German envoy sees Armenian nuclear station closure in 2004 as “unrealistic”

Arminfo
5 Apr 04

YEREVAN

The European Union (EU) does not insist that the Armenian Nuclear
Power Station (ANPS) should be closed in 2004, the German ambassador
to Armenia, Hans-Wulf Bartels, told a briefing today.

He said that Germany is representing the EU in Armenia and the ANPS
closure in 2004 is unrealistic. The ambassador noted that the EU had
not put forward any specific conditions for the conservation of the
station.

PRESS RELEASE
Armenian Youth Federation
Western United States
104 N. Belmont St. Suite 206
Glendale, CA 91206
Contact: Raffi Semerdjian
Tel: 818.507.1933
Fax: 818.240.3442
E-mail: [email protected]
Web:

Protest Attracts 5000 at Turkish Consulate

Los Angeles, CA – The Armenian Youth Federation Western United States Garo
Madenlian Public Affairs Office announced that close to 5000 protestors
gathered at the Turkish Consulate in Los Angeles Saturday afternoon
demanding Turkish recognition of the Armenian Genocide.

The youthful crowd of protestors picketed across two blocks of Wilshire
Blvd. With such signs as `Genocide Unpunished is Genocide Encouraged,’ and
`Turkey stop historical Revisionism.’

“The Canadian government officially recognized the Armenian Genocide earlier
this week,” said Sevag Garabetian, Director of the Protest. “We are thankful
for their ability to classify truth and justice above special interests and
are hopeful that our government, here in the US, will follow suit shortly,’
explained Garabetian.

About two hours after marching on Wilshire Blvd. the protestors gathered in
front of the Turkish Consulate, where Vicken Sosikian, chairman of the AYF
Western Region addressed the crowd from atop of a cargo truck, make shift
stage.

Emphasizing on the fact that over 80% of the gathered protestors were youth,
Sosikian said that this generation, along with future generations of
Armenian American youth will continue its demands for the return of Western
Armenia, proper reparations, and justice.

The protest, which has been organized for the last thirty years attracted
all major broadcast and print media and concluded with the singing of the
Armenian National Anthem.

The success of the protest can be credited to a committee of about 10 AYF
members planning the protest for over five months and over 100 AYF members
helping with crowd control,’ said Marie Minassian, chairperson of the
Protest Organizing Committee. `The protest is one of many forms of political
activism organized by the AYF throughout the course of the year,’ explained
Minassian.

The Armenian Youth Federation Western United States serves Armenian American
communities west of the Mississippi through education, athletics, political
activism, cultural activities and social settings. To learn more about the
AYF please log on to

#####

Armenians Remember
Fresno Bee
B Section
April 25, 2004

About 800 people turned out Saturday for a ceremonial raising of the
Armenian flag over Fresno City Hall. The event was part of the weekend
observance commemorating the Armenian Genocide, in which 1.5 million
Armenians were killed in Turkey from 1915 to 1923. Also Saturday, an
Armenian Martyrs Day Commemoration ecumenical service was held at Holy
Trinity Apostolic Church with
Rabbi Kenneth Segal as speaker. At 1 p.m. today there will be an observance
at Soghomon Tehlirian’s monument in Ararat Masis Cemetery.

(Picture Caption) Veraim Krikorian, 77, sings the Armenian National anthem
as the flag goes up.
(Picture Caption) A gust of wind unfurls the flag as it is raised be Sevag
Jierian, member of the Homenetmen Armenian Scouts, Troop 12. Other Scouts
pictured are Aleen Postoyan, and Jenya Bakanian.

The Daily Star, Lebanon
April 26 2004

Legal experts, MPs dust off neglected draft laws
Proposals often circulate for years

By Nada Raad
Daily Star staff
Monday, April 26, 2004

A proposal to encourage companies and the private sector to hire
university graduates in return for tax reductions was just one of
several ideas put forward during a seminar organized by the Lebanese
Legislation Monitor (LLM).

The brainchild of the Lebanese Foundation for Permanent Civil Peace,
the LMM is a three-year program designed to make sure the draft laws
and proposals studied by Parliament, the Cabinet and public
administrations are in conformity with the rules of the state,
constitutional norms and human rights.

