Photo: AFP
Armenian peacekeepers are safe after the Taliban attack on an army base on Friday, Spokesman for the Ministry of Defense Artsrun Hovhannisyan reports.
“No of the Armenian peacekeepers has been hurt in the attack on the Mazar-e Sharif in northern Balkh province. they continue service in another base,” Hovhannisyan said in a Facebook post.
More than 100 Afghan soldiers were killed or wounded in a Taliban attack on an army base on Friday.
In a letter dated April 21, 2017 and addressed to the Armenian National Committee of America Western Region (ANCA-WR), Wyoming Governor Matthew H. Mead has recognized the Armenian Genocide and praised the work of Armenian American grassroots.
“The atrocities of both the Armenian and Jewish Holocausts were unimaginable,” reads Governor Mead’s letter, “but it is important for all to remember – history must not repeat itself.” The letter also recalls a meeting with senior ANCA-WR staff earlier this year, when Executive Director Elen Asatryan and Community Development Coordinator Simon Maghakyan visited Cheyenne, adding that “The work of the Armenian National Committee is inspiring.” Referencing the upcoming April 23 commemoration in Denver, Governor Mead concludes his letter with, “My thoughts are with you as you gather for the Colorado State Capitol Armenian Genocide Commemoration.”
“We thank the Governor of the Great State of Wyoming for standing on the right side of history and adding his voice to the ongoing need to recognize and commemorate the Armenian Genocide,” remarked ANCA-WR Chair Nora Hovsepian. “This recognition is a tribute to the memory of our ancestors and a celebration of the brave work of many Wyomingites who supported the national Near East Relief effort of building and operating 400 orphanages for over 132,000 Armenian children who survived the genocide. Last but not least, this recognition is a testament to the tireless work of our grassroots activists and dedicated staff,” continued Hovsepian.
The news of Wyoming’s recognition of the Armenian Genocide also received praise by elected officials and activists in the Equality State. “I congratulate the Governor for his courageous stance on this moral issue amid lavish anti-Armenian lobbying in Wyoming, which has included all-inclusive junkets to the dictatorship of Azerbaijan by legislators across our nation, who should know better than hobnobbing with bloody dictators that behead Christian Armenians and destroy ancient Armenian churches and Djulfa cross-stones,” remarked Wyoming State Senator Anthony Bouchard. “The Armenian Genocide is an unpunished crime that needs to be recognized and accounted for; Turkey’s ongoing denial of this grave crime, illegal blockade of Armenia and support for Azerbaijan’s genocidal policies against Armenia and Artsakh must end,” continued Sen. Bouchard.
Local ANCA activist Ani Gasparyan, a resident of Larimie, Wyoming, also praised the Governor for recognizing the Armenian Genocide: “As our community recalls the murder of 1.5 million people and the loss of the majority of our homeland, it warms our hearts to know that Governor Mead is recognizing the Armenian Genocide on its 102nd anniversary.”
Today’s victory comes after the ANCA-Western Region team drove down from Denver Colorado to the Equality State on the 29th of February and spent the day meeting with senators and representatives to educate them about the Armenian Genocide, Artsakh, the Armenian community, and discuss Armenian-American priorities. During the visit, Senator Bouchard, who during his recent election campaign connected with the ANCA-WR about his opponent’s junket to Azerbaijan and spoke forcefully against these dirty tactics on the campaign trail, welcomed the ANCA-WR team by connecting them to the Governor’s office and other elected officials. Before the sun rose the next morning, joined by the Chair of the State Revenue Committee Ray Peterson, the ANCA-WR met with the Governor and discussed, among other topics, the heroic efforts of Wyomingites during the Genocide, Turkey’s continued denial of the mass murder of 1.5 million Christian Armenians and the need for proper recognition, restitution and reparations against this unpunished crime against humanity.
“We extend our deep gratitude to Governor Mead, Senators Bouchard and Peterson, and the elected leaders for their leadership, taking the time to learn about Armenian American issues and supporting the Armenian community of Wyoming and the entire United States, as well as standing by the world’s first Christian nation as it continues to address the ongoing security and economic consequences of the Armenian Genocide,” remarked Executive Director Elen Asatryan.
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has issued astatement on 102nd anniversary of the Armenian Genocide;
On this day, we solemnly gather to commemorate the tragic loss of life among the Armenian population, which took place over a century ago.
In 2015, the House of Commons unanimously passed a motion declaring April 24th as Armenian Genocide Memorial Day.
This day honours the memory of those who unjustly lost their lives and suffered during the genocide. We pay tribute to them and their descendants, many of who now reside in Canada.
On this occasion, Canadians – regardless regardless of faith or ethnic background – stand together in solemn remembrance and reaffirmed dedication to ensuring that we never stand indifferently in the face of hate or violence in any form.
As we observe Armenian Genocide Day, please join me in my hope for a future characterized by peace and mutual respect.
Photo: Reuters
More than 100 Afghan soldiers were killed or wounded in a Taliban attack on an army base on Friday, the defence ministry has confirmed, the
Fighting lasted for several hours near the city of Mazar-e Sharif in northern Balkh province.
