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The VVA (Vietnam Veterans of America) Magazine “Commemorating the Armenian Genocide”

May 27, 2015 By administrator

by Michael Manoog Kaprielian

Times Square Photo Caption: V.V.A. 273 flag bearers Roger DiPierro & Karl Antonevich Begin forwarded message:

Times Square photo Berge Ara Zobian Caption: V.V.A. 273 flag bearers Roger DiPierro & Karl Antonevich Begin forwarded message:

The Rhode Island State Council and its three chapters—James Michael Ray Memorial Chapter 818, Washington County Chapter 325, and Providence Chapter 273—joined hundreds of others from Rhode Island traveling to New York City to commemorate the Armenian Genocide.

Twelve buses left Providence in the early morning of Sunday, April 26. One hundred years earlier one and a half million Armenians were slaughtered by the crumbling government of the Ottoman Empire. The Times Square demonstration also paid tribute to those who perished in subsequent genocides.

National Chaplain Fr. Phil Salois, State Council President John Weiss, and other Rhode Island VVA members joined six hundred demonstrators from the state representing many ethnicities. Armenian Americans were joined by Jews, Guatemalans, Cambodians, Native Americans, African Americans, Greeks, Kurds, and refugees from the Ivory Coast.

We don’t go silently into the night. VVA in Rhode Island sees its role as a leader. Twenty-five years ago VVA rallied three hundred Rhode Islanders to the State Capitol for a candlelight commemoration emceed by Chapter 325 member Tom Suprock, who was shot down nine times in Vietnam. That event paid homage to the victims of the Armenian Genocide and called for the universal recognition of human rights.

Now, a quarter century later, VVA members carrying VVA and Rhode Island flags joined many thousands at Times Square, including many other veterans of the wars in Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan. They committed themselves to helping those who had escaped persecution for “Hope”—Rhode Island’s one-word motto and guiding principle.

One 19-year-old refugee from the Ivory Coast was put on VVA’s bus by her mother, who witnessed the killing of her elder daughter in Sierra Leone. The surviving daughter dreams of becoming a lawyer for human rights. Rhode Island VVA members are focused on doing what they can to advance that dream.

M. Manoog Kaprielian is a founding member of Chapter 273 and the former Rhode Island State Council president. He is very active in VVA and Armenian affairs. He can be reached at: aniprov@earthlink.net

Georgians from historical district Saingilo in Azerbaijan: Intimidation and threats are Azerbaijanis’ methods

May 27, 2015 By administrator

The Georgians residing on the territory of the historical Georgian district Saingilo – now in the territory of Azerbaijan – complain of the authorities’ indifference towards their problems in the YouTube video titled “Inhabitants of Saingilo.” They say there is no law there. Security service, intimidation and threats are the methods the Azerbaijanis use.

The inhabitants say that those who go to church are threatened to lose their job. “For example, Fr. Basiliy, the only Orthodox clergyman, is constantly threatened, oppressed and compelled to leave. Say, on the next day after Easter he was banned to sanctify the graves. Lawlessness! There is just no law here!” a local Georgian woman says.

They get no support from the Georgian government, according to her.

“Say, if our clergyman is expelled from Saingilo, we will go to Georgia and hold a protest to demand that all the mosques are closed down. Let them close down all the mosques in Georgia then,” another inhabitant adds.

He says there is only one operating church in Saingilo, and St. George’s Church in village Kurmukhi in Azerbaijani Kakhi district bordering with Georgia has been closed down.

“The president of Georgia himself congratulated the Georgian Azerbaijanis on the holiday of Novruz Bayrami. Yet to us, even the minor officials did not come on Easter, let alone the president. There was no one from Georgia either. This is all very sad. We all need to raise this issue. There is no one-way brotherhood,” one of the locals said.

The Georgians of the historical district Saingilo – which today is in the territory of Azerbaijan – have a number of problems. Over the past years five Georgian clergymen have been compelled to leave the historical Georgian district Saingilo on the demand of the Azerbaijani side. On the local authorities’ decision, in the historical Ereti – in the Azerbaijani territory – the Azerbaijani citizens of Georgian origin (over 10,000) can attend prayers only twice a year, May 6 and November 23, the St. George’s Day. Another demonstration of discrimination is that the Muslim Georgians cannot recover their historical surnames, etc.

