Armenian Genocide Commemorations List and related articles

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Fresno Bee

April 26 2024

Will Armenia survive as a nation? A Fresno woman shares her anguish over its plight | Opinion

CLARICE KRIKORIAN

April 26, 2024 at 3:30 PM

April 24 marked the 109th anniversary of the Armenian Genocide, widely accepted by historians worldwide as the first of the 20th century. As we honored and remembered innocent lives lost in a brutal massacre in 1915 by Ottoman Turks, we also remember those who perished in a more recent campaign of ethnic cleansing in Artsakh.

History repeated itself in the fall of 2020, with persecution of indigenous Armenians living in Nagorno-Karabakh (known as Artsakh, to the Armenians). Centuries ago, Artsakh was a province of the Kingdom of Armenia. However, throughout the years, the area has been subject to territorial conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan.

The Armenian Christians, considered a “problem” to the Ottomans in 1915, were a “problem” to the Azeris, as well. Referring to Armenians as “fascists, barbarians, vandals and rats,” Azerbaijan’s president, Ilham Aliyev, has stated, “Live in your own country. We have nothing to do with you. Do whatever you want to do but leave our lands.”

With orders from Aliyev, the Azerbaijani army invaded Artsakh, bombing civilians, hospitals and homes, murdering innocent men, women and children, cutting off gas and electricity and closing the Lachin corridor (the main supply route from Armenia to the region).

Without heat or food, Armenians were left freezing, starving and begging for help. Unfortunately, their pleas fell on deaf ears of America, Russia, the UN and European Union. Nobody came to their rescue. Though we’ve heard daily of Russia’s war on Ukraine, Israel’s conflict with Hamas in Gaza, and the outpouring of humanitarian aid given to them, Armenians were overlooked. The mainstream media, along with the world, remained silent to the outcries.

Opinion

In September 2023, after nearly three years of war, Azerbaijan claimed victory over the disputed territory. Overtaking Artsakh, Aliyev finally opened the Lachin corridor and, in short time, expelled the entire Armenian population of 120,000. Leaving most possessions behind, the majority of those displaced found refuge in Armenia, hoping to eventually return to their homes and lost lands.

Apparently, the conquest of Artsakh wasn’t enough for Aliyev. He now desires to overtake land in Armenia itself, claiming it rightfully belongs to Azerbaijan, and adding that Armenia must change its constitution in order to make peace with Azerbaijan.

With blessings of neighboring Turkey, Azerbaijan has initiated construction of a railway project known as the “Zangezur corridor,” which will connect their two countries. To achieve this, however, the project must go through southern Armenian territory. Stating that Armenia is “a country of no value,” Aliyev knows Armenian land is key to the final connection of the railway and threatens if Armenia doesn’t agree to this project, it will be done “by force.”

Currently, Azerbaijanis are firing at three Armenian border villages to provoke a military response in order to invade Armenia. As tensions escalate, Armenia’s small military will, most likely, be overtaken. Aliyev has also set his sights on Yerevan, the capital of Armenia, claiming it, too, belongs to Azerbaijan.

Today, we are living in an “I want what you have” society. Many world leaders are possessed by power, politics, corruption and greed. It seems humanitarian aid is selective, based on what resources a country has to offer. Armenia, a small landlocked country, isn’t rich in fuel or materials of importance to the outside world. America “needs” oil-rich Azerbaijan for its resources and economic interests and is willing to overlook all wrongs to obtain those “needs.” Due to Azerbaijan’s gas diplomacy (the country’s main exports being oil and fuel) any sanctions against them for their crimes against humanity are, unfortunately, unlikely.

I am but one voice among the silent cries of many, and I fear, during these troubled times, Armenians may one day be a people without a country. Sadly, the world has closed its eyes, choosing not to see.

Though facing continued challenges and adversity, Armenians are resilient. Finding courage and strength through their faith and cultural heritage, the Armenian spirit perseveres.

Stories of the now long gone survivors of “The Forgotten Genocide” are enshrined in videos and eyewitness documentation, preserving history and truth. We, the children of those survivors, must ensure their stories are passed on to the generations who proceed us for, as we’ve seen, history forgotten is history repeated.

Clarice Krikorian of Fresno is a retired registered nurse. She is a member of the Arts and Humanities Advisory Board at Fresno State and the CSU Summer Arts Community Board.

https://www.fresnobee.com/opinion/readers-opinion/article288024380.html

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CRUX

April 26 2024

Christian leaders call on UK government to recognize Armenian Genocide

By Charles Collins

LEICESTER, United Kingdom – Christian leaders in Britain have asked the UK Government to formally recognize the deaths of Armenians during World War I as a “genocide.”

Armenia and Turkey are still bitterly divided over the memory of events that led to the death of somewhere between 1 million and 1.5 million people between 1915 and 1918.

In a letter to Prime Minster Rishi Sunak, Church heads said such an official recognition is not merely symbolic “but serves as a powerful statement against atrocities and a step toward preventing future acts of genocide.”

The massacre of Armenians in by what was then the Ottoman Empire at the end of World War I is formally recognized as a “genocide” by 22 countries around the world, including Uruguay, Cyprus, Russia, Germany, Argentina, France, Italy, and Venezuela. The U.S. Congress has recognized the genocide, but no U.S. president has formally recognize the congressional vote.

On April 24, Armenians worldwide commemorate the genocide, which Church leaders say profoundly impacted millions and continues to resonate in their collective memory.

“The United Kingdom has always been at the forefront of defending human rights and justice on the global stage. Historical figures such as former Prime Ministers David Lloyd George and Sir Winston Churchill have openly spoken about the massacres of Armenians from 1915 to 1923, referring to them as ‘the holocausts of 1915’ and the ‘clearance of the Armenian race from Asia-Minor,’ respectively,” the letter says.

“These acknowledgements from your predecessors underscore the significance of the events that transpired and the importance of formally recognising them. In recent years, the global community has made significant strides in acknowledging historical injustices, including key allies such as the United States and several European nations formally recognising the Armenian Genocide,” the Church leaders continue.

The head writer of the document was Armenian Bishop Hovakim Manukyan, but it included several Orthodox and Anglican bishops, as well as a Catholic member of the House of Lords.

The letter mentioned the ongoing conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan in Nagorno-Karabakh.

A full-scale war between two countries began in the early 1990s following the dissolution of the Soviet Union. The Armenians won the first part of the conflict, occupying a region inhabited by Armenians but formally ruled by Azerbaijan. However in 2020, a large-scale Second Nagorno-Karabakh War erupted and led to a resulted in a significant Azerbaijani victory, with over 7,000 people being killed in the last four years.

The letter from the British church leaders said the latest conflict has “repeated” the century-old conflict in the Ottoman Empire.

“Following the 44-day devastating war in Artsakh in the autumn of 2020, in September 2023, Azerbaijan launched a campaign which Raphael Lemkin, who coined the term ‘genocide,’ defined as ‘a coordinated plan of different actions aiming at the destruction of essential foundations of the life of national groups, with the aim of annihilating the groups themselves’,” the Church leaders wrote the prime minister.

“The nine-month blockade of Artsakh – known as Nagorno Karabakh – was the beginning of such a genocidal policy, culminating with a military atrocity that resulted in the ethnic cleansing of Armenians from their ancestral homeland,” the statement says.

“Prime Minister, the Armenian diaspora was formed not as a result of natural migration but because our people were forced to flee their historical homeland; our people were killed, raped, sent on death marches to the Syrian deserts, and our churches and homes were burnt and totally destroyed. The same is happening now,” the statement continues.

“Today, the Azerbaijani government, backed by Turkey, continues to threaten Armenia, and exerts pressure to gain control over more territories within the sovereign territory of Armenia,” the leaders told Sunak.

The statement went on to add that while ongoing conflicts and challenges to international law and human rights continue, the role of historical truth in fostering peace and justice has never been more critical.

“The United Kingdom’s formal recognition of the Armenian Genocide would send a strong message to the world about our commitment to historical truth and justice, transcending political and economic interests,” the Church leaders say.

“Such an act of recognition would not only honour the memory of those who suffered and affirm justice but would also reaffirm the UK’s commitment to upholding human rights. Recognition of the Armenian Genocide by the UK would also send a clear message to Turkey and Azerbaijan to cease their aggression against Armenia,” the statement continues.

The Church leaders also claim there is a “high risk” that the actions in the new conflict would result in a new war breaking out, adding a third conflict to a world already beset with global uncertainty and wars in Ukraine and the Middle East.

Armenia and Azerbaijan have pledged to work toward signing a peace treaty over the past many months, but no visible progress has been made, and tensions have continued to rise amid mutual distrust.

https://cruxnow.com/church-in-europe/2024/04/christian-leaders-call-on-uk-government-to-recognize-armenian-genocide

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Turkish Minute

May 2 2024

Turkish court acquits 2 human rights activists who recognized Armenian ‘genocide’

Two human rights activists from a leading rights organization in Turkey have been acquitted of insult charges against the Turkish nation and government due to their remarks recognizing the mass killings of Armenians in the final days of the Ottoman Empire as “genocide,” the Bianet news website reported.

Eren Keskin, the co-chairperson of the Human Rights Association (İHD) and also a prominent lawyer, and Güllistan Yarkın, a member of an İHD commission fighting against racism and discrimination, faced charges under the controversial Article 301 of the Turkish Penal Code (TCK), which concerns insulting the Turkish nation, parliament, government or Turkishness.

Keskin and Yarkın faced the charges, which carry a prison sentence of between six months and three years, due to a commemoration ceremony held by the İHD in 2021 in memory of the victims of the mass deportation of Armenians under Ottoman rule during World War I. Both Keskin and Yarkın recognize the killings as genocide, while the Turkish government categorically rejects the claim.

Thursday’s hearing at an İstanbul court was observed by other human rights activists and representatives from civil society organizations who wanted to show solidarity with Keskin and Yarkın.

Plainclothes police officers were allowed to stay in the courtroom despite requests from the defendants for their removal. Keskin said she felt pressured by their presence.

Keskin said in her defense statement that she thinks what happened to Armenians at the hands of the Ottoman Empire before the establishment of the Turkish Republic in 1923 is tantamount to genocide. She said the ordeal of the Armenians should be discussed in Turkey and that such a discussion will help the democratization of the country and the expansion of freedoms, while adding that no laws can prevent people from expressing their views on the issue.

“I think the 1915 [incidents] constituted a genocide. Turkey should confront with this and pay reparations for it. I do not accept the accusations against me,” said Keskin, adding that she wants to enjoy the same freedoms as those who claim the mass killings of the Armenians was not a genocide.

The court ruled for the acquittal of both defendants on the grounds that the elements of a crime were not established.

The Armenians — supported by historians and scholars — say 1.5 million of their people died in a genocide committed under the Ottoman Empire during World War I.

