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The Armenian American Community proudly announces the completion of the Pasadena Armenian Genocide Memorial project!
The Pasadena Armenian Genocide Memorial Committee, its partner organizations, the City of Pasadena, and community organizations invite YOU to join us for the historic Unveiling Ceremony of the Armenian Genocide Memorial!
TED Cruz Stresses: “The Massacre of the Armenian, Assyrian and other Christian People Should be Called what it is: Genocide”
WASHINGTON, DC – Republican Presidential Candidate, Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) today marked the Centennial of the Armenian Genocide with a statement calling for the proper recognition of the massacre of Armenian, Assyrian and other Christian peoples as genocide, reported the Armenian National Committee of America (ANCA).
Sen. Cruz’s statement, addressed to the Armenian Church of Austin, was read on the south steps of the Texas State Capitol, during the Austin Peace March and Rally, an observance attended by thousands and organized by the Armenian Genocide Centennial Committee of Texas.
“Senator Cruz got it right,” said ANCA Executive Director Aram Hamparian. “As Americans, we cannot be silent. We must speak the truth. His remarks highlight the Armenian Genocide gag-rule that Ankara continues to enforce on the U.S. government, and spotlight the stark choice facing President Obama this April 24th: to reject or enforce Turkey’s veto on our nation’s Armenian Genocide policy.”
Prior to his election to the oval office, President Obama was clear and unequivocal in his pledge to properly characterize the murder of over 1.5 million Armenian men, women and children from 1915-1923 by the Ottoman Turkish government as genocide. “The facts are undeniable. An official policy that calls on diplomats to distort the historical facts is an untenable policy. As a senator, I strongly support passage of the Armenian Genocide Resolution (H.Res.106 and S.Res.106), and as President I will recognize the Armenian Genocide,” stated then Senator Obama in a January 19, 2008, statement.
See below full text of the statement
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Armenian Holy Cross Church on Akhtamar in Lake Van,
By permitting the Armenians to only one Mass per year to the Armenian Holy Cross Church on Akhtamar in Lake Van, Turkey treats its image and wants to benefit from the tourist trade thousands of Armenians who go on island of Akhtamar. Behind this facade opening, thousands of Armenian churches are now in ruins when they are not destroyed, on the territory of historic Armenia.
Many Armenian churches have also been used to target when firing during practice of the Turkish army and many other dismantled and its stones recovered by the Turks or Kurds for their own construction. The Armenian Genocide is also the cultural genocide with removal of traces of their cultural, religious and national on the same land where Armenians have lived for thousands of years and built a civilization.
Krikor Amirzayan
Next week, Armenia will hold perhaps the biggest events of its post-Soviet history. Delegations from a number of major countries, international personalities will visit the country for the 100th anniversary of the Armenian Genocide will be commemorated with the main events in Yerevan on 23 and 24 April.
Preparations for the commemorative events were held in Yerevan for months and they cover almost all areas of life in the city – the improvement of infrastructure and traffic accommodation, public health and safety Customers visiting the country.
At the beginning of the year, the Chief Vladimir Gasparyan police ordered the establishment of a working group to coordinate the work of the police during the events related to the commemoration of the centenary of the genocide. Police officers who have received special training will do special tests in different places in the capital on April 24, and during the days preceding and following it.
In recent assistant working consultations Yerevan Mayor David Ohanian gave instructions to provide additional conditions in health care facilities in connection with the events of the genocide centennial in order to be able to serve potentially more people seeking medical or professional advice help.
The director of the ambulance service was responsible for ensuring able to serve different parts of Yerevan in first aid in case of need. The service was also responsible for mobilizing more vehicles and ambulance staff than usual before the Tsitsernakaberd Memorial on April 24.
Early March, the municipality of Yerevan began tree pruning activities in the capital, explaining that she is also pursuing aesthetic purposes, as this will provide more visibility to the city and its architectural designs.
The majority of buildings in Yerevan today have posters with messages on the 100th anniversary of the Armenian Genocide as well as symbols of the commemoration of the genocide centennial. The stickers with this flower can also be seen on many cars in Yerevan these days.
Hotels are also full of preparations in recent days to accommodate thousands of visitors expected in Armenia for the April events. Armhotels.am, an online hotel reservation site, told ArmeniaNow that since mid-March, nearly all rooms in 70 hotels in Yerevan had been reserved for the period from April 20 to 25. At the date of today, there are only a few rooms available and they are in hotels located on the outskirts of the city.
Considering the expected influx of customers, some hotels have even increased their prices. But the big hotels like Best Western Congress, for example, have denied any changes in their pricing policy. The hotel managers said that all their rooms for the period from April 21 to 25 have been reserved there is already a month.
Economists say that in addition to the political, the large number of visitors expected in Armenia will also have its effect in economic affairs. For example, the Armenian national currency, the dram, is likely to gain more ground due to strong foreign exchange inflows expected this month.
