Author: Boshkezenian Garik

Armenian National Committee of America
888 17th St. NW Suite 904
Washington, DC 20006
Tel: (202) 775-1918
Fax: (202) 775-5648
E-mail: [email protected]
Internet:

PRESS RELEASE
April 21, 2004
Contact: Elizabeth S. Chouldjian
Tel: (202) 775-1918

ANCA WELCOMES CANADA’S RECOGNITION OF THE ARMENIAN GENOCIDE

— NATO Members Joins Growing Number of Nations
Officially Recognizing Turkey’s Crime Against Humanity

— Praises ANC of Canada for Success in Two Decade-Long Effort

OTTAWA, CANADA – With an overwhelmingly favorable vote of 153 to 68
in Parliament today, North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO)
member Canada joined the growing number of nations that have
formally recognized the Armenian Genocide, reported the Armenian
National Committee of America (ANCA).

The motion reads, simply “That this House acknowledges the Armenian
genocide of 1915 and condemns this act as a crime against
humanity.’

“Armenians in America and throughout the world welcome this
historic step by Canada,” said Aram Hamparian, Executive Director
of the ANCA. “The Canadian Parliament, in rejecting intense
Turkish government pressure, took an important step in further
isolating Turkey for its shameful, international campaign of
genocide denial.”

Today’s action, which followed yesterday’s second reading of the
Armenian Genocide Resolution, Bill M-380, is the culmination of
more than twenty years of work by the Armenian National Committee
of Canada, (ANCC) in Ottawa, Toronto, Montreal, Vancouver, and
throughout the country. An ANCC team has been in the nation’s
capital for the past several weeks representing the community’s
views on this matter.

Bill M-380 was introduced last year by Madeleine Dalphond-Guiral
(Bloc Québecois), seconded by Sarkis Assadurian (Liberal), Alexa
McDonogugh (National Democratic Party), Jason Kenney (Conservative
Party). On February 21st, the Parliament held its first reading,
which included an hour of debate on the measure. Among those
speaking in favor of the Resolution during the first reading were
Derek Lee (Liberal), Eleni Bakopnaos (Liberal), Francine Lalonde
(BQ), Stockwell Day (PC) and the Hon, Lorne Nystrom (NDP).

The governing Liberal leadership paved the way for this vote by
allowing a “free vote,” meaning that individual members are allowed
to vote their conscience, without any pressure or negative
repercussions from their respective party leaderships.

#####

ARMENIAN PRESIDENT NOT GOING TO DISSOLVE PARLIAMENT OR REPLACE PRIME
MINISTER

20.04.2004 18:41

/PanARMENIAN.Net/ Armenian President Robert Kocharian has denied the hearsay
on his intention to dissolve the Parliament or replace the Prime Minister.
“If the Government fulfills the budget for 100% and secures the economic
growth, replacing the Prime Minister or dissolving the Parliament does not
make sense,” R. Kocharian told journalists today. “Moreover, the steps of
the opposition promote more active and consolidated work of the ruling
coalition,” the Armenian leader noted. R. Kocharian also stated that “in
case the opposition tries to overstep the constitutional limits, the
response will again be adequate.”

NEWLY ESTABLISHED NATION’S REDEMPTION PARTY INTENDS TO SAVE NATION IN THREE
MONTHS

YEREVAN, April 20 (Noyan Tapan). Newly established Nation’s
Redemption party intends to settle all problems the Armenian people
are facing at least within three months. Sargis Karapetian, chairman
of the party registered at the Justice Miniistry two days ago, said
during the April 20 press conference.

