Glendale News Press
LATimes.com
Jan 26 2005

ANC loses director to clerk race

Ardashes Kassakhian will step down as executive director to focus on
his bid for Glendale city clerk. Other candidates are also cutting
back work schedules.

By Josh Kleinbaum, News-Press and Leader

GLENDALE – Ardashes Kassakhian began a 10-week sabbatical from the
Armenian National Committee this week to focus on his campaign for
city clerk, highlighting the effort that nine candidates are putting
into the first competitive race for city clerk in 75 years.

Kassakhian, who has worked for the committee’s Western Region for
five years and has been its executive director for the last two, will
campaign full-time for the April 5 election, he said. Armen
Carapetian, the region’s government relations director, will serve as
acting executive director.

“I’m going to miss the work that I’ve been able to do here, but
directing a nonprofit and running the city clerk’s office, there’s a
lot of similarities,” Kassakhian said. “I’m grateful for all my
experience here. They afforded me the opportunity to serve the
community of Glendale, to work intimately with city officials and
others.”

Kassakhian is the only candidate for city clerk who is leaving his
day job entirely for the campaign, but several other candidates said
they will reduce their workload during the next 10 weeks. Kathryn Van
Houten, an attorney, said she will tone down her volunteer work.
Stephen L. Ropfogel, an independent business owner, is reducing the
amount of time he’s spending on work, as is Stephanie Landregan, a
landscape artist.

Narineh Barzegar, a graduate student, postponed classes for a quarter
to focus on the election. Gary Sysock, deputy executive officer with
Los Angeles County Clerk of the Board, has vacation time stored up,
and Lorna Vartanian, financial accounting manager for a law firm,
said she would take time off if needed.

“I’m still in the planning stages,” Vartanian said. “I don’t have all
of that quite figured out yet. But I’m going to gauge that as I go
along and certainly work accordingly.”

Two candidates, Paulette Mardikian and George McCullough, could not
be reached for comment.

During his time at the Armenian National Committee, Kassakhian led
the committee’s push for genocide education, served as its liaison to
state and federal legislators and helped mobilize Glendale’s Armenian
voters. In Glendale elections, the Armenian National Committee’s
endorsement has become among the most sought after.

“If he doesn’t win the election, we’d love him to come back,” said
Steve Dadaian, chairman of the committee’s Western Region board of
directors. “He does the work of three men. He knows a lot about
Armenian American issues regionally, but he also knows what the local
issues are for the Glendale voters and the community.”

Dadaian wasn’t sure if the committee will hire a permanent
replacement for Kassakhian before the April election. For now,
Carapetian will focus on regional activities to commemorate the 90th
anniversary of the Armenian genocide, working with federal
legislators and creating a community outreach plan for the
committee’s Western Region.

“We’re not replacing Ardy. You can’t replace Ardy,” Carapetian said.
“He’s built wide community contacts, and not just in the Armenian
community.”

KLAS-TV, NV
Jan 26 2005

Teens Facing Deportation Talk With Eyewitness News

(Jan. 25) — They’ve spent twelve nights away from home in federal
custody fearing they’ll soon be taken out of the country. The Las
Vegas teens face deportation to Armenia.

Tuesday, while sitting in a holding cell in Los Angeles, the girls
placed a phone call to Eyewitness News Reporter Atle Erlingsson. He
spoke to the girls for about ten minutes.

The girls are scared. They don’t know what’s going on, or if they
will ever see their family again. They were raised here in America.
They are not citizens and the government wants them out. But their
dad and other sisters would stay here.

“It’s terrible. I hate it. I want to go home. I just want to go home.
I can’t take this anymore,” said 18-year-old Emma Sarkisian, drawn to
tears as she talks on the phone.

She and her 17-year-old sister, Mariam spend 13 hours a day sitting
in a federal holding cell. At night, Emma says they’re taken to a
hotel where a male guard watches over their every move — even when
they’re sleeping.

Elena Shulikova has known the girls for years. She’s a family friend
working to stop the deportation. “They’re treated like prisoners or
criminals. And they’re not. And I can only imagine what they’re going
through in there,” Shulikova said.

The two girls eat very little. Emma says, “We eat disgusting food —
jelly sandwiches. The food is terrible. You just have to starve
yourself.”