During Saturday’s seminar, several MPs, lawyers and professors
examined draft proposals and laws that are still stuck in Parliament
and attempted to identify the best ways to push them forward.

Lawyer and university professor Antoine Sfeir proposed a law that
would promote an increase in youth employment after they graduate.
Sfeir, who was speaking about the difficulties of renewing laws here,
said that the proposal is already implemented in developed countries
to facilitate the hiring of young graduates who don’t have real world
experience.

“The law would stipulate a reduction of taxes paid by companies and
the private sector according to the number of fresh graduates they
hire per year,” Sfeir said.

Sfeir’s proposal was welcomed by Beirut MP Walid Eido, Baabda MP
Salah Honein and Zahle MP Nicolas Fattoush, who said that they would
be the first to agree on the proposal once it was handed to
Parliament.

However, proposals and draft laws sometimes need several years before
they are passed by Parliament’s committees as well as the Cabinet.

“Many side talks are done by MPs when discussing a certain draft law
and politicians often interfere to stop the discussion of a certain
draft law,” said Minyeh MP Ahmad Fatfat, who is a member of
Parliament’s Administration and Justice committee.

University professor Tony Atallah said that 123 pages of draft laws
and law proposals are currently discussed by Parliament’s committees
or revised by the Cabinet.

Atallah, who spent more than two months searching for the drafts laws
and proposals due to the lack of an organized archive for such
documents, succeeded, at the end, in summarizing them into 16 pages.

He said that currently the municipal draft law is discussed by
Parliament’s committees. Atallah noticed in his research that until
now there are no law proposals regarding parliamentary elections,
which are scheduled to be held in the spring of 2005.

Beirut MP Serge Toursarkissian, who was present at the seminar, said
that one of his proposals stipulates the formation of a 14-member MP
committee to take charge of relations with Lebanon’s expatriate
population.

Kesrouan MP Neamatallah Abi Nasr said that he had already proposed a
similar law enabling Lebanese living abroad to be represented in
Parliament by 12 separate MPs.

Toursarkissian made it clear during the seminar that his increase of
the number of MPs from 12 to 14 was to allow the Armenian community
to be represented among the MPs representing the Lebanese abroad.

Also discussed during the seminar, was the draft of the rent law
currently under discussion by a parliamentary committee. It gives
landlords the right to evict tenants by paying 20 percent of the
salable value of the property. As it currently stands, Parliament’s
Joint Committee has extended the rent law, which was endorsed in
1992, until June 2004 to allow the Finance and Budget Committee to
finish studying the new draft.

There are also draft laws and law proposals put forward by different
MPs to revise the military service. Western Bekaa MP Robert Ghanem,
one of the MPs proposing such an amendment, said that the military
service law should be amended because many Lebanese living abroad are
currently not registering their newborn children as Lebanese to avoid
making them go through the military service.

Other draft laws and law proposals currently under consideration
include one that calls for Lebanon to join the Islamic Educational,
Scientific and Cultural Organization (ISESCO), a draft law
stipulating the general health safety of Lebanese citizens, and a
quota for women’s representation in politics.

Lawyer and lecturer at Sagesse University Paul Morcos said that,
although the elected parliamentary bodies in 1992, 1996 and 2000 left
a large amount of legislation outstanding, the question that should
be asked is whether these pieces of legislation respect the
principles of codification, democracy and human rights, or if its
production is nothing more than “legislative inflation?”

Morcos then highlighted the flaws present in Lebanon’s laws, which he
said are mainly caused by the “translation” of the Lebanese laws from
“old French laws” – something which he said did not go hand-in-hand
with the Lebanese reality.

For her part, Professor of Law at Lebanese University Amirah Abu Mrad
said that although Article 7 of the Constitution stipulates that all
Lebanese are equal, such a statement is a “lie.”

She said that if citizens here are equal, then the government should
have implemented the civil marriage law which is a critical part of
achieving gender equality.

According to Abu Mrad, a statute dating from 1936 stipulates the
implementation of a marriage law, which until now is still absent.
“The government should allow civil marriage and apologize to its
citizens for a delay of more than 65 years in implementation,” she
said.

