
hypocrisy of the British was infinitely preferable to the medieval
sadism of the Japanese.

Benjamin Schwarz is the literary editor and national editor of The
Atlantic Monthly.

Assa-Irada, Azerbaijan
April 16 2005

US embassy unaware of State Secretary’s visit

The US embassy in Baku has not received any information about the
planned visit by US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to the South
Caucasus countries, US Ambassador to Azerbaijan Reno Harnish told
journalists.

Harnish noted that the visit would be useful for solving a number of
problems, including the Nagorno Karabakh conflict. Co-operation
between Azerbaijan and the United States is expanding and the planned
London meeting of Azerbaijani and Armenian foreign ministers is
expected to yield positive results, the ambassador said.

Some media outlets in Azerbaijan reported on Thursday that
Condoleezza Rice is scheduled to visit the Caucasus states early in
May.