Ethnic Georgians have been historically residing in the former Zakatal Region of the Russian Empire. Currently it constitutes the districts of Kakhi, Belakani and Zakatala in Azerbaijan. The total number of the Georgians of those districts, including the Muslim Georgians, is approximately 50,000. Along with other indigenous peoples of the region, they are subjected to oppressions on ethnic and religious ground in Azerbaijan. The local Georgians have repeatedly written appeals to the Georgian and Azerbaijani authorities on the subject.

Source: Panorama.am

The Armenian in “The origins of beauty”

May 26, 2015 By administrator

For 2 years, the photographer Natalia Ivanova * correspondent for Tass, is preparing a project in partnership with UNESCO and Itar Tass, the origins of beauty, a non-commercial project, artistic, documentary and research Cappadocia with Bicycle on the diversity of humanity seen through feminine beauty of all peoples of the world.

She knows Armenia to be conducted within several hundred shots. She shows us the portrait of Diana, model and composer of Armenian origin.

And Mariam, living in Moscow

* The daughter of a Russian general, Natalia Ivanova graduated from the State Institute of International Relations in Moscow; Course of civilization at the Sorbonne and its Paris Photographic Institute, as indeed Mischa, son of Charles Aznavour.

Tuesday, May 26, 2015,
Jean Eckian © armenews.com

Cairo: ‘Battle of humanity’: Muslim scholars Al-Azhar, make desperate call to save Syria’s Palmyra

May 25, 2015 By administrator

The historical city of Palmyra (Reuters / Nour Fourat)

Before Islamic State hammers have a chance to fall on the ruins of Palmyra, a leading Sunni Muslim body is appealing one last time for people to unite “in a battle of humanity” and save what UNESCO calls a historic city of “outstanding universal value.”

The call comes just as Syrian fighter jets were bombarding terrorist positions from the sky early on Monday.

The terrorist group has already killed 400 people in the ancient Syrian city, northeast of Damascus, while thousands more have been displaced by the fighting.

Now, Al-Azhar, a Cairo-based center for Islamic learning, has sounded the alarm as time runs out to prevent Palmyra from becoming another Nimrod, the Iraqi (Assyrian) city where Islamic State (formerly known as ISIS/ISIL) wiped thousands of years of history from existence with axes and sledgehammers.

“Protecting archeological sites from destruction and plundering is the battle of all of humanity,” the center said in a statement a day after another appeal by Syria’s antiquities director and ISIS entered the museum in the 2,000-year-old Palmyra and raised their black flag over the citadel.

Maamoun Abdulkarim, the antiquities director, on Saturday called for the implementation of UN Security Council Resolution No. 2199, which was unanimously approved on February 12 and called for nations to combat terrorism by any means possible.

“We have to unite our efforts in order to protect one of the most important archaeological cities in the Middle East from being destroyed by Daesh [the Arabic acronym for Islamic State],” Al-Azhar’s statement said.

Following UNESCO’s call for a swift resolution and an end to the fighting, Al-Azhar urged the international community to do whatever it can to prevent one of the world’s most important archaeological sites from being destroyed.

Since the city’s seizure Thursday, the race has been on to save this World Heritage site – a collection of Greco-Roman ruins with intricate designs, colonnades and an ancient cemetery full of elaborately-decorated tombs.

For Al-Azhar, this isn’t just about Islamic State being prehistoric in its cruelty: the organization says it clear that nowhere in Sharia law does it say that destruction of universally-valued antiquities and heritage sites is a holy duty.

Belgium party leader: Armenian Genocide deniers to be expelled from our party

May 24, 2015 By administrator

If there is an [Armenian Genocide] denier in the Humanist Democratic Centre, he/she will be immediately expelled, Benoît Lutgen, President of Belgium’s Humanist Democratic Centre said, referring to the scandalous statement by the Brussels MP Ahmed El Khannouss on the Armenian Genocide.