Ankara accepts that both Armenians and Turks died in huge numbers as Ottoman forces fought czarist Russia.

But Turkey vehemently denies a deliberate policy of genocide and notes that the term had not been legally defined at the time.

https://www.turkishminute.com/2024/05/02/turkish-court-acquit-2-human-right-activists-who-recognized-armenian-genocide/

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REACTION

May 8 2024

It’s time for the UK to acknowledge the Armenian genocide

• Sam Chandler
  
• May 8, 2024

On 24th April, Armenians around the world gathered to observe Armenian Genocide Remembrance Day. At local churches and memorials, they commemorated the 1.5 million Armenians who were systematically killed by Ottoman authorities between 1915 and 1923; to this day one of the worst massacres in human history.

Tragically, their pain will be compounded by the ongoing denial and obfuscation of governments across the world, many of whom still refuse to acknowledge it even took place. The UK, for example, has never formally acknowledged the Armenian genocide — and only 33 countries around the world have. Sadly, even the Armenian government itself is beginning to buckle to international pressure, with Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian telling his people to “overcome [their] trauma.”

Turkey is the most ardent of the deniers — acting as if the genocide never happened is a key plank of its state policy. Ankara has used a range of measures to suppress the truth, including funding academic centers to spread revisionist history; taking legal action against scholars and journalists who speak up; and censoring United Nations reports by blocking all mentions of it in official documents.

For its part, the UK engages in a form of “soft denialism”, in which it neither confirms nor denies the reality of the genocide in public. This unofficial policy — born of a desire not to upset Turkey, a key regional ally — might be defended on the grounds of realpolitik, yet it also carries grave unintended consequences. Indeed, by refusing to openly acknowledge this historic crime, the UK risks giving tacit license for further atrocities to be committed in the future.

Take the recent conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan as an example. In September 2023, Azerbaijan launched a military offensive on the Nagorno-Karabakh region, resulting in the forced displacement of 120,000 Armenians. This followed months of deliberate starvation of the population, in which Azerbaijani forces blocked access to food and medical supplies through a military blockade.

This effective ethnic cleansing has been followed by a series of further provocations against Armenia itself, including Azerbaijan’s President Ilham Aliyev referral to the Republic of Armenia as “Western Azerbaijan“. Azerbaijan has even renamed a street in Stepanakert, Nagorno-Karabakh’s deserted capital, after Enver *****, a former Turkish statesman and one of the chief architects of the Armenian genocide.

Observers fear that Azerbaijan may also target Armenian cultural and religious sites in the region, some of which have been present for over 2,000 years. In the Azeri exclave of Nakhchivan, for example, around 98 per cent of Armenian heritage sites have been dismantled.

This pattern of ethnic cleansing, cultural erasure, dehumanizing rhetoric, and politicized Armenophobia are all major warning signs for future atrocities. Indeed, US think tank The Lemkin Institute for Genocide Prevention has issued no less than three red flag alerts on the situation in the South Caucasus — the most severe warning it can give.

In the face of these signals, the British government simply cannot afford to stay silent. Equally, by staying complicit in the denialism of Turkey/Azerbaijan, the UK is sending the message that regional actors can engage in whatever aggression they like without meaningful pushback.

This is also a significant diplomatic barrier to improved relations with Armenia, which is increasingly keen to develop closer political and security ties with the West. The EU recently announced a €270 million deal with Armenia to help boost its economy and increase national resilience; sending a powerful message that Armenia will be supported by the West as it ends its traditional dependence on Russia.

This is a major opportunity for western countries to gain a new strategic ally in the region, yet unfortunately, the UK has been slow to capitalise on the opening. To kickstart the process, a public acknowledgement of the reality of the Armenian genocide would be a timely signal of friendship, whilst sending a clear message that further irredentist aggression in the South Caucasus will not be tolerated by the democratic West.

This would serve both an immediate practical purpose, and a longer-term ethical one. At the end of his infamous Obersalzberg Speech in 1939, Adolf Hitler once asked: “Who, after all, speaks today of the annihilation of the Armenians?”. This ugly precept was used a week later to justify Germany’s brutal invasion of Poland, on the understanding that the Nazi’s horrific crimes against the Poles would soon be forgotten to history.

The implication was clear: If no one today remembers or cares about what happened to 1.5 million Armenians between 1915 and 1923, why would anyone speak up against fresh atrocities? It is in the interest of every nation in the world to prove this idea wrong.

Sam Chandler is a public affairs professional and political commentator with Young Voices UK. Follow him on Twitter: @SamAdamChandler

https://reaction.life/its-time-for-the-uk-to-acknowledge-the-armenian-genocide/

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GRIPT, Ireland

May 11 2024

TÁNAISTE WON’T COMMIT TO RECOGNISING THE ARMENIAN GENOCIDE

The Tánaiste Micheál Martin has said the government will not commit to following the lead of other countries in officially recognising the Armenian Genocide.

In response to a parliamentary question from PBP-Solidarity’s Deputy Paul Murphy, the Tánaiste and Minister for Foreign Affairs said that the Irish government has not taken a position on the subject.

He also suggested that there are questions marks as to whether the atrocities which took place during the First World War reached the criteria for genocide which exists under international law.

“The term ‘genocide’ has a particular meaning under international law. The Government has not taken a stance on whether those terrible events should be described as a genocide.

“To reach a conclusion that any event amounts to genocide involves the consideration and determination of a number of complex factual and legal issues, including an assessment of the actions and intentions of many parties.

“Currently, there is no international consensus on whether these events amount to genocide. No Irish or international court has issued a final judgment recognising these terrible events as an act of genocide,” Martin said.

In recent years, growing numbers of EU members and other countries have been formally recognise the reality of the Armenian Genocide which began in 1915 and led to the deaths of 1.5 million Armenian Christians at the hands of Muslim forces of the Ottoman Empire.

In 2021, Joe Biden drew sharp criticism from his Turkish counterpart when he became the first American President to recognise the Armenian Genocide.

The number of countries which formally recognise the Armenian Genocide has increased significantly in recent years, with Ireland now being in a minority of EU member states by not granting this recognition.

While Leader of the Opposition, Micheál Martin himself described the mass killings as “genocide” while asking the then Minister for Foreign Affairs Simon Coveney if he would recognise the atrocities in this way.

In the past, Turkey has warned that countries which recognise the Armenian Genocide will face economic sanctions, and in 2011, Ankara imposed sanctions on France after the country’s parliament passed a bill making it an offence to deny that the genocide took place.

Economic considerations may be part of the decisions taken by successive Irish governments to maintain the approach of non-recognition.

In 2022, Ireland exported €2.314 billion in services to Turkey along with €1.363 billion of goods.

More recently, renewed hostilities between Azerbaijan – a close ally of Turkey – and Armenia has focused increased attention on the plight of the world’s oldest Christian nation.

In the wake of Azerbaijan’s military offensive in 2023 which led to an estimated 99% of the Armenians in the breakaway region Nagorno-Karabakh fleeing their homes, Micheál Martin defended the warm reception which an Azerbaijani delegation was afforded when visiting the Dáil, saying that it was important to host delegations “without fear or favour.”

Historians have suggested that the Armenian Genocide of 1915-1917 forms part of a broader state-directed genocide against Armenian, Greek and Assyrian Christians which saw the Christian minority in what is modern-day Turkey fall from roughly 20% in 1894 to just 2% in 1924.

Turkey’s Christian population has plummeted further in the last century amidst ongoing harassment and discrimination, and Christian advocacy groups warn that anti-Christian sentiment in Turkey is increasing.

https://gript.ie/tanaiste-wont-commit-to-recognising-the-armenian-genocide/

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May 12 2024

Never Again? Echoes of the Past Threaten Armenia

• Andrea Pegoraro
  

In December 2023, as the 75th anniversary of the Genocide Convention passed, the international community faced multiple instances of potential genocide, including risks in the Nagorno-Karabakh. As reported by Luis Moreno Ocampo, the first Chief Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC), the California-based Centre for Truth and Justice (CFTJ) petitioned the ICC to investigate Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev for genocide against Armenians in Armenia. Judge G. Apkarian presented evidence of Aliyev’s intent to destroy ethnic Armenians, including his derogatory language and military actions. Aliyev’s genocidal strategy extended beyond Nagorno-Karabakh to sovereign Armenian provinces, leading to unlawful displacements and brutalities against Armenian women. Azerbaijan’s ongoing genocidal policy poses a threat to Armenians within their own state’s borders.

D.J. Scheffer, first US Ambassador-at-Large for War Crimes Issues and senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, highlighted the failure of diplomatic efforts to prevent the persecution of the Armenians in Nagorno-Karabakh. Despite the situation’s severity, international law’s tools are limited, he says. The term “ethnic cleansing”, described by the UN as a violent policy to remove civilian populations based on ethnicity or religion, has parallels with crimes against humanity and genocide. However, enforcement mechanisms, like the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) principle, are hindered by geopolitical interests, exemplified by Russia’s likely veto in the UN Security Council due to its focus on Ukraine.

Scheffer questioned the efficacy of international monitors and suggests deploying UN monitors on the Armenia-Azerbaijan border. Additionally, he proposed truth and reconciliation efforts and turning to the ICC for justice, emphasising Armenia’s impending ICC membership and potential to prosecute ethnic cleansing. Furthermore, he warned of Azerbaijan’s military ambitions and suggested Armenia’s ICC involvement could deter aggression and seek justice for ethnic Armenians.

In hallowed halls where echoes of “never again” still resonate, a brutal stain of violence mars the soil of Nagorno-Karabakh. Innocent Armenians are being ruthlessly displaced, a tide of casualties rising because of this blatant assault on human rights. Azerbaijan’s alleged genocidal actions evoke the spectre of a horrific but relatively recent past, a chilling reminder of the barbarity mankind swore to forever eradicate. The international community now stands at a crossroads. Diplomatic failures highlight the impotence of words in situations of this magnitude. We must now demand a robust investigation by the ICC to hold these perpetrators accountable for their heinous crimes. The deployment of international monitors is no longer a mere suggestion, but an absolute necessity. Only through their unwavering vigilance can further bloodshed be prevented.

The Armenian Genocide is not ancient history. Historian Simon Payaslian tells us that a systematic campaign of extermination unfolded within the context of a crumbling Ottoman Empire during World War I. Tensions between the Empire’s Muslim majority and Christian minorities, including Armenians, had simmered for decades. However, the outbreak of war was a critical juncture. The Ottoman government, Taner Akçam says, was increasingly paranoid about Armenian loyalty and susceptibility to separatist ideologies, so much so that it viewed Armenians as a potential fifth column conspiring with Russia. This suspicion, fuelled by wartime propaganda, culminated in the arrest of Armenian intellectuals on April 24th, 1915, marking the unofficial start of the genocide, as reported by the US Holocaust Memorial Museum. Massacres, forced deportations into harsh desert conditions, and starvation became instruments of a state-orchestrated effort to eliminate Armenians from Anatolia.

