Author: John Hovhannisian

The draft law on recognition of the Nagorno Karabakh Republic co-authored by Zaruhi Postanjyan and Hrant Bagratyan is on the agenda of the forthcoming government sitting.

According to the Government opinion on the draft law, “the adoption of the bill submitted to RA Government depends on the results of discussions between Armenia and Artsakh, with consideration of the future developments and external factors.”

During the parliamentary discussions on the bill Deputy Foreign Minister Shavarsh Kocharyan will come forth with a supplementary report.

The EU’s top diplomat Federica Mogherini said Tuesday that Turkey would only get visa-free travel to the bloc once it has met all the required criteria, AFP reports.

Turkey has demanded its citizens be allowed to enter the European Union’s passport free Schengen zone without a visa by June, in exchange for it taking back migrants from Europe.

But the EU insists that Turkey must meet 72 conditions before allowing visa-free travel, of which it is believed to have fulfilled about half.

“On free travel, this will be done only once all the criteria are respected, as for all countries with which we negotiate free travel for a limited period,” EU foreign policy chief Mogherini said on France Inter radio.

“It was the case with Georgia, it was the case with Ukraine, it is a discussion we are having with Kosovo. There are very strict, technical criteria that must be put in place, a very severe verification must be carried out to apply this measure.”

The EU struck the deal with Turkey to send back all “irregular” migrants which arrive in Greece after March 20 in a bid to halt mass migration which has created enormous strain in Europe.

 

Mogherini said resuming talks on Turkey’s accession was “the only way we can help Turkey modernise its state (and) respect fundamental rights including press freedom … and also hold a larger conversation for example on relaunching peace talks with the Kurds.”

 

If Ankara meets its side of the agreement, the European Commission has promised to recommend next month that EU states approve visa-free travel for Turks.

Today, on the 101th  anniversary of the Armenian Genocide, President Serzh Sargsyan visited Tsitsernakaberd and paid tribute to the memory of the victims of the Mets Eghern.

He laid a wreath at the memorial and placed flowers near the eternal fire which perpetuates the memory of the innocent victims, President’s Press Office reports.

 

Photo: Kayana Szymczak

 

The soft sound of the duduk, the national instrument of Armenia, enveloped the Cathedral of the Holy Cross Saturday afternoon at the start of a prayer service held on the eve of the 101st anniversary of the Armenian genocide,  reports.

Cardinal Sean P. O’Malley led the ecumenical service that marked the first time the Archdiocese of Boston has formally commemorated the genocide that killed 1.5 million people.

“It is so important that we do not allow the events of the genocide to slip into oblivion,” O’Malley said, addressing nearly 800 people seated in the pews. “The one and a half million lives are not forgotten. . . . One of the fruits of their martyrdom is the accumulation of love that unites us.”

O’Malley was joined by church leaders representing a number of Catholic, eastern Orthodox, Christian, and Armenian churches across the eastern United States and Canada.

Sunday marks 101 years since the beginning of the mass execution by the Ottoman Empire. In a ceremony one year ago, those killed were canonized by the Armenian Apostolic Church.

“We pray for them,” said Archbishop Oshagam Choloyan, leader of the Armenian church in the eastern part of the United States. “They will be remembered for eternity.”

Pope Francis last year declared the mass killing of Armenian Christians in Ottoman Turkey during World War I “the first genocide of the 20th century,” during a Mass in St. Peter’s Square to mark the centennial anniversary of the massacre.

The remark angered officials in Turkey, which does not recognize the wartime killings as a genocide.

O’Malley, a top American adviser to the pope, on Saturday urged people to confront the lessons of the genocide.

“We must ask ourselves if the world had responded differently to the Armenian Genocide, could the Holocaust [have been] averted?” he said.

“No civilization can afford to falsify the historical record,” he said. “To do so is perilous.”

Anthony Barsamian, the cochairman of the Armenian Assembly of America, said present-day Turkey must “account for its past so that they will not repeat the crime of genocide.”

He lauded O’Malley for holding the two-hour prayer service.

“We warmly thank Cardinal Sean O’Malley and the Massachusetts Catholic community for hosting this important event on our behalf,” said Barsamian, who also serves as president of the Massachusetts Council of Churches, an ecumenical organization.