According to Karapetian, both the authorities and the opposition are
opposed to the people. According to him, the authorities should have
welcomed the people going to the President’s residence instead of
exerting violence against the unarmed participants of the
rally. Sargis Karapetian stated that all the people responsible for
that should be punished. The chairman of the Nation’s Redemtion party
criticises the opposition, as well, considering, that taking advantage
of the people’s discontent wishes to attain the power. Sargis
Karapetian himself seeks no power. The party he leads intends solely
to save the Armenian people solely and return the wealth stolen from
them. If luxurious mansions, restaurants and casinos are being built
in some country, it means that this country is rich: “Justice lacks in
Armenia: one should save the body of the Armenian people and then its
soul.” “We’ll make it and you’ll see,” Karapetian promised, refusing
to dwell on the program for the nation’s rescue. He also refused to
tell the number of the party’s members and the names of his
allies. The leader of the party also said that the organization the
members of which are the azatamartiks (freedom fighters) has its
structures in all the regions. The party cooperates nither with
Yerkrapah Union of Volunteers nor with other organizations of
azatamartiks nor with the opposition or pro-governmental
parties. Sargis Karapetian, in his own words, is a former ARF
Dashnaktsiutiun member and was expelled from the party in 2001 for
“the speeches against the authorities.”

A1 Plus | 07:03:52 | 13-04-2004 | Politics |

Authorities implemented the referendum

On April 12 around 00:30 o’clock, when peaceful demonstrates were enjoying
kind of unification, quite suddenly on Baghramyan Avenue the street
illumination went down. Then the rumors spread: “They are going to press
people with a tanks”. Leaders of opposition declared, it is methods of
making people scare and there is no reason for panic. Suddenly water shooter
cars, which were parked on the next side of the barbed wire started to move
ahead opening the way for helmets. On Bagramyan Avenue street illumination
was put on back. Good trick… army and water shoot cars had to see their
enemy. Simultaneously to water shoot some type of unknown explosives were
thrown out (later we clarified they were splinters!).It was so unexpectedly,
people got in a flap, but kept their positions. On the same moment, some
fellows in civilian clothes, which were grouped around Chekhov school and US
Embassy (first they were among demonstrates) took off their clubs and
started to beat people violently.

At the same time, from the Parliament of Republic of Armenia central gate
red-berets went out, which joined the massacre from the other side. When
number of injured people became critical, not protected demonstrates started
to move back. Crossroad of Baghrayan Avenue and Moskovyan street was already
blocked. Another fully equipped army of helmets was waiting there for
already shocked citizens.

By now, number of demonstrates are taken to the hospital hardly injured.
Obviously lots of them did not apply, being frustrated. Unfortunately none
of Armenian TV channels were there at the moment, the only brave cameramen
was from Russian ORT… he was beaten and camera broken. In an hour, when
some of MPs from opposition were arrested and demonstrates finally repressed
satisfied order implementers were proud to report their chiefs about settled
“rule and order in the country”… Hereafter Mr. Kocharyan can keep up with
his preparation for the Charles Aznavour anniversary concert in Paris…

—

courier-journal.com
Friday, April 9, 2004

Middle Eastern kubbe is a holiday favorite

By SARAH FRITSCHNER
[email protected]
The Courier-Journal
“The epitome of honest country cooking, (kibbeh) satisfies deep down as few
other foods can. Preparing and eating this perennial favorite is not only a
hallowed tradition; it is a universal addiction!”

– Sonia Uvezian

“Recipes and Remembrances from an Eastern Mediterranean Kitchen.”
(University of Texas, 1999)

Kubbe’s mixture has been called “the masterpiece of the Middle Eastern
table.” The beef is made many different ways.

Photo by PAM SPAULDING,
The C-J
When A.J. Thomas’ father moved to Louisville from Lebanon, he brought with
him a deep marble mortar of sorts, what would be called a jurn in Lebanon.
It was the traditional tool for pounding lamb or beef into a paste with
finely grated onion, salt, pepper and cinnamon. The meat was mixed with
bulgur – cracked wheat that had been cooked and dried – after it was soaked
in ice water.