Shulikova says the prisoner lifestyle is difficult for Emma and
Mariam, two girls who have the same likes and dislikes as your
average teen. “Like a little of make-up. Music. Emma wanted to be a
singer. She had this silly dream of becoming a singer/actress. They
listen to Britney Spears. They love movies. They’re just average high
school kids.”

They’re two average girls who are admittedly scared of their future.
“Yes, of course,” says Mariam. “I know nothing about (Armenia). I
wouldn’t even survive there.”

And that, of course, is the concern of those who know the girls.

Wednesday, a federal judge is expected to reconsider whether or not
the girls should be released on bail until their deportation is
decided.

In the meantime, local politicians are starting to stir up the pot.
Congresswoman Shelley Berkley and Senator Harry Reid are following
the case. They do have the ability to stop a deportation and keep the
girls here.

The Daily Star, Lebanon
Jan 26 2005

Arguments flare over Lebanese electoral law
Hariri to have 2 lists in Beirut

By Nayla Assaf and Nada Raad
Daily Star staff

BEIRUT: Lebanon’s draft electoral law has created furious rows
between the country’s opposition and government loyalists.

As was widely predicted, the new law envisages the division of the
capital into three electoral districts.

Under the proposal the country will be divided into 26 districts.

It also introduces two popular amendments: the lowering of the voting
age to 18 and more controversially, it proposes allocating 30 percent
of seats in Parliament to women.

The Cabinet expected to formally discuss the law later this week, but
Premier Omar Karami refuted criticisms, insisting the law could still
be amended.

Meanwhile, Interior Minister Suleiman Franjieh’s remarks earlier this
week in which he warned the Christian opposition against aligning
itself with former premier Rafik Hariri in Beirut continue to cause
controversy.

Speaking on Sunday night, Franjieh threatened revoke the proposal to
partition Beirut into three districts, which is largely deemed
favorable to Christians.

He said: “If the state feels that its stake in the electoral battle
is under threat, it will seek its own interests and redistribute the
cards in Beirut.”

He also said that he finally decided, in his proposal, to split Sidon
and the Zahrani into two separate districts, following the demand of
Speaker Nabih Berri.

Franjieh said: “His demand was very logical. He is demanding that the
1960 law be applied as is concerning the Sidon-Zahrani area.”

In an unusual nod to Jumblatt, Franjieh had also said that his law
proposal did not restrict Jumblatt’s power.

Franjieh’s comments were sharply criticised by Karami, who said: “I
do not agree with [Franjieh’s] comments, because we say that we have
constitutional institutions, which judge such issues.”

Jbeil MP Fares Soueid, a prominent member of the Christian
opposition, lashed out at Franjieh and demanded the Cabinet’s
resignation.

“The words of Interior Minister Suleiman Franjieh yesterday were
extremely dangerous and confirm the authorities’ plans to sabotage
opposition lists,” he said.

Speaking to the Lebanese Broadcasting Corporation International,
Soueid said: “How alliances are forged is not the business of the
interior minister. His task should be limited to producing an
electoral law and guaranteeing the impartiality of the state.”

Speaking after a meeting of the Democratic Gathering, Chouf MP Walid
Jumblatt’s parliamentary coalition, Baabda MP Bassem Sabaa said
Franjieh “is trying to announce the [election] results in advance.
The opposition will remain unified and that victory will be on its
side despite the falsification attempts and the attempts to pressure
public opinion.”

He added the draft electoral law was “an attempt to bribe Lebanese
public opinion through the introduction of a quota for women and the
lowering of the voting age to 18”.

He said: “Our position concerning the lowering of the voting age is
well known even if the authorities introduced it in order to get more
votes.”

Jumblatt’s Progressive Socialist Party has been requesting that the
voting age be lowered for several years.

Sabaa also confirmed earlier claims by Jumblatt that the opposition
will ask the United Nations to intervene in case of violations in the
electoral process.

Meanwhile, contrary to government expectations, former Prime Minister
Rafik Hariri announced he will run in Beirut’s third electoral
district, and not in the first district, which includes a majority of
Sunni voters.

Sources close to Hariri said he will have two complete lists in
Beirut.

The first one in the third district, which has nine seats, is mostly
Shiite and Armenian, and the second is in the six-seat mostly Sunni
first district.