Some Armenians said they were grateful for the chance to pray with people of other faiths.

“It was a beautiful ceremony of unity,” said Sona Topjian Frissora, 87, who lives in the North End. “I can’t tell you how touched I was.”

“It was very memorable for me,” said Lilit Karapetyan of Watertown, during a reception that followed the service. “The most amazing thing is there were people from all religions there.”

AFP – As the world prepares to mark the Armenian genocide, filmmakers and musicians are attempting to raise awareness among an American public largely ignorant of one of modern history’s darkest episodes.

It is 101 years on Sunday since Turkey’s Ottoman government began arresting minority community leaders and setting in motion a campaign of systematic slaughter that had left 1.5 million Christian Armenians dead by the early 1920s.

Turned out of their homes and sent on death marches through the Mesopotamian desert, they were stripped naked and forced to walk until they died of thirst or collapsed and were shot dead.

At the same time, the ruling “Young Turks” created death squads to drown countless thousands in rivers, throw them off cliffs, crucify them and burn them alive, raping women and forcing them to join harems or serve as slaves.

The collective trauma has been transferred from the original victims to every subsequent generation of Armenians who have carried the unresolved suffering of their ancestors to their new homes across Europe and the United States.

On Sunday thousands of Armenians are expected to rally in Los Angeles — home to the largest diaspora community in the world — to demand that the Turkish government finally recognize the massacres as a genocide.

Yet there is frustration among the campaigners that ordinary Californians may not have even heard of the events they refer to as “Medz Yeghern” — or “The Great Crime.”

French-Armenian filmmaker Robert Guediguian’s “Don’t Don’t Tell Me The Boy Was Mad,” which gets its US premiere on Friday at COLCOA, the world’s largest festival of French film, staged annually in LA, aims to change that.

“I don’t think the rest of America is conscious of what happened. But it’s not only America, it’s also Europe and a lot of Western countries. They are ignorant of the story. They are not aware,” he told AFP.

“It’s only in places where there is a big Armenian community where people have their voices heard about this subject… Cinema can absolutely educate people and make them aware of what is happening in the world.”

“Don’t Tell Me The Boy Was Mad” is set around the Armenian diaspora in 1970s and 80s Marseille, France and follows a wave of bombings and assassinations perpetrated by Armenian radicals against Turkish targets across Europe in response to the genocide.

Guediguian based his story on “The Bomb,” an autobiographical novel by Jose Antonio Gurriaran, who was semi-paralyzed by an Armenian terrorist attack in Madrid but became a leading advocate for international recognition of what he called “the forgotten genocide.”

Despite a history of support for laws formally recognizing the Armenian genocide, US President Barack Obama — accused of kowtowing to Turkish sensitivities — hasn’t used the term to refer to the killings while in office.

“Barack Obama took the stand that most people in politics do. They come to the community and say ‘we will absolutely recognize that your community or people have been in a genocide.’ But then once they are elected and become president they don’t,” said Guediguian.

Many of the stories of abuse related by characters in the film are derived from the 62-year-old’s own family history, passed down from his grandparents’ generation.

“In the movie Anoush tells the story of her mother who had been raped several times before she made it to France. This story really happened, to my great aunt,” Guediguian told AFP.

The director, who describes reaction to his movie as “very warm,” is looking for a US distributor while in Los Angeles for the nine-day COLCOA.

Meanwhile a second film about the genocide, “Armenia, My Love,” had its premiere in Pasadena, California last week, also opening at several Los Angeles locations including Glendale, home to around 80,000 of the 200,000-plus Armenians in Los Angeles.

Written and directed by Romanian American Diana Angelson, who also stars, the film tells the story of a family living in the occupied territory of the Armenian homeland, now eastern Turkey, in 1915.

Angelson says that while she needed to depict the horror of the massacres, it was the film’s “strong messages of hope, love, faith, perseverance and strength” that she wanted to prevail.

“Hopefully it will travel the world and it will teach many people kindness,” she added.

Friday also sees the release of Grammy Award-winning Los Angeles-based Armenian American musician a thriller inspired by the events of the genocide which was released last year.