The mixture has been called “the masterpiece of the Middle Eastern table,”
says Paula Wolfert in her book, “The Cooking of the Eastern Mediterranean”
(Harper Collins, 1994). It is referred to as kibbeh, kibbee, kubbe, kubba,
kofte, koupas and keufteh, depending on where you come from – Cyprus to
Armenia – and how your original language has been Americanized.

Thomas pronounces it kubbe (kuh-bee) and grew up in Louisville eating it as
the main course of Sunday dinner.

For these Sunday meals, the mixture wasn’t cooked. In those pre-E. coli
0157:H7 days, people of Eastern Mediterranean descent ate raw beef and lamb
regularly.

Many still do, says Thomas, co-owner of A. Thomas Food Service, who goes to
great pains to make a kubbe-friendly beef available to those who want to eat
raw kubbe, French steak tartare, Sicilian insalata di carne cruda or who
just enjoy a hamburger cooked rare.

Though Thomas says, “we can’t say that it’s safe to eat raw,” the beef they
use for kubbe has been ground with special precautions (the federal
government recommends cooking all ground meat to the well-done stage).

At Thomas’ business, the beef round is trimmed of its surface meat, which is
discarded, exposing the inner, sterile part of the muscle. This beef is the
first ground in the morning, on equipment that was cleaned and disinfected
the night before. All the processing is done in a refrigerated room, and
completed by the same trained personnel who started the process. Then it is
vacuum-packed and chilled and sold only to people who have ordered it so
there are no leftovers.

Many local Lebanese of his generation rarely serve raw kubbe for Sunday
dinner these days, according to Thomas, but “a lot of people will buy this
meat for holidays.” He sells a lot during the winter holidays – Thanksgiving
and Christmas – and today, many people will pick up orders to serve at
Easter dinner.

Easter dinner at the Thomases’ will be pot luck and involve “probably just
the family,” says Thomas, “40 or 50 people.” Kubbe will be a side dish,
along with traditional Lebanese stuffed squash, lima beans and rice. Then,
he says, they’ll set up grills outside and cook ribs and leg of lamb.

Kubbe is made hundreds of different ways, and it is often cooked. Wolfert
has 50 variations in her cookbook (all cooked), and Uvezian includes an
entire chapter in both her Eastern Mediterranean book and “The Cuisine of
Armenia” (Harper & Row, 1974).

Thomas’ family makes it one way. To every 1 pound of kubbe meat, which is
seasoned with finely minced onion, salt, pepper and cinnamon, his mother
adds 1 cup of bulgur that has been soaked in ice water and squeezed dry.
Traditionally, the meat would have been pounded in the jurn, but now the
family uses finely ground beef.

“It’s all a timing thing with kubbe. It’s the last thing you mix before you
eat,” says Thomas.

For more information on specially processed beef, call A. Thomas Food
Service at 253-2000.

Is there a food or cooking ingredient you love? Tell us! Write: Sarah
Fritschner, The Courier-Journal, P.O. Box 740031, Louisville, KY 40201-7431.
Or e-mail [email protected].

Online: Ask Sarah a question at courier-journal.com/sarah

Armenian ombudsman condemns rights violation during opposition rally

Public Television of Armenia, Yerevan
6 Apr 04

[Presenter over video of women’s meeting] The human rights defender,
Larisa Alaverdyan, has also condemned violence directed against
freedom of speech that took place at the opposition rally yesterday [5
April].

Women representatives of Armenian political organizations, who
gathered at a meeting devoted to prospects of democracy, confirmed
that one could not speak even about guarantees for men’s rights in an
undemocratic country.

[Larisa Alaverdyan, captioned as Armenian ombudsman] Any violence and
disorder which takes place in Armenia does not mean violation of the
rights of only a group of men or journalists. This points to the
weakness of the state and ruling authorities which should ensure law
and order in the country.

Reporters Sans Fronties, France
April 7 2004

Journalists beaten up covering opposition demonstration

Reporters Without Borders has protested after at least four
journalists were attacked covering an opposition demonstration. One
of them was also briefly arrested for photographing police setting up
roadblocks ahead of the rally.