Great Reporter
April 26 2004

Armenians struggling to find a foothold
Posted on Sunday, April 25 2004

By Onnik Krikorian

For visitors to post-Soviet Armenia, first impressions of its capital
resemble any other place in Europe, but travel just 10 minutes from
the centre and you enter another world…

Like Baku and Tbilisi, new hotels, restaurants and boutiques have
sprung up where once stood communal markets and grey, drab shops
selling wares that the majority could afford.
But venture further and roads have deteriorated, buildings are in
disrepair and some have even collapsed. The centre of the city is
illuminated by hundreds of neon signs and billboards but when the sun
goes down, the rest of the capital and much of the country instead
descends into darkness. Poverty here is endemic.

According to official government statistics, half of Armernia’s
population lives below the national poverty line with 17 per cent
living in extreme poverty. Salaries average just $50 a month while
pensions are even lower at $10. According to the National Statistics
Service, 70 per cent of the population lives on a staple diet of
bread, potatoes and macaroni.

As a result, the United Nations concludes that the issue of survival
is still vital for many Armenians.

“When we talk about poverty in Armenia,” says Ashot Yesayan, First
Deputy Minister at the Ministry of Social Security, “we are talking
about people who cannot even afford to eat. Among potential claimants
[for social benefits] are families with young children who have no
money for even bread.”

Living on the edge

In a small room of a derelict house situated half an hour away from
Yerevan, one such family burns plastic and rubber to stay warm during
the winter months. The walls of the room should be white but, like
the three children that resemble paupers from a Dickensian novel,
they are black and covered in soot.

A social worker stands calmly as the children’s Uncle articulates his
anger. The government’s National Commission for Minors has decided
that the children must be removed for their own safety and placed in
a children’s home.

An international organisation has been called in to do the dirty work
for them.

Without the children, the family will find it impossible to survive.
Every day, they beg for scraps and change in the nearby village.
Faced with the prospect of his only source of income being taken
away, the Uncle waves a knife in the air before emotion finally
overcomes him. His legs give way and he collapses into a heap on the
floor.

Families like this are representative of the poorest of the poor in
Armenia. They are unable to feed or clothe themselves; their children
rarely attend school and in some cases, are not even officially
registered as having been born. With no official documents, they are
unable to receive social benefits or medical assistance.

An underclass is forming in Armenia, a world away from the image that
the government would like to portray to its large and influential
Diaspora. It is, however, one closer to the reality than that
depicted in a hundred coffee-table books and postcards of monasteries
and churches photographed against scenic landscapes.

Some even rationalise the situation by arguing that conditions are
only bad in the regions of the republic, but there are just as
serious concerns with poverty in the cities. In fact, the United
Nations considers that urban poverty is far more desperate than that
which faces villagers who can at least live off the land.

In one of the capital’s poorest residential districts, approximately
200 families inhabit a dilapidated hostel complex that once
accommodated workers from the nearby chemical factory. The condition
of the building should be enough to raise alarm in most civilised
countries but the local council says that it is none of their
concern. There are no windows left on the stairwell now exposed to
the elements, and the elevators no longer work after residents
cannibalised their innards long ago.

A four-year-old child pushed another on this stairwell last summer
and one-and-a-half-year-old Isabella fell through a hole in the
railings seven floors to her death. Her mother, Jenik, shrugs off her
loss although from time to time, tears still swell in her eyes when
she remembers.

Jenik has four other children to bring up in two tiny rooms furnished
only by three rusting, metal bed frames and a divan covered with rags
that serve as bedclothes. They’ve lived in this apartment for over a
decade now and don’t even have running water. Her children instead
collect water from those more fortunate living below.

Now, her children no longer beg on the streets after Medecins Sans
Frontieres (MSF) included them in their Prevention program but that’s
not to say that their situation has improved.

Somewhat ironically, although most of the inhabitants of the hostel
are living in abject poverty, only two fall within the remit of the
international medical organisation.

“I agree that many families in this building live in very difficult
conditions,” admits Samuel Hanryon, MSF’s Country Director, “but
their situation is not the same. For example, we can only work with
two of these families because there is a problem with violence. The
needs are enormous in Armenia but we are not the government.”

Which is probably just as well.

Across the road, two former officials have erected large and opulent
mansions, an arrogant display of wealth to contrast against the
extreme poverty opposite.