“Genocide has become the defining factor of the Armenian character worldwide,” Tankian, whose heavy metal band System of a Down has sold over 40 million records worldwide, told students at the American University of Armenia in Yerevan after the film’s release.

“That is a good thing and a bad thing. No culture, no people, want to be known as victims forever. We have a very old, amazing, gorgeous culture to share with the world.”

By Chris Bohjalian

Friday morning, Rep. Jim Costa will lay a wreath in Fresno’s Masis Ararat Cemetery at the grave of an Armenian who died peacefully in San Francisco 56 years ago.

Most Americans are more familiar with the Peloponnesian War than they are with the fellow Costa will remember. Even in the San Joaquin Valley, home to roughly 50,000 Armenian-Americans, most Californians would be hard-pressed to pronounce the man’s name correctly.

And yet for Armenians around the world, Soghomon Tehlirian’s name inspires pride and awein equal measure. On a March morning in 1921, in broad daylight and on a main street in Berlin, he shot and killed Mehmed Talat Pasha, one of the three rulers of the Ottoman Empire during World War I and the architect of the Armenian genocide. That year he would be tried for murder and the German jury would find him innocent. The New York Times would announce the verdict with the headline, “They had to let him go!”

This Sunday marks the 101st anniversary of the start of the Armenian genocide. It was on that night in 1915 that the Armenian intellectuals, professionals, editors and religious leaders in Constantinople were rounded up by the Ottoman authorities, and almost all of them were executed. In the years that followed, three out of four Armenians living in the Ottoman Empire were systematically annihilated by their own government: 1.5 million people. The majority of Armenians alive today are descendants of those few who survived.

I knew bits and pieces of the Tehlirian story growing up, but it wasn’t until last year whenEric Bogosian published “Operation Nemesis” that I understood what a remarkable and complex tale it really is.

Bogosian, an award-winning actor, playwright and novelist, did monumental research to piece together how a reserved, young Armenian from a village in what is today northeastern Turkey would become a central figure in the plot to exact revenge on the masterminds of the slaughter.

Bogosian’s story is as riveting as any spy thriller, and all the more remarkable because it’s true. (In two photos of Tehlirian taken in the 1920s, the nattily dressed assassin looks more like a silent film star than a man who had grown politicized in 1915 while rounding up the orphans of butchered Armenians and trying desperately to get them help.)

As the individual chosen to execute Talat Pasha – a man the first postwar Turkish government had sentenced to death in absentia for his monumental crimes, and was hiding in Berlin under an assumed name – Tehlirian no doubt hoped he would be acquitted of the crime, but knew also that he was risking his own life and freedom.

Obviously Talat Pasha’s death could not bring back the dead or return the Armenian homeland. If you want to see the definition of ethnic cleansing, visit the eastern half of Turkey where the Armenians once lived. Today there are remnants of Armenian churches and monasteries and unmarked mass graves, but you will find no living Armenian communities.

But Tehlirian took the risk and he succeeded. With a single bullet, he had done what the victorious allied nations had failed to do: punished a war criminal. David had slain Goliath.

After the trial, Tehlirian would move to Serbia and, later, San Francisco, where he would die in 1960. (He is buried in Fresno because at the time Masis Ararat Cemetery was the only Armenian cemetery in America.) He understood he was viewed as a hero by his people, but he and his wife lived without ostentation. Nevertheless, his grave in Fresno is magnificent, a monument befitting a war hero: a 22-foot-high obelisk with an eagle on top and a pair of cypress trees behind it.

Invariably, the 101st anniversary of any event is a shadow of the centennial. That’s especially true when it is the anniversary of an occasion as solemn as the commencement of a genocide.

But there are links between the Armenian genocide, the Holocaust, the Cambodian killing fields, Bosnia, Rwanda, Darfur, and the violence that ISIS has unleashed on the Armenians and Yazidis in Syria.

The last stage in a genocide is often the first stage of the next one. Moreover, Turkey still refuses to acknowledge the crimes of the Ottoman Empire, leveraging its geographic and geopolitical clout to bully its allies – including the United States – into euphemism or silence. The fact is, the Armenian nation is statistically a diaspora nation, with seven of every 10 Armenians in this world living outside the nation state.

