Author: Boshkezenian Garik

Turkey considers “initiatives” on Armenian genocide claims – minister

NTV television, Istanbul
4 May 05

[Announcer] [Passage omitted] During a briefing to the Assembly
Committee for Foreign Affairs, EU Adaptation and Human Rights,
[Foreign Minister Abdullah] Gul said that the EU issue is still at
the top of the government’s list. [Passage omitted]

Gul also talked about the Armenian claims during his address.

[Gul] We may undertake some initiatives in the coming days as a display
of our sincerity. We will never tolerate the mentality that mud slung
against Turkey will leave a trace even if it does not stick. All of us
see the signs of a new realization and opposition of public opinion. We
will activate the legal platforms in this regard. Our deputies,
intellectuals and our civil society organizations will wage the most
appropriate fight in order to discourage such accusations.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
Contact: Meri Poghosyan

Public Relations Chairperson

HabiArm Community Youth Group of Habitat For Humanity
Armenia
374 (10) 55 61 14
[email protected]

HABIARM COMMUNITY YOUTH GROUP OPERANTING WITHIN
HABITAT FOR HUMANITY ARMENIA
AWARDED A $500 DISNEYHAND MINNIE GRANT
TO LEAD A GLOBAL YOUTH SERVICE DAY PROJECT

Global Youth Service Day (GYSD) is an annual event organized by Youth
Service America with the Global Youth Action Network, together with a
consortium of International Organizations and more than 100 National
Coordinating Committees. From Brazil and Colombia to Kenya and China,
young people around the world are currently organizing community
service projects in celebration of Global Youth Service Day. Since
2000, Global Youth Service Day has grown from 27 participating
countries to more than 125 countries in 2004.

The Global Youth Service day is of great importance to HabiArm Youth
Community Group as it is an official day for what HabiArm has adopted
as one of its missions, i.e. to raise the awareness of young people
about community service and volunteering issues.

We organized a special two-day event for the children of Habitat
for Humanity Armenia homeowners with the purpose of helping them
understand what is the community and how they can be involved in its
development. Before Habitat For Humanity Armenia helped their families
to build their own simple decent and healthy homes. This program made
a real difference in their life and now they can make difference in
someone else’s life and make them smile and feel loved.

The first day, April 30 was community service in action. The children
visited Mission Armenia Nor Nork Community Center taking for them
table games, i.e. backgammons, chess and books. The children, sang,
danced, and recited for grandmas and grandpas.

The children from Yerevan with the guidance and help of HabiArm
members had prepared a performance about Habitat and community service.

HabiArm president and vise-president made a presentation about Habitat
for Humanity, HabiArm youth group and their activities. In their turn
elders explained how their center works and what activities do they
have. At the end elders and children danced together, exchanged phone
numbers and made plans to meet in future as well.

On the second day, May 1, five children from Yerevan and five from
Vanadzor, aged 7-14 were taken to an orphanage in Vanadzor. The choice
of the town was conditioned by our willingness to involve peripheral
regions and not concentrate mainly on Yerevan. Habitat For Humanity
Armenia homeowner children from Vanadzor sang, danced, and recited
for other children and children from Yerevan again performed about
Habitat and community service.

The orphanage kids surprised us with a nice lively concert.
Afterwards the children got together and built paper houses. It was
very interesting to get and compare the orphan kids’ perspective
of home and that of Habitat homeowner children. The day ended with
eating cakes together and distributing gifts to all the children.

Global Youth Service Day is a public education campaign that highlights
the amazing contributions made by youth year-round to their communities
through volunteering. Since Global Youth Service Day started in 2000,
a number of international organizations have joined Youth Service
America and Global Youth Action Network to expand this program,
including the Inter-American Development Bank, Youth Employment Summit,
IEARN, Service for Peace and others. In the United States, National
Youth Service Day, also a program of Youth Service America, is part
of Global Youth Service Day. For more information, visit:

DisneyHand, worldwide outreach for The Walt Disney Company, is
dedicated to making the dreams of families and children a reality
through public service initiatives, community outreach and volunteerism
in the areas of compassion, learning, the arts and the environment. For
more information visit

Youth Service America is a national nonprofit resource center that
partners with thousands of other organizations committed to growing
the youth service movement. Youth Service America’s programs and
services increase the effectiveness, sustainability, and scale of
the youth service and service-learning fields on a local, national,
and global level. In addition to Global Youth Service Day and
National Youth Service Day, happening April 15-17, 2005, YSA also
hosts SERVEnet (), providing the largest database of
volunteer opportunities in America. For more information about grant
opportunities for Global Youth Service Day, please visit

The Global Youth Action Network is a not-for-profit organization
that acts as an incubator of global partnerships among youth
organizations. Their mission is to facilitate youth participation
and intergenerational partnership in global decision-making; to
support collaboration among diverse youth organizations; and to
provide tools, resources, and recognition for positive youth action.
For more information, please go to:

HabiArm Community Youth Group is a youth-oriented team of volunteers
within Habitat For Humanity Armenia.