But Hariri will not present a list for Achrafieh, which he will leave
to his allies in the Christian opposition.

lso, amid the rising tensions, President Emile Lahoud defended the
authorities’ performance, reiterating that the new electoral law will
be fair and just and treating all regions equally.

Lahoud also vowed the government will provide a suitable climate to
allow elections to be held freely and in the most honest and
transparent manner.

He said that discussions of the draft electoral law should not resort
to terms that spark sectarian rife and encourage domestic divisions.

Information Minister Elie Ferzli said Tuesday that the Syrian
authorities have chosen not to interfere in the coming parliamentary
elections.

Houston Chronicle, TX
Jan 26 2005

Auschwitz survivor: Do we still have ears to listen?
Take the moment to renew the vow ‘never forget’
By SAMUEL PISAR

Sixty years ago, the Russians liberated Auschwitz, as the Americans
approached Dachau. The Allied advance revealed to a stunned world the
horrors of the greatest catastrophe ever to befall our civilization.
To a survivor of both death factories, where Hitler’s gruesome
reality eclipsed Dante’s imaginary inferno, being alive and well so
many years later feels unreal.

ADVERTISEMENT

We the survivors are now disappearing one by one. Soon history will
speak of Auschwitz at best with the impersonal voice of researchers
and novelists, at worst with the malevolence of demagogues and
falsifiers. This week the last of us, with a multitude of heads of
state and other dignitaries, are gathering at that cursed site to
remind the world that past can be prologue, that the mountains of
human ashes dispersed there are a warning to humanity of what may
still lie ahead.

The genocides in Armenia, Cambodia, Bosnia, Kosovo and Rwanda and the
recent massacres of innocents in the United States, Spain, Israel,
Indonesia and so many other countries have demonstrated our inability
to learn from the blood-soaked past. Auschwitz, the symbol of
absolute evil, is not only about that past, it is about the present
and the future of our newly enflamed world, where a coupling of
murderous ideologues and means of mass destruction can trigger new
catastrophes.

When the ghetto liquidation in Bialystok, Poland, began, only three
members of our family were still alive: my mother, my little sister
and I, age 13. Father had already been executed by the Gestapo.
Mother told me to put on long pants, hoping I would look more like a
man, capable of slave labor. “And you and Frieda?” I asked. She
didn’t answer. She knew that their fate was sealed. As they were
chased, with the other women, the children, the old and the sick,
toward the waiting cattle cars, I could not take my eyes off them.
Little Frieda held my mother with one hand, and with the other, her
favorite doll. They looked at me too, before disappearing from my
life forever.

Their train went directly to Auschwitz-Birkenau, mine to the
extermination camp of Majdanek. Months later, I also landed in
Auschwitz, still hoping naively to find their trace. When the SS
guards, with their dogs and whips, unsealed my cattle car, many of my
comrades were already dead from hunger, thirst and lack of air. At
the central ramp, surrounded by electrically charged barbed wire, we
were ordered to strip naked and file past the infamous Dr. Josef
Mengele. The “angel of death” performed on us his ritual “selection”
– those who were to die immediately, to the right, those destined to
live a little longer and undergo other atrocious medical experiments,
to the left.

In the background there was music. At the main gate, with its
sinister slogan “Work Brings Freedom,” sat, dressed in striped prison
rags like mine, one of the most remarkable orchestras ever assembled.
It was made up of virtuosos from Warsaw and Paris, Kiev and
Amsterdam, Rome and Budapest. To accompany the selections, hangings
and shootings while the gas chambers and crematoria belched smoke and
fire, these gentle musicians were forced to play Bach, Schubert and
Mozart, interspersed with marches to the glory of the Fuhrer.

In the summer of 1944, the Third Reich was on the verge of collapse,
yet Berlin’s most urgent priority was to accelerate the “final
solution.” The death toll in the gas chambers on D-Day, as on any
other day, far surpassed the enormous Allied losses suffered on the
beaches of Normandy.

My labor commando was assigned to remove garbage from a ramp near the
crematoria. From there I observed the peak of human extermination and
heard the blood-curdling cries of innocents as they were herded into
the gas chambers. Once the doors were locked, they had only three
minutes to live, yet they found enough strength to dig their
fingernails into the walls and scratch in the words “Never Forget.”

Have we already forgotten?