According to RTBF, the leader made it very clear that the deniers have no place in the party, since this contradicts the party’s Code of Ethics. “If there is a denier in the Humanist Democratic Centre, he/she will be immediately expelled. And I’ll tell you why: when I became a President, I asked each candidate to acknowledge all the genocides, including the Armenian Genocide. This is a written commitment, which is stipulated by our Code of Ethics in line with other obligations and rules of conduct,” Benoît Lutgen said.

Earlier, MP Ahmed El Khannouss from the Belgian capital city of Brussels had made a controversial statement in connection with the Armenian Genocide, consequently finding himself in the center of a debate. El Khannouss had recently written on Facebook about not recognizing the Armenian Genocide. His comment sparked a lot of criticism and some even accused the Brussels MP of denialism. In response, El Khannouss said he was misunderstood: “I have always been clear about the Armenian Genocide, which I acknowledge. I think there’s no need to argue over these historic sufferings.”

Istanbul They fight against the destruction of Camp Armen

May 23, 2015 By administrator

Photo: Zafer (Victory in Turkish) is a Turk. He fights with the Armenians to save the orphanage Armen Camp. “Yes, I am a young Turkish and I participate in this event because I do not want to be crushed under the shame”

Armen Camp, the former orphanage foundation of the Armenian Protestant Church Gedik Pacha – on the outskirts of Tuzla in the far east of Istanbul – is in danger of destruction. It was built in 1963, in part through the efforts of orphans. The orphanage building, abandoned since the 1980s after being usurped by the Turkish state was under the yoke excavators since May 6, destroying part of the building until the intervention of Garabet ( Garo) Paylan, a parliamentary candidate for the ruling Peoples Democratic Party (HDP) of Armenian origin, and a former resident of the orphanage Garabet Orunöz.

The two men were able to convince the foreman, explaining that Hrant Dink and Raquel, who lived here, had their memories, as well as other people, including a deputy. Hrant Dink had become, himself one of the counselors.

In the wake of the coup of 1980, the founder and director of the orphanage, the ecclesiastical Hrant Güzelyan, was accused of raising the Armenians, which led to his being tortured.

Listed on several occasions, the plot is now up to M.Fatih Ulusoy. The latter has agreed to halt the demolition for now, and is open to negotiations for a solution that would not lose the monetary value of its investment.

Since then, Armen Camp is busy day and night by Armenian militants and Turkish Nor Zartonk who lived there. A banner was displayed with the inscription “Armenians, welcome to Camp Armen”. Another says “The Camp Armen should return to Armenians”.

Armenian Missionary Association of America (AMAA) wrote to the President, Prime Minister and the Ambassador of the Republic of Turkey USA asking for their response and support.

In the letters, Zaven Khanjian, Executive Director / CEO of the AMAA, requested that Turkish leaders are seriously considering intervention and immediate resolution to avoid further demolition of the historically significant Camp and for the return of the property its rightful owners, the Armenian Evangelical Church of Gedik Pasha in Istanbul.

Yesterday, 22 May, an important manifestation of protest and against Holocaust denial was held in Pera (Beyoglu). The journalist of Armenian origin Raffi Hermon Araks notes that it has participated in this event because as the young Zafer he “did not want to be crushed under the shame.”

Saturday, May 23, 2015,
Jean Eckian © armenews.com

The Guardian predicts Armenia’s victory at Eurovision 2015 (video)

May 23, 2015 By administrator

Britain’s The Guardian predicted Armenia’s victory at this year’s Eurovision song contest.

“Data behind Eurovision votes suggest some countries perform consistently well. We look at whether numbers can point us to who will triumph in Vienna,” The Guardian said.

“Here’s what’s probably going to happen:

• Viewers will be treated to a few out of the ordinary performances • Everyone will be complaining about regional voting blocs • Like most competitions that involve competing against other European nations (and doesn’t include the use of bicycles), the UK entry will flop.

But we’re going to be a bit bolder than that.

We’re having a shot at predicting who is going to follow in the footsteps of Conchita Wurst as the winner of the contest,” The Guardian said.