Insurgents targeted those leaving Friday prayers at the base’s mosque and others in a canteen, the army said.
The Taliban said in a statement they had carried out the attack, using suicide bombers to breach defences.
Earlier estimates put the death toll as high as 134, but a statement from the defence ministry on Saturday gave the figure of more than 100 killed or injured.
It is one of the deadliest tolls in a Taliban attack on the Afghan army.
At least 10 Taliban militants were also killed in the fighting and one attacker was detained.
Photo: Eric Paul Zamora
A commemoration and flag-raising event to remember the Armenian genocide is planned at Fresno City Hall, 2600 Fresno St., from 10 a.m. to noon Saturday, the reports.
The Armenian Genocide Commemorative Committee of Fresno announced several events in April to mark the genocide, in which about 1.5 million Armenians were killed by the Ottoman Empire between 1915 and 1923.
Ara Khachatourian, English editor of the Asbarez Newspaper, will be the keynote speaker at Saturday’s event. The AUSA “Sounds of Freedom” Military band is expected to play.
The Armenian flag will be raised by the Homenetmen Scouts and Fresno High School’s Junior ROTC in honor of the survivors and those killed in the genocide.
An event Monday from noon to 1 p.m. will take place at the Armenian Genocide Monument at Fresno State. Associated Students Inc. President Tim Ryan is a guest speaker for the event. Professor Hagop Ohannessian will be the keynote speaker.
Performances by students from the Charlie Keyan Armenian Community School and Fresno State are scheduled.
At the same monument, flowers will be laid at 6 p.m. A religious service is planned for 7 p.m and a civil service is planned for 7:30 p.m.; a reception will follow.
Fresno Mayor Lee Brand will be the keynote speaker during the evening events at the monument at Fresno State. Other speakers include University President Joseph Castro and Honorary Consul of Armenia in Fresno Berj Apkarian. The Armenian Dance Group of Fresno will perform.
An event on April 26 will feature a book reading of “Echo of Silence” by author Fethiye Cetin. The event is planned for 7:30 p.m. at St. Paul Armenian Church, 3767 N. First Street, in the Haig Berberian Hall.
Admission and parking to the book reading event are free.
A final event will be a documentary film showing of “Women of 1915” by Bared Maronian on April 30.
The film is expected to show the journey of female survivors from the Armenian genocide and the human rights advocates who empowered them.
Body of a soldier from the Russian military base #102 was found in Armenia’s second largest city of Gyumri today.
The man identified as Sergey Yalpayev (born in 1996) was stubbed in the neck, the Prsecutor General’s Office reports.
A criminal case has been instigated under Article 104.1 of the Armenian Criminal Code.
One person has been arrested on suspicion of murder. Investigation into the details of the case is under way.
Russia’s state news agency RIA Novosti cited the military’s southern command as saying that preliminary indications were the attack was sparked by a domestic dispute.
Sen. Edward Markey is calling on President Donald Trump to commemorate the slaughter of more than a million Armenians by Ottoman Turks a century ago as the first genocide of the 20th century — something Turkey has refused to do, the Associated Press reports.
Massachusetts is home to a large Armenian community and includes the genocide in its public school curriculum. April 24 commemorates the day the killings began in 1915.
When he ran for president, Barack Obama promised to recognize the killings as genocide.
In office, he stopped short of doing so, instead calling the killings the first mass atrocity of the 20th century and a tragedy that must not be repeated.
Markey, a Democrat, noted Friday that past Republicans, including former President Ronald Reagan have labeled the mass killing as genocide.
Manchester United striker Zlatan Ibrahimovic and defender Marcos Rojo have both suffered cruciate knee-ligament injuries and face lengthy spells out of action, the BBC reports.
Ibrahimovic landed awkwardly when challenging for the ball during the Europa League quarter-final second-leg win over Anderlecht.
The ex-Sweden international is United’s top scorer this season, with 28 goals.
Rojo was replaced on 23 minutes after colliding with a visiting player.
Ibrahimovic, 35, joined the club on a free transfer from Paris St-Germain last summer but is yet to agree an extension to his one-year United deal.
Rojo’s injury leaves United manager Jose Mourinho short of options at centre-back with England internationals Phil Jones and Chris Smalling already on the sidelines.
Eric Bailly and Daley Blind are United’s only fit senior centre-backs heading into Sunday’s game at Burnley, with the Manchester derby at Etihad Stadium to follow on Thursday.
Photo: The Daily Star/Mohammad Azakir
The Lebanese Forces Friday held a ceremony commemorating the anniversary of the Armenian genocide, the reports.
“April 24, 1915 is not just another day… Humanity was stabbed with the dagger of cruelty,” LF chief Samir Geagea said in a speech during the ceremony held in his Mount Lebanon residence at Maarab.
He added that Lebanese and Armenians have forged historical bonds.
“Our cause is one,” Geagea said. “Armenians struggled for a free Armenia, and so did the Lebanese.”
“It is true that the land of Armenia wept your ancestors … but you have found fathers and mothers in Lebanon,” he added.
A large number of Armenians fled to Lebanon in the wake of the massacres and now make up roughly 4 percent of the population
Geagea also expressed his sympathy with the current regional crises, namely the ongoing war in neighboring Syria.
“We have to be honest with ourselves by condemning the assassins of today like we condemn the assassins of the past,” he said.
By Tim Arango
For more than a century, Turkey has denied any role in organizing the killing of Armenians in what historians have long accepted as a genocide that started in 1915, as World War I spread across continents. The Turkish narrative of denial has hinged on the argument that the original documents from postwar military tribunals that convicted the genocide’s planners were nowhere to be found.
Now, Taner Akcam, a Turkish historian at Clark University in Worcester, Mass., who has studied the genocide for decades by piecing together documents from around the world to establish state complicity in the killings, says he has unearthed an original telegram from the trials, in an archive held by the Armenian Patriarchate of Jerusalem.
“Until recently, the smoking gun was missing,” Mr. Akcam said. “This is the smoking gun.” He called his find “an earthquake in our field,” and said he hoped it would remove “the last brick in the denialist wall.”
The story begins in 1915 in an office in the Turkish city of Erzurum, when a high-level official of the Ottoman Empire punched out a telegram in secret code to a colleague in the field, asking for details about the deportations and killings of Armenians in eastern Anatolia, the easternmost part of contemporary Turkey.
Later, a deciphered copy of the telegram helped convict the official, Behaeddin Shakir, for planning what scholars have long acknowledged and Turkey has long denied: the organized killing of up to 1.5 million Armenians by the leaders of the collapsing Ottoman Empire, an atrocity widely recognized as the 20th century’s first genocide.
And then, just like that, most of the original documents and sworn testimony from the trials vanished, leaving researchers to rely mostly on summaries from the official Ottoman newspaper.
Mr. Akcam said he had little hope that his new finding would immediately change things, given Turkey’s ossified policy of denial and especially at a time of political turmoil when its president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, has turned more nationalist.
But Mr. Akcam’s life’s work has been to puncture, fact by fact, document by document, the denials of Turkey.
“My firm belief as a Turk is that democracy and human rights in Turkey can only be established by facing history and acknowledging historic wrongdoings,” he said.
He broadened his point to argue that much of the chaos gripping the Middle East today was a result of mistrust between communities over historical wrongdoings that no one is willing to confront.
“The past is not the past in the Middle East,” he said. “This is the biggest obstacle to peace and stability in the Middle East.”
Eric D. Weitz, a history professor at the City College of New York and an expert on the Armenian genocide, called Mr. Akcam “the Sherlock Holmes of Armenian genocide.”
“He has piled clue upon clue upon clue,” Professor Weitz added.
Exactly where the telegram was all these years, and how Mr. Akcam found it, is a story in itself. With Turkish nationalists about to seize the country in 1922, the Armenian leadership in Istanbul shipped 24 boxes of court records to England for safekeeping.
The records were kept there by a bishop, then taken to France and, later, to Jerusalem. They have remained there since the 1930s, part of a huge archive that has mostly been inaccessible to scholars, for reasons that are not entirely clear. Mr. Akcam said he had tried for years to gain access to the archive, with no luck.
Instead, he found a photographic record of the Jerusalem archive in New York, held by the nephew of a Armenian monk, now dead, who was a survivor of the genocide.
While researching the genocide in Cairo in the 1940s, the monk, Krikor Guerguerian, met a former Ottoman judge who had presided over the postwar trials. The judge told him that many of the boxes of case files had wound up in Jerusalem, so Mr. Guerguerian went there and took pictures of everything.
The telegram was written under Ottoman letterhead and coded in Arabic lettering; four-digit numbers denoted words. When Mr. Akcam compared it with the known Ottoman Interior Ministry codes from the time, found in an official archive in Istanbul, he found a match, raising the likelihood that many other telegrams used in the postwar trials could one day be verified in the same way.
For historians, the court cases were one piece of a mountain of evidence that emerged over the years — including reports in several languages from diplomats, missionaries and journalists who witnessed the events as they happened — that established the historical fact of the killings and qualified them as a genocide.
Turkey has long resisted the word genocide, saying that the suffering of the Armenians had occurred during the chaos of a world war in which Turkish Muslims faced hardship, too.
Turkey also claimed that the Armenians were traitors, and had been planning to join with Russia, then an enemy of the Ottoman Empire.
That position is deeply entwined in Turkish culture — it is standard in school curriculums — and polling has shown that a majority of Turks share the government’s position.
“My approach is that as much proof as you put in front of denialists, denialists will remain denialists,” said Bedross Der Matossian, a historian at the University of Nebraska and the author of “Shattered Dreams of Revolution: From Liberty to Violence in the Late Ottoman Empire.”
Mr. Shakir, the Ottoman official who wrote the incriminating telegram discovered by Mr. Akcam, had fled the country by the time the military tribunal convicted him and sentenced him to death in absentia.
A few years later, he was gunned down in the streets of Berlin by two Armenian assassins described in an article by The New York Times as “slim, undersized, swarthy men lurking in a doorway.”