I also witnessed an extraordinary act of heroism. The Sonderkommando
– inmates coerced to dispose of bodies – attacked their SS guards,
threw them into the furnaces, set fire to buildings and escaped. They
were rapidly captured and executed, but their courage boosted our
morale.

As the Russians advanced, those of us still able to work were
evacuated deep into Germany. My misery continued at Dachau. During a
final death march, while our column was being strafed by Allied
planes that mistook us for Wehrmacht troops, I escaped with a few
others. An armored battalion of GIs brought me life and freedom. I
had just turned 16 – a skeletal “subhuman” with shaved head and
sunken eyes who had been trying so long to hold on to a flicker of
hope. “God bless America,” I shouted uncontrollably .

In the autumn of their lives, the survivors of Auschwitz feel a
visceral need to transmit what we have endured, to warn younger
generations that today’s intolerance, fanaticism and hatred can
destroy their world as they once destroyed ours, that powerful alert
systems must be built not only against the fury of nature – a tsunami
or storm or eruption – but above all against the folly of man.
Because we know from bitter experience that the human animal is
capable of the worst, as well as the best – of madness as of genius –
and that the unthinkable remainspossible.

In the wake of so many recent tragedies, a wave of compassion and
solidarity for the victims, a fragile yearning for peace, democracy
and liberty, seem to be spreading around the planet. It is far too
early to evaluate their potential. Mankind, divided and confused,
still hesitates and vacillates. But the irrevocable has not yet
happened; our chances are still intact. Pray that we learn how to
seize them.

Pisar is an international lawyer and the author of “Of Blood and
Hope.”

ArmenPress
Jan 26 2005

ARMEN AVETISIAN’S FELLOWS SEEK HIS RELEASE

YEREVAN, JANUARY 26, ARMENPRESS; A senior member of the
ultra-nationalist Armenian Aryan Union told a news conference today
that party members will appeal against a local court decision that
sanctioned the arrest of their leader, Armen Avetisian, on charges of
inciting ethnic intolerance late Monday.
Armen Avetisian was placed in custody pending a criminal
investigation into his anti-Jewish statements. He is prosecuted under
an article of the Armenian Criminal Code that envisaged between three
and six years’ imprisonment for persons who incite `ethnic, racial
and religious hatred.’
His party fellows have established a committee in defense of
Avetisian together with Hayots Toon (Armenian Home) non-governmental
organization. A lawyer Melania Arustamian will defend his interests
during the trial.
In a series of newspaper interviews and TV appearances Avetisian
used to put the blame for Armenia’s political and socioeconomic woes
on Jews. He has also won a notorious fame in recent months claiming
that some government and parliament members are homosexuals.

ArmenPress
Jan 26 2005

KARABAGH DEPUTY FM MEETS OSCE ENVOY

STEPANAKERT, JANUARY 26, ARMENPRESS: Deputy foreign minister of
Nagorno Karabagh, Masis Mailian, met today in Stepanakert with the
personal representative of the OSCE chairman-in-office Imre
Palatinus, based in Tbilisi, the capital city of neighboring Georgia.
Nagorno Karabagh foreign affairs ministry said Palatinus introduced
Torsten Aren, the new field assistant of the OSCE personal
representative.
After praising good working relations between the ministry and the
OSCE mission Masis Mailian expressed hope they will continue in
future too. He pledged foreign ministry’s willingness to continue to
support the activities of the OSCE representative and create good
working conditions for the mission.
The two men discussed also a range of issues connected with the
January 30 visit of an OSCE fact-finding visit to Nagorno Karabagh.
Also today Karabagh foreign minister Arman Melikian met with
another personal representative of the OSCE chairman-in-office
Andrzey Kasprzik, who heads a mission overseeing ceasefire regime on
the line of contact between Armenian and Azeri troops. They have also
discussed the January 30 visit of the OSCE delegation that comprises
representatives of Germany, Sweden, Italy and Finland.
In a related news Karabagh defense minister Seyran Ohanian told
today journalists that the army has significantly reinforced the
frontline positions. He also said that the number of peace-time army
fatalities is still big, but did not elaborate.