“Our model is not based on the quality of the songs (or the lack thereof), but on an average of votes each participating nation received over the past 12 years, which is then adjusted for factors that include present day geopolitics, form in more recent editions, past performance and tempo.

We have now spent the last two years tinkering with the model and hope the improvements we’re introducing mean that our projected winner will be the one to take it all.

So without further ado, the Guardian data prediction for Eurovision 2015 winner is… Armenia!

Genealogy’s controversial “Face the Shadow” references the mass murder of 1.5m Armenians by the Ottoman Empire in 1915. It was originally called “Don’t Deny” – Turkey still contests that it was not a genocide, and this title was deemed too political by Eurovision organisers.

Other countries our model expects will make the top 10 include Serbia, Sweden, and Azerbaijan,” The Guardian concludes.

The Guardian: Eurovision 2015: the Guardian’s data-driven prediction

The Guardian: Don’t Tell Me the Boy Was Mad review – Armenia’s tragedy becomes meaty drama

May 22, 2015 By administrator

Love on the run … Don’t Tell Me the Boy Was Mad. Photograph: PR

Cannes 2015

French-Armenian director Robert Guédiguian takes on the Armenian genocide and the campaign of vengeance against Turkey in a film that goes in unexpected directions

The indefatigable Robert Guédiguian returns to the highminded thriller style that proved successful with his 2009 picture The Army of Crime, which unveiled local complicity in the betrayal of a wartime resistance cell in German occupied Marseilles. This new film, for which the original French title is a slightly more snappy Une Histoire de Fou (A Story of Madness), jumps forwards three decades, to Marseilles in the 1970s, and takes as its subject the wave of bombings and assassinations perpetrated by Armenian radicals against Turkish interests, in response to the genocidal killings of Armenians during and after the first world war.

With his Armenian heritage, this counts as deeply personal territory for Guédiguian; though you sense that the director’s uncompromising political sternness makes it difficult for him to fully plant a flag. Nevertheless, he has produced a film that both acts as a useful primer for understanding the decades-long grievance that the Armenian genocide produced, and discusses the peculiar politics of direct action terror in the 1970s.

Don’t Tell Me the Boy Was Mad begins with a black-and-white preface, describing the assassination of Talaat Pasha, the Ottoman minister generally considered to have initiated the 1915 massacres, by Soghomon Tehlirian in Berlin in 1921; he was acquitted by a German court who, somewhat ironically, were outraged by Tehlirian’s accounts of Turkish-organised death marches and concentration camps. The film then abruptly cuts to the 1970s and the Armenian diaspora in Marseilles where we home in on a storekeeper called Hovannes (Simon Abkarian, from Army of Crime), his wife Anouch (Ariane Ascaride, Guédiguian’s wife and regular collaborator), and hotheaded son Aram (Syrus Shahidi). Fed with tales of Turkish brutality by Anouch’s aged mother, Aram joins a local group of like-minded agitators, which becomes the gateway drug of the very 70s form of urban terrorism. Soon Aram finds himself clutching a detonator, waiting to blow up the Turkish ambassador to France.

t’s here that Guédiguian’s takes a significant detour into more complex moral discussion. As Aram is about to push the button, a random cyclist pulls up behind the ambassador’s car; Aram makes the choice to set off the bomb anyway. The cyclist, called Gilles, is not killed, but severely enough injured to require months of operations and be largely confined to a wheelchair. Aram disappears to Beirut, there to join up with like-minded urban guerrillas and continue the campaign of terror; but racked with guilt, Anouch tracks Gilles down and offers him the family’s help, as a kind of penance. Gilles, angry and bitter, takes up the offer; after practically moving into Aram’s old bedroom, he starts to take on and identify with the Armenian cause. Meanwhile, over in Beirut, Aram swiftly becomes disillusioned with his commander’s callousness towards innocent bystanders – as Gilles once was – but can’t quite bring himself to quit for a more principled splinter group to stay with his lover, Anahit.

All this makes for a meaty two-hour-plus drama, with Guédiguian sketching in the moral dilemmas with clarity and firmness. The central debate is rehearsed again and again: can innocents ever be sacrificed for a cause, however urgent? Some of the dialogue is a little decks-clearing – Ascaride at one point quickly explains that “most Armenians abhor violence” – while the largely studio-bound sets make the film feel a little airless. It’s only when we get to Armenia in the final frames that the horizons open up. Guédiguian, none the less, has something interesting to say; his film is always good, if it’s not quite brilliant.