Habitat for Humanity Armenia is an affiliate of Habitat for Humanity
International and supports community development in the Republic of
Armenia by assisting in the construction and renovation of simple,
decent and affordable homes.

Founded in 1976, Habitat for Humanity International is a
non-denominational Christian, non-governmental, non-profit housing
organization that has helped more than 700,000 people of all races,
religions and backgrounds to have a simple, decent and affordable
place to live. Habitat for Humanity has built or renovated more
than 175,000 homes throughout the world, becoming a global leader
in addressing poverty housing. Habitat for Humanity is active in 100
countries worldwide, including 18 in Europe and Central Asia.

# # #

Belarus, Armenia set to boost bilateral trade
By Andrei Fomin

ITAR-TASS News Agency
May 3, 2005 Tuesday

MINSK, May 3 — Belarussian Prime Minister Sergei Sidorsky and his
Armenian counterpart Andranik Margaryan called for boosting bilateral
trade by several times.

The premiers, at their meeting in the Belarussian capital on Tuesday,
named car-making and agriculture as the most promising fields of
cooperation.

“Belarussian companies are aimed at active work at foreign markets.”
Last year alone, the republic boosted its exports by more than 30
percent as its foreign trade turnover reached over 30 billion dollars,
Sidorsky said.

Belarus is ready to supply to Armenia state-of-the-art technologies
and developments, he added.

In 2004, Belarus invested some six billion dollars in technical
upgrades at domestic companies, and is ready to share part of its
innovations with Armenia. Car-making and agriculture are the most
promising fields in such cooperation.

In Sidorsky’s view, the forms of trade and economic cooperation
with Armenia should be the same as with Russia, Belarus’ closest
trade partner.

“There /in the Russian Federation/ we set up companies which service
centers; we work for the development of the Russian economy; while
Russians work similarly in Belarus,” the Belarussian premier said.

According to Margaryan, the issue of stepping up trade and economic
cooperation with Belarus was discussed at a meeting with Armenian
business people on Tuesday. The target for the near future is to
achieve a 100-million-dollar trade turnover, and then increase it to
500 million dollars.

Last year, two-way trade was 10.8 million dollars. It increased 2.5
times this year.

Turkish Press
April 3 2005

Press Scan

ARMENIAN THESES REFUTED

CUMHURIYET- Documents which the Turkish General Staff published
refute theses of Armenian diaspora claiming that 1,5 million
Armenians were massacred by Ottoman Empire. The documents prove that
413,00 of 987,000 Armenians who were living in Ottoman lands were
forced to migrate to Syria.

National unity

Yerkir
29 April 05

On April 24, the Armenians all over the world showed a unique national
unity: both in Armenia and in the small and large Armenian communities
throughout the world the Armenians commemorated the 90th anniversary
of the Genocide.

There was one idea that united all of us and it was the idea of
denunciation and reparation. This unique manifestation of national
unity raised a logical and natural question – if we can unite around
pain and demands for restoration of justice, what then prevents us, the
Armenians, from uniting around the goal of creating a strong Armenia?

If we see no division lines on April 24, what prevents us from
ignoring those division lines in the process of creation of a powerful
Armenia? Is it not the strong Armenia that will protect us, the
Armenians from the possible blows of history? Is it not the strong
Armenia that will be the best guarantor for us to commemorate the
innocent victims?

Kirkus Reviews
May 1, 2005

THE PROPHET OF ZONGO STREET;
Stories

Ten lively, polished stories from Ghanian-American writer Ali about
the transformation of Africa from old country to new.