ArmenPress
Jan 26 2005

GOVERNMENT APPROVES FOOD SECURITY CONCEPT

YEREVAN, JANUARY 26, ARMENPRESS: The Armenian government approved
on January 25 the “concept of food security”, whereby it wants to
make Armenia meet international standards of self-sufficiency in
agricultural products by 2015. The program envisages that in ten
years Armenia’s agriculture and food processing industry will be able
to secure 75 percent of domestic demand in foodstuffs.
Hrachya Tspnetsian, a senior official from the Agriculture
Ministry, said after the Tuesday government session that Armenia
meets now only 55 of its domestic demand for foodstuff. He added that
the success of food security program depends largely on the
purchasing power of the population. Another goal of the program is to
enable every Armenian to consume at least 2,100 kilocalories a day,
an amount which doctors say is the “physiological minimum.”
Armenia has to import now all consumed sugar, cooking oil and part
of meat, wheat, but imports no fruits, potatoes and other vegetables.
The food security concept was developed by an inter-ministerial
commission. According to national statistical service, monthly
earnings of each member of an urban household make 12,000 drams
(approximately $25) and in rural areas 7,000 drams. Fifty-three
percent of that money comes from wages, 10 percent from sale of
agricultural products, 10.5 percent from state benefits and
allowances and another 22 percent from money remittances from abroad.
An average Armenian family spends two thirds of its budget on food.

ArmenPress
Jan 26 2005

GREECE DONATES 100,000 EUROS TO ARMENIA

YEREVAN, JANUARY 26, ARMENPRESS: The government of Greece has
pledged today 100,000 euros ($137,000) to the UN World Food program
(WFP) for Armenia. The money will be used to provide food assistance
to vulnerable families in Armenian provinces of Tavush, Shirak,
Gegharkunik and Lori.
Speaking at a presentation ceremony at the Greece’s embassy in
Yerevan ambassador Antonios Vlavianos said his government was the
first to respond to WFP’s request to help support food security
program in Armenia.
The ceremony was attended also by WFP Representative and Country
Director Armenia, Muzaffar Choudhery.
Muzaffar Choudhery noted that the donation will help the
vulnerable families to resist winter hardships. He said part of the
money will be spent on buying flour, which will be distributed to
around 40,000 families. Part of the aid will be used for providing
around 30,000 schoolchildren with lunches. Also another part of the
aid will be directed to Food for Work and Food for Training courses.
Greece was followed by Japan, whose government has sent 2,000 tons of
wheat.
At the conclusion the ambassador said he hopes that Armenia will
soon no longer need such aid programs. He also said the embassy will
be supervising purchase of flour and its distribution.

LasVegas Sun, NV
Jan 26 2005

Armenian sisters in ‘unusual’ case are called flight risks
By Timothy Pratt
<[email protected]>
LAS VEGAS SUN

Federal immigration officials on Tuesday said the case of the
teenaged Armenian sisters threatened with deportation is “highly
unusual” and said the teens haven’t been released to their father
because they are considered a flight risk.

The Sarkisian sisters’ case is one of only several dozen of the more
than 10,000 cases in a year at the Los Angeles regional office that
are drawn out due to a federal court-issued stay, said Virginia Kice,
spokeswoman for Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Gloria Kee, Los Angeles field office director for the immigration
office’s detention and removal section, also said the girls have not
been released to their father, Rouben, in Las Vegas, while the court
case is pending because they are considered “a flight risk.”

Although the girls’ father is a legal U.S. resident and runs
Tropicana Pizza in Henderson, the teens’ mother is in the country
illegally and “is an absconder,” Kee said.

“There is quite honestly a concern — will the family actually
cooperate in bringing them back?”

In the vast majority of cases in which deportation orders are issued,
immigrants are usually sent out of the United States immediately,
Kice said.

But Tuesday was the 12th day Emma, 18, and Mariam Sarkisian, 17, were
held in Los Angeles by federal authorities, pending a Las Vegas
federal magistrate’s decision on arguments for and against their
deportation.

During that time, as publicity about the case has spread, public
support has grown and Rep. Shelley Berkley, D-Las Vegas, sent a
letter dated Jan. 24 to the federal office urging “strong,
humanitarian consideration for deferred action” in the case.

The magistrate’s decision may uphold the federal government’s order
to send the girls to Armenia, a country that is so foreign to them
they don’t even speak its language, having been brought to the United
States when they were under 5 years old.