The spectre of genocide in Nagorno-Karabakh casts a long shadow, threatening not only the lives of Armenians but also the fragile stability of the region and the world. The international community cannot afford to stand idly by. A resolute commitment to human rights and the principles enshrined in the Genocide Convention is an imperative necessity. Thorough investigations by the ICC, coupled with the deployment of international monitors, offer a glimmer of hope. Ignoring this conflict in favour of geopolitical expediency sets a dangerous precedent, jeopardising not only regional security but the very notion of a world order built on peace. The time for action is now.

https://theowp.org/never-again-echoes-of-the-past-threaten-armenia/

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Armenpress.am

 

Armenian Ambassador to Italy hands over exclusive archival documents related to Hamidian Massacres to Armenian Genocide Museum-Institute

Read the article in:Հայերեն

4 minute read

YEREVAN, JUNE 29, ARMENPRESS. Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of the Republic of Armenia to Italy, Tsovinar Hambardzumyan, handed over newly discovered archival documents to the Armenian Genocide Museum-Institute. These documents contain detailed information on the persecution and massacres of Armenians and other Christians in the Ottoman Empire at the end of the 19th century. Most of them are originals and present in detail the entire reality of the period.

In an interview with Armenpress, Armenian Ambassador to Italy Tsovinar Hambardzumyan and Director of the Armenian Genocide Museum-Institute Edita Gzoyan discussed the content of the newly discovered archival documents and their significant importance.

Director of the Armenian Genocide Museum-Institute, Edita Gzoyan, noted that the Armenian Genocide Museum-Institute is preparing to publish these archival documents in cooperation with another Italian researcher.

"This is the second time that Armenia's Ambassador to Italy, Tsovinar Hambardzumyan, has donated archival materials to the Armenian Genocide Museum-Institute," said Edita Gzoyan. "Taking this opportunity, I would like to thank our Ambassador representing Armenia in Italy, who keeps both our museum-institute and these materials related to the Armenian Genocide under special attention. It is the second time we have received such a large and important donation from her," said the director of the museum-institute.

Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of the Republic of Armenia to Italy, Tsovinar Hambardzumyan, while presenting the archival documents transferred to the Armenian Genocide Museum-Institute, noted: “I had just started my diplomatic mission in Italy when an Arab journalist named Talal Khrais, a great friend of Armenia and the Armenian people, came to me from Lebanon. Talal Khrais is a war journalist and is now a representative of the Lebanese National Agency based in Rome, the capital of Italy. He is also the secretary of the Arab-Italian association 'Assadakah.' He handed me this archive.”

 

 

 

 

 

"He is a resident of Oriolo Romano, a small town in Lazio, Italy. A bricklayer named Salvatore Gargano from that town discovered a bag inside the wall of a monastery he was repairing, which contained these documents. They belonged to the Franciscan priest, Father Salvatore Lilli," Tsovinar Hambardzumyan said. She informed that Father Salvatore was sent to Asia Minor at the end of the 19th century and was in the Ottoman Empire, in the city of Marash, where he witnessed the Armenian pogroms.

The Ambassador detailed that Father Salvatore has left many interesting testimonies about the persecutions and massacres of Armenians and Christians in general during the reign of Sultan Abdul Hamid of the Ottoman Empire in 1894-1895.

"Father Salvatore was martyred in 1895, along with seven other Armenian monks who did not want to change their faith and did not want to leave Father Salvatore alone.

Unfortunately, together with him, everyone was tortured to death," the Ambassador said, stressing that the documents in his possession consist of two copies, most of which are originals.

Shushan Khachatryan, senior researcher at the Armenian Genocide Museum-Institute, noted that the newly discovered documents should be studied in detail because they are of great importance and contain significant information about the Hamidian pogroms.

 

 

 

 

 

 

https://armenpress.am/en/article/1194751?fbclid=IwZXh0bgNhZW0CMTEAAR1_Yfqhkp9mD5Hz6NEHRQkPvog0XEQVNlQI9t8s1XSG0eRegPnDm0ly5G0_aem_1VfAFSfajEb3xmhsHTGGvQ

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BARRON'S

July 3 2024

 

 

• FROM AFP NEWS

Armenia Genocide Mention Costs Turkey Radio Station Its Licence

 

Turkey's media regulator has withdrawn a radio station's licence after a guest talked about the "Armenian genocide" on air, officials said Wednesday.

Radio and television watchdog RTUK suspended Istanbul-based Acik Radyo from broadcasting for five days in May for the programme, which it said incited hatred.

The sanction came after a guest on a show in April called the 1915 killings of Armenians in the dying days of the Ottoman Empire "genocide" -- a term many historians agree on but which Turkey disputes.

RTUK board member Ilhan Tasci, from the opposition CHP party, criticised the decision. He said the licence was withdrawn because the station did not suspend broadcasts, though it did pay its fine.

 

Acik Radyo -- which has been broadcasting for three decades -- confirmed the withdrawal to AFP. It was still broadcasting Wednesday.

 

The Turkish Journalists' Union said RTUK's decision was a blow to freedom of speech.

"RTUK should be an autonomous institution and should immediately overturn this decision," it said on X.

Armenia says Ottoman forces massacred and deported more than 1.5 million Armenians during World War I between 1915 and 1917.

Around 30 countries have recognised the killings as genocide, a charge vehemently rejected by Turkey. Ankara admits nonetheless that up to 500,000 Armenians were killed in fighting, massacres or by starvation during mass deportations from eastern Anatolia.

rba-fo/fg

https://www.barrons.com/news/armenia-genocide-mention-costs-turkey-radio-station-its-licence-d68c9df7

[MosJan]

 

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The Catholic World report

Aug 6 2024

 

 

A detailed but sometimes lacking account of the Armenian genocide

A review of The Righteous and People of Conscience of the Armenian Genocide by Gérard Dédéyan, Ago Demirdjian, and Nabil Saleh.

 

Filip Mazurczak

 

The Ottoman Empire’s genocide of more than one million Armenians during World War I was one of history’s great tragedies. The Righteous and People of Conscience of the Armenian Genocide by Gérard Dédéyan, Ago Demirdjian, and Nabil Saleh, recently translated from the French by Barbara Mellor, includes numerous inspiring examples of people moved to act during the Armenian Golgotha, but the book’s downplaying of the Christian faith of many of these humanitarians is frustrating.

The job among the nations

Few people have experienced such perennial hardship as the Armenians. When St. Gregory the Illuminator baptized King Tiridates III in 301, Armenia became the first state the adopt Christianity as its official religion. Yet the coming centuries saw the Armenians conquered by the heathen Persians, Mongols, and Turks. In the 1890s, Sultan Abdul Hamid II ordered the murder of up to 300,000 Armenians.

The Hamidian massacres were, however, only a harrowing indication of even worse things to come. During World War I, the nationalistic Young Turks government, one of the Central Powers along with Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Bulgaria, found the pretext for a final solution to the Armenian question when many Armenians saw Russia, part of the Entente and at war with Turkey, as possible liberators. After losing the Battle of Sarikamish, during which Armenian legionaries served Russia, Turkey initiated a genocide of Holocaust-like proportions. According to statistics provided by Dédéyan, Demirdjian, and Saleh, between 1.2 and 1.5 million Ottoman Armenians (out of a total of between 1.8 and 2.1 million) were killed. By comparison, according to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, a similar proportion of European Jews, two-thirds, were murdered during World War II.

The genocide of six million Jews was appalling, yet after the war the Jewish people created an independent state that, while often having to defend itself against its Arab neighbors, enjoys a high standard of living and exercises political influence disproportionate to its small size. In contrast, after being mass murdered by the Young Turks, the Armenians became part of Stalin’s murderous empire. In 1988, Armenia suffered one of history’s most devastating earthquakes, killing tens of thousands of Armenians and leaving many others homeless. Since independence, Armenia has engaged in two wars with Azerbaijan over Nagorno-Karabakh, the most recent one resulting in the ethnic cleansing of the region’s Armenians. Poor and corrupt, Armenia experiences major brain drain.

In the West, Holocaust deniers are about as numerous and influential as flat earthers and, as the case of the English pseudo-historian David Irving shows, treated with deserved universal contempt. Yet publicly denying the Armenian genocide incurs zero political costs. The late Madeleine Albright, Clinton’s secretary of state, was an Armenian genocide denier, yet this in no way tainted her public image. In 2008, Barack Obama courted Armenian American voters in California by promising to recognize the genocide; he squandered eight long years when he could have done so, yet he still is beloved by the left.

The Armenian people, who have clung to their Christian faith longer than any other nation despite constant hardship, invite comparisons to the Biblical figure of Job. But the Armenian genocide, unlike the Jewish tragedy during World War II, is not the subject of well-known museums, books, and films in North America. The stories of those who acted heroically during the Armenian genocide are far less familiar than accounts of Holocaust resisters.

In this regard, the authors have made an important contribution. Their book follows a similar structure: after introducing a group of people (such as Muslim righteous, diplomats, or jurists and writers who fought for the truth about the genocide), which follow chapters each devoted to specific individuals.

An odd approach to Christianity

The Righteous and People of Conscience, however, has a major flaw: downplaying Christianity as a source of inspiration for many of the book’s protagonists. The authors devote an entire chapter to emphasizing that the Young Turks were secularists, and that Muslims instead saw Christians like the Armenians (and Jews) as dhimmis, or “People of the Book” who, while paying taxes from which Ottoman Muslims were exempted, were to be treated with respect. Meanwhile, in introducing the Arab “Righteous,” the authors note that, as anyone who has seen Lawrence of Arabia knows, the (mostly Muslim) Arabs were dominated at the time by the Ottoman Empire and thus regarded the Armenians as allies in oppression.

It seems that, in a post-9/11 world, the authors feel compelled to emphasize that the genocide was not a Huntingtonian clash of civilizations. Yet they offer no similar explanation of the theological notions and sense of cultural-religious kinship that inspired Christians to help the Armenians.

A better book on a related topic is Armenian-American poet and academic Peter Balakian’s The Burning Tigris: The Armenian Genocide and America’s Response. Written in 2003, Balakian laments that public awareness of the genocide had slid into oblivion. Yet he quotes President Herbert Hoover as saying that a century ago “the name Armenia was […] known to the American schoolchild only a little less than England.” Balakian chronicles many American fundraising campaigns to aid the Armenian plight, as well as the great political pressure on President Woodrow Wilson to do something (ultimately, in the spirit of Wilsonian idealism the president unsuccessfully proposed the creation of an independent Armenia in the Treaty of Sèvres).

