1 - Secret Document Reveals State Dept.’s
Interference in Genocide Recognition
By Harut Sassounian
Publisher, The California Courier
www.TheCaliforniaCourier.com
2- 2019 Aurora Prize awarded to Yezidi activist Mirza Dinnayi
3 - Two Armenian Institutions Vandalized in France
4- Citing Financial Trouble, AGBU to Close Pasadena Manoukian High
School
5- Cultural Boycott of Turkey Led by Major Scholars and Artists
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1 - Secret Document Reveals State Dept.’s
Interference in Genocide Recognition
By Harut Sassounian
Publisher, The California Courier
www.TheCaliforniaCourier.com
The United States government has recognized the Armenian Genocide
multiple times in the past. In an official document submitted by the
US government to the World Court in 1951, the Armenian Genocide was
acknowledged for the first time as an example of Genocide. The House
of Representatives adopted two resolutions in 1975 and 1984,
acknowledging the Armenian Genocide. Furthermore, Pres. Ronald Reagan
issued a Presidential Proclamation on April 22, 1981 referencing the
Armenian Genocide.
Nevertheless, recent US Administrations have made repeated attempts to
block the acknowledgement of the Armenian Genocide by the US Congress
and successive American Presidents have avoided using the term
Genocide in their April 24 commemorative statements.
For example, the Reagan Administration, after Pres. Reagan issued a
Presidential Proclamation in 1981 acknowledging the Armenian Genocide,
opposed Congressional resolutions recognizing the Armenian Genocide.
The George H. W. Bush Administration opposed Senate Majority Leader
Bob Dole’s efforts to have the US Senate recognize the Armenian
Genocide Resolution in 1990.
The Clinton Administration blocked the passage of the Armenian
Genocide Resolution in 2000, moments before the House was to vote on
it.
The George W. Bush Administration objected to the adoption of the
Armenian Genocide Resolution by the House of Representatives in 2007.
The Obama Administration opposed the Armenian Genocide Resolution in
2010, preventing it from reaching a full House vote.
An unclassified “Secret” State Department document, dated October 2,
2000, discloses the length to which the US government went to block
the passage of House Resolution 596 in the year 2000, while Bill
Clinton was President and Madeleine Albright was Secretary of State.
Resolution 596 was approved by the House International Relations
Committee on 24 yes, 11 no and 2 present votes on October 3, 2000.,
but not put to a vote in the House of Representatives.
The “Secret” document contains two letters: the first from Secretary
of State Albright to Foreign Minister of Armenia Vartan Oskanian and
Turkish Foreign Minister Ismail Ipekci; the second letter is from Tom
Pickering, Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs, to Dick
Solomon, President of the US Institute of Peace. In an introductory
note, Steven Sestanovich, Special Adviser to the Secretary of State
for the new independent states of the former Soviet Union, tells US
Ambassador to Armenia Michael Lemmon that both Pickering and Solomon
“are obviously part of the deal we are trying to put in place to head
off the Genocide Resolution. I discussed them today with VO [Foreign
Minister Vartan Oskanian] and Van Krikorian [Co-Chair of the Armenian
Assembly of America] did the same. VO was positively disposed but said
he could not speak for RK [Pres. Robert Kocharyan], who had already
gone home sick. VO will speak with him tomorrow and get his
reaction….”
Secretary of State Albright, in her letter to the Foreign Ministers of
Armenia and Turkey states: “The US Administration has strongly opposed
this resolution, believing that it offers a completely
counterproductive approach to the goal of improving relations between
Turkey and Armenia and promoting reconciliation between the Turkish
and Armenian peoples. I am hopeful that we will proceed in getting
this resolution put aside, because we are strongly committed to what
we believe could be a more promising approach…. I will be writing in
due course with some ideas about how to make this effort a success.”