Source: The Guardian

Reuters Exclusive: Turkish intelligence helped ship arms to Syrian Islamist rebel areas

May 21, 2015 By administrator

ADANA, Turkey | By Humeyra Pamuk and Nick Tattersall

A locally made shell is launched by rebel fighters towards forces loyal to Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad at the frontline in al-Breij district of Aleppo December 10, 2014. REUTERS/Sultan Kitaz

Turkey’s state intelligence agency helped deliver arms to parts of Syria under Islamist rebel control during late 2013 and early 2014, according to a prosecutor and court testimony from gendarmerie officers seen by Reuters.

The witness testimony contradicts Turkey’s denials that it sent arms to Syrian rebels and, by extension, contributed to the rise of Islamic State, now a major concern for the NATO member.

Syria and some of Turkey’s Western allies say Turkey, in its haste to see President Bashar al-Assad toppled, let fighters and arms over the border, some of whom went on to join the Islamic State militant group which has carved a self-declared caliphate out of parts of Syria and Iraq.

Ankara has denied arming Syria’s rebels or assisting hardline Islamists. Diplomats and Turkish officials say it has in recent months imposed tighter controls on its borders.

Testimony from gendarmerie officers in court documents reviewed by Reuters allege that rocket parts, ammunition and semi-finished mortar shells were carried in trucks accompanied by state intelligence agency (MIT) officials more than a year ago to parts of Syria under Islamist control.

Four trucks were searched in the southern province of Adana in raids by police and gendarmerie, one in November 2013 and the three others in January 2014, on the orders of prosecutors acting on tip-offs that they were carrying weapons, according to testimony from the prosecutors, who now themselves face trial.

While the first truck was seized, the three others were allowed to continue their journey after MIT officials accompanying the cargo threatened police and physically resisted the search, according to the testimony and prosecutor’s report.

President Tayyip Erdogan has said the three trucks stopped on Jan. 19 belonged to MIT and were carrying aid.

“Our investigation has shown that some state officials have helped these people deliver the shipments,” prosecutor Ozcan Sisman, who ordered the search of the first truck on Nov. 7 2013 after a tip-off that it was carrying weapons illegally, told Reuters in a interview on May 4 in Adana.

Both Sisman and Takci have since been detained on the orders of state prosecutors and face provisional charges, pending a full indictment, of carrying out an illegal search.

The request for Sisman’s arrest, issued by the Supreme Board of Judges and Prosecutors (HSYK) and also seen by Reuters, accuses him of revealing state secrets and tarnishing the government by portraying it as aiding terrorist groups.

Sisman and Takci deny the charges.

“It is not possible to explain this process, which has become a total massacre of the law,” Alp Deger Tanriverdi, a lawyer representing both Takci and Sisman, told Reuters.

“Something that is a crime cannot possibly be a state secret.”

More than 30 gendarmerie officers involved in the Jan. 1 attempted search and the events of Jan. 19 also face charges such as military espionage and attempting to overthrow the government, according to an April 2015 Istanbul court document.

An official in Erdogan’s office said Erdogan had made his position clear on the issue. Several government officials contacted by Reuters declined to comment further. MIT officials could not immediately be reached.

“I want to reiterate our official line here, which has been stated over and over again ever since this crisis started by our prime minister, president and foreign minister, that Turkey has never sent weapons to any group in Syria,” Erdogan’s spokesman Ibrahim Kalin said on Wednesday at an event in Washington.

Erdogan has said prosecutors had no authority to search MIT vehicles and were part of what he calls a “parallel state” run by his political enemies and bent on discrediting the government.

“Who were those who tried to stop MIT trucks in Adana while we were trying to send humanitarian aid to Turkmens?,” Erdogan said in a television interview last August.

“Parallel judiciary and parallel security … The prosecutor hops onto the truck and carries out a search. You can’t search an MIT truck, you have no authority.”