“Most likely some changes will be observed in the exchange rate dollar-dram and the Armenian national currency will appreciate for a short period. I think it will last until early May, “said the economist Vilen Khachatryan ArmeniaNow. “Visits to a large number of foreign tourists will also bring greater purchasing power, and there will be some activity especially in the tourism sector.”
GOHAR ABRAHAMYAN
Refers to Native Americans as ‘Redskins’
ANKARA—Warning that decisions like the European Parliament’s motion recognizing the Armenian Genocide will lead to enmity and prejudice against Turkey and Muslims, Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu, in an attempt to point the finger away from the Turkish government, asked about the fate of the Aborigines in Australia and Native Americans in the United States.
“If a contribution is to be made to peace, if European culture is to preserve its multicultural and multi-religious structure, it must not make decisions that will cause enmity against any religious or national group on the basis of history. This is a situation which will provoke anti-Islam and anti-Turkish [sentiments], which have been on the rise recently in Europe. From now on, the ‘Turkey-Armenia’ [issue] has moved beyond the ‘Turkish-Armenian’ issue. It is a reflection of racism in Europe,” Davutoğlu said on Friday, responding to reporters.
The European Parliament’s motion came on April 15, a few days after Pope Francis also reaffirmed the Armenian Genocide with a Holy Mass at the Vatican.
The prime minister argued that both the European Parliament’s resolution and the pope’s statement were “a new reflection of racism.”
Davutoglu turned the discussion away from Turkey as he mentioned past injustices committed by European countries. “I told [European Parliament President Martin] Schulz yesterday. If we are to open the history of Europe, what was done in Africa during colonialism? What was done in Asia? What was done in Australia and where have those authentic tribes disappeared to? Where are the Aborigines, where are the Redskins?” he said, using the derogatory term for Native Americans.
Davutoglu then pointed the finger at the Catholic Church, criticizing the Church’s actions five hundred years ago during the Spanish Inquisition. “We could open files of Catholic history and bring up an issue by talking about those who fled the Inquisition, came to our country and how they have lived in peace here for centuries.”
During the Municipality Assembly session of the Turkish Van city, the attendees honored the memory of the victims of Armenian Genocide and Anfal campaign (slaughter of Kurds in Iraq).
At the beginning of the 3rd Municipality Assembly session, the Assembly Deputy Chairman Cahit Bozbay and press-secretary of Democratic Regions Party (DBP) Ramazan Alver made a statement on Armenian Genocide and Anfal campaign, Van city municipality official website reports.
Cahit Bozbay, the Van city Municipality Assembly Deputy Chairman, stated that they condemn the Armenian Genocide and Anfal campaign and honor the memory of the victims. In his remarks, Bozbay noted that the society should confront the past genocides and massacres. In his turn, Ramazan Alver stated that what happened to Armenians in 1915 is a human tragedy, which lies at the core of genocide. He said that DBP recognized the 1915 events as genocide, noting that the Pope’s statement was the precise definition of the events. “Although 100 years have passed, this human tragedy is still fresh, and the government is trying to paper it over,” the Democratic Regions Party press-secretary noted.
Google Doodle Armenian Genocide commemoration 100 year
The famous American Armenian TV personalities, Kim and Khloé Kardashian sisters, have tweeted the following:
“Please sign this petition to bring awareness to the Armenian genocide. I did!!!”
By way of this petition, the image below will appear as Google Doodle on April 24, which marks the centennial of the Armenian Genocide.
– See more at: http://style.news.am/eng/news/21640/kardashian-sisters-sign-armenian-genocide-petition.html#sthash.msA8LPDs.dpuf
Philippe Alfroy, AFP
An editor shows an old copy of Armenian newspaper Jamanak in the newspaper’s offices in Istanbul on April 10, 2015
Istanbul (AFP) – It’s witnessed the collapse of an empire, the horrendous massacre of its people and the birth of an entirely new state. And it keeps on printing.
The newspaper “Jamanak” (“The Times” in Armenian) is the oldest continuously-running newspaper in Turkey and oldest anywhere in the Armenian language.
It published its first issue on October 28, 1908, in the final one-and-a-half decades of the Ottoman Empire when Armenians were still citizens of the empire, before the creation of modern Turkey and when Istanbul was still officially known as Constantinople.
It survived the massacres from 1915 of Armenians at the hands of Ottoman forces, an atrocity whose 100th anniversary is commemorated on April 24.
And still it prints almost every day, keeping Istanbul’s small Armenian community of some 60,000 up to date with events and views.
Entering its offices in Istanbul’s Ferikoy district is like visiting a museum with the walls decorated with old photos and back issues painstakingly stacked up.
In his office, the director Ara Kocunyan, dictates his articles to three editorial assistants who type them into the computer in Armenian script.
“We are the newspaper of the Armenian community in Turkey,” said Kocunyan.
“Jamanak has been published without interruption and for a long time, it has crossed so many eras that it has become an anthology of the life of Armenians in the Republic of Turkey.”
“It is our memory,” he added.
Six days a week, the 2,000 daily copies of the newspaper are printed in a basement close to the editorial offices. As it always has.