In the second letter, Under Secretary of State Pickering wrote to
Solomon, President of the US Institute of Peace, an independent
institution founded by Congress: “…Recently, the Congress has been
deliberating a resolution, HR 596 on ‘Commemoration of the Armenian
Genocide.’ As you know, the Administration has opposed this
resolution, but we firmly believe that a Truth and Reconciliation
process on this subject is needed…. The Secretary [of State] has asked
me to write to propose that the US Institute of Peace begin developing
ideas for such a Truth and Reconciliation process with the goal of
launching it in the near future…. As a first step, we hope you will
consider convening a group of credible and recognized Turks, Armenians
and others. These should include the representatives of public groups,
scholars, archivists, government or former government officials and
others. Our hope is that an initial meeting could be held as early as
December in Washington, D.C. This initial planning group would review
the historical and political contexts and generate a consensus on the
scope and timetable of subsequent activities, including creation of a
commission to prepare a report.”
The initiative proposed by the Department of State was finally
launched in July 2001 when the “Turkish Armenian Reconciliation
Commission” (TARC) was founded with the participation of six Turks and
four Armenians which included Van Krikorian from the Armenian Assembly
of America, Antranik Migranian from Moscow, and two Armenian foreign
ministry officials.
In the months succeeding the formation of TARC, I wrote several
editorials opposing it because it was clear that TARC was a ploy by
the State Department to block the proposed congressional resolution to
recognize the Armenian Genocide. Even without the knowledge of the
“Secret” document disclosed in this article, most observers suspected
that TARC was created and funded by the State Department in
conjunction with the Turkish government to undermine the pursuit of
the Armenian Cause.
Unfortunately, certain Armenian groups and individuals were deceived
by this American-Turkish ploy which was naively supported by the
Armenian Foreign Ministry. It took a considerable effort on the part
of many Diaspora Armenians to convince the Armenian government to drop
its support of TARC.
Armenians need to remain vigilant not to fall in the trap of those who
pursue their own interests at the expense of the Armenian nation.
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2- 2019 Aurora Prize awarded to Yezidi activist Mirza Dinnayi
ERBIL, Kurdistan region—The fourth annual Aurora Prize for Awakening
Humanity was awarded to Mirza Dinnayi in the Armenian capital of
Yerevan on October 19, 2019. Dinnayi is the Co-Founder and Director of
Luftbrücke Irak (Air Bridge Iraq), an organization committed to
helping survivors of ISIS atrocities.
Granted by the Aurora Humanitarian Initiative on behalf of the
survivors of the Armenian Genocide, Dinnayi “embodies the power of
compassion, of personal commitment and a burning desire to save
lives,” according to Vartan Gregorian, co-founder of the Aurora Prize
and member of the selection committee.
The Yezidi activist, who fled to Germany in 1994, has become a
prominent figure in the community, aiding survivors of the genocide
started in August 2014 and spearheading a program to bring survivors,
including Sakharov Prize recipient Lamiya Bashar, to Germany. He also
worked as an adviser to Iraqi Former President Jalal Talabani on
minority rights, and met the first group of Yezidi survivors to escape
ISIS.
As the 2019 Aurora Prize Laureate, Dinnayi will receive a $1,000,000
grant which he has donated to charity. The beneficiaries of this
year’s prize money, Luftbrucke Irak, SEED Foundation and the Shai Fund
all work with survivors of the genocide, in which more than 6,000 were
kidnapped and 300,000 displaced.
Working on behalf of the Yezidi community, Mirza Dinnayi has dedicated
his whole life to saving Iraqi victims of terror, evacuating women and
children from territories controlled by ISIS and providing those
tortured and violated with rehabilitation and support.
Tom Catena, Aurora Humanitarian Initiative Chair and 2017 Aurora Prize
Laureate, praised Dinnayi as an “outstanding human being” who never
wavered while facing “an unspeakable evil.” Injured in a helicopter
crash while delivering aid to Yezidis stranded on Mount Sinjar in
August 2014, the incident catalyzed his desire to aid his community.
In an article published by The Independent in August 2019, Dinnayi
lamented the lack of domestic support available for female survivors,
especially in terms of mental health. “There is a striking disparity
between how local and international communities focus on property
assimilating genocide survivors,” he wrote. ‘We must empower survivors
of the Yazidi genocide to successfully rebuild themselves and their
communities so that their generation is not forgotten and lost.”
Home to a sizeable Yazidi community who are the country’s largest
minority group, Dinnayi referenced Armenia’s Yazidi connections in his
acceptance speech, and expressed appreciation for the country’s
recognition of his people’s plight. He also spoke of the silence
surrounding their historic persecution: “As a survivor of the Yezidi
genocide, I should tell you 73 genocides have passed and nobody
heard.” His grandfather escaped fled the Armenian genocide to Iraq.
