Author: Maral Takmazian

President Serzh Sargsyan signed a decree today reorganizing the Ministry of Territorial Administration and Emergency Situations into two Ministries

• Ministry of Territorial Administration
• Ministry of Emergency Situations

The President instructed the Government to take decisions deriving from the decree within a month.

President Sargsyan also appointed new Ministers

• Armen Yeritysan – Minister of Emergency Situations
• David Lokyan – Minister of Territorial Administration
• Levon Mkrtchyan – Minister of Education and Science
• Artsvik Minasyan –  Minister of Economy

– Approximately 60 people filled the chapel at the Granoff Family Hillel Center last night to hear survivors of genocide share their stories as a part of Tufts Against Genocide’s (TAG) 6th annual Survivors Speak panel. The event was held as a component of the Cummings/Hillel Program for Holocaust and Genocide Education.

Senior Shoshana Weiner and sophomore Mariel Kieval, both interns for the Cummings Foundation, introduced the event with a joint speech about the importance of remembrance. Weiner and Kieval organized the event in conjunction with TAG President Caroline Atwood. In their speech, they said that while the phrase “never again” is often used while discussing such atrocities, events of genocide continue to happen to this day.

The first panelist to speak was sophomore Nairi Krafian, the great-granddaughter of Hagop Madoian, a survivor of the Armenian Genocide.

“My experience is so different from [his],” she said.

Krafian shared snippets of her great-grandfather’s fractured childhood working as a forced gravedigger, who recorded the surreal experience of living among the dead in a journal. “Nobody would pay any attention,” she shared from his journal. “People died, and deaths went unnoticed.”

Krafian said that the repercussions of the Armenian Genocide, where masses of Armenian people were murdered in 1915 by the Ottoman government, have been passed onto her, and “that discomfort influences [her] life.” She said she maintains a deep connection to her Armenianidentity, and takes pride in what she describes as the failure of the Turkish people to extinguish her own.

The next panelist, Holocaust survivor Jack Trompetter, said that genocide stems from a process of demeaning and dehumanizing another people.

“To have a genocide, you need to have ‘the other.’ Once you have that other, the path is clear for an atrocity to occur,” he said.

Trompetter was born in Nazi-occupied Holland in 1942, and was separated from his family as they split up to avoid persecution, ultimately reuniting with his family at the close of the war.

“When people went into hiding in those days, nobody had any idea how long it would be,” he said. “I was one of the lucky children.”

The next panelist, Edina Skaljic, spoke about living in constant fear during the Bosnian Genocide, where ethnic cleansing in the late 1990s took the lives of thousands of Bosniaks. Skaljic said she remembered being given a shopping bag by her mother, and being told to pack only what she needed while leaving their home.

“I didn’t understand. Why did I have to choose?” she said. “That was the moment my childhood ended.”

Skaljic said out of fear of danger, she was forced to assume a new name and hometown to shield the truth of her heritage. She recalled arguing with her mother at the time about pretending to be something she was not.

“Your name could actually mean life or death in Bosnia at that time,” she said.

The last panelist to speak was Claude Kaitare, a survivor of the Rwandan Genocide, where the Tutsiswere being targeted and slaughtered by the Hutu majority in 1994. Kaitare said the conflict began without warning; suddenly, neighbors were turning on neighbors, and weapons and checkpoints were sprouting up everywhere.

He recalled a time when a Tutsi boy went up to

a checkpoint and was beat by the guards with the blunt ends of their machetes. One guard hit the boy with the wrong side of the blade, drawing blood, he said.

“Once they start seeing blood, it’s like open season,” Kaitare said.

After the boy fell to the ground, the guards announced they were taking him to the hospital, which was really “a mass burial place,” he said.

The survivors on the panel all spoke about the importance of remembering genocide.

“In telling you these stories, that makes you witnesses,” Trompetter said.

Students should now carry the burden of preserving his history, he said. Skaljic echoed this sentiment, expressing her fears that their stories of death and survival would go untold.

“Silence is betrayal,” she said. “We say we have to forgive, but not forget.”

The panelists also discussed the difficulty in the healing process after surviving genocide. All of them said that no survivor can ever fully recover, but that educating the next generation helps survivors personally come to terms with their difficult histories.

“There is nothing more amazing, there is nothing more healing for a genocide survivor than to see people who actually care,” Skaljic said.

“The victims of genocide or crimes against humanity are as aggrieved as the ones who died in a war, car crash or natural disaster. Denying this fact is to perpetuate the crime,” historian Yves Ternon said in an interview with . Working especially on Rwanda, Jewish and Armenian genocides, Ternon worked as a physician for year and then devoted himself to historical research.

Asked whether it’s proper to make a comparison between Holocaust and Armenian genocide, he said: “Of course we can and in fact, we should. All genocide studies complement each other. Though there are some differences between these two genocides, there are also a lot of similarities. First of all, both of them were based on an ideology. Holocaust was grounded on racist ideology, which is based on anti-Semitism, or colloquially, on “hate of Jews”. A similar ideology was prevalent among the Young Turks: Turkism, meaning Turkish nationalism and panturkism. At the end, these ideologies went so far that the idea of getting rid of everyone who is not Turk prevailed. I mean, getting rid of Christians, for instance, Armenians.”

“On the other hand, there is an important difference between two genocides. One of them was a pure racist ideology; this is what happened in Holocaust. Comparing the Armenians in Ottoman Empire and Jews in Germany, Jews hadn’t been constituting a problem; I mean, there wasn’t any religious-ethnic problems or territorial issues. However, Armenians had an autonomy problem in Anatolia and they had always been subjected to discrimination, because they are Christians. In this sense, Armenians constituted a “threat” in Anatolia. They had to eliminate it, but how? By annihilating the Armenians. The frameworks of these two genocides is different, but both of them were based on an ideology and resulted in a genocide,” he said.