Children in a difficult situation

Two floors up, a father of six removes copper wire from electrical
appliances and automobile parts to sell for a few hundred drams. Like
Jenik, Hampartsum’s family is also included in MSF’s Prevention
Program but their situation could be considered even worse.

Hampartsum’s only son is in prison for theft after he stole in order
to buy food for the family. But unlike those in government who are
believed to have stolen significantly more, the courts threw the book
at him. Recently, Hampartsum’s son wrote a letter to his father. He
can be released from prison if he pays $100. For Hampartsum, however,
it might just as well be $100,000.

Last September, his daughter, Gohar, became the face on hundreds of
posters that were displayed throughout Yerevan highlighting the
plight of vulnerable children in Armenia. “I want to live with my
family,” read the poster.

Now, Gohar and two of her four sisters are temporarily residing in a
children’s home in Gyumri. And to make matters worse, Hampartsum’s
eldest daughter lives with her grandmother, unwilling to tolerate her
father’s drinking. When Hampartsum was supplied with a bag of cement
to fix up his apartment he allegedly sold it in order to buy vodka.
In and out of hospital for alcoholism, when he drinks, he beats his
wife.

But Hampartsum is not a bad man; it’s just that times are hard. His
wife found work in a local kiosk but left after three days when the
owner refused to pay her the 3,000 dram ($6) she was owed. Meanwhile,
both Margarita and her husband can’t even scrape 500 dram together to
pay for the photographs required for their passport applications.

They’re not planning to leave the country, of course; just that they
need some official papers to receive benefits and other assistance.
Still, they have it better than others.

On the ground floor, an extended family of 14 inhabits a tiny room
that can barely accommodate two. Along the corridor, water gushes
from the communal toilet and the washroom, seeping into the floor.

Last year, according to the residents but not confirmed by other
sources, four people died of tuberculosis on the ground floor alone.

MSF admit that tuberculosis is fast becoming a serious concern in
Armenia. “The problem is a serious issue in Yerevan – especially with
regards to Multi Drug Resistant (MDR) Tuberculosis,” says Hanryon.
“Nowadays, anyone suffering from MDR in Armenia is sentenced to
death.”

But although journalists, international organisations and film crews
visit the families living in this hostel on a regular basis, and
seemingly with good intentions, everyone complains that nothing
changes.

Perhaps they have a point.

Although the Armenian Government finalised its long-awaited Poverty
Reduction Strategy Paper (PRSP) in August 2003, it will take until
2015 before poverty in Armenia is reduced to the post-earthquake 1989
level of 20 percent.

But at least the World Bank and the United Nations consider that such
goals are achievable.

Key to the success of the PRSP will be increasing social benefits and
salaries while waging an effective struggle against endemic
corruption and a shadow economy that by some estimates accounts for
the lion’s share of all business in the republic.

It is envisaged that poverty in Armenia should fall to below 45 per
cent of the population in 2004.

;file=article&sid=248

New Yorker, NY
April 26 2004

DEPT. OF STYLE
WORD PROBLEM
Issue of 2004-05-03

Among the many peculiarities of Times house style – such as the
tradition, in the Book Review, that the word `odyssey’ refer only to
a journey that begins and ends in the same place – one of the more
nettlesome has been the long-standing practice that writers are not
supposed to call the Armenian genocide of 1915 a genocide. Reporters
at the paper have used considerable ingenuity to avoid the word
(`Turkish massacres of Armenians in 1915,’ `the tragedy’) and have
sometimes added evenhanded explanations that pleased many Turks but
drove Armenian readers to distraction: `Armenians say vast numbers of
their countrymen were massacred. The Turks argue that the killings
occurred in partisan fighting as the Ottoman Empire collapsed.’

The quirk was not strictly policed, and a small number of writers,
intentionally or otherwise, managed to get the phrase into the paper.
Ben Ratliff wrote, in 2001, that the Armenian-American metal band
System of a Down `wrote an enraged song about the Armenian genocide
of 1915.’ Another writer who slipped it in was Bill Keller, in a 1988
piece from Yerevan, during his time at the paper’s Moscow bureau:
`Like the Israelis, the Armenians are united by a vivid sense of
victimization, stemming from the 1915 Turkish massacre of 1.5 million
Armenians. Armenians are brought up on this story of genocide.’