Why did Americans (and Europeans) care about distant Armenia in 1915? Because Armenia is the world’s oldest Christian nation, and the West was then still very Christian! Wilson himself was a Presbyterian minister’s son. Whereas the authors emphasize the Muslim teaching on the dhimmis in explaining the motivation of the Muslim righteous, the uninformed reader could conclude that the numerous Christians mentioned in their book were motivated by secular humanitarianism, and their faith was incidental.

For instance, the book devotes a brief chapter to Alexandra Tolstoy, praising her for supporting the Armenians in the spirit of her father’s “humanitarian legacy.” Could not her father Leo’s devout (albeit anti-institutional) Christianity not have inspired her as well? The book does not even pose that question. The authors only quote in passing a letter by Johannes Lepsius, a German pastor and champion of the Armenians, that the Armenians are “[t]he most ancient people in Christendom;” otherwise, the readers will not learn of Armenia’s place in the Christian imagination.

When the authors do discuss Christianity, their approach is strange, even bizarre. In the concluding chapter, they pontificate on the concept of “righteousness.” They do summarize Biblical teachings and the scholastics, but they place them alongside many other sources, such as the pagan Greco-Roman philosophers and Muslim thinkers. The authors have the chutzpah to claim that “[t]he [French] Revolution went far beyond” Christian notions of natural law as—unlike Christian thinkers such as St. Thomas—the Enlightenment philosophers argued for the abolition of all privilege.

On the contrary, the French Revolution created the world’s first totalitarian state, where thousands of political opponents were killed. Some historians consider the brutal suppression of the War in the Vendée, in which French Catholics revolted against the Revolution, to be a genocide. While the book makes no mention of this, the irreligiousness of the Young Turks movement was inspired by post-1789 French secularism.

Finally, there is a chapter devoted to Pope Benedict XV and Cardinal Angelo Maria Dolci, Apostolic Vicar of Constantinople. Of the twentieth century’s popes, Benedict XV is perhaps the least appreciated, yet he was a major spokesman for peace and provider of direct humanitarian aid during the Great War. While the authors do praise Benedict, whom they compare to President Wilson for appealing for a new international order conducive to international cooperation, as well as Dolci for his appeals to the Turkish government to stop the genocide and establishment of an orphanage for Armenian children, they criticize the latter’s early belief that the Ottomans could be persuaded to stop the killings as “a certain initial naivety–rooted in his faith both in Christianity and in humanity.” The Armenian genocide was among the greatest crimes in recent history. Yet many people bore heroic Christian witness and aided their co-religionists.

The Righteous and People of Conscience of the Armenian Genocide is an important book because, like Peter Balakian’s work twenty years earlier, it reminds us how many Christians’ consciences were stirred and they refused to stand idle amidst absolute evil. Hopefully, someday a work will appear highlighting the Christian aspect of this major humanitarian aid rather than downplaying it as a source of strength and inspiration.

The Righteous and People of Conscience of the Armenian Genocide
By Gérard Dédéyan, Ago Demirdjian, and Nabil Saleh
Hurst, 2023
Hardcover, 520 pages, 40 b&w illustrations

 

https://www.catholicworldreport.com/2024/08/05/a-detailed-but-sometimes-lacking-account-of-the-armenian-genocide/

[Yervant1]

Asbarez.com

 

Echoes of 1915: U.S. Betrayal of Promise to Armenia

by Contributor

 

 August 8, 2024

 

in Armenia, Artsakh, Commentary, Latest, Op-Ed, Top Stories

 

A caravan of cars carrying Artsakh Armenians is forcibly leaving their ancestral homeland in Sept. 2023

 

BY MICHAEL VAKIAN 

In the White House’s formal recognition of the Armenian Genocide on April 24, 2021, the Biden administration committed to “preventing such an atrocity from ever again occurring.” However, through providing military aid to Azerbaijan, the United States has been complicit in Azerbaijan’s attacks on Nagorno-Karabakh (Artsakh), a region with a majority-Armenian population of approximately 120,000 as of September 2023. 

 

Michael Vakian

Since that historic statement of genocide recognition, the U.S. administration has fallen well short of keeping its promise to the Armenian people, violating international law and basic human rights standards in the process.

I am a 20-year-old Armenian-American from Tarzana, California. I attended the same small Armenian school from preschool through high school, where we spoke Armenian. Growing up, I was always deeply connected to my Armenian heritage and often told about the 1915 genocide committed by the Ottoman Turks, including how my great-grandfather was orphaned at the age of six and relocated to Beirut, Lebanon.

The current conflict involving Armenia, Nagorno-Karabakh, and Azerbaijan stems back more than a century. The region known as Nagorno-Karabakh was part of ancient Armenian kingdoms and has been predominantly inhabited by Armenians since the late 11th century. In 1920, Armenia was Sovietized. Three years later, the Soviet Union arbitrarily granted Nagorno-Karabakh to Azerbaijan despite its overwhelming Armenian majority. In 1988, Nagorno-Karabakh voted to gain independence from Azerbaijan, leading to a full-scale war between Armenia and Azerbaijan after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. A ceasefire was brokered in 1994, leading to Nagorno-Karabakh assuming de facto independence.

In September 2020, Azerbaijan reignited the conflict with attacks on the Armenians in Nagorno-Karabakh. Backed by military support from Turkey, Azerbaijan captured significant territory. A temporary ceasefire was brokered in November 2020, but Azerbaijan continued its offensive thereafter until it ethnically cleansed the region of Armenians by September 2023.

The attacks by Azerbaijan against Armenians in Nagorno-Karabakh constitute war crimes. Former Armenian prisoners of war described torture and ill-treatment such as being beaten for hours, having their hands burnt with cigarette lighters, being poked with metal rods, and being denied food for multiple days. Gruesome tactics also included execution of civilians, beheadings, and bombings. Despite this, Azerbaijan President Ilham Aliyev dismissed accusations of war crimes as “fake news,” attributed to biased narratives by Western media.

Azerbaijan’s attacks have involved the deliberate destruction of historic Armenian cultural sites, including churches and monuments. In 2023, there was a 75% increase in destroyed cultural sites and a 29% increase in sites classified as “threatened.” The Holy Savior Ghazanchetsots Cathedral, a prominent historical landmark, was shelled twice, injuring three individuals seeking refuge inside. An Azerbaijani military truck destroyed a stone cross in the village of Arakel. Stone crosses, known as “khachkars” in Armenian, are iconic of the Armenian Christian faith and are protected by UNESCO. Countless examples of graffiti and vandalism also occurred, including of churches and gravesites. 

These actions reflect Azerbaijan’s deeper motivation: wiping out the Armenian race and eliminating any remaining signs of Armenian culture in the region. Azerbaijani President Aliyev has shown this intention by referring to ethnic Armenians as a “virus” and stating, “we will chase them away like dogs.”

A Critique of U.S. Complicity

Military and financial aid from the U.S. contribute to the human rights and international law violations currently being committed by Azerbaijan against the Armenians. The 1992 Freedom Support Act’s Section 907, which prohibited direct U.S. aid to the government of Azerbaijan, was waived in 2002 by President George W. Bush to provide security assistance. Since then, the U.S. has given around $164 million to Azerbaijan for “counter-terrorism” support. This means that American funds appropriated for counterterrorism are instead being used for inhumane acts.

U.S. complicity in the Azerbaijani genocide against the Armenians in Nagorno-Karapakh violates international law. In 1948, the United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Crime and Genocide (CPPCG) enacted a legal framework for the prosecution of genocidal acts. Its criteria for genocide is “any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial, or religious group:

1. Killing members of the group
2. Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group
3. Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part
4. Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group
5. Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group”

With an Armenian death toll of thousands from the September 2020 attacks until this writing, Azerbaijan’s actions meet the first two criteria, namely killings and bodily and mental harm. As for the third condition, Azerbaijan has blocked essential goods to Armenians in Nagorno-Karabakh, destroyed homes, hospitals, and schools, and forced Armenians to evacuate from the region. Azerbaijan thus meets at least three of the five CPPCG’s criteria.

Article III of the CPPCG established “complicity in genocide” as a punishable offense. The 1987 Genocide Convention Implementation Act incorporated the CPPCG into U.S. law, making U.S. complicity in genocidal actions illegal under both international and federal law. Aid to Azerbaijan also constitutes a violation of the Leahy Law, legislation that prohibits the providing of military assistance to foreign military groups that are credibly involved in gross violations of human rights. 

Public sentiment in the U.S. does not support such complicity. A majority of Americans, 65%, believe that defending human rights globally should be a goal of American foreign policy, according to the University of Maryland Critical Issue Poll.

American leaders have been apprised of human rights violations in Nagorno-Karabakh. On September 14, 2023, Yuri Kim, then the U.S. Acting Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs, condemned Azerbaijan’s aggression before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. However, the U.S. remained silent as Azerbaijan launched another military offensive five days later.

On July 12, 2023, President Biden remarked, “Faced with a threat to the peace and stability of the world, to democratic values we hold dear, to freedom itself, we did what we always do: The United States stepped up,” referring to support of Ukraine against Russian attacks. However, the White House’s reluctance to defend Armenia demonstrates that it only steps up to uphold democratic values when it furthers its geopolitical interests. Supporting Ukraine offers geopolitical benefits, including preventing Russian territorial expansion and upholding Ukraine’s exportability of natural gas, that are not present in intervening in the ethnic cleansing of Armenians. 

With the Caucasus region rife with geopolitical instability, Armenia remains the only beacon of democracy amid despotic corruption in neighboring countries like Russia, Turkey, and Azerbaijan. The U.S.’s failure to intervene shows it is selective in choosing which democracies to defend.

Why the Armenian Plight is Overlooked

Today, protests against genocidal conduct run rampant throughout the U.S. and much of the world. Demonstrations calling for an Israeli ceasefire in its bombardment of Gaza since October 2023 have taken place in more than 100 American colleges. In stark contrast, and despite recurring atrocities against the sovereignty of the Armenians of Nagorno-Karabakh, Azerbaijani atrocities remain overlooked.

Propaganda by the Turkish state plays a role in downplaying the rights and needs of Armenia as a nation and as an ethnicity. Some 100 years later, the modern Turkish Republic still refuses to acknowledge the genocide committed by Ottomans. An article on the Republic of Turkey’s Ministry of Foreign affairs website describes Armenian claims of genocide as “infusing history with myth” and claiming the Armenian portrayal is “one-sided and steeped in bias.” This narrative is promulgated by the Turkish government today despite numerous letters, reports, and treatises written by Western diplomats, such as American Ambassador Henry Morgenthau, who served in the Ottoman Empire. Additionally, newspaper articles, photographic evidence, and countless eyewitness accounts further contradict this narrative.