Police failed to intervene as a group of unidentified men in civilian
clothes targeted the journalists during a demonstration organised by
the Azgayin Miabanutiun party (National Unity) in Yerevan on 5 April,
the international press freedom organisation complained.

The thugs attacked and injured Anna Israelian, of the daily Aravot,
Onik Grigorian, photographer for Armenia’s investigative journalists’
website, Hetq online, and Tigran Babaian, cameraman for privately
owned Kentron TV.

The attackers damaged their equipment, as well as the camera of Haik
Gevorgian, working for the opposition daily Kaykakan Jamanak. A film
crew from Shant TV had their videotapes snatched.

Before the rally began, Gevorgian was arrested and held for one hour
at Ashtarak, 50 kms from the capital, where he had gone to picture
police setting up roadblocks, placed the authorities said, to
maintain public order.

Expressing concern about the arrest, Reporters Without Borders
pointed out that the cameraman was only doing his job.

Azat Artsakh, Republic of Nagorno Karabakh (NKR)
April 4, 2004

MINE CLEARANCE IS URGENT IN KARABAKH

On March 30 NKR minister of foreign affairs met with the director of
the international program of mine clearance and displacement of
unexploded ammunition Matthew Hovel. The program is implemented by the
British humanitarian organization The HALO Trust which has been
operating in Nagorni Karabakh since 1995. Mr. Hovel, whose term of
service has ended in Nagorni Karabakh, introduced to the minister the
new representative of the program in NKR Ed Row. He thanked the
government of the republic for providing favourable conditions for
their activities and great assistance to the implementation of the
mission of The HALO Trust. In his turn, Ashot Ghulian, the minister of
foreign affairs, mentioned that even 10 years after the cease-fire the
problem of mine-clearance remains urgent in NKR. The minister of
foreign affairs pointed out the willingness of the NKR government to
continue the works of mine-clearance, which is essential to providing
the security of the population and the economic development of the
republic. Matthew Hovel said The HALO Trust will continue its
activities in Karabakh for several years. At the end of the meeting
Ashot Ghulian thanked the organization for their humanitarian programs
in Karabakh and stated the willingness of the republic authorities, in
particular the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to continue assisting to
the organization.

AA.

SUNDAY TELEGRAPH(LONDON)
April 04, 2004, Sunday

The forgotten genocide

Brendan Simms applauds this study of the Ottoman Turks’ attempts to
wipe out the Armenians

by Brendan Simms

The Burning Tigris:
A History of the
Armenian Genocide by Peter Balakian
Heinemann, pounds 18.99, 473 pp pounds 16.99 ( pounds 2.25 p&p) 0870
155 7222

THE MASS murder of the Armenian population of Ottoman Turkey was, as
the Holocaust scholar Israel Charny put it, the “prototype” of
20th-century genocide. In 1894, and again with even greater ferocity
in 1915, the Turkish government engaged in a deliberate strategy of
straightforward massacre, transplantation, death marches, and forced
conversion to Islam.

All this was well known at the time: the Armenian massacres regularly
made the headlines in the British and American press. Indeed, as the
Pulitzer Prize-winning study by Samantha Power, A Problem From Hell,
reminded us recently, it was the Armenian massacres which prompted
the Polish-Jewish lawyer Rafael Lemkin in the 1920s to start thinking
about what kind of international legal safeguards could be put in
place to prevent recurrence. Another, and even more terrible genocide
later, Lemkin’s quest resulted in the United Nations Genocide
Convention of 1948.

Peter Balakian’s new book, The Burning Tigris, which made the New
York Times best-seller lists last year, retells the story of the
Armenian massacres in an accessible way. It is not for the
faint-hearted. In places, the narrative becomes an almost unbearable
catalogue of cruelties and killings. If the author seems to dwell on
these, the reason lies in a revisionist campaign to minimise the
scope of and intention behind the massacres, sponsored by some
otherwise rather eminent historians.