Keller, who became the paper’s executive editor last July, finally
changed the policy earlier this month. During a telephone
conversation the other day, he said that his reporting in Armenia and
Azerbaijan `made me wary of reciting the word `genocide’ as a casual
accusation, because in the various ethnic conflicts that arose as the
Soviet Union came apart everyone was screaming genocide at everyone
else.’ He said, `You could portray a fair bit of the horror of 1915
without using the word `genocide.’ It’s one of those heavy-artillery
words that can get diminished if you use them too much.’

Most scholars use the United Nations definition of genocide, from the
1948 Genocide Convention: killing or harming people `with intent to
destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or
religious group.’ But, Keller says, `we were using a dictionary
definition that was the purist definition – to eliminate all of a race
of people from the face of the earth.’ The Times’ position was based
on the notion that the systematic killing that began in 1915 applied
mainly to Armenians inside the Ottoman Empire.

Last July, the Boston Globe started using the term, which, Keller
says, `made me think, this seems like a relic we could dispense
with.’ In January, the Times ran a story about the release in Turkey
of `Ararat,’ Atom Egoyan’s 2002 movie about the events of 1915. The
piece, which referred to `widely differing’ Turkish and Armenian
positions, prompted Peter Balakian, a professor of humanities at
Colgate, and Samantha Power, the author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning
book `A Problem from Hell: America and the Age of Genocide,’ to write
a stinging letter to the editor. Balakian also got in touch with
Daniel Okrent, the paper’s new public editor, asking if he and Power
could come in and talk to the Times about the genocide style problem.
Okrent found the issue `intellectually interesting and provocative
enough that I thought Keller and Siegal’ – Allan M. Siegal, the paper’s
standards editor – `might be interested.’ Balakian and Power, joined by
Robert Melson, a Holocaust survivor and Purdue professor, met Keller
in his office on March 16th. Before the meeting started, Keller told
the group that he was going to make the change. `A lot of reputable
scholarship has expanded that definition to include a broader range
of crimes,’ Keller said later. `I don’t feel I’m particularly
qualified to judge exactly what a precise functional definition of
genocide is, but it seemed a no-brainer that killing a million people
because they were Armenians fit the definition.’

Siegal drew up new guidelines. `It was a nerdy decision on the
merits,’ he said. Writers can now use the word `genocide,’ but they
don’t have to. As the guidelines say, `While we may of course report
Turkish denials on those occasions where they are relevant, we should
not couple them with the historians’ findings, as if they had equal
weight.’ Okrent pointed out that `the pursuit of balance can create
imbalance, because sometimes something is true.’ Although the word
`genocide’ was not coined until 1944, a Times reporter in Washington
in 1915 described State Department reports showing that `the Turk has
undertaken a war of extermination on Armenians.’ You might say it has
been a kind of odyssey.

– Gary Bass

Daily Illini, IL
April 26 2004

Armenian association holds vigil to remember World War I genocide

By Rachel Bass | Staff writer
Published Monday, April 26, 2004

Huddled together fighting the wind against the bleak, rainy sky, the
members of ArmA, the University’s Armenian Association, held their
first candlelight vigil on Saturday night to commemorate the Armenian
genocide during World War I.

Despite its end 81 years ago, the Armenian Genocide and its horrors
remain vivid in the mind of Zaruhi Sahakyan, a graduate student in
economics and the club’s president.

“We need to raise awareness and make it known that we shouldn’t
forget,” Sahakyan said.

Defined by Laine Pehta, ArmA’s treasurer and senior in LAS, as a
“concerted effort by a political power to completely destroy a
culture,” the Armenian genocide claimed the lives of 1,500,000
people. The Turkish government attempted to annihilate the Armenian
population of the Ottoman Empire between 1915 and 1918, and then
again between 1920 and 1923. Diseases plagued the concentration camps
and many others suffered starvation and thirst during the deportation
to Syria. Those that escaped fled to Russia.

Areg Danagoulian, a teaching assistant in physics, emphasized the
importance of remembering the Armenian genocide.

“This was an actual attempt to systematically exterminate a people.
The victims were our ancestors,” Danagoulian said. “When it’s
forgotten, it ends up happening again.”