For non-Armenian U.S. citizens, the manufactured uncertainty around this issue can make it difficult to take a stand in defense of Armenian subjugation. Media failure to dispel misconceptions about the events of 1915 perpetrated by the Turkish government have helped keep the Armenian genocide shrouded in the darkness of World War I, as today’s public focuses on equally tragic human rights violations in other countries. 

Dr. Bedross Der Matossian, professor of Middle East History and Politics at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, summarized similar media issues with the Azerbaijani attacks on Armenians in Nagorno-Karabakh. He observes, “the Azeri lobby is very strong….it’s able to control through its PR forums, the public opinion within Europe and United States through articles being published.” Der Matossian detailed the issue of “both sidesism” present in the scant media coverage on the Nagorno-Karabakh situation, typically describing a war between two opposing nations, rather than deliberate Azerbaijani attempts to seize control of the entire region.

A lack of education on the Armenian genocide has also contributed to the Armenian cause being overlooked historically. Tereza Yerimyan, the Government Affairs Director at the Armenian National Committee of America, explains the impact of this lack of education:

The Armenian Genocide particularly, is a part of American history. It’s a part of world history, and yet it’s not taught in those curricula in high school. Think about not being educated on World War I and II, right? It’s significant parts of our country’s history that are being omitted. That creates an opportunity to overlook what’s taken place, and then to overlook the patterns, both in history and today, that are consistently repeated.

The Armenians in Nagorno-Karabakh endured or perished from atrocities similar to those the Ottoman Turks perpetrated during the 1915 Armenian Genocide. History has repeated itself, with a virtual blackout of media coverage and an anemic global outcry about the Armenian manslaughter. This shadow Armenian struggle has been subsumed by other assaults, from Russia and Ukraine to Israel and Palestine. Geopolitical interests are to blame, with Israel and Ukraine being key allies of the United States. Those conflicts have had the full attention of the government and the mainstream media. That has caused the public to listen and react.

Call to Action

To address the current atrocities, informed citizens must advocate for governmental reform. Egregious human rights violations by Azerbaijan against the Armenian community in Nagorno-Karabakh are illegal and not to be tolerated. Our government is complicit because it provides military and financial aid to Azerbaijan. In doing so, the U.S. contributes to Azeri violations of international law and violates the terms of the waiver of Section 907 of the Freedom Support Act. Unethical and undemocratic, this behavior reflects a government detached from the will of its citizens. Taxpayers have the power, and the moral obligation, to demand that our tax dollars not be used to commit these barbarities.

Here are several ways to do this:

1. Raising Awareness: Educate others to foster significant change. The general public’s lack of knowledge about the Armenian cause is a major shortcoming. Mainstream media coverage is limited, and few public figures speak out. All American citizens concerned about human rights should educate friends, family, colleagues, and parishioners.
2. Participating in Armenian Advocacy Groups: Support nonprofits like Armenian National Committee of America (ANCA), Armenian Relief Society (ARS), Hayastan All-Armenian Fund, The Genocide Education Project, Armenian Youth Federation (AYF), Armenian General Benevolent Union (AGBU) and the Armenian Assembly of America. Increased public outcry can attract legislative attention.
3. Participating in Legislative Change: Vote for legislators who oppose funding human rights violations. Support bills like the Armenian Protection Act of 2024, which would rescind the waiver of Section 907 of the Freedom Support Act. Electing pro-Armenian congressmen is crucial.
4. Opposing COP 29 (Conference of the Parties of the UNFCCC) in Azerbaijan: Protest Azerbaijan hosting the UN’s Climate Change Conference, highlighting its human rights violations. Contact the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change Secretariat (secretariat@unfccc.int) and engage in local protests. Tereza Yerimyan summarizes the issue: “Not only did they (Azerbaijan) not get punished or sanctioned for what they did, but they received an additional reward by hosting COP 29. What does that say about humanity? Not much.”
5. Writing Opinion Pieces: Share personal stories in local papers to raise awareness. It’s urgent that descendants of those affected by the Armenian genocide record firsthand accounts. Media visibility helps mitigate false propaganda from Turkish and Azerbaijani media.

The U.S. is complicit in modern-day genocidal acts against Armenians in Nagorno-Karabakh. As a global champion of democracy and the rule of law, the U.S. must immediately cease all financial and military aid to Azerbaijan and hold its government accountable for human rights violations. Given the Biden administration’s 2021 promise, meaningful action and unwavering support are necessary to honor past commitments and prevent a repetition of the 1915 atrocities.

Michael Vakian is a 20-year-old student at the University of Southern California, hailing from Tarzana, California. Growing up in a close-knit Armenian community, he attended A.G.B.U. Manoogian-Demirdjian School from preschool through high school and is a lifelong member of Homenetmen Massis. An aspiring law student, he aims to bring awareness to critical global matters, particularly those affecting the Armenian community.

 

 

https://asbarez.com/echoes-of-1915-u-s-betrayal-of-promise-to-armenia/?fbclid=IwY2xjawEiiIBleHRuA2FlbQIxMQABHZ7Yjgt-STflxMdxbhuyPJaKA2fYsH5UtWKeR0bp4r2IqanhXwuJ7jRCiw_aem_Pv2uB8rUXsWQdb8dQWB_7A

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Armenpress.am

 

International Association of Genocide Scholars adopts resolution on genocidal actions in Nagorno-Karabakh

Read the article in: العربيةFrançaisՀայերենРусский简体中文

 

YEREVAN, SEPTEMBER 7, ARMENPRESS. The International Association of Genocide Scholars (IAGS) has adopted a resolution regarding Nagorno Karabakh, Suren Manukyan, a genocide scholar, said on Facebook.

He emphasized that the IAGS is the largest and most prestigious organization dedicated to the study of genocides, with approximately 700 scholars as members.

According to the resolution, the Organization declares:

1.The blockade of Nagorno-Karabakh from December 2022 to September 2023, including the closure of the Lachin Corridor, was characteristic of actions considered imposing conditions of life designed to bring about the physical destruction of the ethnic Armenians in the territory and caused serious mental and bodily harm to the Armenians in the territory, which are recognized as genocidal crimes under the United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. 

2. The forced removal of ethnic Armenians in September and October 2023 through siege and bombing is ethnic cleansing and the crime against humanity of deportation or forcible transfer of population (forced displacement). 

3. The bombing of civilian areas is a violation of international humanitarian law; 

4. The torture and killing of ethnic Armenian prisoners of war and civilians is a violation of international humanitarian law.

The Organization calls upon Azerbaijan

5. To free all ethnic Armenians in Azerbaijani detention in unlawful circumstances;

6. To comply with orders and judgments of the International Court of Justice, and other obligations of international law including international human rights law and international humanitarian law;

7. To prevent future violations of human rights of the Armenians;

8. To prevent further displacement of Armenians from their homeland by respecting the  Republic of Armenia’s territorial sovereignty;

9. To respect, protect and prevent the destruction of any Armenian cultural property in Nagorno-Karabakh;

To the international community

10. To protect Nagorno-Karabakh’s right to self determination;

11. To take appropriate measures to guarantee the right to return and security of Armenians forcibly displaced from Nagorno-Karabakh;

12.Calls upon the international community, including national governments and international organisations, to recognise the atrocities perpetrated against the ethnic Armenians of Nagorno-Karabakh as constituting gross violations of human rights, war crimes, genocide and crimes against humanity, as applicable, and to take appropriate measures in response to prevent further violations and crimes;

13. Recommends the application of transitional justice measures, including sanctions, investigation of the case by the International Criminal Court;

14. Calls on the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court to investigate the crimes;

15. Calls upon Azerbaijan to remove its soldiers from the territory of the Armenian Republic and to respect the right of self-determination of the Armenians of Nagorno-Karabakh.

 

 

 

Published by Armenpress, original at https://armenpress.am/en/article/1199263?fbclid=IwY2xjawFJxDtleHRuA2FlbQIxMQABHTzbRumQgGESdEejQHTHAjRfaQ0NxzKDkZs6XalBBPJM0qslGIZ9gC14EQ_aem_CsGCBNTGRStL1UohDmG6KQ

[Yervant1]

UK - Sept 12 2024

 

 

Eternal flame sculpture in Ealing honours victims of the Armenian Genocide

 

 

An eternal flame appeared in Ealing last year – as both a sculpture and a memorial to genocide.

The Armenian genocide that the sculpture commemorates was the systematic destruction of the Armenian people and identity in the Ottoman Empire during World War I. Although the actions match the generally accepted definition of genocide, the term is contentious, particuarly in modern day Turkey. However, it’s generally accepted to have been such an act.

The genocide took place between 1915-19, when on the orders of Talaat Pasha, an estimated 800,000 to 1.2 million Armenians were sent on death marches to the Syrian Desert. There were also subsequent forced conversions of the surivors to try and destroy the Armenian heritage.

The Turkish government maintains that the deportation of Armenians was a legitimate action that cannot be described as genocide. As of 2023, 34 countries have recognized the events as genocide, concurring with the academic consensus.

I saw the memorial a few months ago, and wondered why it was in Ealing — and now understand that the British Armenian Community of Ealing is the largest Armenian community in all London.

A previous memorial was planted on Ealing Green—an apricot tree, which symbolizes longevity, hope, and perseverance. The scientific name of the Apricot is Prunus Armeniaca, which is also appropriate.

Now, it’s been joined by a stylised flame that is also a representation of the Xachqar (Armenian cross). The memorial, carved from Armenian basalt (red tuff stone), was created by the sculptor Varazdat Hambardzumyan, who is considered one of Armenia’s leading stone carvers.

The memorial is also mounted on a basalt plinth.

It was unveiled in April 2023 and a plaque on the base reads: “The Eternal Flame In memory of the one and a half million sanctified victims of the 1915 Armenian Genocide”

 

Researching the memorial and how contentious the topic can be, I expected that there would have been objections when the planning application was filed, but surprisingly, they weren’t from people who oppose the genocide definition of what happened but from local groups who argued that the memorial would reduce the pavement width.

The memorial is close to two much larger telephone boxes, so that was a rather odd complaint to make.

You can find the memorial on the green just outside Pitzhanger House and Gallery in Ealing Broadway.

 

https://www.ianvisits.co.uk/articles/eternal-flame-sculpture-in-ealing-honours-victims-of-the-armenian-genocide-75423/

[Yervant1]

Greek Reporter

Sept 14 2024

 

 

The Japanese Ship That Saved Greeks During the Smyrna Catastrophe

 

ByTasos Kokkinidis

September 14, 2024

A Japanese ship saved hundreds of Armenians and Greeks from genocide in Asia Minor in 1922 after the Smyrna Catastrophe.

In a most remarkable incident, described in the book Armenia, Australia and the Great War, the captain and crew of the Tokei Maru, a Japanese ship, showed exemplary courage in saving the desperate refugees who were stranded at Smyrna.

Desperate refugees stranded after Smyrna Catastrophe

Hundreds of thousands of Armenian and Greek refugees had fled to the docks of Smyrna after Turkish nationalist troops had entered, burned, and occupied the city on September 9, 1922.

The Turkish occupation was soon followed by the massacre and deportation of Armenian and Greek civilians.

About twenty ships belonging to the WWI allies were in the harbor, with their crews simply sitting by and watching the events onshore unfold. A fire was started in Smyrna’s Armenian quarter four days later, which eventually ended up destroying much of the city.

The captain of the Japanese merchant ship suddenly decided to take it upon himself to rescue the refugees.

The nation of Japan later also provided vital humanitarian aid to the survivors of the Armenian genocide.

Anna Harlowe Birge, the wife of the American professor, Dr. Birge of the International College at Smyrna, witnessed the helpless refugees crowding each other off the wharves as Smyrna began to burn.

 

 

Men and women could be seen swimming in the harbor, hoping to be rescued after the catastrophe in Smyrna; many of these people eventually drowned.

Japanese ship saved hundreds of Greek refugees

Birge related that “in the harbor, at that time, was a Japanese freighter, which had just arrived loaded to the decks with a very valuable cargo of silks, laces and china representing many thousands of dollars. The Japanese captain, when he realized the situation, did not hesitate.”

“The whole cargo went overboard into the dirty waters of the harbor, and the freighter was loaded with several hundred refugees, who were taken to Piraeus and landed in safety on Greek shores,” according to Stavros T. Stavridis, who wrote about Birge’s story in an article published in the American Hellenic International Foundation’s policy journal.

Another account of the brave rescue was published on September 18, 1922, in the New York Times.

Refugees constantly arriving…relate new details of the Smyrna tragedy. On Thursday [September 14th]…there were six steamers at Smyrna to transport the refugees, one American, one Japanese, two French and two Italian. The American and Japanese steamers accepted all comers without examining their papers, while the others took only foreign subjects with passports.

 

 

The humanitarian actions of the Japanese ship were also recorded at the time by many Armenian and Greek survivors of the Smyrna catastrophe.

https://greekreporter.com/2024/09/14/the-japanese-ship-which-saved-hundreds-of-greeks-during-the-smyrna-catastrophe/

 

[Yervant1]

NEOS KOSMOS, Australia
Sept 15 2024

 

Ottoman Empire’s genocide of Armenians, Assyrians and Greeks to be taught in NSW schools

It comes following a motion adopted by the NSW Legislative Council and a letter co-signed by over 25 academics calling for the inclusion in the curriculum

From 2027 onwards, Year 7 to 10 students in New South Wales will be taught about Australia’s and New Zealand’s humanitarian efforts during WWI that saved survivors of the Armenian, Assyrian and Greek genocides.

The inclusion in the curriculum was made known to the Armenian National Committee of Australia in a formal letter sent from the state Minister for Education, Prue Car, a week prior to the official release of the History Curriculum by the NSW Education Standards Authority (NESA).

 

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Included in the new curriculum core study is a section, where teachers will be delivering classes about “Significant groups, individuals, ideas, beliefs, practices and events in Australia: making a nation – from Federation to WWI”, which include “Australia’s civic action and humanitarian response during WWI”.

The cornerstone achievement was welcomed by the Joint Justice Initiative (JJI), the advocacy group of the three communities working towards parliamentary recognition of the genocides of Armenians, Assyrians and Hellenes since its formation in March 2020.

Members of the Australian Institute for Holocaust and Genocide Studies (AIHGS) – including Professor Peter Stanley and Vicken Babkenian who co-authored ‘Australia-Armenia & the Great War’ – have been among the cohort of scholars who contributed to recognition efforts, by making public knowledge the ANZAC connection to the rescuing of Indigenous Armenians, Assyrians and Hellenes of Anatolia and Mesopotamia amidst the genocide.

“This is the beginning of a new era in the pursuit for genocide recognition, where awareness and education will play a pivotal role,” Armenian National Committee of Australia Executive Director Michael Kolokossian said in a statement.

“By ensuring that future generations learn about humanitarianism during the 1915 Genocides, we are also equipping students with the knowledge to stand against future atrocities.”

In a statement announcing the news, the JJI and the AIHGS have committed to develop resources ready for Australian classrooms.

The decision on the new Syllabus implementation set for the 2027 school year, preceded a motion unanimously adopted in the NSW Legislative Council calling for mandated Armenian, Assyrian and Greek Genocide education and the establishment of a museum, as well as a letter co-signed by over 25 academics.

https://neoskosmos.com/en/2024/09/15/news/australia/ottoman-empires-genocide-of-armenians-assyrians-and-greeks-to-be-taught-in-nsw-schools/

[Yervant1]

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Truth Out

Oct 4 2024

 

 

Eric Adams Allegedly Took Bribes to Erase the Genocide That Killed My Ancestors

The mayor’s silence on the Armenian genocide mirrors his refusal to condemn Israel’s genocide in Gaza.

By

 

Jesse Hagopian , 

Truthout

New York City Mayor Eric Adams is facing a sweeping indictment on federal corruption charges accusing him of taking bribes, committing fraud and soliciting illegal foreign campaign donations. The charges, which involve a long-running conspiracy with Turkish officials, allege that Adams accepted lavish gifts and campaign contributions in exchange for political favors, including fast-tracked approvals for a Turkish consulate in Manhattan and other benefits that served Turkish government interests.

But let’s be clear: While media outlets run wall-to-wall coverage about Adams pressuring the fire department to approve a Turkish consulate that wasn’t up to code, they have given little attention to one of his most egregious and immoral actions: Adams’s alleged promise to remain silent about Turkey’s genocide of Armenians.

For me, this issue is neither obscure nor distant: As someone of both African American and Armenian heritage, I experience the violence and betrayal of Adams’s decision to paper over this genocide as visceral and immediate.

The federal indictment against Adams states:

On April 21, 2022, the Turkish official messaged the Adams staffer, noting that Armenian Genocide Remembrance Day was approaching, and repeatedly asked the Adams staffer for assurances that Adams would not make any statement about the Armenian Genocide…. The Adams staffer confirmed that Adams would not make a statement about the Armenian Genocide. Adams did not make such a statement.

This isn’t an abstract issue for me. My great-grandfather on my mother’s side, Ardash Hagopian, was out of the country when the Armenian genocide — known as the Medz Yeghern, an Armenian phrase meaning “Great Catastrophe” — began in 1915. When he returned, he discovered that most of his family had been massacred. On April 24, 1915, Armenian intellectuals were arrested in what is now called Red Sunday, marking the start of the systematic extermination of Armenians by the Ottoman Empire, the predecessor of modern-day Turkey.

The Ottoman government carried out widespread deportations and mass killings that ultimately took the lives of an estimated 1.5 million Armenians. Many Armenians were forced into death marches through the Syrian desert without food, water or shelter. Thousands died of starvation, exhaustion or exposure, while others were brutally executed. Women and children were also often subjected to horrific violence, including rape and abduction, and men were either killed or sent to labor camps. The goal was to erase the Armenian presence from the empire entirely. In their book, Survivors: An Oral History of the Armenian Genocide, Donald E. Miller and Lorna Touryan Miller document one survivor recalling:

When we were going to the village, the road on both sides was filled with dead bodies. I have seen with my own eyes thousands of dead bodies.… It was so bad that it began to stink everywhere, so that they [the Turks] gathered up all the corpses and burned them by pouring kerosene on them.

As a Black Armenian, I find Adams’s genocide denial to be a particularly profound betrayal. My ancestors on my father’s side survived the Maafa — a Swahili word meaning “Great Disaster,” which refers to the genocide of the trans-Atlantic slave trade that caused the deaths of millions of Africans.

As New York City’s second Black mayor, Adams surely understands the weight of historical atrocities like slavery, making it especially painful to see him use his power and authority to deny the genocide of another people.

The denial of the Armenian genocide has not only erased the historical suffering of Armenians, but it has also contributed to their ongoing plight — as the recent ethnic cleansing of Armenians from the Republic of Artsakh (Nagorno-Karabakh) demonstrates.

In the fall of 2023, Azerbaijan killed hundreds of Armenians in Artsakh and forcibly displaced 120,000, nearly the entire Armenian population of the Republic — an action made possible in part by military aid from Israel. This mass killing was only registered as a blip in U.S. news despite the scale of the violence.

It’s troubling that just months before this tragic displacement, a former New York City mayoral aide involved in Adams’s administration got a free trip to Azerbaijan, funded by its government. This aide, whose home was raided by federal agents, had direct ties to the Azerbaijani and Turkish governments. The close relationship between Adams’s administration and these foreign governments raises serious questions about how his broader alliances appear to prioritize strategic interests over Armenians’ human rights.

As contemptable as Adams’s genocide denial is, it hardly makes him unique. In fact, it places him squarely within a long U.S. tradition that began with the nation’s efforts to erase its own culpability in the killing of millions of Indigenous and African people. In addition, it took the U.S. over a century to officially recognize the Armenian genocide, finally doing so in 2021 — long after many other nations had made the acknowledgment. The delay wasn’t due to a lack of historical evidence but rather due to the U.S.’s strategic alliance with Turkey, a key player in the oil-rich Middle East.

The denial of the Armenian genocide has not only erased the historical suffering of Armenians, but it has also contributed to their ongoing plight.

Turkish lobbying groups have played an aggressive role in influencing U.S. policy to deny or downplay the Armenian genocide. As Julien Zarifian wrote in The United States and the Armenian Genocide: History, Memory, Politics, “Modern Turkish lobbying has been led mostly by two organizations: The Turkish Coalition of America (TCA) and the Assembly of Turkish American Associations (ATAA)…. Overall, this diverse and often well-coordinated Turkish lobbying … played a significant role in nonrecognition of the Armenian Genocide by the United States.”

These and other lobbying groups have spent millions of dollars to pressure politicians to support Turkish interests and build campaigns to ensure the official narrative remains one of denial — and they were so effective because the U.S. already had a strategic interest in using Turkey to help protect its geostrategic interests, including access to oil.

This pattern of erasure extends well beyond the Armenian genocide. In the U.S. today, we are witnessing a similar campaign to erase or distort the truth about Black history and the histories of other people of color by attacking what the right wing has inaccurately labeled critical race theory. Astoundingly, these laws, which seek to restrict honest education on the history of systemic racism in the U.S., now affect nearly half of all public school students. In 2023 — not in 1823 or 1923 — the Florida State Board of Education imposed state standards asserting slavery was of “personal benefit” to Black people. Policy makers around the country have banned thousands of books dealing with issues of race, gender and sexuality, further limiting students’ access to a full and honest account of history — and the American Library Association reports that the number of banned books is at an all-time high. Teachers who refuse to lie to children and are teaching the truth about the history of racism in the U.S. are increasingly under attack. There has been a particularly intense targeting of educators who allow classroom discussion of Israel’s current genocide in Gaza.