Soeaking about the denial of the Armenain Genocide, the historian said “it is more than denial, it is an ignoring policy.” “Today, Turkey doesn’t only deny the annihilation of Armenians, but also ignores their existence. As Taner Akçam said, Turkish identity is based on the non-existence of Armenians. If Turkey accepts the genocide, it would also accept their existence. This means that Turkish identity would be harmed in part. This is of course really hard. Thus, I think that the denial will go on for years. Turkey also denies the existence of Kurds. Turkish identity doesn’t accept Kurds with their Kurdish identity; they want to see them as Turkish, which is not true. We have to acknowledge that Turkish identity is problematical and it constitutes the foundations of Turkish Republic. Unsettling these foundations is not easy; it requires efforts that will last for years. Thankfully, there are a lot of scientists who work on this issue and some of them in Turkey, which is a good thing.”

Referring to the perspectives of social transformation in Turkey, Yves Ternon said: “Turkey is still being governed by the Young Turks mentality. Unionist policies remain. I mean, there is change, but it is not enough. In short, there are 3 reasons why I think that the denial of Armenian Genocide will continue. First reason is the impossibility of reconstitution of Turkish identity. Second one is the problem of compensation and the third one is the impossibility of a transformation in Kemalist or İslamist political ideology. Thus, if there is no democracy in Turkey and a radical change, a social transformation is difficult. On the other hand, there are political parties like HDP which are ready to accept the Armenian Genocide. There are minority, but they are there. There might be a change, if the number of such parties increase.”

Today, President Serzh Sargsyan sent a congratulatory message to the President of the Islamic Republic of Iran Hassan Rouhani and Supreme Leader of Iran Sayyed Ali Khamenei on the occasion of the 37th anniversary of the Islamic Revolution.

The Azerbaijani side used weapons of different caliber as it fired more than 700 shots in the direction of the Armenian positions last night, the NKR Ministry of Defense reports.

The front divisions of the NKR Defense Army mostly refrained from retaliatory actions and confidently carried out their military duty all along the line of contact.

Armenia condemns the launch of ballistic missile by North Korea.

“We condemn the launch of the ballistic ‪‎missile by the ‪Democratic People’s Republic of Korea , which violates ‪‎UN Security Council resolutions and raises tension in the ‪‎Korean peninsula,” the Armenian Ministry of foreign Affairs said in a statement.

 

The has named Germany-based Armenian World Champions Arthur Abraham and Susi Kentikian as “Boxers of the Year.”

WBO Middleweight Champion Abraham was voted the best by readers of the magazine and the jury. WBA Flyweight Champion Kentikian received the most votes among the boxers.

Abraham’s coach Ulli Wegner has been named “Coach of the Year” for the 13^th time.

Pedro Agramunt, a Spanish lawmaker and the chairman of the European People’s Party at the Council of Europe (EPP-CD) Group, will replace Luxembourgian lawmaker Anne Brasseur as the president of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe.

The President of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe is elected for one year by majority of votes and can be reelected once.

Last year he was the rapporteur on the functioning of democratic institutions in Azerbaijan. Azerbaijan’s human rights organizations accuse him of bias.

He is also listed among those involved in “caviar diplomacy.”

Reported from Strasbourg by Aghavni Harutyunyan

Armenia has been drawn to compete in the first semi-final of this year’s Eurovision Song Contest, to be held in Stockholm, Sweden.

The first semi-final will be held on Tuesday 10 May, ahead of the grand final on Saturday 14 May. Armenia will be one of eighteen countries in Semi Final 1 fighting for ten qualifying places in the grand final.

The draw has also determined that the Armenian entry will be performed in the first half of Semi Final 1, although the exact running order of the songs will be decided upon by the producers at Swedish television later.

Semi Final 1: Croatia, Finland, Moldova, Armenia, Greece, Hungary, the Netherlands, San Marino, Azerbaijan, Cyprus, Malta, Bosnia & Herzegovina, Estonia, the Czech Republic, Montenegro, Iceland, Austria, Sweden, France and Spain.

Semi Final 2: Latvia, Belarus, Ireland, Switzerland, Macedonia, Australia, Lithuania, Poland, Israel, Serbia, Albania, Bulgaria, Denmark, Georgia, Romania, Slovenia, Norway, Ukraine, Belgium, Germany, Italy and Great Britain.

Armenia will be represented at the contest by Iveta Mukuchyan.

 

The US Embassy in Armenia has issued a statement on the resignation of Human Roghts Defender Karen Andreasyan:

“We note with regret Karen Andreasyan’s decision to step down as Armenia’s Human Rights Ombudsman.  He has been a tireless and effective champion for those who were defenseless; those who feared their voices might be silenced if they voiced unpopular messages;  and any Armenian who fought for his or her rights as a citizen to be respected.  We wish him the greatest success in his future endeavors.  He will remain a friend, colleague, and contact of the U.S. Embassy and the U.S. Government.

Mr. Andreasyan’s work was buttressed by the professionalism and dedication of the staff at the Office of the Human Rights Ombudsman.  One of Mr. Andreasyan’s lasting legacies will undoubtedly be the expansion of the number, and the quality, of staff at this invaluable Armenian institution, which we trust will continue to serve the best interests of the Armenian public under his successor.  We are committed to maintaining our close cooperation and partnership with the Office and its staff on issues related to the protection of human rights in Armenia.  We look forward to working with the new Human Rights Ombudsman.

The United States remains dedicated to working with the Armenian Government and our Armenian partners to advance the cause of democratic development and human rights in Armenia.  Our  ultimate goal has been, and will remain, a democratic and prosperous Armenia, living in security and peace with its neighbors.”