Sahakyan explained that the international observance for the genocide
occurs on April 24 because on that night in 1915, the Turkish
government arrested more than 200 Armenian intellects and public
figures.

“The largest obstacle to overcome now is that the government that
perpetrated this strongly denies it,” Pehta said. “The official
Turkish policy is that this did not happen.”

Nevertheless, the United Nations’ Genocide Convention acknowledges
the Armenian Genocide. Thirty-three U.S. states also officially
recognize it, the most recent of which was Idaho, Sahakyan said.

As part of the candlelight vigil, Pehta read an excerpt from Burning
Tigris, a book by Peter Balakian, an Armenian intellectual who
teaches at Colgate University. Those gathered also recited prayers
and observed a moment of silence.

Lauren Buchakjian, freshman in business, then performed a piece on
the violin by Armenian composer Komitas, titled “Krunk” — which
translates to “swallow.”

“Komitas was a victim of the genocide,” Buchakjian said. “This song
is a portrayal of what he saw and what he felt, and it depicts the
deep sadness that people felt.”

The Rev. George Pyle of the Three Hierarchs Greek Orthodox Church in
Champaign attended to lend his support and stand in solidarity. He
also came to remember his grandmother who suffered in the 1922
genocide.

“If we forget hatred, we will relieve it,” Pyle said. “I choose to
remember the Armenians and I choose to remember all people who have
suffered.”

The California Aggie Online
April 26 2004

Armenian students commemorate past genocide

By LISA BO FENG
Aggie Staff Writer

The vigil took place when the sun was still out Friday evening, but
candles were lit nonetheless in remembrance of the 1.5 million
victims of the Armenian genocide, which took place from 1915 to 1923.
The massacre was backed by the Ottoman Turk government, and is known
as the first genocide of the 20th century.

The commemoration event concluded Armenian Genocide Awareness Week,
and featured speeches and poems from UC Davis students and members of
the Armenian community. The event was put on by the Armenian Student
Association.

“It’s not the people they want to erase, it’s our history,” said
Karen Sarkissian, a UCD alumna. Sarkissian told the story of her
grandfather, who was one of many Armenians exiled to Syria. During
his stays in various German-run camps, he learned the German
language. His knowledge of Armenian and German led him to eventually
become a translator for the German army and survived the genocide.

Once the largest minority group in Turkey, millions of Armenians were
executed, starved and died of disease while forced to march into
Syria. The events occurred when the new leadership in Turkey – a
group called the Young Turks – was trying to establish itself as a
World War I power.

Close to a century later, Turkey – a close U.S. ally – continues to
deny the events.

The United States also does not recognize the incident as genocide.
In the last eight annual speeches commemorating Armenian Genocide
Week, Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush did not use the term
“genocide.” Bush called the events a “great calamity” in his 2003
commemoration speech.

“Every election we get a president who promises to get the genocide
recognized.but they always ignore it immediately,” said Taline
Gulesserian, a UCD law student.

The U.S. Congress has also heard several bills that recognize the
event but have never reached a vote. However, 33 states, including
California, have issued proclamations acknowledging the genocide.

Gulesserian said she was pleased that Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger
included the term “genocide” in his commemoration speech at the state
Capitol on Saturday.

“Denial is killing them twice,” said sophomore Garo Manjikian, ASA
co-president.

The Canadian government formally recognized the Armenian genocide on
Wednesday, according an Armenian National Committee of America press
release. Canada joins France and Greece as countries recognizing the
issue.

During the week of tabling on campus, Gulesserian said she was
surprised at the number of non-Armenians who have heard about the
incident. Aside from members speaking to students, ASA also showed a
documentary on denial and recognition.

Participants at the vigil were also concerned about the number of
Turkish-endowed scholars teaching in the U.S. Beginning in the late
1990s, the Turkish government has been pushing to endow Turkish
studies programs in major universities in the U.S. with donations up
to $1 million.

According to reports in their campus newspapers, UCLA and UC Berkeley
have both since rejected such endowments.

At the end of the vigil, students recited the Lord’s Prayer in
Armenian and observed a moment of silence.

“Recognition can help ensure the lesson’s learned and can be used to
prevent further atrocities against Armenians and other groups,” said
speaker Christine Vahramian.