Today, alongside Turkey, Israel remains one of the few countries that continue to deny the Armenian genocide. The bitter irony of Israel’s refusal to recognize the Armenian genocide is that this atrocity was the very precedent Adolf Hitler cited when planning the Holocaust, which resulted in the murder of some 6 million Jewish people. In a chilling speech to his military commanders before the invasion of Poland in 1939, Hitler infamously remarked, “Who, after all, speaks today of the annihilation of the Armenians?” Hitler’s statement should remind us that the world’s failure to hold perpetrators accountable for the Armenian genocide emboldened the Nazi regime to carry out its own genocidal atrocities against Jewish people. Given this history, Israel’s continued denial of the Armenian genocide is especially troubling.

Adams’s silence on the Armenian genocide mirrors his refusal to condemn Israel’s genocide in Gaza or call for a ceasefire. Instead, Adams has voiced unwavering support for Israel, even as human rights organizations, international bodies, and over 800 scholars and genocide experts warn that Israel’s military actions in Gaza — including mass killings, bombing schools and the destruction of civilian infrastructure — meet the legal threshold for genocide under international law. “We have an unbreakable bond, New York and Israel, and we’re going to continue to build on that,” Adams once said. “And I am blessed to continue to do so as the mayor.”

In May, a WhatsApp chat between several billionaires and business titans — including former Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz; Dell founder and CEO Michael Dell; and Joshua Kushner, brother of Jared Kushner — was leaked, showing they pressured Adams to crack down on pro-Palestinian protests at Columbia University. Students had occupied Hamilton Hall and renamed it Hind’s Hall in honor of Hind Rajab, a 6-year-old Palestinian girl who was viciously killed by Israeli military forces in Gaza earlier that year. A member of the WhatsApp group informed The Washington Post that he had contributed $2,100, the maximum allowable amount under the law, to Adams that month.

As reported by The Washington Post, “Four days after chat members held the video call with Adams, student protesters occupied a campus building and Columbia’s president invited police back to campus to clear the building. Officers removed and arrested dozens of protesters, pushing, striking and dragging students in the process.”

Adams’s cracking down on students protesting the genocide in Gaza — in accordance with billionaire Zionists’ wishes — and accepting money from Turkey to deny the Armenian genocide demonstrate a disturbing willingness to prioritize political and financial alliances over human rights and historical truths.

The federal indictment against Adams reveals just how far the efforts to hide inconvenient truths can go. In March 2019, an Adams staffer was exchanging text messages with him about a potential trip to Turkey when the staffer instructed, “Please delete all messages you send me,” according to the indictment. Adams casually responded, “Always do,” the indictment says. This act of erasing evidence mirrors his broader comfort with concealing uncomfortable truths — whether it’s political corruption or denying genocides and historical atrocities when it serves his interests. This casual attitude toward erasing records is a microcosm of the larger attempts to erase or deny histories that people find uncomfortable.

Judith Herman, the renowned psychiatrist and trauma expert, writes in her book Trauma and Recovery, “The ordinary response to atrocities is to banish them from consciousness. Certain violations of the social compact are too terrible to utter aloud: this is the meaning of the word unspeakable.”

Herman’s insight helps explain why societies often deny or downplay genocide and other atrocities. The sheer horror of these events makes them difficult to confront, but Herman also recognizes the danger of such denial. She continues: “Atrocities, however, refuse to be buried. Equally as powerful as the desire to deny atrocities is the conviction that denial does not work.”

Today, alongside Turkey, Israel remains one of the few countries that continue to deny the Armenian genocide.

The history of the Armenian genocide, the Holocaust, the genocide against Native Americans, the trans-Atlantic slave trade and the ongoing violence in Gaza are all connected by a common thread of disremembering history and the refusal to confront uncomfortable truths. While Adams’s reckless acceptance of bribes might make headlines, his denial of the Armenian genocide and the genocide in Gaza — his most significant moral crimes — are not unusual positions among U.S. politicians. These officials, at the behest of billionaires, are eager to deny genocides abroad because they fear that the spotlight on those atrocities could swivel around and shine bright on the U.S.’s brutal legacy of displacement, ethnic cleansing and genocide.

Zabel Yesayan, a writer, activist and organizer in the Alliance Universelle des Femmes pour la Paix par l’Education (International Alliance of Women for Peace Through Education), was the only woman on the list of Armenian intellectuals targeted for arrest and deportation by the Ottoman government when the genocide started; yet she managed to escape to Bulgaria and survive. In her book titled, In the Ruins — which documents the devastation she witnessed when thousands of Armenians were killed by Ottoman forces in 1909 in the Adana region of modern-day Turkey, which was a prelude to the Armenian genocide — Yesayan writes, “It is essential … that all of us see our bleeding country in its true colours, that we learn to take a hard, courageous look at it.”

As Yesayan told us, it is essential that we see. We must remember. We must speak the truth. And we must hold accountable those who seek to bury the past in order to avoid reckoning with the present. While it’s Eric Adams who faces indictment, the truth is the entire political system should be indicted — for banning honest history from schools in the U.S. and for bombing schools in Gaza.

It is only by confronting these truths that we can break the cycle of violence and denial, and begin the work of healing and justice.

Jesse Hagopian is a Seattle educator, an editor for Rethinking Schools magazine, a founding steering committee member of Black Lives Matter at School and serves as the director of the Teaching for Black Lives Campaign for the Zinn Education Project. Jesse is the author of the forthcoming book from Haymarket Books, Teach Truth: The Attack on Critical Race Theory and the Struggle for Antiracist Education, editor of More Than a Score: The New Uprising Against High Stakes Testing, and the co-editor of the books, Teaching for Black Lives, Black Lives Matter at School and Teachers Unions and Social Justice. You can connect with Jesse on IG @jessehagopian or via his website, www.IAmAnEductor.com.

https://truthout.org/articles/eric-adams-allegedly-took-bribes-to-erase-the-genocide-that-killed-my-ancestors/

 

[Yervant1]

Turkey - Oct 6 2024

 

A political prisoner Armenian woman in an Ottoman prison

 

 

Pınar Öğünç 10.06.2024NEWS

In the light of what we know so far, this book can be described as "the first prison memoir written by a woman in the Ottoman Empire". In her foreword, Lerna Ekmekçioğlu also states that it is generally the first prison memoir written by a woman in the Middle East. So who was Vartuhi Kalantar? What caused her to be tried in the Martial Court and imprisoned in the General Prison?

It is difficult to find a prison testimony at the late Ottoman Empire, and it is unlikely that it was written by a woman. Also, the fact that this woman is Armenian makes Vartuhi Kalantar's memories of the General Prison, recorded as the first modern prison of the empire, very valuable. This memoir of Kalantar was published in Armenian by Aras Publishing in 2022 under the name "Hapishane-i Umumi Women's Ward, 1920-1921", and was recently published in Turkish with the translation of Artun Gebenlioğlu.

Vartuhi Kalantar, who stayed in the General Prison from June 1915 to 1918, was a political prisoner. The dates 1920 and 1921 in the memoir take us to the Hay gin magazine, where it was first published under the name "Getronagan pandin gineru pajinı" (Hapishane-i Umumi Women's Ward). It was thanks to Lerna Ekmekçioğlu that it escaped its waiting in the archives and reached today's readers. Ekmekçioğlu, who is McMillan-Stewart Associate Professor of History and Head of the Department of Women and Gender Studies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, first came across an announcement in Haygin magazine in 2005, during her thesis study. This is an announcement from 1920 that Vartuhi Kalantar's prison memoirs will soon be published serially. Of course, it surprises and excites Ekmekçioğlu that an Armenian woman recorded her two and a half year imprisonment in this way.

 

General Prison in 1920's

 

In the light of what we know so far, this book can be described as "the first prison memoir written by a woman in the Ottoman Empire". In her foreword, Lerna Ekmekçioğlu also states that it is generally the first prison memoir written by a woman in the Middle East. So who was Vartuhi Kalantar? What caused her to be tried in the Martial Court and imprisoned in the General Prison?

A 20-year-old woman wanted to be executed
Vartuhi Kalantar was born in Bursa in 1895. Her family moved to Istanbul in 1908. Her father, Tavit Kalantaryan studied philosophy and pedagogy and then taught in Armenian schools. He established the Kalantaryan School, the first mixed school for Ottoman Armenians. This was a school that was considered "feminist" by its contemporaries. Likewise, Vartuhi's mother, Takuhi Kalantaryan, was also an educator.

When she was 16, Vartuhi went to Lausanne to study literature and history. The Armenian students and some political figures she met there helped her to shape his political thought and to sharpen her revolutionary ideas leading to independence. After a period in Lausanne, she moved to the University of Leipzig to study ancient history and pedagogy. When the First World War started, she did not want to leave her family alone and extended her visit to Istanbul for summer vacation and. In May 1915, upon a tip-off citing some of Vartuhi's letters and political activities, their house was raided and she was arrested along with his father, who was in his seventies, for "separatism". The place where they were brought was the General Prison, where the Armenian intellectuals gathered from their homes on April 24, 1915 were also kept. This first "modern" prison, opened in Sultanahmet in 1871, is also known as Mehterhane. (The book also includes an article on the General Prison, written by İzzet Umut Çelik, who works especially in the field of prison history.)

In order to accompany her 20-year-old daughter in this process, her mother found a way to have herself arrested. We read from her memoirs, published as a sixteen-issue serial, that her mother was also with her. Months later, when they were tried as a family, due to some diplomatic interventions and the efforts of some figures such as Zabel Yesayan, the verdict was not in favor of the death penalty requested by the prosecutor, and Vartuhi and her father were sentenced to five years in prison. Mother Takuhi was acquitted. The fact that the family was originally from Russian Armenians allowed them to be released after two and a half years, instead of serving the full five years, thanks to the article for prisoners of war in the Treaty of Brest Litovsk.

 

A mademoiselle among the lice
Kalantar cleared the notes she kept while in prison after she was released. Apparently she has more records of the early years. Translating the notes into text later allowed her, as a political woman, to describe the power relations in the prison and some figures based on observations over a long period of time. She is a good observer and a woman who uses language skillfully; she has subtle observations and very impressive expressions while conveying them. Sometimes it's almost poetic, sometimes it's powerful because of the emotional intensity of what happened. Although it is not very long in volume, what we have here is a truly special, rare and even unique memoir.

