California Courier Online, June 9, 2005
1 – Commentary
Foreign Service Agency Wrongly
Withdraws Award from Amb. Evans
By Harut Sassounian
California Courier Publisher
2 – UCLA Plans Armenian Studies Colloquium
3 – Jerusalem Institute on Holocaust and Genocide
Protests Turkish Cancellation of Conference
4 – AGBU Oakland-San Francisco
Hosts Yeretzian Art Exhibit
5 – USC Education Pioneer
Jack Munushian Dies at 81
6 – Grape Leaves Filling
Worth $1.7 Million
7 – Romanian-Armenian Journalist
Details 51 Days of Iraq Captivity
8 –
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1 – Commentary
Foreign Service Agency Wrongly
Withdraws Award from Amb. Evans
By Harut Sassounian
Publisher, The California Courier
The American Foreign Service Association took the very unusual step this
week of rescinding the prestigious “Constructive Dissent” award that it had
decided to bestow upon U.S. Ambassador to Armenia John Evans, during a
special ceremony that was to be held at the Benjamin Franklin Diplomatic
Reception Room of the State Department on June 17.
The AFSA is the professional association of the United States Foreign
Service. It represents 26,000 active and retired Foreign Service employees
of the Department of State and Agency for International Development. The
Secretary of State usually attends the group’s annual award ceremony.
Last February, during his tour of various Armenian communities in the
United States, Amb. Evans publicly referred to the extermination of the
Armenians in Ottoman Turkey as genocide. “I will today call it the Armenian
Genocide,” the U.S. Ambassador said. “I informed myself in depth about it.
I think we, the US government, owe you, our fellow citizens, a more frank
and honest way of discussing this problem. Today, as someone who has
studied it, …there is no doubt in my mind what happened…. I think it is
unbecoming of us, as Americans, to play word games here. I believe in
calling things by their name.” Referring to “the first Genocide of the 20th
century,” Amb. Evans said, “I pledge to you, we are going to do a better
job at addressing this issue.”
Amb. Evans knew that his frank comments ran counter to the official line of
recent U.S. administrations that have avoided using the term genocide to
characterize the mass killings of Armenians.
After complaints from Turkish officials to the U.S. government, Amb. Evans
was forced by his superiors to issue “a clarification,” stating that he
used the term “genocide” in his personal capacity — and he now found that
to be “inappropriate.” To make matters worse, Amb. Evans was then forced to
correct his clarification,” replacing the word “genocide” with “Armenian
tragedy.”
Since Amb. Evans had dared to challenge the position of his own superiors,
he was nominated for the AFSA’s coveted “Constructive Dissent” award. The
AFSA’s web site explains that this award “publicly recognizes individuals
who have demonstrated the intellectual courage to challenge the system from
within, to question the status quo and take a stand, no matter the
sensitivity of the issue or the consequences of their actions.” The AFSA
states: “The purpose of the Dissent Awards is to encourage Foreign Service
career employees to speak out frankly and honestly.” It also states that
the Constructive Dissent Awards “offer an opportunity to publicly recognize
and honor the courageous and thoughtful actions of our colleagues, over and
above their responsibilities.”
Last week, Haygagan Jamanag, a newspaper published in Yerevan, reported
that Amb. Evans was the winner of this year’s “Constructive Dissent” award.
Since the name of the honoree was not yet officially announced, I contacted
the AFSA in Washington, D.C., and was told that Amb. Evans was indeed the
winner of this prestigious award. I was also told that he was selected
because of his stand on the Armenian Genocide.
As this column was about to go to print, I received an unexpected call from
an AFSA official in Washington, informing me that the Award Committee had
just met and decided to reverse itself and “withdraw the award” from Amb.
Evans. When I asked why, the answer was “no comment.”
We can safely speculate that the same cast of characters at the upper
echelons of the Bush Administration, who had earlier forced Amb. Evans to
withdraw his remarks on the Armenian Genocide, had now succeeded in forcing
the AFSA to rescind this award.
Incredibly, what they were taking away from Amb. Evans was not just any
award. It was an award for dissenting from the Bush administration’s
immoral position on the Armenian Genocide. It was an award for simply
telling the truth! Amb. Evans was basically repeating what Pres. Ronald
Reagan had said back in 1981 in his Presidential Proclamation,
acknowledging the Armenian Genocide. It would seem that Bush administration
officials are not afraid to go after an Ambassador, but they would not dare
to take on Pres. Reagan who committed the same sin of telling the truth!
It is a telling sign of our decadent times that an individual has to be
given an award for having “the courage” to tell the truth — and worse yet,
have that award unfairly taken away from him.
All those who side with truth and justice, should complain to the AFSA
([email protected]) for its withdrawal of Amb. Evans’ award and ask that
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice () have it
reinstated promptly.
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2 – UCLA Plans Armenian Studies Colloquium
LOS ANGELES – The UCLA Department of Near Eastern Languages and Cultures is
sponsoring a Graduate Student Colloquium in Armenian Studies for February
2006.
Invited to participate are graduate students and recent post-docs (Ph.D.
within the last two years) in the various disciplines associated with
Armenian Studies broadly defined. The participants are asked to present the
results of their recent research and interact with peers and more senior
scholars.
Finalized presentations are not essential. Work in progress is encouraged
and ample time for discussion will be allotted to each paper. Comparative
themes and interdisciplinary treatments are particularly desirable,
organizer said.
Interested parties are requested to submit a one-page abstract (preferably
by e-mail) for peer review before November 15, specifying audiovisual
requirements.
The final program will be announced by December 15. A reception will be
held on to welcome participants to the campus and the colloquium will
conclude with a banquet. Accommodation will be provided for out of town
presenters. Speakers are asked to look into travel subsidies available at
their home institution. UCLA has a limited amount of funds to assist those
who would otherwise be unable to attend.
To submit abstracts, send a copy to both Ani Moughamian at
[email protected] and Prof. Peter Cowe at [email protected]. If you
have any questions, contact Moughamian at (310) 207-2080, or Professor Cowe
at (310) 825-1307, fax. (310) 206-6456. Mail address: UCLA, Department of
Near Eastern Languages and Cultures, 295 Kinsey Hall, Box 151105, Los
Angeles, CA 90095-1511.
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3 – Jerusalem Institute on Holocaust and Genocide
Protests Turkish Cancellation of Conference
JERUSALEM – The Institute on the Holocaust and Genocide in Jerusalem,
Israel protested the Turkish Government’s cancellation of an important
scholarly conference on “the Armenian question” sponsored by a consortium
of Turkish universities, which was to have been conducted in Turkish at
one of the universities with an expected attendance of more than 700
registrants.
They noted: “The program titles of many of the presentations made it very
clear that many of the scholars addressing the conference intended to
recognize the historical validity of what is known in history in the free
world as “the Armenian Genocide.”
“They were going to do so despite the fact that current Turkish law
prescribes jail sentences of several years for statements either about the
Armenian Genocide or calling for Turkey withdrawing from Cypress. These
speakers are loyal Turks who love their country and want to see it advance
and grow. Several of them have written about the importance for Turkey
itself to achieve a free society, with guaranteed academic freedom, freedom
of speech, and freedom of ideas; and thus also for Turkey to demonstrate
its readiness to be accepted in the European Union.
“Our Institute on the Holocaust and Genocide in Jerusalem was perhaps the
first in the world to hold an interdisciplinary, multiple ethnic conference
on the genocides of all peoples when we convened the “First International
Conference on the Holocaust and Genocide” in 1982. Six lectures out of a
total of 300 at our conference were scheduled to deal with the Armenian
Genocide. As reported in many stories in the New York Times and other
world press, Turkey pressured Israel to remove these six lectures, the
government of Israel shamefully complied, and when we refused to do so the
government attempted with considerable use of government powers to close
our conference down entirely. Fortunately, even when Israel errs, it is
overall a genuine democracy, and our insistence on holding the conference
including the lectures on the Armenian Genocide could not be broken. The
process of our resistance and success has been honored many times in
articles and books by many writers ever since (for example, in the Yale
Review).
“The Institute on the Holocaust and Genocide calls on all governments of
the world to strive for a high level of accuracy, objectivity and
transparency about genocidal massacres and genocides, including by its own
peoples for many of our peoples in our shared Earth-world have committed
genocidal atrocities against others. In the long run, the goal of human
life, and all government, should be to protect human lives more and more.”
The protest was signed by Prof. Israel Charny, Executive Director, Prof.
Yair Auron, Associate Director; Marc Sherman, M.L.S., Assistant Director.
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4 – AGBU Oakland-San Francisco
Hosts Yeretzian Art Exhibit
SAN FRANCISCO – On May 7, at St. John Armenian Apostolic Church in San
Francisco, the AGBU Oakland-San Francisco Chapter hosted an exhibit of
artist Seeroon Yeretzian’s paintings and illustrations in commemoration of
the 1600th Anniversary of the creation of the Armenian alphabet. Yeretzian
also conducted a children’s workshop on illustrated Armenian calligraphy
inspiring eager local youth to learn the art form.
Yeretzian was born in Beirut, Lebanon where she attended AGBU
Tarouhi-Hovagimian Secondary School. Yeretzian’s diverse artistic talents
include graphic design and illustration and she is renowned as a
practitioner of the ancient art of Armenian miniature illumination.