‘TARNISHING THE GOVERNMENT’

One of the truck drivers, Murat Kislakci, was quoted as saying the cargo he carried on Jan. 19 was loaded from a foreign plane at Ankara airport and that he had carried similar shipments before. Reuters was unable to contact Kislakci.

Witness testimony seen by Reuters from a gendarme involved in a Jan. 1, 2014 attempt to search another truck said MIT officials had talked about weapons shipments to Syrian rebels from depots on the border. Reuters was unable to confirm this.

At the time of the searches, the Syrian side of the border in Hatay province, which neighbors Adana, was controlled by hardline Islamist rebel group Ahrar al-Sham.

The Salafist group included commanders such as Abu Khaled al-Soury, also known as Abu Omair al-Shamy, who fought alongside al Qaeda founder Osama bin Laden and was close to its current chief Ayman al-Zawahiri. Al-Soury was killed in by a suicide attack in Syrian city of Aleppo in February 2014.

A court ruling calling for the arrest of three people in connection with the truck stopped in November 2013 said it was loaded with metal pipes manufactured in the Turkish city of Konya which were identified as semi-finished parts of mortars.

The document also cites truck driver Lutfi Karakaya as saying he had twice carried the same shipment and delivered it to a field around 200 meters beyond a military outpost in Reyhanli, a stone’s throw from Syria.

The court order for Karakaya’s arrest, seen by Reuters, cited a police investigation which said that the weapons parts seized that day were destined for “a camp used by the al Qaeda terrorist organization on the Syrian border”.

Reuters was unable to interview Karakaya or to independently confirm the final intended destination of the cargo.

Sisman said it was a tip-off from the police that prompted him to order the thwarted search on Jan. 1, 2014.

“I did not want to prevent its passage if it belonged to MIT and carried aid but we had a tip off saying this truck was carrying weapons. We were obliged to investigate,” he said.

(Additional reporting by Ercan Gurses in Ankara; Editing by Nick Tattersall and Anna Willard)

VIENNA: Armenia Team Advances to Eurovision 2015 Final (Video)

May 20, 2015 By administrator

VIENNA, Austria (A.W.)–Armenia, represented by the group “Genealogy,” has moved forward to the final stage of the Eurovision 2015 contest. Armenia was one of 16 countries taking part in the first semi-finals in Vienna on May 19.

Armenia, Belgium, Greece, Estonia, Serbia, Hungary, Russia, Albania, Romania, and Georgia qualified during the first semi-final round.

The second semi-final round will take place on May 21, when 17 more countries will compete to move onto the final stage of the contest.

Below is a video of Armenia’s performance.

On March 12, Armenia released its Eurovision 2015 song entry, “Don’t Deny.” The song enraged some in neighboring Azerbaijan, which claims the lyrics carry a political message. The Armenian delegation denies any specific political subtext in the song.

Along with the release of the song and its music video, Inga Arshakian of Armenia was revealed as the final performer of Genealogy. Arshakian joined Stephanie Topalian, Essaï Altounian, Vahe Tilbian, Mary-Jean O’Doherty Vasmatzian, and Tamar Kaprelian, who hail from Europe, Asia, America, Africa, and Australia, respectively—and are all of Armenian origin.

According to the official website of the Eurovision Song Contest (Eurovision.tv), this is the first time a country is participating with performers from different parts of the world.

A few days following the release, the Armenian delegation announced that it would rename the song to “Face the Shadow” in order to suppress concerns of a political theme and to “strengthen” its themes.

The music for Armenia’s entry was written by award-winning Armenian musician and composer Armen Martirosyan, who also composed Armenia’s entry into the 2010 Eurovision Song Contest, “Apricot Stone.” The lyrics to the song were penned by Inna Mkrtchyan; the music video was directed by renowned Armenian director, Aren Bayadyan.

The finals take place on May 23, when 27 countries compete for first place. The 10 qualifying countries from both semi-finals will qualify to the finals, where they will join the host nation Austria and the five main sponsoring nations: France, Germany, Italy, Spain, and the United Kingdom, and Australia, which was invited this year to commemorate the contest’s 60th anniversary.