Kee said the Sarkisian family knew the day would come when the
sisters would be sent back to their birthplace since an order for
their deportation was issued in 1993.

Rouben and Anoush Sarkisian arrived to the United States in 1991.
Three more daughters were born in this country. They were divorced,
and Rouben gained the status of a legal resident — the step below
citizenship — when he married a U.S. citizen. That marriage later
broke apart.

Anoush never obtained legal U.S. status, Kee said.

During the 1990s each parent attempted to gain legal status for their
two older daughters, Kee said.

“On two occasions, the family came close to obtaining some sort of
benefit. But it was discovered that they could not once it was
revealed they had earlier orders of deportation,” she said.

Rouben has said in recent days that he thought otherwise and
attempted to obtain proof of the girls’ status in July, only to be
told of the deportation order. It took until some time shortly before
Jan. 14 for immigration authorities to obtain travel permits for the
girls from the Armenian Consulate in Los Angeles, at which point the
girls were detained.

But the family’s lawyers won a stay against their departure while a
federal magistrate reviews the team’s arguments and those of the
federal government.

The government filed its argument Tuesday.

The family’s lawyers are hoping the government will allow Rouben
several months to become a citizen, at which point he could petition
for his daughters to become residents.

Another reason the case is unusual, officials said, is Emma is an
adult, while Mariam is a minor. This means Mariam is not what is
known as an “unaccompanied minor,” and an agreement forged in April
between immigration authorities and the Department of Health and
Human Services regarding the care of such minors does not apply, they
said.

That agreement includes provisions for the medical care of a minor
and their educational and other needs, according to Gregory Chen,
director of policy analysis and research at the U.S. Committee for
Refugees and Immigrants.

Kee said that although the detention of the girls “was meant to be
temporary,” a nurse is available to them if they have any health
problems. She said that immigrants awaiting resolution of their cases
are examined within 14 days of the date they are detained.

But, Kee said, the system typically doesn’t wind up having to spend
so much time taking care of people who have been ordered deported.

LasVegas Sun, NV
Jan 26 2005

Editorial: Don’t break family apart
LAS VEGAS SUN

Two Las Vegas girls, whose only crime was to have been brought to the
United States by their father when they were 4 and 3, are being
detained in a federal holding cell in Los Angeles, awaiting
deportation. They’ve been there 11 days now. It’s up to a federal
magistrate to decide whether they should be separated from their
family, including three other sisters, or be sent to Armenia. That is
their country of birth, but, to them, it’s an alien land where they
have no friends or family, no language skills, no means of supporting
themselves.

Only some desperate calls by their family’s attorney on Jan. 17
prevented them from being forcibly boarded onto a plane. On Jan. 18
they received a reprieve when the one flight to Moscow was full. On
Jan. 19, just three hours before their scheduled flight, their lawyer
was successful in appealing to a federal magistrate, who granted the
girls a stay while he reviewed the facts of the case.

The girls are Emma Sarkisian, 18, who graduated last June from Palo
Verde High School, and her sister, Mariam, 17, a student at Palo
Verde. Their parents, Rouben and Anoush Sarkisian, brought them to
the U.S. in 1991. The couple had three more daughters, who, having
been born here, are legal citizens. The marriage broke up and Rouben
married a U.S. citizen, automatically making him a U.S. “resident”
under immigration law. That marriage also broke up and the residency
status of the two girls remained in limbo until last July. That month
Rouben took the girls to immigration officials, hoping to confirm
their status as residents. Instead, officials determined they weren’t
legal citizens and ordered the girls to check in with them once a
month. They also began negotiating with Armenia to receive them.

As Armenia was a republic of the Soviet Union at the time of the
girls’ birth, officials of the now-independent republic at first
disclaimed any responsibility for them. But on Jan. 14, during their
monthly visit to the immigration office, the girls were told that
Armenia had decided to accept them and they were whisked away to the
cell in Los Angeles.

In our view, the girls should be immediately released from custody
and returned to their family while awaiting the magistrate’s
decision. We also believe it would be a miscarriage of justice for
the girls to be deported. This is the only country they’ve ever
known. Their father erred in not applying for their residency years
ago. But by any humanitarian standard, that is no reason for the
girls to be traumatized by tearing them away from their family, their
friends and the lives they’ve been living here.