Her work has been shown in over 25 exhibits throughout California,
including the AGBU Young Professionals of Los Angeles Arvest festival, the
J. Paul Getty Museum, AGBU’s Pasadena Center and the Otis/Parsons Gallery.
To view Yeretzian’s artwork, visit the Roslin Art Gallery online at
AGBU Oakland-San Francisco is dedicated to preserving and promoting the
Armenian identity and heritage through educational, cultural and
humanitarian programs.
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5 – USC Education Pioneer
Jack Munushian Dies at 81
LOS ANGELES – Jack Munushian, a scientist, educator and leader who played a
major role in the development of the USC Viterbi School of Engineering,
died on May 29 of heart failure at Good Samaritan Hospital in Los Angeles.
He was 81.
Funeral services will be held June 2, at St. Gregory Armenian Church, in
Pasadena.
“To an extent few people realize, we at the Viterbi School live in a house
that Jack built,” said USC Viterbi School Dean Yannis Yortsos. “Our
eminence in computer science and distance education grows directly out of
his hard work and foresight.”
Educated as a physicist, Munushian became a part-time lecturer at USC’s
school of engineering in 1957 – a job he kept while holding management
positions at Hughes Aircraft Co. and Aerospace Corp. He joined the USC
faculty as a full professor in the fall of 1967 and was an emeritus
professor at the time of his death.
Munushian had a vision for a new way to educate engineers by using
television. He persuaded the Olin Foundation to help the engineering
school establish the Instructional Television Network (ITV) in 1972 and
used his ties with Hughes, Aerospace Corp. and other Southern California
aerospace companies to make ITV successful. State of the art for its time,
ITV beamed graduate lectures directly from USC to numerous specially
equipped classrooms located at aerospace company offices and factories
throughout Southern California. This arrangement enabled working engineers
to continue their education without interrupting their careers, a concept
that continues today in the USC Viterbi School’s Distance Education Network
(DEN).
In 1988, when the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers awarded
its highly coveted Major Educational Innovation Award to Munushian for his
ITV achievement, the USC Viterbi School had recorded more than 50,000 ITV
enrollments.
Though trained as a materials scientist, Munushian organized USC’s
Department of Computer Science, now one of the USC Viterbi School’s largest
and strongest departments, and served as its first chair from 1972 to 1976.
He also found a home for the unit in the Henry Salvatori Computer Science
Center.
Born in Rochester, N.Y., Munushian received a B.S. in physics from the
University of Rochester in 1948 and a Ph.D., also in physics, from the
University of California Berkeley in 1954. He was a resident of the Bel Air
neighborhood of Los Angeles.
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6 – Grape Leaves Filling
Worth $1.7 Million
YEREVAN (Arminfo) – Armenian customs officers detained Kazakh citizen Aishe
Haroutyunyan while she was trying to smuggle diamonds and gold valued about
$1.7 million as filling in yalanchi grape leaves in a glass jar thru the
Zvartnots Airport.
The Armenian State Customs Agency reported that Haroutyunyan was going from
Yerevan to Actau.
Haroutyunyan says that she bought the jewelry in Yerevan, but feared that
she would not be able to take them legally to Actau She was fined $1.247
million..
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7- Romanian-Armenian Journalist
Details 51 Days of Iraq Captivity
BUCHAREST, Romania (AP) – Romanian-Armenian journalist Ovidiu Ohanesian,
held hostage in Iraq for nearly two months recalled how he and his fellow
hostages were confined in a hot cellar, blindfolded and ordered not to
speak by Iraqi kidnappers.
Ohanesian, home after the hostages’ release May 22, also said in an
interview that they received new clothes as a parting gift from their
captors.
Ohanesian, of the daily newspaper Romania Libera, and reporter Maria Keanne
Ion and cameraman Sorin Miscoci of Prima TV were taken captive March 28
along with their Iraqi American guide, Mohammed Monaf.
A negotiating team led by Romanian President Traian Basescu won the
journalists’ freedom. A previously unknown group calling itself Maadh Bin
Jabal claimed responsibility for the kidnapping in a videotape aired on Al
Jazeera television.
The abductees were blindfolded and ordered not to speak, Ohanesian said.
They were punished if they broke the rules – handcuffed or denied meals.
“We spent 51 days underground, crowded in a small cellar with a weak light
bulb, and blindfolded. There was no air, I was sweating abundantly, worse
than a sauna,” he said.
Romanian prosecutors have accused Monaf of helping to orchestrate the
kidnapping along with a Syrian-born businessman. Monaf’s wife and the
businessman have denied the charge. Monaf is being held in Iraq by US
authorities.
Ohanesian said he found it hard to believe Monaf was involved in the
kidnapping.
“I think he was a collateral victim,” he said. “Monaf was held with us the
entire time.”
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