Consequently, the genocide is, as Pope Francis eloquently described it last year, an open wound for Armenians. We all know what happened to our ancestors – our own parents, grandparents or great-grandparents.

And so while we are now at the centennial plus one, remembering the Armenian genocide is as important as ever. Friday’s wreath-laying and remarks at the Tehlirian grave are especially meaningful. It may not mark the first time that a U.S. congressional representative has visited the monument, but it seems to be the first time in memory. Speaking and standing beside Costa will be Raffi Hamparian, chairman of the Armenian National Committee of America.

Whenever we speak of genocide, we begin first with the numbers. The 6 million. The 1.5 million. But it is not merely the souls that are lost; it is the stories. It is the sense of self. It is the dignity that comes with being human.

My sense is there will be a good crowd Friday – as there should be. Tehlirian, after all, is the closest thing the Armenians have to an avenging angel. Tehlirian gave something to the Armenian people that was taken from even the survivors: a small taste of the pride that walks hand in hand with justice.

On April 8, Foreign Minister Edward Nalbandian participated in the session of the CIS’ Council of Ministers of Foreign Affairs in Moscow.

The Foreign Ministers discussed the CIS activity and range of issues to improve its efficiency.

Foreign Minister of Armenia delivered a statement at the session. Touching upon the military actions unleashed by Azerbaijan against Artsakh (Nagorno-Karabakh), Edward Nalbandian, said, “From the years of establishment, the Commonwealth of Independent States set forth its role in economic, cultural-scientific, political and other processes, however, not always living up to the expectations. Prevention of negative expressions has not been achieved on a range of fundamental issues, including in security. The Nagorno-Karabakh issue is one of the vivid expressions. Not only have the developments happening in recent days caused human losses and deterioration of the crisis, not only are they fraught with long-term destabilization, but also they may become a new challenge to the International as well as humanitarian law, not only to the United Nations’ Charter, other fundamental documents, but also the CIS Charter, which also contains articles on peaceful settlement of disputes and conflicts.

What happened is a consequence of the fact that not everyone in the CIS in practice shares this approach. Large-scale military offensive unleashed by Azerbaijan in the recent days against Nagorno-Karabakh not only violates the 1994 permanent Trilateral Ceasefire Agreement and 1995 Agreement on the Consolidation of the Cease-fire Regime. By the way, the former was initiated in the CIS Inter-Parliamentary Assembly. From the early hours of the unleashed attack, civilian infrastructures were intentionally and overtly targeted, civilians suffered, including children and the elderly.

The calls of the international community for the settlement of the issue through peaceful means were grossly neglected. It is obvious that all this seriously damages the negotiation process and the efforts of the Minsk Group Co-Chairs.

On numerous occasions we have drawn the attention of the international community urging to curb Baku’s military ambitions having in mind exactly such a development of the situation.

Today more than ever the imperative is in the efforts for finding of solutions to exclude in the future of reoccurrence of what happened, to refuse from undertaking explosive attempts on seeking military solution to the issue, to secure exclusively peaceful settlement of the issue.”

Reflecting on possible reforms and increase of the Organization’s efficiency, Minister Nalbandian said, “We would like everyone in the CIS to realize to the same extent their responsibility for preservation and future of this space. Improvement of the CIS activity would certainly contribute to that. It is important to determine what a CIS we would like to see. Multi-lateral structure is attractive when it is effective with distinct mutual commitments, clear preferences and non-exaggerated structure of sectoral cooperation, duplicating each other on a number of issues.

From our point of view, the decisions on deepening of cooperation in this or that field are worthwhile taking, given the level of real interest of the member-states. I would like to emphasize, real rather than declarative readiness to cooperate via CIS’s resources. Today we face a situation when certain member-state signs only 10 percent of the documents adopted, 90 percent of which with reservations.

With only a few members expressing an interest in cooperation in this or that area, who at the same time are members of other integration and other associations, submission of an issue in the CIS format requires thorough examination. Simultaneously, this approach could not lead to curtailing of cooperation in the mentioned fields within the existing legal framework.