Especially what was done to her father and of course her mother makes her very angry and sometimes this can lead to a very harsh and even superior view. Being one of the few Armenians in the women's ward and being tried with death penalty while the First World War and the genocide were going on is not an easy thing, and it is necessary to read it from this perspective. Lepers' Room, Gentlemen's Room, evening entertainment; Kurdish Sinem, Persian Atiye, Arabic Fatma, Janitor Mustafa, guards, rangers... A "mademoiselle" in pedicular’s ward. Perhaps the prison doctor, the only figure she remembers well, helped her to maintain her sanity. Thanks to a translation work she made from German, she had the chance to get away from the ward from time to time and, as a kind of reward, to see her father from time to time.

After her liberation and a year after she lost her mother in 1921, Vartuhi Kalantar settled in America and wrote many articles in Armenian and English, mainly on politics and history, until her death in 1978.

 

 

She married to Zaven Nalbantyan, who was originally from Antakya, in 1923. There are also articles she and her husband wrote with the signature "Zarevand". Although the pseudonym Zarevand is identified with Nalbantyan today, there is also Vartuhi Kalantar behind it.

https://www.agos.com.tr/en/article/31085/a-political-prisoner-armenian-woman-in-an-ottoman-prison

 

 

 

 

 

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[Yervant1]

Jerusalem Patriarchate Wins Lawsuit

To Recover its Vast Properties in Turkey

 

By Harut Sassounian

www.TheCaliforniaCourier.com

In 2019, I wrote about the status of the lawsuit filed in 2012 in Turkey by the Armenian Patriarchate of Jerusalem to recover its over one thousand real estate properties confiscated decades ago.

After going through various legal maneuvers in Turkey for years, the Patriarchate finally won last week a major victory.

Ishan Erdinc reported the good news on October 4. 2024 in Agos Armenian newspaper of Istanbul in an article titled, “Critical development for the properties of the Armenian Patriarchate of Jerusalem in Turkey: Mar Yakoup Foundation is gaining legal personality.” Mar Yakoup refers to the Armenian Patriarchate of St. James (Sourp Hagop) in Jerusalem.  

Turkey’s General Directorate of Foundations (GDF) confiscated the Jerusalem Patriarchate’s properties in 1973, describing the Mar Yakoup Armenian Church Foundation, established during the Ottoman Empire, as no longer functional.

Armenian Patriarch of Jerusalem Nourhan Manougian’s 2012 lawsuit was initially rejected by both a lower court in Ankara and the court of appeal. The Patriarch then appealed to the Constitutional Court of Turkey, the highest court in the country, which decided that the lower court had violated the rights of the Armenian Patriarchate of Jerusalem. The lower court then reversed the frozen status of the Armenian Patriarchate’s properties.

Ali Elbeyoglu, the Turkish lawyer of the Jerusalem Armenian Patriarchate, told Agos newspaper that the Patriarchate now has two options. It will either appoint a Turkish citizen as its representative in Turkey to manage the properties, as it was before their confiscation, or they will be managed from Jerusalem.

Over the years, most of the Jerusalem Armenian Patriarchate’s confiscated properties were sold to third parties without any compensation to the Patriarchate.

Patriarch Manougian has never made a public announcement over the years about the lawsuit he had filed in Turkey. The only media reports were about his multiple visits to Istanbul for undisclosed reasons. Even though attorney Elbeyoglu told Agos that the Jerusalem Patriarchate has over 100 properties in Turkey, Patriarch Manougian, in an exclusive interview, told me in 2019 that the Patriarchate had owned 1,200 properties in Istanbul alone and dozens more throughout Turkey. The Patriarch also informed me that a very large and valuable property owned by the Jerusalem Patriarchate in Yalova, Turkey, formerly a part of Istanbul, was sold by a Turkish-Armenian in the 1950’s to a Turk and then fled to the United States. The Patriarch said he is interested in filing a lawsuit against the heirs of that Turkish-Armenian.

Attorney Elbeyoglu told Agos last week that the Jerusalem Armenian Patriarchate owned a highly valuable “mansion in Kuzguncuk [Istanbul], the title of which was transferred to the Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality, was then demolished.” The Attorney also said that there are “21 properties seized from the Armenian Patriarchate Foundation in Altunizade [Istanbul], [the prominent] Istiklal Boulevard of Istanbul, the Fatih [region of Istanbul] and the City of Adana.”

It remains to be seen what the Jerusalem Armenian Patriarchate will do with the recovered properties and the compensations it will receive for the properties sold long ago to third parties.

I suggest the Jerusalem Armenian Patriarchate form an international commission of highly respected Armenian individuals to oversee the management of these properties and the compensations paid to the Patriarchate. Given the controversy revolving around the sale or lease of the Jerusalem Armenian Patriarchate’s properties in Israel, it would be in the Patriarch’s interest to exhibit transparency to avoid secretive business deals and accusations of corruption.

The anticipated return of these properties is a very positive development since the Turkish government has rarely agreed to give back to their Armenian owners the properties it had confiscated decades ago. In 2011, the Turkish government announced that real estate confiscated from Armenian, Greek and Jewish charitable foundations would be either returned to them or pay compensation for the value of the properties if they have been sold to third parties.

However, after a number of properties were given back to these minorities, the government halted the process, even though some court cases are still pending.

I view Turkish efforts to return some of the confiscated Armenian properties as a means to whitewash their historic crimes. Even though we should be wary of such clever Turkish ploys, we should take advantage of every opportunity to recover a portion of what we lost during the Genocide, such as territories, properties, and other assets. And whatever we cannot recover, we need to receive restitution for them.

This is why Armenians should never forget past injustices and do everything possible to preserve the memory of their losses as long as necessary. Nothing is lost forever. History will take twists and turns and no one knows when the tide will turn in our favor. However, if we ourselves give up our claims, they will be lost forever.

[Yervant1]

Book Reveals 8,000 Letters by Armenian

Survivors of 1890’s Turkish Massacres

 

By Harut Sassounian

TheCaliforniaCourier.com

I just received the first volume of a valuable book published in Yerevan in 2021 that makes public for the first time some of the 8,000 handwritten letters by survivors of the 1894-96 Turkish massacres of 300,000 Armenians in Western Armenia (present-day Turkey), organized by Sultan Abdul Hamid II.

This unique book, authored by Vera Sahakyan and published by the Matenadaran, the repository of ancient manuscripts and documents in Yerevan, reproduces the eyewitness testimonies of 200 Armenian survivors of the Turkish massacres from the 28 villages in the Bulanekh province of the Mush region who had fled to Eastern Armenia. The heart-wrenching letters were sent to Catholicos of All-Armenians Mkrtich Khrimian (1893-1907), known endearingly as Khrimian Hayrig, located in Etchmiadzin, the headquarters of the Armenian Apostolic Church, seeking his compassionate aid for their basic necessities of food and lodging.

The letters of the Armenian survivors were kept for several decades in the archives of Etchmiadzin and subsequently transferred to Matenadaran. The author plans to publish several more volumes in the future to cover the rest of the 8,000 letters. Many of the letters in volume 1 were translated into English by Lucine Minasian.

Here are excerpts from some of the letters written to the Catholicos by the Armenian survivors of the 1894-96 Turkish massacres:

-- On October 29, 1896, Yeghiazar Hagopian, a refugee from Bulanekh’s Kakarlu village of Mush, wrote: “I was able to flee the barbaric Kurdish killings. Besides totally looting us, they murdered my son, and I barely escaped, only losing the fingers of my right hand. It’s already been four months that I have been wandering around here begging for alms…. My family, famished and naked, is impatiently waiting for me back in the homeland. I beseech you to at least grant me some travel money.”

-- On October 14, 1894, Mardiros Mouradian, an inhabitant from Khoshgaldi village of Lower Bulanekh, wrote: “The unlawful Tajiks [Turks] attacked my lamentable and poor family beating us with stones on the one hand, and fatally shooting my 20-year-old son on the other hand. They pillaged my whole fortune and even disrobed us.”

-- On July 11, 1895, Parish Priest Hovhannes Der Bedrossian from Molahkant village of Mush wrote: “Being attacked by Kurds and Hamidian troops, we abandoned our homes and possessions and barely fled secretly to Russia to survive. Now, we are wandering poor, delusional, famished… bereft of a single piece of dry bread.”

-- On January 2, 1896, Hagop Levoniants from Bulanekh’s Liz village wrote: “Our intention is self-defense -- we appeal to you that you will free us, our people, and our homeland from the Turkish iron yoke. Hand us a few weapons so we can go and reach our eight friends who have been writing us letter after letter, asking us to reach them soon.”

-- On January 13, 1897, Mkrtich Haroutyounyan from Bulanekh’s Khristam Kadouk village wrote: “We barely survived the atrocities…and freed ourselves from the pitiless claws of the furious Ottoman government…. I plead for some rags and some rubles that will cover my travel costs, so I can protect my family from the frost and attain daily sustenance for them during the wintertime.”

-- On September 30, 1895, Yaghush Mkrtichian (five people) and Yalduz Mardirosian (six people), two widows of refugee families from Bulanekh’s Kharakhlo village of Mush, wrote: “Both of us have been widowed for almost two years, as the heads [of our families] were killed by the Kurds. Being frightened, we fled here. They took everything we owned. They didn’t leave anything -- neither cattle nor possessions.”

--On March 15, 1894, Baghdasar Margosian from Keakarlou village of Mush wrote: “Enduring numerous tortures and sufferings, we could barely free ourselves from death. The unlawful warden released us from prison, demanding 80 pieces of gold. Afterwards, they looted all my movable and immovable property and forcibly imprisoned my son.”

-- On July 17, 1895, Sahag Garabedian from Hamzasheikh village of Bulanekh Province wrote: “Because of the barbarity committed by the government and the Turks, we left our homeland and fled to Russia. My father died. Now there are five of us, including my old mother. Presently, my family lives in a hut with lice in the Armidlu village.”

-- On April 19, 1894, Priest Mateos Der Kevorkian from Bulanekh village and Sahag Serovpian from Karakilise village wrote: “Since September 1893, the Kurds and Turks of Turkey have been torturing our Armenians intensely and oppressing them. They have been looting our harvested wheat. They have been pillaging our stored wheat. At nights they commit adultery with our wives and then kill them. When the Armenian laborers come back from abroad, they rob their money and homes and kill them. Eighteen families from Hamzasheikh village were forcibly converted into Turkish religion. Three of them were killed and now there is an order to hang 28 people…. Effendis and aghas forcibly demand 40-50 gold pieces from Armenian peasants or kill them. Prelate Priest Nercess has been sentenced to two years in jail. They forcibly demanded from him 450 gold pieces which were collected by passing a plate [in church] and now he is in prison. Effendis and aghas are forcibly taking over the Armenian villages, harming and torturing people….”

This is a valuable book because it:

1) Documents the 1894-96 massacres of Armenians through eyewitness accounts of the survivors;

2) Gives present-day Armenians the opportunity to find the names of their ancestors who used to live in Western Armenia;

3) Reveals that some of the little-known villages in the region were indeed inhabited by Armenians.