The press is the domain of Ibrahim Celik, a man of mixed Kurdish and Armenian origin who takes his mission seriously even if he cannot speak or read the language of his grandmother.
“It is very important to print this newspaper so as not to lose this language. If this kind of newspaper was not printed then our children would forget Armenian and end up forgetting their origins.”
– ‘An important mission’ –
For all its history, the newspaper’s influence is in no way comparable to the Agos weekly, which publishes in both Turkish and Armenian and is also widely read outside the Armenian community.
The assassination in 2007 of the director of Agos, Hrant Dink, cerated a wave of revulsion across Turkey.
But Ara Kocunyan said that it would be wrong to underplay the importance of Jamanak.
“On the political level, it has no weight, that is evident,” he said.
“But we have an important mission to serve as the link between the Armenian community and the Turkish community and to prepare its future in this country.
He said the paper’s mission is even more essential in the run-up to the anniversary of the mass killings of Armenians by Ottoman forces, which Armenians regard as a targeted campaign of genocide that killed 1.5 million of their ancestors.
Turkey vehemently contests the use of the word genocide, saying hundreds of thousands of Turks and Armenians lost their lives in a shared wartime tragedy. Tensions have spiked ahead of the anniversary.
“On April 24, 1915, our newspaper was the only publication to talk about what happened,” said Kocunyan. Armenians see the start of the tragedy as the rounding up of Armenian leaders on April 24.
“100 years on, it’s still very hard to look at this tragedy.”
“People who like me were born in the 1970s did not grow up with the burden of this historical catastrophe.
“We, the young people, need to tackle this subject so that we can carry on living in this country.”
Kocunyan finds the attitudes of the Armenian diaspora — who lobby heavily in the United States to push for recognition of the killings as genocide — as somewhat radical.
In his commentaries, he urges a rapprochement between Turks and Armenians. “While protecting our history and culture, of course,” he added.
He said that the paper has never in recent years been singled out by the government because it is Armenian.
“We have a problem with freedom of the press in Turkey but it concerns all organs of the press. We don’t have more difficulties because we are Armenian,” he said.
By Tony Rennell for the Daily Mail
In 1915 the rulers of the Ottoman empire turned their hatred on ArmeniansShe was in bed when the soldiers came in the middle of the night and dragged her father out of the family home in Diyarbakir, a city in eastern Turkey.
The last thing little Aghavni (her name means ‘dove’ in her native Armenian) heard as she cowered in her room was his shout of defiance: ‘I was born a Christian and I will die a Christian.’
Not until first light did Aghavni dare to creep downstairs on that morning 100 years ago. ‘I saw an object sticking through the front door,’ she later remembered. ‘I pushed it open and there lay two horseshoes nailed to two feet.
the ruling Turks had turned their hatred on the 2 million men, women and children of Armenian extraction who lived within their borders
‘My eyes followed up to the blood-covered ankles, the disjointed knees, the mound of blood where the genitals had been, to a long laceration through the abdomen to the chest.
‘I came to the hands, which were nailed horizontally on a board with big spikes of iron, like a cross. The shoulders were remarkably clean and white, but there was no head.
‘This was lying on the steps, propped up by the nose. I recognised the neatly trimmed beard along the cheekbones. It was my father.’
The year was 1915. In the sprawling, beleaguered Ottoman Empire — an ally of the German Kaiser in the world war that had engulfed Europe and parts of Asia for nine months — the ruling Turks had turned their hatred on the 2 million men, women and children of Armenian extraction who lived within their borders.
The Armenians — who lived on the eastern edge of the empire ruled from Constantinople (modern-day Istanbul) — were Christians and had been since the year 301, making theirs the first nation officially to adopt Christianity, even before Rome.
But here, among the Islamic Turks, they had long been second-class citizens, a persecuted minority. Now, as power in the land was seized by a junta of nationalist officers known as the Young Turks, persecution turned to unbridled savagery.
Over the next six months, there was to be a systematic uprooting and slaughter of perhaps as many as 1.5 million Armenians — on the grounds that they were infidels, racially inferior ‘dogs’ and traitors who were siding with Russia against Turkey.
Those who weren’t put to death on the spot, their faith cruelly mocked — such as Aghavni’s father, a mild-mannered, cultivated spice merchant who spoke five languages — were hounded in columns, eastwards, into the deserts of Syria and Iraq to die.
Their remains are long turned to dust, but the controversy that surrounds those terrible events is as alive as ever.
Just this week at mass in St Peter’s in Rome, the Pope heralded the upcoming centenary of the first killings on April 24 by describing the slaughter of the Armenian Christians as ‘the first genocide of the 20th century’ — only to be ticked off by Turkey in no uncertain terms for inflammatory remarks.
French Prime Minister Manuel Valls is going to deliver a speech at an Armenian Genocide commemoration event set to take place in the Canada Square of Paris, Nouvelles d’Armenie says.
President Francois Hollande was earlier reported to be planning a trip to Armenia to take part the April 24 centennial events in capital Yerevan.