Whether or not the murder of the Armenians was comparable to the
Holocaust against the Jews is a matter of genuine academic debate;
but the broad outline of the killings themselves cannot be disputed.
Even if we discount the testimony of the survivors themselves as
biased, there are still the grim accounts of American observers, and
of the horrified German officers seconded to the Ottomans. In any
case, some senior Turkish figures, such as the Ottoman minister of
the interior, Talaat Pasha, openly bragged about having “disposed of
three-quarters of the Armenians”.

The Armenian genocide was driven by three mutually interlocking
concerns on the part of the Turkish government. First, there was a
profound suspicion of the Christian “otherness” of the Armenians in
an overwhelmingly Muslim polity. The Armenians were not alone in this
respect, of course; the Greeks occupied a similar position.

Second, attempts to modernise the empire led to an emphasis on
“Turkishness”, rather than simply Islam, as a legitimating force.
This only reinforced the exclusion of the Armenians. As Mr Balakian
shows, Armenian converts to Islam were by no means safe: here the
ethnic argument predominated.

Third, and most important, there was the fear of Russian subversion.
The Tsarist empire had been encroaching on the Ottomans in the
Caucasus for some time and had been using the Armenians as a pawn in
this great game; the second wave of attacks took place shortly after
the Ottomans entered the First World War on the German side. In the
minds of the Turkish leadership, therefore, the massacres were also
something of a pre-emptive strike.

The author pays particular attention to the American response to the
genocide. It was, he notes, the first time that the public was
exposed to this kind of man-made catastrophe. At the level of civil
society, the response was overwhelming. Huge sums of money were
donated for relief, and various committees were set up to raise
awareness and put the Ottoman government under pressure. All this
marked the beginning of a global human rights dimension in American
politics.

At governmental level, the reaction was rather different. Some State
Department figures, such as the ambassador to Constantinople, Henry
Morgenthau, played an important role in bringing the massacres to the
attention of the outside world. But in general, the received wisdom
within the administration was that Turkey was a sovereign state, and
that no direct American interests were involved.

Mr Balakian is perhaps a little too quick to judge here. It was all
very well for ex-Presidents such as Teddy Roosevelt to call for
American intervention, but there were severe practical difficulties
involved. The kind of military instruments which rendered
humanitarian interventions possible in the former Yugoslavia in the
1990s, such as precision air strikes, were still in their infancy;
and “Johnny Turk” had shown at Gallipoli that he was a much more
formidable foe than the Bosnian Serbs.

The Burning Tigris concludes with an epilogue on the memory of the
Armenian genocide in recent years. It notes that the American
government continues to defer to Turkish sensitivities on the issue.
A Congressional Bill, the Armenian Genocide Resolution, designed to
raise awareness of the massacres, was sabotaged by Clinton’s White
House as recently as the autumn of 2000 after furious Turkish
lobbying.

During the Cold War, when Turkey was a key pillar of NATO in the
eastern Mediterranean, this made some sort of sense. Nor was it
completely unreasonable to maintain this stance throughout the 1990s,
when Turkey was a cornerstone of the containment of Saddam Hussein’s
Iraq. No longer: the refusal of the Turkish government to join the
“coalition of the willing” in 2003 means that the moment may have
arrived when the American government can finally confront Ankara with
the truth.

Brendan Simms’s ‘Unfinest Hour: Britain and the Destruction of
Bosnia’, is published in paperback by Penguin.

The Associated Press State & Local Wire
April 2, 2004, Friday, BC cycle

Boston arts center displays works inspired by obsession and compulsion

By HELENA PAYNE, Associated Press Writer

A Boston artist has dedicated a museum exhibit to the type of
behavior that causes some to separate their M&Ms into colors, pop
bubble wrap until there is no more plastic to crush and focus all
their attention on the most minute detail out of pure obsession.

