ARMENIAN APOSTOLIC CHURCH CELEBRATES SHROVETIDE (“BUN BAREKENDAN”) ON
FEBRUARY 6
YEREVAN, FEBRUARY 4. ARMINFO. The Armenian Apostolic Church celebrates
Shrovetide holiday on February 6.
The press-service of AAC Ararat Diocese told ARMINFO that in
conformity with church traditions, Shrovetide is marked on the eve of
Lent. Shrovetide symbolizes the life in paradise. This holiday is
celebrated also in Russia and European states. During the evening
service on the eve of Shrovetide, the altar is closed by curtains up
to the end of Lent, which start on February 7.

LENT STARTS ON FEBRUARY 7 IN CONFORMITY WITH CALENDAR OF ARMENIAN
APOSTOLIC CHURCH
YEREVAN, FEBRUARY 4. ARMINFO. In conformity with the calendar of the
Armenian Apostolic Church, Lent starts on February 7. It will continue
to the Easter, which is fixed for March 27 this year, AAC Ararat
Diocese reports to ARMINFO.
Forty days of Lent symbolize the 40 days Jesus Christ spent in the
desert praying. On March 2, in the middle of Lent, traditional “gata”
(“cake”) is baked and coins are put in it. According to beliefs, who
finds the coin in “gata” he will be successful. Wedding and offering
ceremonies are banned in the period of Lent. However, Catholicos of
All Armenian Vazgen I allowed wedding at Armenian churches on
Saturdays and Sunday during Lent, excepting the days of Holy Week
(March 20-27).
From: Baghdasarian

Useless-Knowledge.com
Feb 4 2005
Knowledge Is The Key To Macedonia
By Alexander Antonarakis
Feb. 4, 2005
Dear Audience and Thomas Keyes, the Macedonian Question is one of
time, Geographical Positioning, and historical slander. I will make
this quite short.
The creation of the state of Skopia. This area of the Balkans was and
is always considered as the birthplace of the modern Bulgarian
nation, as Kosovo is to the Serbs. Ohrid was the capital of the
Bulgarian Tsardom in the 10th century. Throughout the Ottoman Empire
this area was called the Milliet of Rum, and had nothing to do with
Macedonia. I have spoken with a Bulgarian and an educated Skopian,
and they both agreed that they spoke the same language and were of
the same truko-slavic race as the Bulgarians are. The idea of these
Slavic brothers being called Macedonians came as a figment of Tito’s
imagination. In fact, Yugoslavia was the only country to need a visa
for Greece. Also, what hardship did they suffer from the Greeks that
we didn’t suffer from the Bulgarian fascists of the world war? We did
not allow Slavs into Greece because they were COMMUNISTS!!! NOT
BECAUSE OF ETHICITY! We had just suffered a civil war and defeated
communism when Tito named the republics.
The Geographic location of Macedonia. Well, this should be
surprising…! Throughout most of Byzantium, the Theme of Macedonia
was NOT centred on the modern area. The Capital was Adrianople, and
stretched from Serrai to the Walls of Constantinople. The Theme in
present day Macedonia was called that of Thessaloniki. Also the
Macedonian Dynasty of Byzantium came from near Adrianople, and were
half Armenian originally. No one can argue that ancient Macedonia was
largely on the Modern Greek Macedonia, and the north was periphery!
History. Here are a few questions. Why would Phillip try and educate
his son with Greek Philosophers? Why did Alexander create a Hellenic
empire that involved a Hellenic league. He could have easily made the
empire in his dialect. DIALECT is exactly what it is. It has been
written that during the campaign, the Macedonians would resort to
their dialect among friends. Nowadays if Cypriots don’t want to be
fully understood by Greeks, they can put on a pretty heavy accept,
but they are in effect Greek! Was Alexander Greek? He did indeed feel
like one. The Slavs? Indeed they did show in the 6th Century or so,
from the north. They had, and have nothing to do with Macedonia. By
the time they came, the ancient Macedonians had been eradicated by
the Romans centuries before, and they had become fully Greek.
As Thomas Keyes said, we should strive for unity, and the naming of
Skopia as Macedonia is a blatant assault on our and Bulgarian soil.
Also, let the ancients rest in peace. I would propose the name
Slavomacedons if they wish, or Ohridians, or Western Bulgaria. I
plead to all….please get educated the history. As Socrates
said…”knowledge is the only good, and ignorance the only evil”.
————
About the author Alexander Antonarakis: a PhD candidate in Cambridge
University, UK.

7 POINT QUAKE REGISTERED IN TURKEY
YEREVAN, FEBRUARY 4. ARMINFO. A 7-point earthquake was registered in
Turkey last night.
The National Seismic Protection Service of Armenia reports that the
quake took place 50 km southeast of the town of Van at 4:20 a.m. In
the epicenter the shock was 7 point strong. Information on
destructions and casualties is specified.

Journal of Turkish Weekly, Turkey
Feb 4 2005
Erdogan Criticizes Cypriots and Armenians
While meeting French Parliament Speaker Jean Louis Debre, Prime
Minister Erdogan criticized Cyprus over the failure of the
UN-initiated referendum. Answering Jean Louis Debre’s questions about
Cyprus, Erdogan recalled that Turkish Cypriots had voted in favor of
the Kofi Annan settlement plan but also highlighted the fact that it
was the Greeks who rejected it.
The premier said “We are constantly asked about what will happen in
Cyprus next. Why should we pay the price of a mistake that wasn’t
actually caused by us?”
On the subject of Armenians, Erdogan told Debre that Turkey has
opened its archives about Armenians but that there will be no
improvements in the situation until Armenians decide to collaborate
on the issue, which they are presently refusing to do.
Source: Hurriyet, 4 February 2005

Christianity Today
Feb 4 2005
Christian History Corner
Losing Jesus’ Language
The Assyrians, Iraq’s main Christian population, struggle to keep
their heritage and their ancient language.
posted 02/04/2005 9:00 a.m.
The Assyrians are the major Christian group in Iraq, where they
participated, with some hindrances, in last week’s election. A native
Assyrian herself, cultural historian Dr. Eden Naby has a great
concern for the survival of her community, which has suffered from
persecution throughout the 20th century. She has published
extensively on the Assyrians, as well as the Afghans, Turkmens,
Uighurs and Kurds, and has conducted NEH seminars for teachers at
Harvard University and the University of Massachusetts at Amherst on
religious and ethnic minorities in the Middle East. She is currently
editing a book about the Assyrian diaspora worldwide and preparing a
monograph on Assyrians in the Middle East.
CT Online Assistant Editor Rob Moll spoke and e-mailed with Dr. Naby
about the Assyrians and their struggle to maintain their heritage.
ROB MOLL: Assyrians have been in Iraq for a long time. Could you tell
us about their history in the region?
EDEN NABY: Iraq is a recent term. Assyrians were in the region long
before the British, the Ottomans, the Arabs, and the Kurds. For
Assyrians, the term Mesopotamia makes better sense since that Greek
word – meaning “land between the rivers” – expresses where they have
lived historically, between the Tigris and the Euphrates. The
combination of an increasingly minority ethnicity and language plus
the problem of being Christian under Muslim rule has driven Assyrians
into the hinterlands of Iraq – the natural refuge areas of the
marginalized (either deserts or mountains). The Assyrians went into
the mountains, although significant numbers remained on the Nineveh
plains where churches date to the 4th and 5th centuries or earlier.
When Iraq was cobbled together through conquest and negotiations with
the successors to the Ottomans, many Assyrians ended up in Iraq.
Others lived in Turkey, Iran and Syria. After the Islamic Revolution
in 1979, Assyrians left Iran in such numbers that only about 15
percent of the post-World War II community remains.
What forces caused Assyrians to emigrate?
Persecution of Assyrians during the past several centuries has
centered around their Christianity, not their ethnicity. It is only
in the 19th and 20th centuries that ethnicity has come to play a role
in the Middle East as a source of friction.
Records from the 19th century are plentiful and clear: Islamic
governments treated all “people of the Book” as tolerated
second-class citizens. The Assyrians were subjected to poll taxes
levied against non-Muslims and the oppressive feudal system prevalent
in the Middle East, which combined to keep the Assyrians poor and
starving.
But more immediately, they were the victims of Kurdish tribes often
appointed as “tax farmers” for the Ottoman rulers in the areas where
Assyrians lived. Kurds therefore became accustomed to abusing
Assyrians both as a different, non-Kurdish speaking minority, and as
Christians with no recourse to authority. Most egregious was the
regular abduction of Assyrian girls and women.
The opportunity to emigrate came with the advance of Tsarist Russia
southward and the entry of Western diplomats and missionaries. The
first big emigration was to Russia, which is still a thriving and
educated community that has retained its Aramaic languages since
1828.
The second emigration was to America, the Christian-friendly land
that was able and willing to take a hardworking laborer or a good
student. In the late 19th century, men began coming to work in cities
with industrial jobs.
But persecution increased, as did opportunities to emigrate. The
years 1895-6 were particularly severe as were 1905, 1909, 1912, 1914
and finally 1915, the Year of the Sword. By 1918, nearly all
Assyrians were refugees somewhere. Until 1924, when the U.S.
immigration law became more restrictive, Assyrians poured into the
U.S.
During times of persecution, even with the backing of British and
American diplomats and missionaries, there was little the Assyrians
could do to defend themselves except make appeals, have the
missionaries buy back their sisters and daughters, and study hard to
improve themselves. Medicine and technical fields became their
strength. As doctors, they passed the well-developed art of healing
from ancient practice, plus Greek knowledge, to the rest of the
Middle East.
There is a strong emphasis on education in the Assyrian community in
America.
In minority communities, especially from the Middle East where under
Islam there is little economic opportunity, education is the key.
Medicine is a long-standing tradition among Assyrians.
Medicine is transportable across cultures. Most of the intellectuals
who came over and were trained in the ministry, education, or
something else ended up doing factory jobs.
Assyrians are concentrated in certain areas of the U.S. Why?
Mostly because of factory jobs. Also missionaries helped to send some
boys to school. Ohio Wesleyan, Springfield International College in
Springfield, Massachusetts, and Colombia University, were a few
schools Assyrians attended. At Colombia, Professor Abraham Yohannan
came to help translate the New Testament into Syriac – not the ancient
language, but they Assyrian vernacular in Iraq.
The pre-WWI immigrants came to work. Only after 1912 did permanent
residence in the U.S. dawn on the community as it saw waves of
persecution build against them. After WWI, our community was either
killed or scattered. Two-thirds of our people were killed or died of
disease.
How has the Assyrian community stayed connected, both within America,
and with Assyrians in the Middle East?
The basic connection is family. People in our community, as in most
Middle Eastern communities, remain closely connected to extended
family. When people immigrate from Iraq or Syria, part of the family
stays behind. This is a plus and minus because when you have your
great uncle still living in Baghdad you’re very careful about what
you say about Saddam Hussein or anyone who could turn around and harm
your people.
The second connection is through religious organizations or cultural
institutions. But it’s not easy holding on to a second and third
generation because of the language issue.
How important is keeping the language to maintaining the culture?
It is possible to be an Assyrian and not know the language. Certainly
there are people who are Jews, Armenians, Native Americans, who don’t
know the language of their community. We have people who feel
strongly that they are Assyrian, but the basis for their being
Assyrian has diminished considerably because of the loss of language.
The Passion of the Christ was in Aramaic. Could Assyrians watch
without the subtitles?
Many people could understand much of it. If I didn’t want to see the
subtitles and just listen, I had to close my eyes, which I didn’t
want to do. I understood about 50 percent, and I’m not as well
acquainted with our written language as some.
Is there a larger interest in Aramaic because of the movie, and has
it affected your community?
I’d like to say that Mel Gibson had an effect on the community, but I
don’t think it’s Mel Gibson at all. In terms of the visibility of
Aramaic, it certainly created a lot of visibility outside of our
community.
We simply do not have facilities to propagate our written language.
We had greater literacy in our community in 1920 than we do today.
The reason is that before 1920 the West had an enormous interest in
our language. There is a story about the 50th celebration of the
American presence in northwest Iran, which was in 1884. They had
invited some Persian dignitaries and a missionary was sitting next to
one of the Persian officials. The official noticed a lot of women
sitting together with books in their hands, and the official turned
the missionary and said, “what are those women doing with those
books. Women in your community can read?” and they asked for all the
women who could read to stand up. 600 women stood.
I don’t think we have 600 women in Iran today who could read our
language. We have a population of 15,000. There has been no
opportunity for our people to study our language.
Can you maintain it in America?
We have social institutions and church institutions that teach and
propagate the language. One of the problems we have is that some
churches insist that the vernacular should not be written [for
services], and that the only language should be Syriac, which died
out as a spoken language in the 14th century. Other churches, the
Chaldean and the Church of the East, pushed for the vernacular. Using
the vernacular means the church, when it teaches the language,
teaches the vernacular. That helps to preserve the language.
Rob Moll is online assistant editor for Christianity Today magazine.
More Christian history, including a list of events that occurred this
week in the church’s past, is available at ChristianHistory.net.
Subscriptions to the quarterly print magazine are also available.

THE NATIONAL ASSEMBLY TRYING TO STRENGTHEN THE RA POSITION IN THE WORLD
A1+
4 Feb 05
3 international structures – NATO Parliamentary Summit, PACE and OSCE
are preparing reports about the Nagorno Karabakh conflict, refugees in
our region and the Mass Media. This fact, as well as the Atkinson
report, which Arthur Baghdasaryan does not consider the victory of the
Armenian diplomacy, made our Parliament reconsider its international
activities.
The National Assembly intends to sign up not only for the NATO
Parliamentary Summit and the Francophone Parliamentary Summit, but
also for the West-European Union and the Arabian Countries
Parliamentary Summit. The participation in these Summits even as an
observer is very important not only from the parliamentary, but also
from the political point of view. In this case the Karabakh conflict
and the regulation of Armenia’s relations with the Muslim world are
taken into consideration. In this context the National Assembly
official delegation will soon visit the countries of the Persian bay.
The RA National Assembly is also taking measures to sign up for the
Parliamentary Assembly of the American countries and to get the
position ofobserver in the Parliamentary Summits of American
countries.
All this is necessary for Armenia to occupy the proper position in the
international field, `The people sitting in the great capitals do not
think about Armenia’, says Arthur Baghdasaryan, meaning that Armenia
must make efforts to strengthen his position in the world.

French Speaker, Turkish MPs discuss plans for Armenian genocide probe
Anatolia news agency
4 Feb 05
ANKARA
French National Assembly President Jean Louis Debre proposed on Friday
[4 February] that an international independent organization should
investigate the Armenian genocide claims.
Debre, who is visiting Turkey, met Yasar Yakis, chairman of the
Turkish Parliamentary European Union (EU) Adjustment Commission, and
the members of this commission.
So-called Armenian genocide allegations and the referendum to be held
in France on Turkey’s EU membership were debated in the meeting.
Debre said that Armenian genocide claims could be examined by a group
including scientists and representatives of organizations like United
Nations (UN), NATO, and Council of Europe, and a group from
Switzerland, and noted that thus, it could be proven whether those
claims were true or false.
On the other hand, Yakis said that any study to be made, supposing
that the Armenian genocide happened, and without investigating whether
some acts considered as “genocide” were true or false could be
wrong. He said that Turkey was not against any study to be made by
historians and so, opened its archives. But, he stated, Armenia had
not opened its archives.
Meanwhile, Onur Oymen, a parliamentarian from the main opposition
Republican People’s Party (CHP) who is also a member of the
Commission, said that a meeting on this matter was held in (Austrian
capital of) Vienna but the Armenian historians did not join a second
meeting.
Also confirming that Turkey had opened its archives, Oymen claimed
that making a political decision on historical incidents would cause
wrong results.
As Oymen asked why the French parliament passed a law without
investigating the Armenian genocide claims, Debre said, “let’s leave
things aside. We should forget the past. We want to help you on your
road to the EU”.
[Passage omitted]

Former employee of US embassy in Armenia arrested for illegal issuance of
visas
Mediamax news agency
4 Feb 05
YEREVAN
A former employee of the consular department of the US embassy in
Armenia, 45-year-old Piotr Zdzislaw Parlej, has been arrested in
California on charges of taking bribes for illegal issuance of visas
during his tenure in Armenia, the US State Department and Justice
Department say in a joint official statement released by the US
embassy in Armenia today, Mediamax news agency reports.
If the charges laid against him are proved, Parlej will spend from
five to 15 years in prison.
The charges say that from April 2004 to January 2005, Parlej, together
with a group of accomplices, took bribes in Yerevan and forged
American visas. The investigation is processing six separate cases, in
which Piotr Parlej took bribes of 10,000 dollars for issuing US entry
visas.
Attorney Kenneth L. Wainstein and Assistant Secretary for the Bureau
of Diplomatic Security Frank Taylor have stated that they highly
assess the actions of special agents of the US diplomatic security
service, the embassy staff in Armenia and the Armenian law-enforcement
bodies which helped solve the crime.
For its part, the US embassy in Armenia “thanked the Armenian
authorities for their cooperation in investigating the case and would
like to express special thanks to the Armenian National Security
Service for its invaluable help”.

French Speaker defends referendum over Turkey’s EU bid
Anatolia news agency
4 Feb 05
ANKARA
French National Assembly President Jean Louis Debre proposed on Friday
that an international independent organization should investigate the
Armenian genocide claims.
Debre, who is visiting Turkey, met Yasar Yakis, chairman of the
Turkish Parliamentary European Union (EU) Adjustment Commission, and
the members of this commission.
[Passage omitted]
The decision of the French parliament to hold a referendum on
accession of new members to the EU after 2007 was also debated in the
meeting.
CHP parliamentarian Oymen said that no referendum was held on any
country that became an EU member before, and noted that this decision
was made against Turkey, and added that it caused disappointment in
Turkey.
When Oymen said that such a procedure would not be carried out for
Romania, Bulgaria and Croatia which would become EU’s new members,
Debre said that referenda were held for some other countries in the
past, and stated that Europe’s borders would change after Turkey
joined the Union. He stressed that it would be useful to learn views
of the French regarding this matter.
Debre, who asked how his country could help Turkey on its road to EU
membership, said that France could either send experts to Turkey to
help this Commission’s initiatives or host members of the Commission
in France to extend support to them.
Jean Louis Debre was received by Turkish President Ahmet Necdet Sezer
earlier today.