FOCUS: The Forgotten Genocide
By Virginia Terzian
For the Titan

April 22, 2004 Cal State Fullerton – The Daily Titan

Sylvie Tertzakian is an adjunct professor at Chapman University and
the daughter of a survivor of the Armenian genocide. She remembers the
stories her father, Khoren Aharonian, told her of his struggle to
survive. Ahoronian was only 11 years old when the Young Turks began
deporting Armenians from his village. He and his family marched into
the Syrian Desert for months with no food or water.

`My paternal uncle and my father were the only survivors in our
family,’ Tertzakian explained.

She spoke of how her father had to witness his mother’s death in the
desert. She said, `The survivors did not get counseling to deal with
their tragedy, instead they carried that baggage with them and handed
it down to their children. ‘

For Tertzakian and many other Armenians who are the children or
grandchildren of the Armenian genocide, the `baggage’ holds a special
meaning to them.

`The trauma that they go through as children – they cannot share it
with others,’ Tertzakian said.

The two brothers were separated in the desert during the genocide;
Tertzakian’ s father went to Jerusalem and his brother ended up in
Lebanon.

For the few survivors of the genocide, these separations were quite
common.

Finding lost family members was an extremely rare occurrence; most
were left to start all over again – alone, with nothing but memories
and the hope that it would never happen again.

It has been 89 years since the Armenian genocide began. Some Armenians
believe the greatest tragedy is not that so many were killed in the
first case of ethnic cleansing during the 20th century, but rather
that its occurrence is still denied to this day by its perpetrators
and forgotten by much of the world.

To fully understand the significance of the Armenian genocide it is
important to examine when, where and why this event took place.

In present day Eastern Turkey, when the Young Turks, a political
faction of the Ottoman Empire in 1915, decided that they wanted to
create a new Turkish state they saw the Armenian minority as an
obstacle to realizing their goal.

On April 24, 1915 some 200 of the Armenian community leaders were
taken from their homes by the Young Turks and murdered, beginning the
three-year genocide that would eventually take the lives of about 1.5
million Armenians, or half of their population.

`The Turks attacked these communities, Armenians were put on death
marches. Others in tiny villages were just massacred. The Turks were
trying to create a Turkish nation with no minorities,’ said Cal State
Fullerton Professor Touraj Daryaee.

The Armenians were driven out of their homes to march into the Syrian
Desert. Adolf Hitler later used similar death marches during the
Holocaust. Cora Granata, professor of German history at CSUF said,
`Nazi policy makes explicitly references to the Armenian genocide in
their plans.`

According to the Web site , when Hitler
invaded Poland he was quoted as telling his associates that a Jewish
holocaust would be tolerated by the West by stating that `Who, after
all, speaks todayof the annihilation of the Armenians?’

As a Web site dedicated to educating the world about past genocides,
gives an account of the Armenian genocide: `the
adult and teenage males were separated from the deportation caravans
and killed underthe direction of Young Turk functionaries. Women and
children were driven for months over mountains and desert, often
raped, tortured and mutilated. Deprived of food and water and often
stripped of cloths, they fell by the hundreds of thousands along the
routes to the desert.’

The Turkish government states that the Armenian people of Eastern
Turkey were attempting to separate from the Ottoman Empire and form
their own country and that the Ottoman Turks were simply attempting to
hold the country together. Turkey has claimed that only a few
thousands Armenians perished in a civil war that took place between
the Armenians and the Ottoman Turks.

In a lecture given at Harvard University in April of 2001, Professor
Vahakn Dadrian said, `For about seven weeks, Mazhar Inquiry Commission
secured from many provinces of Ottoman Turkey authentic, official
Ottoman documents.’

These documents allegedly proved that it was the Turkish
government’s intention to massacre the Armenian people.

Although the international community condemned the actions of the
Turkish government, no actions were made to force the postwar Turkish
government to acknowledge the Armenian genocide.

Today, nearly nine decades later, the Turkish government still refuses
to admit genocide occurred. Instead, Turkey still refers to it as the
`so-called Armenian genocide.’

In an article from the Turkish Press dated March 4, 2004, Prime
Minister Abdullah Gul said `those who are living a comfortable life
outside Armenia do not contribute to improvement of relations between
Turkey and Armenia with their attitude. Historians should deal with
events of the past. The Ottoman Empire had never perpetrated any
massacre or assimilated intentionally.’

Armenians seeking acknowledgement of their people’s tragic history may
be faced with large obstacles, but simply giving up and trying to
forget is not a possibility.

`The genocide lives with us, not just in April, but all the time,’
said Tertzakian, referring to April 24, the day recognized by many as
the commemoration of the Armenian genocide. `It’s something we should
never forget. Never again.’

Taner Akcam, a Turkish scholar currently teaching at Minneapolis
University, is one of the few people from his home country to openly
recognize the Young Turks’ actions towards the Armenians as an act of
genocide. Akcam believes that Turkey has to deal with the past in
order to improve the future for these two neighboring countries. With
work like his from other Turkish people, perhaps there will eventually
be an open border between Turkey and Armenia.

In the U.S., 31 states already acknowledge the Armenian genocide –
including California – yet the U.S. government is still unwilling to
call it genocide. ` You would be surprised how many Americans know
about the Armenian genocide,’ said Tertzakian.

As of March 2004, 15 countries including Switzerland, France and
Russia have agreed to label the 1915-1918 killings of the Armenian
people as genocide.

It is the hope of many Armenians that once the genocide is finally
acknowledged throughout the world, it can help prevent other genocides
fromtaking place.

`The Armenian Genocide should be taught at schools and universitiesto
make people aware of man’s inhumanity to man.’ said Tertzakian.

As art is an expression of life, young Armenian artists are expressing
their peoples’ pain through their art.

In an interview for MTV News, Serj Tankian of the band System of a
Down said, `My family tree goes up to my grandfather and his memories,
from there on, it’ s cut off.’

Tankian’s band is well known, especially in the Armenian community,for
their work towards the acknowledgement of the Armenian
genocide. System of a Down will be having a concert on April 24 at the
Greek theater to raise awareness of the Armenian genocide.

The Armenian movie `Ararat’ is another artful expression ofthe
genocide.

Already in the 20th century we have seen genocide in the Ukraine,
Cambodia, Rwanda, Germany and in areas inhabited by the Kurds.

`We are still going through the trauma of the genocide,’ Tertzakian
said.

Because the Armenian genocide is still denied, the pain of the
Armenian people has been forgotten by the world, but not by those who
are connected to it.

Info maybe for a box

The Armenian Genocide has directly affected the author’s family. Her
great-grandfather, who was just five years old when the genocide
began, wastaken by a Turkish soldier and raised as his son. When he
was 14 he learned the truth about his past and the past of his people
by a few of the surviving Armenians in Turkey. He then ran away to
Syria where he heard other Armenians were living. At the age of 19,
in a chance meeting, he found his uncle and learned about his family.

The genocide is commemorated everywhere in the world that Armenians
are located, with monuments, memorials and protests, in attempts to
make the rest of the world to be aware and acknowledge the Armenian
genocide. Those interested in becoming involved at a presentation
should go to for locations of events near them.

Locally the 40 martyrs Armenian apostolic Church of orange in Santa
Anna’s commemoration Ceremony and virgule with a key note speaker on
the 25th at 7:30pm the event is open to the public and everyone is
welcome for more information contact them at (714) 839-7836.

Also in Hollywood on the April 24th there will be a march in `little
Armenia’ at 10:00am to acknowledge the genocide. If you are
interesting in being a part of this remembrance event go to
for more information.

A1 Plus | 13:13:31 | 24-04-2004 | Social |

YOUNG NATIONALISTS DEMANDING FOR HONOR

Armenian Nationalist Youth Bloc has today held a protest action near Great
Britain Embassy against Ambassador Thorda Abbott-Watt over her statement
denying the fact of the Armenian Genocide.

“We demand the Ambassador for honor to have insulted dignity of our people.
She must apologize to the Armenian people for her statement. Each Armenian
has the right to demand for explanation”, Bloc Vice-Chair Roman Gevorgyan
says.

The protestors conveyed a letter to the Embassy and are now expecting for
the answer of the Ambassador. “Being nationalists we will press for it”,
Bloc Vice-Chair added.