The exhibit at the Boston Center for the Arts is called “OCD,” as in
obsessive compulsive disorder. Curator Matthew Nash said it’s not
about an illness but how the creative process can be driven by a
series of obsessions and compulsions.

“You should see my studio,” said Nash, who has shown his art in
Boston, Chicago, New York and Italy.

He is one of the people who separates his Skittles, M&Ms and Reese’s
Pieces into separate containers for each color. He used the latter
two sugary goods to create his art for the OCD exhibit, which lasts
through May 9 and features artists from New York, Pennsylvania,
Virginia and Pennsylvania.

Using the Halloween-like colors in the candies, Nash made a grid that
forms the images of soldiers, planes and other war-related pictures.

“The obsession of this is having bins and bins of M&Ms and hoping
when you’re done it looks like something,” Nash said.

Nancy Havlick has bins with objects separated by color, but they’re
filled with sugar eggs. In an attempt to fuse her multicultural roots
– English and Armenian – with her American upbringing, she decided to
start her own tradition.

With the sugar eggs, Havlick creates “rugs.” Make no mistake, they
aren’t to walk on.

The eggs are colored with a mixture of spices and foods often used in
Armenia, including mahleb, sumac, almonds, apricots, paprika and
rosebuds. She organizes them in decorative patterns on the floor.

“I’m deciding my own tradition. Rather than looking backwards, I’m
forging ahead,” Havlick said, laying one of the eggs in its position.

Havlick said she didn’t recognize her obsession with making sugar
eggs until she realized she has been doing it for a decade. But she
has also realized another fixation: carving out an identity from her
multiethnic past.

In her parents’ generation, Havlick said, it was much more common to
assimilate to the American culture rather than celebrate differences.

“My mother wasn’t cooking Armenian food. We were having hot dogs and
hamburgers,” she said.

The sugar eggs have become her own way of bridging the past to the
future and “to control the chaotic feelings” of life, she said.

And for her two children, the sugar egg tradition is working. Her
9-month-old son Jonathan’s first words were “momma,” “sugar” and
“eggs.”

Many of the exhibitors wanted their art to express something about
both the creation process and the result.

New York artist Jason Dean wanted to conquer bubble wrap after
working for an animation company where he did a lot of packing.

So he decided to make it an art project and see how much time it
would take for him to pop the largest roll of bubble wrap he could
find: 110 feet by 4 feet. It took about six hours.

That roll and other smaller ones are mounted on a wall of the exhibit
like paper towels above a kitchen sink. There is also a video that
features Dean’s “popping spree.”

“I kept thinking that they were a lot louder,” he said. “It just
sounded like fireworks and I kept thinking that someone is going to
question this odd sound.”

Joseph Trupia, another New York artist, used office supplies to make
drawings called “What I can do in 40 hours” and “What I can do in 8
hours.”

Another work in the OCD exhibit shows 600 photographs of rear ends.

“It was kind of a silly thing to do at first and it became a document
of the process of looking,” said Boston artist Luke Walker of his
gluteus photography.

Norfolk, Va., artist Jennifer Schmidt became fascinated with the
repetition of filling in ovals on test score sheets.

“The idea of the artwork showing evidence of repeated activity is
something we see in a lot of different forms,” said Martha Buskirk, a
fellow at the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute in
Williamstown, Mass., and author of “The Contingent Object of
Contemporary Art.”

The clinical disorder is even more consuming, said Diane Davey, a
registered nurse and program director of the OCD Institute at McLean
Hospital in Belmont.

“Obsessive compulsive disorder is really defined as someone who has
unwanted or disturbing intrusive thoughts and who engages in a set of
behaviors that are meant to sort of neutralize the thought and help
them to feel less anxious,” Davey said.

Davey said an exhibit like “OCD” might help someone to question his
or her own behavior and seek help if necessary.

On the Net:

Boston Center for the Arts:

OCD Exhibition: