— The best Armenian news of the week is that yesterday the citizens of Armenia went to the polls and peacefully cast their ballots. While election monitors gave the event “mixed marks,” Armenian President Serzh Sarkisyan’s ruling Republican party (unsurprisingly) won. Reuters reports:

The Republican Party won 44 percent of the vote decided under a party list system in Sunday’s election and won at least 28 seats contested by individual candidates, election officials said, giving it an overall majority in the 131-seat parliament.

— Writing for Azatutyun, Emil Danielyan has a look at Monday’s elections and reports this troubling fact:

In their preliminary findings that clearly fell short of the Armenian government’s expectations, the nearly 300 observers mostly deployed by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) avoided stating whether the vote was democratic.

— Ditord has compiled a crowd-sourced map of possible voter irregularities, including voter fraud, and published the data on its blog. They registered 1,000+ alerts.

— Radio Liberty has gone as far as asking, “Was Armenia’s Presidential Elections a Step Backwards?” The writer presents some facts:

There were numerous reports of vote-buying by the HHK.  Purportedly charitable activities by its coalition partner Prosperous Armenia (BH), including the distribution of some 500 tractors in rural areas by a company owned by BH chairman Gagik Tsarukian, were seen by international election monitors as incompatible with the new electoral code.

— Also of note is that last Friday, an accident at a Republican Party rally in Yerevan injured 144 people when a smoker lit up near promotional balloons that were decorated with the governing party’s election slogan “Let’s believe in change.” The next day, Armenia’s first lady visited those injured in the hospital.

— Today, we hear the disturbing news that Yerevan bar DIY, one of the only LGBT-friendly bars in Armenia, was bombed by what are believed to be two male suspects and “sources speculate it is a hate crime for nationalist fascist.” Ianyan has the story.

— New data on the Armenian/Azerbaijani conflict has emerged and suggests things have changed somewhat. 23% of Armenian citizens believe the conflict will never be resolved, while 24% of Azeribajiani citizens believe it will be resolved in 2–5 years. Also, Azerbaijanis are much more likely (33%) to see the territorial issues of Karabakh as the biggest issue facing their country, while the issue is a far smaller concern for Armenia’s citizens (3%).

— The Los Angeles Review of Books has published a review of Armenian America author Aris Janigian’s new novel, This Angelic Land, and explains its fascinating take on the infamous 1992 LA riots:

… This Angelic Land reframes the fires of 1992 not as an uprising against oppressive white institutions or through the doomed romanticism of gangsta gunmen or in the form of a metaphor for the tattered loyalties of the black bourgeoisie but as a historically conditioned collision of dispossessed tribes on a patch of contested ground. For contested ground is what Los Angeles has been since its capture by the U.S. Army in 1847.

— Armenian American TV reporter Taguhi Vardanyan interviews Charles Aznavour at the Beverly Hilton Hotel in Los Angeles. The interview is on YouTube.

— And finally, Armenian film director Tigran Khzmalian’s film “The Genocide Photographer” (in Armenian) tells about Armin Theophil Wegner, a witness to the Armenian Genocide whose photographs documented one of the greatest crimes against humanity committed in the past century.

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News & Views is published every week. It is a summary of the week’s most interesting, provocatiove and thought-provoking links to articles, videos, photos and commentary of interest to the readers of Ararat.

And he is not the only one using a Facebook logo. The ruling Republican Party of Armenia has a song-ad inundated with enlarged cardboard cutouts of the thumbs-up “LIKE” icon of Facebook. [Editorial note: the YouTube video appears to have be taken down] Is the Armenian government trying to claim its share in what this author has termed click-to-share democracy? Perhaps for the election cycle.

Only four years ago, during the February 19, 2008 presidential election, there was not widespread prospect for digital activism, except for videos taped by cell phones and posted on YouTube. When ten people died in the March 1 protests challenging the election outcome, the Armenian President declare a state of emergency, which limited local media coverage of political events to copy-and-pasting government press releases.

In the run-up to the Armenian parliamentary elections, an activist carries a Facebook banner alongside Armenian national flags at a recent rally of the opposition Armenian National Congress (ANC) party in Yerevan. (Photo: PhotoLure) (via Eurasianet)

Facebook did exist in 2008, but for very few Armenian citizens. The platform for information beside cell phone videos posted on YouTube were a few blogs based outside Armenia, like my own Blogian. I blogged during the bloody protest (after a text message from a friend woke me up) and continued posting news and accounts in the days to come, partly based on personally-transmitted accounts from Armenia. My readership instantly jumped to over 10,000.

Unlike Blogian, there are many active blogs out there today that will be blogging the elections. But while blogs may produce useful content, Facebook is the place to share news items, photographs, videos, and even expose voting fraud. In the words of EurasiaNet:

Arguably, sensations like the Yerevan apartment that somehow managed to accommodate 101 registered voters also are contributing to voter curiosity about [Facebook]. Twenty-five-year-old Facebook user Edgar Tamarian posted about the apparently unusually spacious flat after finding it on a list of registered voters on the national police website; all of the supposed voters hailed from Georgia’s ethnic Armenian village of Nardevan. The police claimed the entry was “a mistake” that they had somehow overlooked.

Facebook is not the only platform for information sharing. An interactive observer project, iDitord, maps reports of voting irregularities throughout Armenia.

But watchdog activism doesn’t match the volume of political ads by the participating parties. The best guide to the sea of advertisements is a Facebook group called Political Ads, which tries to feature all ads on its wall, asking representatives of the political parties partaking in the parliamentary elections to post their promotional videos.

Political ads somewhat reflect resources, with the ruling party having what seem to be unlimited ads, some of them artistically rich and others animated. In one day alone, about 30 ads were posted by rparmenia, the official YouTube account by the Republican Party of Armenia.

One ad is a rap called “Havatank vor Pokhenk” or “Let’s Believe so We Can Change It” (the official slogan) by the ruling Republican Party of Armenia. Trying to be hip, it is instead accused of plagiarizing a Russian song and Barack Obama’s “Change We Can Believe In.” But the worst part of the ad may be the line “let every man have at least one wife,” which, unfortunately, will not even bother many Armenians. A better and possibly the most expensive ad is a song with lots of energetic young people, who are waving cardboard cutouts of thumbs-up — the Facebook “like” logo all over Armenia.

Surprisingly, there are not as many ads (at least online) by the richest man in the race (and in the country) Gagik Tsarukyan and his Prosperous Armenia Party, recently joined by high-profile former Minister of Foreign Affairs Vartan Oskanian. It is curious that Tsarukyan is even running, since, according to the Civilitas Foundation — a civil society group established by Oskanian himself, the business tycoon missed the entire September 13–December 8, 2011 session of the parliament, along with a member of the Republican Party, and two members of the Armenian Revolutionary Federation (ARF), an opposition party.

ARF may not have good parliamentary attendance record, but its ads arguably have the most detailed and informative — as opposed to emotional — content, detailing the particular steps that it would (like to) take, ranging from reducing the number of deputies, halting development in downtown Yerevan, to recalling Armenia’s signature from the controversial Armenian-Turkish protocols. (ARF is in controversy itself, with one of its poster girls not wanting her photo used by the party). But ARF is also not shying away from spicy entertainment. An animated ad features an unpleasant oligarch, generally associated with the ruling Republican Party and its wavering ally Prosperous Armenia, telling viewers not to vote for ARF as it would make Armenia a better country.

Another opposition bloc, the Armenian National Congress (a coalition and also a rebranding of the controversial Armenian Popular Movement, the party of independence and war with Azerbaijan, led by former President Levon Ter-Petrosyan), has ads that are basically clips from rally speeches. Probably the least expensive political ads of the parliamentary elections.

Another opposition party, Heritage, has an ad, called Voice of the People, with several satisfied citizens, including small business owners, recounting specific instances of successful support from Heritage. That’s not surprising given that Heritage is not only led by the popular California-born lawyer and Armenia’s first Foreign Minister Raffi Hovanissian, but also has arguably the people’s parliamentarian and most famous woman deputy — Zaruhi Postanjyan, often seen and very loudly heard — in videos of nonpartisan protests, from environmental issues to mistreatment of army conscripts.