“Three million people were killed at that time. Nobody spoke about
that.”
The 2019 Aurora Prize Ceremony was part of the Aurora Forum, held in
Armenia on October 14–21, 2019 which convenes leaders and
change-makers from across the world to share knowledge, perspective
and ideas.
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3 - Two Armenian Institutions Vandalized in France
The Samuel Mourad Armenian School in France was vandalized (pictured,
top) on Tuesday, October 22, days after the editorial office of
Nouvelles d’Arménie’s magazine was broken into and ransacked
(pictured, bottom), creating concern among the French-Armenian
community about being targets of attacks.
Vandals broke into three central buildings of the school and smashed
doors and windows of 24 rooms of the building with metal rods and
stones.
This is not the first attack on this secondary Armenian Catholic
school located in the storied town of Sevres, about six miles outside
of Paris. The school was attacked in January. is a secondary Armenian
Catholic school and was
“We are seriously concerned about repeated acts of vandalism against
the Samuel Moorat Armenian College of Sevres. These acts should not go
unpunished,” said Armenia’s Ambassador to France Hasmik Tolmajian in a
Facebook post.
Armenia’s High Commissioner for Diaspora Affairs also condemned the
attack, in a statement posted on the office’s Facebook page. He also
said that he met with the director of the school, Father Harutiun
Bzdigian and discussed the fate of the school, which remains closed
since the January attack. Sinanyan added that after meeting with
Bzdigian he was thinking about ways to reopen the school, “and today I
found out about the second attack.”
“I was saddened to learn that the Samuel-Mouradian School in the north
of Paris was again attacked. Vandalism—it is impossible to describe
what happened in other words,” said Sinanyan.
“I cannot ignore the brutal attack on the office of the Nouvelles
d’Arménie magazine three days ago, which was simply a violation of
free speech and democratic values,” said Sinanyan. “I strongly condemn
such actions against these two Armenian institutions in France, which
has become a second homeland for thousands of our compatriots.”
Sinanyan expressed his solidarity with the Samuel-Mouradian School and
Nouvelles d’Arménie, adding that he spoke to Father Bzdigian upon
hearing the news of the vandalism and offered his office’s support.
The offices of the Paris-based Nouvelle d’ Arménie were ransacked on
Saturday and equipment was stolen, according to the publication’s
website, which reported the break in.
According to the reports, the door to the office was broken and the
offices were ransacked. The publication officials reported that three
computers and one camera were stolen from the premises. The next issue
of the magazine was scheduled to go to press.
“Computers, which were of no financial value and contained the layout
of our next issue of the magazine and a number of important
information—reporters’ notes and non-published interviews—were
stolen,” Nouvelles d’Arménie reported on its website.
Armenia’s Embassy in France was quick to condemn the incident,
describing the attack as “a serious encroachment on freedom of speech
and the values of the republic.”
The editorial board of the magazine is linking the attack to the
activism of its editor-in-chief, Ara Toranian, who is also the
co-chairman of the Coordinating Committee of Armenian Organizations in
France, known as CCAF.
Toranian, who has been a vocal advocate for Armenian Genocide
recognition, was particularly active in recent criticizing Turkey’s
invasion of northeastern Syria.
He represented the CCAF in an event alongside noted academic
Bernard-Henri Lévy on October 12 at the theatre Gymnasium in Paris
addressing human rights violations.
Armenian Revolutionary Federation Bureau member and CCAF co-chair
Mourad Papazian said the attack was the work of the Turkish services
that operate in Paris.
“We expected such an offensive by the ambassador of turkey in France
against anti-Erdogan circles. This attack not only aims to collect
information about our future projects but also was an attempt at
bullying the community. As a result, we ask the French authorities for
intense attention to protect the community’s freedom of _expression_.”
Armenia’s Union of Journalists also issued an announcement Monday,
condemning the attack.
“This isn’t the first attack on the magazine, and as stated by the
magazine’s staff none of the previous cases have unfortunately been
resolved. The reputed media outlet has for many years raised issues of
pan-Armenian significance, condemning the denial of the Armenian
Genocide, its support for the Republic of Artsakh. Any kind of
violence or pressure against free speech is a great problem for any
democratic state,” said Armenia’s Union of Journalists in its
announcement.
