Category: News

– The Promise is a sweeping romantic epic in the tradition of Dr. Zhivago, its lavish budget denoted by its stars, Oscar Isaac and Christian Bale. It includes a scene unlikely to be equalled in importance this year. It is 1915, and Mikael (Isaac) has slipped back through lines of marauding Turkish troops towards his home village, hoping to rescue his family. Instead, he finds the villagers piled like rubbish by a river, the female corpses’ headscarves a futile effort at modesty. The wooded setting could be a Belorussian forest in 1941, in one of the souvenir photos Nazis snapped of the Jewish Holocaust.

But these are Armenians, the Christian minority who lost 1.5 million to systematic extermination by the Ottoman Turkish government in World War One. The term “genocide” was coined by Jewish lawyer Raphael Lemkin in 1944 to describe the Armenians’ destruction, when its pre-echo of ongoing Nazi slaughter was clear. And yet this is the first time a major film has shown audiences what happened. After 102 years, its visceral impact finally pierces the silence.

Isaac, who made his name as the failed folk-singer anti-hero of the Coen Brothers’ Inside Llewyn Davis (2013), and found true fame as dashing, sexually ambiguous X-wing fighter pilot Poe Dameron in Star Wars: The Force Awakens and its upcoming sequel, felt the scene’s impact when he read it.

“I was incredibly moved every time I would go back to it,” the 38-year-old says, speaking with soft fluency in a Manhattan hotel room. “I had questions about certain other aspects of the movie, but every time I would read that scene, it would never not affect me. That was one of the big reasons I wanted to do the movie – to try to understand how a moment like that could happen, and to figure out how I would get myself to have an at least somewhat honest reaction to it.”

Isaac’s preparation for playing an Armenian villager who leaves for cosmopolitan Constantinople to be a medical student in 1914, only to be almost drowned by history’s tide, involved deep research amongst LA’s Armenian community, and in the genocide’s copious archive. “What was particularly useful,” he explains, “was listening to recordings of older gentlemen speaking many, many years after the fact about what they witnessed as children. Seeing their grandmother stabbed to death by the gendarmes. Little babies being laid by a tree and left there. Being marched out to the desert. All these different kinds of images that you read about, so they became very personal.”

Isaac entered an almost meditative state as the crucial, draining scene approached. “I just came on the set and tried to feel quietly concentrated, but not overly focused, and listened to music. So you’re in a state of relaxation, and ready to respond. Doing that scene felt like it did when I read it.”

Michael’s doctor is an unusual, quietly decent hero, reminding Isaac of people almost as close to home. “There’s a gentleness to him,” he considers. “I come from a family of doctors – my father and two brothers are all doctors, my sister’s a scientist – and there’s an element of people who dedicate their lives to helping others, or hoping to understand things, where there’s an innate gentleness. And on the other hand, they can quickly feel pretty superior! I was more interested in the gentleness.”

Isaac admits he was “pretty ignorant” about the genocide before working on The Promise. The Independent’s Robert Fisk has relentlessly fought to bring its well-documented events to public light, most memorably in the report recalled in his book The Great War for Civilisation (2005), when he and his photographer, searching for evidence of the mass killings in Margada, Syria, discover they are standing on a hill of skeletons. Mainstream cinema, though, has turned a blind eye. Micro-budget Armenian-language films apart, there’s been the fine Armenian-Canadian director Atom Egoyan’s modern-day meditation on the genocide, Ararat (2002), and maverick German-Turkish director Fatih Akin’s The Cut (2014), starring Tahir Rahim as an Armenian death-marched into the desert before a picaresque journey.

A large explosion has hit an area near Damascus international airport, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights says, the BBC reports.

“The blast was huge and could be heard in Damascus,” said Rami Abdel Rahman, head of the UK-based monitoring group.

The airport lies about 25 km (15 miles) south-east of Syria’s capital.

The blast was reportedly followed by a large fire. There is no word on casualties. The cause is unclear.

The first stage of the negotiations between the Republic of Armenia and the European Union on the Comprehensive Air Transport Agreement (Common Aviation Area between the Republic of Armenia and the European Union) has been kicked off.

“The Common Aviation Area Agreement will help to enhance tourism & trade, allow more EU citizens discover beautiful Armenia,” Head of the EU Delegation to Armenian Piotr Switalski said at the opening of the negotiations.

“This is a beautiful day because the relations between Armenia and the European Union are getting a new positive impetus,” he said.

The negotiating group of the Armenian side will be headed by the Head of the General Department of Civil Aviation of the Republic of Armenia Sergey Avetisyan.

Negotiating delegation from the European Union side is headed by the Deputy Head of Unit for Aviation Agreements of the European Commission  Klaus Geil.

In the frames of this agreement the Republic of Armenia will join the EU Common Aviation Area, and as a result the parties will liberalize the market, providing the airlines with the opportunity to operate the routes without any limitations and enjoy equal opportunities of servicing a market with a population of 500 million.

The effective European standards will be introduced in the Republic of Armenia and the Armenian and foreign airlines will be provided with the opportunity to operate air routes based on commercial considerations without any limiting interference by the states.

We should note that on 1 December of 2016 the Council of EU Transport Ministers adopted a mandate that allowed the European Commission to start negotiations with the Republic of Armenia.

Pedro Agramunt, President of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) was banned from chairing the Assembly sitting as His Majesty King Felipe VI of Spain was addressing the sitting.

According to member of the Armenian delegation to PACE Samvel Farmanyan, Agramunt was banned from chairing the sitting under the pressure of PACE political groups.

Farmanyan is confident today is Agramunt’s last working day at PACE and expects the Spanish to resign tomorrow.

An Illinois couple married for 69 years have died with an hour of each other, family members tell US media, the BBC reports.

Isaac Vatkin, 91, was holding the hand of his wife Teresa, 89, as she succumbed to Alzheimer’s disease on Saturday, the Daily Herald reported.

Isaac died 40 minutes later. Family members said they took comfort in knowing they were together at the end.

“You didn’t want to see them go,” said grandson William Vatkin, “but you couldn’t ask for anything more.”

“Their love for each other was so strong, they simply could not live without each other,” said daughter Clara Gesklin at the couple’s joint funeral.

For nearly a century, members of the Dildilian family practiced photography in the Ottoman Empire, Greece and the United States. Unlike the best known Armenian photographers who practiced in Istanbul during the final decades of the Ottoman Empire, the Dildilians worked primarily in Central Anatolia and on the Black Sea coast. The archive they left behind gives a vivid glimpse into provincial life at a time of rapid change and brutal tragedy, the reports.

“Reimagining a Lost Armenian Home” brings together over 200 extraordinary photographs from the Dildilian archive. It also includes text and notes written by Armen Marsoobian, a professor at Southern Connecticut State University who has organized exhibitions based on the collection in Turkey, Armenia, the U.S., and the U.K. He is the grandson of Tsolag Dildilian, the founder of the family business in Sivas in central Turkey in 1882.

Joined by his brother Aram, Tsolag’s photography business developed rapidly and he was able to open studios over a period of 30 years in towns like Amasya, Konya and Adana. The book features photos from these studios, as well as from the family’s travels across Anatolia. More than 900 photographs and glass negatives survived, along with family memoirs describing life during this tumultuous era. It is amazing that so many photos were preserved, and most of the ones reprinted in the book are in top condition.

Many Dildilians perished during the genocide of Armenians in 1915, but some family members were able to survive. Tsolag knew the commander of the local gendarmerie and had himself worked as a photographer for the Ottoman army. He and other family members were allowed to remain in Merzifon if they converted to Islam and assumed Turkish identities, which they did.

When the First World War ended in 1918, the surviving Dildilians reclaimed their Armenian identities with the hope of rebuilding their lives. But things got difficult once again with the Turkish War of Independence and they finally ended up leaving Turkey in November 1922.

“Reimagining a Lost Armenian Home” is a rich, moving chronicle of a vanished world.

The Turkish Ministry of Foreign affairs has issued a statement, condemning and rejecting ‘in strongest’ terms the resolution adopted by the Chamber of Deputies of the Parliament of the Czech Republic on Armenian Genocide and other crimes against humanity.

“We are also disappointed by President Zeman’s letter of 24 April 2017 addressed to the Armenian diaspora in his country with regard to the events of 1915, as it includes serious inconsistencies,” the Ministry said in a statement.

“President Zeman, while stating in his letter that history should not be interpreted by politicians, and exposing the fact that politicians abuse history for their political interests, and that the past should first and foremost be analyzed and interpreted by historians; contradicts his own words as he makes political assessments with regard to the events of 1915,” the Ministry said.

The Ministry of Foreign affairs has conveyed the reaction to these political actions to the Ambassador of the Czech Republic to Ankara.

The adopted accused the Ottoman Empire of carrying out systematic genocide against Armenians, as well as other Christian minorities.

Photo: Murad Sezer / Reuters

Th European Friends of Armenia (EuFoA) organised a briefing to assess the parliamentary elections held in Armenia on 2 April, and their consequences for the future of the Armenia-EU cooperation.

Heidi Hautala, Member of the European Parliament who led the EP’s delegation which was an integral part of the International Electoral Observation Mission (IEOM), was the speaker at this Briefing, which was moderated by Diogo Pinto, Director of EuFoA, and attended by more than 30 representatives of the European Parliament, the European Commission, diplomatic corps and international NGOs.

Mr Pinto thanked and welcomed the speaker and the participants, and reminded that these were the first elections held in Armenia following the constitutional amendments, approved in a referendum in December 2015, which reduced the powers of the President in favour of the Prime Minister and the Parliament, and changed the electoral system from a majoritarian to a largely proportional one, and that they took place just a couple of weeks after the initialling of the EU-Armenia Comprehensive and Enhanced Partnership Agreement.

Ms Hautala, in her initial remarks, noted that the elections were preceded by an extremely constructive and inclusive process, which led to a new, consensual Electoral Code, and reminded that the EU contributed financially to the success of the elections, namely through the introduction of Voter Authentication Devices (VADs) and web cameras, which helped identifying voters and preventing multiple voting, impersonatio
n and fraud, significantly increasing the overall transparency. Ms Hautala added that despite the fact that the elections were well administered and fundamental freedoms were generally respected, observers were confronted with credible information about vote-buying and pressure on civil servants and employees of private companies, exerted by various candidates from different parties.

During the interesting debate that followed, both the Central Election Commission and the Precinct Election Commissions were praised for the professional and transparent way in which their work was conducted; the public TV channel H1 was acknowledged for devoting equitable coverage to all contestants in its newscast; but concerns were expressed regarding the ownership and the independence of the media, and the causes and effects of the phenomenon of vote-buying.

In conclusion, and despite the shortcomings which need further investigation so they can be eradicated and overcome, these elections confirmed that Armenia is on the right track to consolidate itself as a strong democracy, where both the government and the opposition are able to learn from mistakes and integrate criticism. In this context, the EU should continue to encourage reforms and support Armenia’s sovereignty and independence, namely through assistance promoting the independence of the judiciary, transparency of the political process and good governance, but also training for journalists and continued empowerment of civil society.

Mr Pinto, speaking after the briefing, said: “This was a successful event, and I am happy to see that it attracted the interest of so many people. We wish all the best to the recently elected members of the National Assembly of Armenia, and look forward to seeing a renewed cooperation with the EU. The signature of the new Comprehensive and Enhanced Partnership Agreement, which we hope will happen soon, will add impetus to that”.

Photo: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Controllers and scientists must wait until Thursday to hear from Cassini, the BBC reports.

The probe was due early on Wednesday to make the first of 22 dives in between Saturn’s cloudtops and the inner edge of its spectacular rings.

The daredevil flights are designed to gather pictures and other science data of unprecedented resolution.

But Cassini was out of radio contact for the duration of the plunge and is not scheduled to re-establish communications for another day.

Because the probe was moving so fast – at over 110,000km/h – there was some risk attached to flying through the ring plane.

An impact with even a tiny ice or rock particle at that velocity could do a lot of damage, and so the decision was made to point Cassini’s big antenna in the direction of travel, to act as a shield.

But, of course, that meant it could not also then talk to Earth at the same time.

Assuming all goes well, 21 similar dives will be made over the course of the next five months before the probe dumps itself in the atmosphere of Saturn. With so little fuel left in its tanks, Cassini cannot continue its mission for much longer.

The US space agency (Nasa) is calling the gap-runs the “grand finale”, in part because of their ambition. They promise pictures of unparalleled resolution and science data that finally unlocks key puzzles about the make-up and history of this huge world.

“We’re going to top off this mission with a lot of new measurements – some amazing new data,” said Athena Coustenis from the Paris Observatory in Meudon, France.

“We’re expecting to get the composition, structure and dynamics of the atmosphere, and fantastic information about the rings,” she told the BBC.

A key objective is to determine the mass and therefore the age of the rings. The more massive they are, the older they are likely to be – perhaps as old as Saturn itself.

Scientists will do this by studying how the velocity of the probe is altered as it flies through the gravity field generated by the planet and the great encircling bands of ice.