Ali’s tales alternate between a hometown setting of Zongo Street–a
densely populated neighborhood of Ghana’s bustling city of Kumasi,
where the locals toil as small merchants–and the ethnic
neighborhoods of New York City, where young Ghanian immigrants strive
to make modern wages in predominantly white America. First, on Zongo
Street, the 91-year-old Uwargida, one of the four widows of the Hausa
King, shuffles out nightly to regale the neighborhood children with
scary mythological tales, such as the story of the eternal dueling
between the devil boy and the priest in “The Story of Day and Night.”
In “Mallam Sile,” the eponymous bachelor tea-seller on Zongo Street
marries the big, strong lady named Abeeba, whose daunting brawn
intimidates her husband’s customers into settling their bills. “The
Manhood Test” recounts hilariously the poignant events leading up to
a husband’s having to prove his virility to his wife publicly while
the old-lady lafiree judges. In “Man Pass Man,” the local swindler’s
mean tricks on people lead to a terrifying interview with the devil
himself. Transplanted to America, Ghanians have to tread carefully
amid the entrenched racism of whites. In “Rachmaninov,” a young
Ghanian artist hooks up drunkenly with a rich blonde American woman
in the city and spends a terrifying night trying to sober her up
rather than call 911 and risk a racial backlash. A Brooklyn musician
in “The True Aryan” has to endure a tedious lecture in multicultural
empathy by his Armenian cab driver; while the vulnerable domestic
worker in “Live-in,” Shatu, a widow seeking work to support her three
children back in Ghana, undergoes hostility from her elderly Long
Island charge and untoward attention from her employer.

Overall, Ali shows an almost anthropological interest in his
characters, and a keen eye for the humanistic detail: a richly
rewarding cultural study.

Publication Date: 08/01/2005
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Stage: Adult
Star: 1
ISBN: 0-06-052354-9
Price: $22.95
Author: Ali, Mohammed Naseehu

Deutsche Presse-Agentur
April 30, 2005, Saturday
11:17:39 Central European Time

Campaign saves Indian elephant from Armenian zoo

New Delhi

After a four-month campaign by Indian animal lovers, the government
relented and said it would not gift a baby elephant to Armenia, it
was reported Saturday.

The federal government had promised to send a six-year-old elephant,
named Veda, to join the only male elephant in Armenia’s zoo, the
Hindu newspaper reported.

Veda was born in the Bannerghatta national park outside the southern
Indian city of Bangalore, and locals complained she would not survive
the freezing temperatures of Armenia.

Animal lovers said it would be cruel to separate baby Veda from her
grandmother Suvarna, mother Vanita, brother Gokula and sister Gowri,
as elephants are very social animals.

They wrote letters to Indian President APJ Abdul Kalam and Prime
Minister Manmohan Singh and held protests outside the park that is
Veda’s home. Their campaign was supported by the Britain-based Born
Free Foundation.

On Friday, the government relented and said Veda could stay with her
family in Bangalore. School children and animal rights activists
celebrated at the park, distributed sweets and offered prayers at a
local temple.

They held banners that said, “Elephantine thanks to the PM” and “Veda
saved from a cruel fate”.

In 1999, Armenian officials asked the Indian government for a female
elephant for their lone male originally from Moscow. In 2003, then
Indian premier Atal Behari Vajpayee promised them an elephant during
his visit to Armenia.

The lone 15-year-old elephant was also from India and very lonely in
the Armenian zoo. “Maybe he should be brought back to India,” said
animal rights activist Suparna Baksi-Ganguly, who led the campaign
for Veda. dpa ar sc

A1plus

| 17:11:06 | 28-04-2005 | Politics |

ARMENIA ALONG WITH ALGERIA

Press in Armenia is not free. Freedom House has issued its annual report, in
which Armenian press is rated as `Not Free’ in 2003-2004.

Freedom House’s annual press freedom survey has tracked trends in media
freedom worldwide since 1980. Now covering 194 countries and territories,
Freedom of the Press: A Global Survey of Media Independence provides
numerical rankings and rates each country’s media as `Free,’ `Partly Free’
or `Not Free.’ This year the organization rated the press of 75 countries as
`Free’, 50 as `Partly Free,’ and 69 as `Not Free’. Out of 27 states of the
former USSR and Central and Eastern Europe (including Armenia) press in not
free in 10 states, free in 8 states and partly free in 9 states. Russia and
Azerbaijan are rated as `Not Free’, Georgia as `Partly Free’. In the Baltic
states press is free.

According to the report, Armenia’s rating makes 64 points. To note, last
year Armenia occupied the 135th position. In 2005 it is one point higher and
shares the 134th with Algeria.

AZG Armenian Daily #076, 28/04/2005

Neighbors

PACE ‘DEEPLY CONCERNED’ ABOUT POLITICAL SITUATION IN AZERBAIJAN

The Monitoring Committee at PACE expressed “deep concern” about “the current
political situation in Azerbaijan on the eve of the parliamentary elections
in Azerbaijan.”