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4- Citing Financial Trouble, AGBU to Close Pasadena Manoukian
High School
The Armenian General Benevolent Union, citing declining enrollment and
increased deficit, has announced that it will combine the “AGBU Vatche
and Tamar Manoukian High School (MHS) with our sister AGBU
Manoogian-Demirjian School (MDS) on the Canoga Park campus at the end
of this school year.”
The decision was conveyed to the MHS community, as well as to AGBU
Western District members, in an email on Friday afternoon from the
AGBU Central Board, the Manoukian Foundation and the MHS Board,
explaining the reasons for the decision.
“Parents were also provided information and assurances that they will
be supported throughout the process of deciding whether to send their
children to MDS or another high school,” according to the statement.
“We thank the MHS administration, faculty and staff for their
dedication and devotion to the school. While respecting the MHS school
community’s strong connection to the school, we truly believe MDS will
continue to offer these same values and cultural traditions,” said the
statement. AGBU MDS is located in Winnetka, Calif., which is roughly
35 miles from the AGBU MHS campus in Pasadena. “With an even more
robust educational experience, MDS offers a dynamic learning
environment, a significantly larger student body population, many of
whom are friends with MHS students, and considerably more resources
for students than MHS.”
The AGBU has apparently offered a $500,000 subsidy to offset tuition
(AGBU MDS tuition for the 2019-2020 school year is $10,300 per
student; AGBU MHS tuition for the 2019-2020 school year is $7,980), as
well as to provide students the option to bus from Pasadena to
Winnetka. “The decision to combine our schools achieves two important
objectives: it allows us to continue providing excellent education to
our MHS students at no additional cost to them; and it creates the
opportunity to invest resources in a way that is most responsive to
the needs and interests of our local community to help it grow and
thrive,” said the statement.
According to sources online, the amount it takes to run a school
varies on how large the enrollment is for that year, taking into
consideration salaries for faculty and staff, teachers’ benefits for
health care, financial aid for the students, utilities, general
operating expenses, and books.
“AGBU and the Manoukian Foundation remain committed to providing the
broader Los Angeles community enhanced opportunities to learn and
celebrate our beautiful culture. Combining our two schools allows the
Canoga Park campus to focus on continuing to expand our excellent
traditional education, and creates the opportunity to convert the
Pasadena Campus into a community and cultural center, anchored by the
recently completed Performing Arts Center. This project, which will be
undertaken with the community’s direct input and underwritten by AGBU
and the Manoukian Foundation, will create a hub for innovative
educational and cultural programming. We will continue to keep you
informed on the developments of this project,” said the statement.
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5- Cultural Boycott of Turkey Led by Major Scholars and Artists
By Hakim Bishara
A group of 280 leading scholars, writers, and artists have signed a
petition to boycott Turkish government-sponsored academic and cultural
institutions. Signatories include famous scholars Angela Davis and
Noam Chomsky; art critics Boris Groys and David Levi Strauss;
anthropologist Michael Taussig; musician Brian Eno; and Eyal Weizman,
founding director of the London-based collective Forensic
Architecture, among others. The petition was released in response to
Turkey’s invasion of Kurdish regions in northeastern Syria.
The petition calls on academics, artists, and intellectuals around the
world to opt-out of joint projects and research collaborations with
Turkish universities and to pressure international academic
institutions to sever all ties with Turkish counterparts. It also
calls on trade unions representing university staff to make a
commitment to support the boycott.
“The boycott we are calling for does not preclude communication and
collaboration with individual Turkish scholars or democratic
institutions/journals,” the petition clarifies. “Turkish scholars will
be welcome to attend academic events, using institutional funding to
do where appropriate, to publish in academic journals and to take part
in other activities as individuals.”
This is also a call for cultural workers and cultural organizations to
boycott events, activities, agreements or projects involving Turkish
government or government-funded cultural institutions. International
venues and festivals are asked to reject funding and any form of
sponsorship from the Turkish government.
