Armenian News...A Topalian...France recognition undeniable as Genocide!...

tert.am 

France's role undeniable in Genocide recognition
04.07.15

France has played an undeniable role in the international recognition
of the Armenian Genocide, Prime Minister Hovik Abrahamyan said in
Paris.

At a meeting with his French counterpart, Manuel Valls, the head of
Armenia's cabinet appreciated the country's permanent attention to the
problem, as well as the French official delegation's attendance the
recent centennial events in  Yerevan.

`France's contribution to the international recognition and
condemnation of the Armenian Genocide is undeniable. We highly praise
the French official delegation's participation in the Genocide
centennial events in Yerevan under the leadership of President
Francois Hollande. We are also thankful to you for attending and
delivering a brilliant speech at the commemoration event held near the
Komitas Statue in Paris on April 24,' he added.

According to the Armenian Government's press service, the sides also
discussed the Armenia-EU relations, as well as the Nagorno-Karabakh
issue and other regional developments at the meeting. Both prime
ministers highlighted the importance of achieving a peaceful solution
to the Armenian-Azerbaijani land dispute. The liberalization of EU
visas for Armenian citizens was also on the agenda.

At the end, Premier Abrahamyan invited the French official to conduct
an official visit to Armenia.


armenpress.am 

Armenian PM thanks French Parliament Speaker for recognition 

of Genocide by law
4 July, 2015

YEREVAN, JULY : In the framework of the working visit to France,
the Prime Minister of the Republic of Armenia Hovik Abrahamyan
on July 3 met with the President of the National Assembly of France
Claude Bartolone. From the Armenian side the meeting was attended by
the Minister of Education and Science of the Republic of Armenia Armen
Ashotyan, the Minister of Diaspora Hranush Hakobyan, the Minister of
Agriculture Sergo Karapetyan, the Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs
Karen Nazaryan, from the French side ` the Chairman of the
France-Armenia Parliamentary Friendship Group Rene Ruquet and the
ambassadors of the two countries.
The press service of the Government of the Republic of Armenia
informed Armenpress that expressing gratitude for the warm reception,
Hovik Abrahamyan stressed that France occupies a unique place in the
foreign political agenda of Armenia.
`Being at the National Assembly of France, I cannot but express my
deepest gratitude for the France's considerable humanitarian mission
in recognizing the Armenian Genocide by law in 2001. France is the
first country in the world to recognize the Armenian Genocide by law',
- stated Hovik Abrahamyan among other things. He expressed hope that
the French Parliament will be consistent in the submission and
adoption of the new bill, condemning the denial of the Genocide. 

armradio.am
BELGIAN HOUSE PANEL PASSES ARMENIAN GENOCIDE 

RESOLUTION
07 Jul 2015
Siranush Ghazanchyan

The Foreign Affairs Committee of the Belgian House of Representatives
on Tuesday passed a draft resolution on the commemoration of the
centenary of the Armenian Genocide, Belgian websites report.

The resolution must now be voted in a plenary session of the House.

Three coalition parties abstained from voting.

Head of the MR group Denis Ducarme welcomed the vote.

A few weeks ago Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel said the tragic
events committed between 1915-1917 in the Ottoman Empire should be
"considered a genocide." 

armenpress.am
ABOUT 180 GENOCIDE SCHOLARS AND SPECIALISTS IN 

RELATED FIELDS ARE IN ARMENIA
8 July, 2015

YEREVAN, JULY 8. The 12th conference of International
Association of Genocide Scholars in Yerevan will stand out for the
number of the participants, high academic reputation and of course
from the point of view of the 100th anniversary of the Armenian
Genocide. Over 180 genocide scholars and specialists of related
disciplines from around the world will take part in the prestigious
conference "The Comparative Analysis of the 20th Century Genocides."

As Armenpress was informed from the Armenian Genocide Museum-Institute
(AGMI), the opening of the conference "The Comparative Analysis of
the 20th Century Genocides" will take place in the Great Auditorium of
the American University of Armenia. The President of the Republic of
Armenia Serzh Sargsyan will deliver an opening speech. The election
of the new president of the Armenian Genocide Museum-Institute will
follow the opening of the event and the newly-elected president will
make a speech. The head of the Office of the President of the Republic
of Armenia Vigen Sargsyan will later introduce the events dedicated
to the 100th anniversary of the Armenian Genocide.

The conference to be held in July 2015 is dedicated to the centenary
of the Armenian Genocide, as well as to the 70th anniversary of the
World War II and the Holocaust. The head of the local organizing
committee of the conference, the director of AGMI Hayk Demoyan noted:
"This conference is going to be an exceptional event in the field of
Armenology and particularly in the field of Armenian genocide studies.

Hundreds of prominent experts and young scholars will arrive in
Armenia, whose participation in the IAGS 12th conference will be a
good opportunity to have more profound perceptions of the Armenian
Genocide and its consequences, as well as to get well acquainted with
Armenia and the Armenian culture".

The International Association of Genocide Scholars recognized the
Armenian Genocide in 1997 and received the prize of RA president
for its significant contribution on the recognition of the Armenian
Genocide in 2010.

IAGS is the leading and the largest organization of scholars studying
genocide and crimes against humanity. The association was founded in
1994 by famous scholars Israel Charny, Helen Fein, Robert Melson,
Roger Smith and today it unites more than 500 scholars from around
the world. The association aims at investigating and teaching the
causes of genocides in the world in order to prevent the genocides
in the future. The Armenian Genocide has always been in the focus of
genocide studies by the members of IAGS.

The conference will be marked with a visit to the newly prepared
exhibition of the Armenian Genocide Museum and Institute. During the
conference participants will be able to devote one day to an optional
excursion to Gyumri, the city where the world's largest orphanages
were established by the American Near East Relief after the Armenian
Genocide and to visit the Memorial of Musa Dagh Resistance in nearby
Yerevan.

The International Association of Genocide Scholars is a global,
interdisciplinary, non-partisan organization that seeks to further
research and teaching about the nature, causes, and consequences
of genocide, and advance policy studies on genocide prevention. The
Association, founded in 1994, meets regularly to consider comparative
research, important new work, case studies, the links between genocide
and other human rights violations, and prevention and punishment of
genocide. The Association holds biennial conferences and co-publishes
the scholarly journal Genocide Studies and Prevention. A central
aim of the Association is to draw academics, activists, artists,
genocide survivors, journalists, jurists, public policy makers, and
other colleagues into the interdisciplinary study of genocide, with
the goal of prevention. Membership is open to interested persons
worldwide. The International Association of Genocide Scholars
recognized the Armenian Genocide in


armradio.am
LIVING MEMORY: AN EVENING IN LONDON DEDICATED TO 

ARMENIAN GENOCIDE CENTENARY
06 Jul 2015
Siranush Ghazanchyan

On 26 June 2015 the Executive Committee of the AGBU London Chapter
organised an evening, "Living Memory" at the Chelsea Old Town Hall
dedicated to the Centenary of the Armenian Genocide and the rebirth
of the Armenian nation.

The first part of the event (4-7 P.M.) was an impressive exhibition,
"The memory is still alive", dedicated to the works of the young
painter Nairi Afrikian. The visitors watched the exhibits of this very
talented artist with great interest and admiration. Some of the works
were a combination of painting and sculpture, manifesting a style
which uniquely belongs to Nairi Afrikian. It should be noted that
the exhibition was dedicated to the Centenary of the Armenian Genocide.

The second part of the evening was opened by Assadour Guzelian, who
welcomed the honorary guests attending the function, such as Baroness
Caroline Cox, Ex-Mayor of Chelsea Councillor Condon Semmondz, Honorary
Alderman Mushtaq Lasharie and Counsellor of the Armenian Embassy Tigran
Galstyan, as well as the audience. After making a short reference to
the Armenian Genocide, Guzelian read the following passage from Winston
Churchill's book, "The Aftermath" regarding the extermination of the
Armenians by the Ottoman Turkish Government during WWI. "There is no
reasonable doubt that this crime was planned and executed for political
reasons. The opportunity presented itself to clearing Turkish soil of
a Christian race." Guzelian then read the letter he received from the
Foreign & Commonwealth Office in response to his Open Letter written
in February to P. M. Cameron, President Obama and President Netanyahu
about recognising the Armenian Genocide.

The letter confirmed that the British Government had not altered its
position. Guzelian pointed out that "powerful governments like USA and
Great Britain can bury JUSTICE, but they should always remember that
TRUTH has never had a grave in history. One cannot bury the truth."

The founder-director of the Komitas Institute Ara Sarafian, a
historian specialising in late Ottoman and modern Armenian history,
delivered a lecture entitled "Let us remember the Armenians living
in Turkey today". He referred to his meetings with the Turkish and
Kurdish intellectuals, representatives of various organisations,
public figures, ordinary citizens and peasants in different provinces
of Turkey, illustrating his talk with maps and pictures. In his
very interesting lecture Sarafian pointed out that compared to the
undemocratic and dictatorial regime of two decades ago, the situation
has improved considerably in present day Turkey. Many issues, which
were considered taboo and could not be publically referred to then,
including the Armenian Genocide, can now be openly discussed, and as
a result many hidden Islamised Armenians are returning to their roots.

Sarafian emphasised that for the pursuit and peaceful solution of
the Armenian question, we must ensure the cooperation of Turkish and
Kurdish intellectuals, public figures and organisations. A reputed
specialist in his subject, Ara Sarafian's lecture had a great impact
on the audience.

One of the greatest friends of Armenia, Artsakh and the Armenian
people, Baroness Caroline Cox delivered an excellent speech full
of emotion, entitled "The spirit of Armenia: Beauty from the ashes
of destruction".After a short reference to the Armenian Genocide
centennial commemoration event on April 24 at the Tsitsernagapert
in Armenia, Baroness Cox spoke about the atrocities perpetrated by
Azerbaijan on Armenians of Artsakh during the war. She condemned
barbaric crimes committed by Azerbaijan and praised the Armenians
of Artsakh for their Christian spirit and patriotism. She narrated
many moving stories related to her 82 humanitarian visits to Armenia
and Artsakh.

According to Baroness Cox, during the Azerbaijan-Artsakh war, the
Azeris launched 400 Grad rockets every day on Stepanagerd. Hundreds of
missiles and rockets were launched, amongst other sites on historic
Gantsassar Church. Only one bomb fell on the church, but did not
explode! Baroness Cox attributed this to Divine intervention. She
spoke from her heart and that is why her moving stories made some
members of the audience cry! Baroness Cox ended her speech by reading
the English translation of a poem written by Gegham, a ten year old
Armenian boy from Artsakh.


[they are at it again: we are the tools of USA foreign policy]

Daily Sabah, Turkey
July 6 2015
Dadrian: An Armenian name in an American game
TAL BUENOS

Dadrian-case has once again demonstrated how we are hypnotized by
Western-narrated stories which have great imperialistic plans
mischievously affecting everyone

Vahakn N. Dadrian is often described by genocide scholars as the
distinguished pioneer in their field of study. The high regard for
this founding father of genocide scholarship is ingrained in the
discourse on genocide as part of a premeditated field-enhancing
rhetoric that seeks to sustain the legitimacy of its product. This is
how a biased academic field of study strives to lend itself
credibility: It talks about its early days in a romanticized manner,
but without commitment to fact-based inquiry.

However, the conduct of research that is free of such information
control might show that the circumstances surrounding the initiation
of Dadrian's work warrant a question that has not been asked, let
alone answered, about the trusted originator of the field of genocide
study. A recently found CIA document regarding Dadrian serves as a
significant indication that genocide scholarship cannot be evaluated
without consideration of its origin.

In the 1950s it became apparent that the greatest challenge to
American control over world opinion was the accusation of
neocolonialism by a collective of smaller countries in Africa and
Asia. These countries maintained that the U.S. was using its power to
coerce, bribe or co-opt local elites to run their countries according
to U.S. interests, leading to an exploitation of local resources and
an expropriation of national culture. It was then that an interest
emerged in the U.S. to establish American-controlled narratives of the
national histories of small nations, such as Armenians. At Harvard
University, a group led by Richard N. Frye, a professor of Iranian and
Central Asian studies who had a substantial background in intelligence
work for the U.S. government, attracted the cooperation of the
Armenian elite in Massachusetts in a bid to entrust the university
with the power to narrate Armenian history. Thus, the claims of
neocolonialism against the U.S. were effectively offset by the ability
of American academia to create narratives of small nations in which
local regimes were shown as villainous and responsible for local
suffering. The popularization of these national narratives had the
impact of a diversionary tactic. In this context, Armenian scholars
were molded and promoted in order to give the Armenian narrative in
U.S. universities a sense of authenticity. Dadrian was one of these
scholars.

In the 1960s, the unprecedented bombing of Vietnam brought with it
worldwide accusations of genocide against the U.S. This meant that it
would no longer suffice to control the narratives on the histories of
small nations to negate the vocalized perspectives on American
neocolonial abuse. American aggression in Indochina went far beyond
neocolonialism, and there was a growing American need to control the
use of the term genocide. While Richard G. Hovannisian was destined to
be the rising star in the American-controlled version of modern
Armenian history, Dadrian was bestowed with opportunities to publish
sociology-inspired articles that would reinvent the meaning of
genocide in a manner that serves U.S. interests.

In the 1970s Dadrian produced writings in which there is a clear
assumption of authority on the term genocide. Despite the generally
high methodological standards in the social sciences, Dadrian's
characterization of the Armenian tragedy as genocide was based on a
slanted presentation of unreliable sources. It is highly unusual for
the academic community to accept and publish material in which a
scholar makes certain claims about history that are based on an
uncritical reading of wartime propaganda. Dadrian cites Arnold Toynbee
as a credible source, although Toynbee was hired by the British
government for the very purpose of producing anti-Ottoman propaganda
during the war. Dadrian also cites political figures and missionaries
whose clear interest was to rally the public against the Ottoman
Empire. It is hard to imagine how such disingenuous work could be
approved by editorial boards of academic journals unless Dadrian was
empowered by movers and shakers. Instead of his work being rejected,
Dadrian's failure to meet research criteria is actually repeated and
solidified by others: Leo Kuper legitimized Dadrian's work, Samantha
Power legitimized Kuper's work, and many students of genocide
currently cite Power without feeling the need to research any further.
Taner Akçam's work builds directly on the work of Dadrian, his mentor.
This is how the information on genocide stays controlled and the field
of study thickens on a steady diet of unchecked falsehoods.Not only
did Dadrian provide an Armenian building block for the American
genocide narrative against Turkey as part of the effort to eliminate
genocide accusations against the U.S. for its actions in Vietnam, he
also argued in 1976 that what happened to Native Americans in the U.S.
was not genocide, but merely a result of a conflict that was forced by
"structural properties." In his article, "The Victimization of the
American Indian," use is made of Dadrian's non-Anglo-Saxon Armenian
identity to assume "an objective point of view" about the suffering of
Native Americans and determine that their "victimization was neither
uniform, nor constant, but that it was confined by a set of variables
reducing its incidence, scope and severity." In other words, from his
American-given position as an expert on genocide, Dadrian found that
there was an "absence of a policy of total and ruthless extermination
of the American Indian ..."

Why would a sociologist decide to write something of this nature
unless in service of U.S. interests? Dadrian's style of excluding the
cases of the Vietnamese and Native Americans from his accusations of
genocide is in line with U.S. interests and has set the tone for
genocide scholarship to this day.

Interestingly, Dadrian was marked as the "subject" of a confidential,
now declassified, CIA communication, which is dated July 30, 1962.
This means that Dadrian was a matter of investigation and interest for
the U.S. government years prior to his emergence as an expert on
genocide. The document was sent by the Chief of the Munich Operations
Group who expressed concern about "considerable past suspicious
activity on subject's part." The bottom-line question in the
communication is: "Has Headquarters verified subject's background?" It
might be speculated whether there was concern that the plan to promote
Dadrian as a reputable scholar of Armenian-related studies through
government-affiliated academic platforms could be hampered by his
personal background, or perhaps the CIA was looking to hold on to
Dadrian's past incidents in order to blackmail him into producing
academic literature according to the dictation of U.S. interests.
According to this document, Vagh Gulumian, who is described as the
head of the Dashnak in Germany at the time, told a CIA source that
Dadrian had been well received in the Soviet Union "as a communist
sympathizer" but was later "expelled for rape." It was also said that
Dadrian had "close relatives in U.S. congressional circles."

Having this in mind, it seems to be high time that upon his next
interview Dadrian would take some time off his genocide-labeling tasks
to answer the following question: To what extent did the U.S.
government facilitate and influence his genocide-related work? The
answer is foundational to the entirety of genocide scholarship, yet
information control has sterilized the discourse from having a
discussion on this matter. The public, especially Armenians who have
been mobilized by Dadrian's publications, would be interested to know
whether this scholar was an agent of American interests and whether
his Armenian name was used to instigate genocide accusation against
the Ottoman government.

Meanwhile, the American enterprise, the International Association of
Genocide Scholars, is scheduled to have yet another one of its annual
conferences. The conference will be held in Yerevan from July 8 to
July 12. It is likely to center on the accusation of genocide against
Ottomans and the accusation of denial against Turkey in keeping with
the controlled discourse that has been carefully developed and
disseminated since the Vietnam War. It is also likely that Dadrian
will be regarded there as an eminent scholar whose work is seminal,
while the conference participants maintain utter ignorance of the
circumstances in which his work on genocide began. An adequate inquiry
by genocide scholars might show that their perception of Dadrian is
the product of a hollow structure. To them, however, such an inquiry
is dreaded and avoided, for what they would find might necessitate a
recognition that their academic work is an extension of American soft
power; a continuation of a political agenda that is framed as
scholarly.

To Armenians, such a recognition might lead to an identity crisis or
transformation, for what they would find might mean that, much like in
the 19th century, the Armenian people are being told who they are by a
great power that is using its ability to instill a Western-narrated
story of Armenian nationalism so as to make Armenians into pawns in a
much greater imperialist game.


* Ph.D. candidate in Political Science at the University of Utah