According to Mediamax, the statement of the PACE Monitoring Committee said
that “there are not some basic preconditions in Azerbaijan, in particular,
the freedom of the speech and the right to hold peaceful rallies, that are
required for holding free and just elections, six months before the
parliamentary elections in that country.”

The PACE Monitoring Committee stated that “in fact, the Azeri opposition has
no opportunity to unfold propaganda of its ideas among the electors.” The
statement emphasized that “in Azerbaijan the independent journalists are
still being prosecuted, while after the murder of Elmar Huseynov, a
well-known journalist, they also fear for their lives.”

“The prospects of huge incomes that will flow into the country after the
construction of Baku-Tbilisi-Jehyan oil pipeline, as well as the atmosphere
of the large-scale corruption increase the risk of defending the power and
the money, sparing no efforts. On this background that can hardly be
compared with the situation in Georgia and Ukraine, the insinuation of the
term “revolution” can cause unprecedented consequences from both sides,” the
statement said.

The PACE Monitoring Committee emphasized that the coming elections in
Azerbaijan “will be a decisive test for democracy, especially on the
background of the violations fixed in the course of the presidential
elections in the October of 2003.”

AZG Armenian Daily #076, 28/04/2005

Armenian Genocide

‘TURKISH SOCIETY HAS LOST ITS MEMORY’

“If I had not come to Germany, I would not probably have become a writer and
would not have written a book with an ending featuring Yerevan, the Memorial
of Armenian Genocide of 1915. And I could not find courage and strength to
stand today before the Ararat and speak”.

“When I came to Germany in 1991, I left behind a country that had more human
rights violations than it has today. There was a civil war between the
Turkish state and Kurds. And there was not even a single book that would not
falsify the Armenian Genocide. I knew that the Turkish society, to whom I
belonged, has lost its memory”.

These are the words of Turkish writer Dogan Aqhanlə who attempts
through his activities and literature to evoke the historic memory of his
nation.

Dogan Aqhanlə is now resident of Cologne and works at Cologne’s Appeal
Against Racial Discrimination organization. After the military coup in
Turkey in 1980, Aqhanlə was thrown to Istanbul jail as a political
prisoner and underwent torture and humiliation. He was expatriate to Germany
in 1991 for his political views. Istanbul’s Belge publishing house put out
his “The Disappeared Seas” trilogy in 1998-99. The first two books are
delineation of the last 3 decades of Turkey’s history and the lost
generation; the third one entitled “The Judges of Doomsday” deals with
Christian minorities of the Ottoman Empire during the reign of sultan Abdul
Hamid II and the Armenian Genocide of 1915. Sevnem Hatun, protagonist of the
book, is a pregnant woman clad in man’s clothes who is a Christian survivor
of Turkish massacres who brings her son up in the spirit of Islam to secure
his future. The latter meets another genocide survivor — Anahit.
Developments of the novel bring them to Yerevan, to the Memorial of Genocide
Victims.

During the meeting at the Writers’ Union on April 25 Dogan Aqhanlə
presented his political views, mainly concerning the Armenian Genocide.
Grigor Janikian told the writer that his ancestors were from Western Armenia
and he is homesick for the forefathers’ land and asked whether the Turkish
writer did not want to return to his birthplace. Dogan Aqhanlə said
that there can be no comparison between Armenians who were extirpated from
their motherland and him who was forced out for his political views. Kurdish
writer Karlen Chachan appreciated that the guest recognizes the fact of the
Armenian Genocide, emphasized that no other nation treated Kurds as
Armenians did and said that today’s Turkey implements anti-Kurdish policy.
Turkish writer accepted that he is a protector of human rights first of all
and finds that the Turkish intelligentsia is in shame cap-a-pie. He
considers important that young Turks that live today in Germany, which has
committed genocide, acknowledge the Armenian Genocide.

As a German citizen, Dogan Aqhanlə feels shame that this country has
not so far recognized the Genocide. He says that German archives are open
before every researcher. As regards Turkish archives, they are in chaotic
condition and there is no document containing mitigating circumstances.

“My deeds are not those of a hero, I merely establish the truth. We should
do this earlier and on a wide-scale level. It’s not my business whether the
Turks will recognize or not. I am concerned with working among the younger
generation. Younger classes of Turkish society have something to do for the
Armenians”.

By Melania Badalian