“Turkey’s academic institutions are deeply enmeshed with Turkish
capitalism and the military industrial complex,” the campaign’s
website reads. “Many universities act as incubators for Turkish
military technology, making the arms companies richer, and
strengthening the state’s oppressive militarism.” Turkey’s government
and academic establishment, the petition adds, have been “working
together to stamp out freedom of speech in Turkey.”
The petition builds on a previous call to boycott Turkish institutions
released in 2017 in response to the Turkish state’s persecution of
anti-war academics in the country. In January 2016, more than 2000
academics working in or researching on Turkey, a group that came to be
known as Academics for Peace, signed a petition calling on the Turkish
government to end its war in the Kurdish region, seek a peaceful
resolution of the decades-long fight against Kurdish groups, and allow
international observers to monitor the situation in Kurdish towns and
cities destroyed by the Turkish army.
The Turkish government responded with a fierce crackdown on the
scholars. More than 700 of them have been criminally charged with
making propaganda for a terrorist organization. “[They] have been
subjected to vindictive and punitive attacks ordered by the president,
Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, and implemented through joint efforts by the
government and the higher education establishment,” the website
hosting the petition reads.
Turkey’s military operations in Syria’s Kurdish regions began on
October 9 after Erdoğan was reportedly given clearance by President
Trump (the president later denied endorsing the invasion). Yesterday,
October 21, United States troops withdrew from Syria, signaling a
dramatic shift in American foreign policy in the region. A five-day
ceasefire that was achieved last week expires today, October 22.
Meanwhile, Russia is filling the void the American withdrawal left
behind with a new agreement between Erdoğan and Russian president
Vladimir Putin, which divides the power along the Turkey-Syria border
between the two countries.
“US troops have been abruptly withdrawn from northern Syria, placing
the Kurdish people in Rojava and others in Syria’s danger,” said Davis
in an address at a conference in Sao Paolo, Brazil earlier this week.
“I am inspired by the struggle for freedom that has been undertaken by
the Kurdish people,” she continued. “Women’s freedom is conceptualized
as the very heart of Kurdish freedom and of their struggle for
democracy and socialism […] Kurdish women and men have been building
the kind of democracy that should inspire us all to be more
imaginative and more radical in our own aspirations and in our
constant struggles for Freedom.”
In an email that raised a lot of eyebrows on October 14, chairman of
Contemporary Istanbul, Ali Güreli, defended the Turkish invasion of
Syria and called on visitors of the fair not to fall for “black
propaganda” about ethnic cleansing of the Kurds in the region. In a
follow-up email on October 18, Güreli retracted his statement, calling
it “entirely inappropriate,” and vowing to “remain outside of any
political situation or debate.”
“People in Turkey are being fed this Erdoğan gray wolf propaganda that
what happened in Rojava was just an extention of the PKK [The
Kurdistan Workers’ Party],” David Levi Strauss, critic, poet, and
chair of the MFA program in Art Writing at the School of Visual Arts
in New York, told Hyperallergic in a phone conversation. “That’s
what’s they’re being told over and over again, and they believe it.”
In 2016, Strauss co-edited the book To Dare Imagining: Rojava
Revolution, a collection of essays about the Kurdish revolution in
Syria that has been hailed as a socialist, feminist, and democratic
revolution since it started in 2012. In the past few weeks, Strauss
has published a series of articles on the situation in Rojava,
expressing his dismay of the overall indifference of the American
public and media to atrocities committed against the Kurds. “Overall,
the coverage in the U.S. media has been disgraceful,” he wrote in his
latest dispatch. He continued: “Almost no one has mentioned the Rojava
Revolution or the new society that had been formed there. No mention
of the women. Do they really not know anything about it? The only
mention I’ve seen was on Democracy Now.”
“We thought that we could have something to do with changing the
conversation by publishing that book in 2016, and it had no effect
what-so-ever,” Strauss told Hyperallergic. “Trump just handed Putin
and Erdoğan everything they wanted,” he commented on the recent
developments, “the ceasefire was just an extension of that.”
“What Rojava built, while attacked from all sides, was an amazing
thing,” Strauss said. “I’m afraid it’s being crushed under the boots
of Erdoğan, Trump, Assad, Putin, and it’s a terrible loss for the
world.”
This article appeared in Hyperallergic on October 23, 2019.
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