It is reasonable to continue making an inventory on the legal framework, defining clear mechanisms for the implementation of the following principles:
-mandatory rotation of quota positions,
-level of responsibility and accountability of CIS’ structures and bodies for drafting of documents, which enables reduction of a number of meetings with participation of experts from capitals,
-optimization of rule-making activity,
-exclusion of duplication of similar functions, etc.

Yet again I would like to underline, that Armenia pursues a positive agenda in the CIS. We spare no effort to translate into practical life all the positive experience gained within this format of cooperation and provide modernization of CIS in accordance with today’s realities.

Concluding my remarks, I would mention readiness to support drafts of more than dozen documents on different aspects of cooperation agreed upon for the session.”

Photo: REUTERS/SANA

 

Syrian soldiers advanced slowly in heavy fighting with Islamic State fighters near Palmyra’s ancient ruins on Friday, state media and a monitoring group said, in an offensive which could open up swathes of eastern Syria to government forces, reports.

The recapture of Palmyra, which the Islamist militants seized in May 2015, would mark the biggest single gain for President Bashar al-Assad since Russia intervened in September and turned the tide of the five-year conflict in his favor.

Syria’s SANA news agency said that the army and an allied militia took more high ground overlooking the city, while the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported advances by the army amid what it said were heavy clashes.

Observatory director Rami Abdulrahman said the fighting had reached Palmyra’s Roman-era ruins, located in the southwest of the city, where he said the army could not rely on air cover because of the risk of further damage to the ancient site.

Islamic State has blown up ancient temples and tombs since capturing Palmyra, something the U.N. cultural agency UNESCO has called a war crime.

The agency welcomed the prospect of Palmyra’s recapture, saying it “carries the memory of the Syrian people, and the values of cultural diversity, tolerance and openness that have made this region a cradle of civilization.

“For one year, Palmyra has been a symbol of the cultural cleansing plaguing the Middle East,” UNESCO director-general Irina Bokova said in a statement.

The European Central Bank cut all its interest rates and expanded its monthly bond purchases by a third as President Mario Draghi strives to fend off the threat of euro-area deflation, reports.

The 25-member Governing Council, meeting in Frankfurt on Thursday, cut the rate on cash parked overnight by banks by 10 basis points to minus 0.4 percent, and its benchmark rate to zero. Bond purchases were raised to 80 billion euros ($87 billion) a month, starting in April, and corporate bonds will now be eligible. Draghi will hold a press conference at 2:30 p.m. local time.

Market expectations for more stimulus had risen after the ECB said it would review its program as persistent weakness in consumer prices and a Chinese slowdown threaten to undermine the euro-area recovery.

The State of Georgia has adopted H.R. 1580, resolution recognizing the independence of the Nagorno Karabakh Republic.

The resolution notes that “the Nagorno Karabakh Republic has a long and storied history, holding a cherished place in the Armenian people’s history and culture.”

The resolution takes note of the fact that  the Nagorno Karabakh Republic declared its independence on December 10, 1991, after a long struggle that in some respects continues to this day, that the persistent demand for self-determination was an inspiration to people of many nationalities in the region, becoming one of the catalysts for the breakup of the former Soviet Union.

The document stresses that through the course of the last two decades, the people of the Nagorno Karabakh Republic have shown tenacity and perseverance in the face of war, massacres, economic deprivation, and other tremendous hardships; and for more than 20 years, the Nagorno Karabakh Republic has stayed true and faithful to its citizens by remaining independent while working to bring change and stability to the Caucasus region and by holding free and fair elections and referendums that were widely declared as a model for the region.”

“International observers, including the United States, have assessed the May 3, 2015, Parliamentary Elections in the Nagorno Karabakh Republic as free and transparent,” the document reads.

Therefore, members of the House of Representatives honor the Nagorno Karabakh Republic and its citizens; recognize the sacrifices, dedication, and resolve shown by the people of the republic in the face of extreme adversity; extend best wishes for peace, prosperity, and continuing success; and encourage the international community to give appropriate recognition to the Nagorno Karabakh Republic as a free, independent, and sovereign democracy.