But the most widely seen ad of Heritage (and possibly the entire election), is the popular song “Sareri Kami” (“Wind of the Mountains”), sung by its iconic composer Ruben Hakhverdyan and another famous singer, Harout Pamboukjian. The two singers’ endorsement is important as, unlike younger pop artists, the two are not generally seen as opportunistic.

While Armenians will remain pessimistic about elections for a long time, 2012 may be the first year when the government will fail to silence or minimize reports of irregularities. Facebook may not directly make Armenia’s elections more democratic, but it will give voters a much needed space for sharing and learning otherwise unreported news and accounts. Armenia’s click-to-share democracy helps make the “e” in elections electronic and eclectic.

Born June 6, 1946, Sevag grew up in the tight-knit Armenian community of Philadelphia. His parents, Dr. and Mrs. Manasseh Sevag, recognized their sons intellectual curiosity from an early age and encouraged him to succeed while retaining a connection to his Armenian heritage. After graduating from the University of Pennsylvania he traveled around the country working in various Armenian communities from coast to coast.

While Sevag was an accomplished educator, editor, and translator, many people did not know that Sevag was also an autodidact. During the 1980s, when he was teaching English at the Rose and Alex Pilibos Armenian school in Los Angeles, Sevag taught himself Armenian and embarked on a journey to become one of the world’s foremost Armenian translators. His passion for the Armenian language knew no bounds and he was also an avid collector of books. His personal collection of books, journals, and periodicals numbers in the thousands.

In the last two decades of his life, Sevag was best known to the Armenian community as a well-respected editor. He served as the managing editor of the Armenian Reporter weekly for 15 years until he stepped down in 2006 to join the Armenian General Benevolent Union. At AGBU, Sevag served as assistant editor of the biannual AGBU News magazine and as the editor of Ararat magazine.

Sevag has published more than a dozen literary, historical and other works, the most recent being Armenian Golgotha by Grigoris Balakian, which he published with leading Armenian American poet and author Peter Balakian.“Aris Sevag’s death is a great loss to the Armenian community,” Balakian says. “He was a great translator of Armenian literature into English. Aris lived inside of the language and he knew his writers in a deep and lived-in ways. And, he brought to every text a serious intellectual understanding of the writer and of the time and place and historical context. He made a rich contribution to Armenian culture, and he had a zest and passion for what he did, and his soulful love of  literature will be missed by all his friends and colleagues. “

Professor George Bournoutian, senior professor of Middle Eastern and East European History at Iona College, worked with Sevag on numerous projects. Sevag edited seven of Bournoutian’s 20 books, including the forthcoming sixth edition of The Concise History of the Armenian People. The Armenian translation of the book, which was just completed in Yerevan, Armenia, will be dedicated to the memory of Aris Sevag. “Aris Sevag’s knowledge of the Armenian and English language surpassed many academics,” Bournoutian says. “He never said a bad word against anyone, helped all, and forgave those whom took advantage of him. He will be sorely missed.”

During his lifetime, Sevag published hundreds of articles in journals and newspapers around the world. Among Sevag’s unpublished translations are accounts of several Armenian Genocide survivors, a study on the orphans from the Armenian Genocide, histories of prominent Armenian families and works of literature. One of these literary works, Bedros Keljik’s Armenian-American Sketches was being serialized in the pages of Ararat since 2010 and before his death Sevag was able to publish seven of the 21 short stories in the collection.

During his memorial service last Monday at St. Sarkis Armenian Apostolic Church in Little Neck, Queens, his son Armen spoke about his father’s spirit and love of life. He concluded with the words, “As long as there are books to read and people to read them, his smile and spirit will live on forever.”

Sevag is survived by his wife Asdghig, his children, Aida, Alice, Ani and Armen, and his brother Paul.

— According to Panorama.com, there are 16 Armenian secondary schools in Turkey with 3,070 Armenian students.

—Slovakia is following France’s lead in proposing the criminalization of Armenian Genocide denial and Turkey isn’t happy.

— Six historic graveyards were returned to Istanbul’s Jewish, Greek and Armenian communities last week.

— Mother Jones magazine has a photo essay on “The Unrecognized Islands of the Caucasus.” It features the photography of Karen Mirzoyan.

— This weekend marks the 100th anniversary of the sinking of the Titanic. What many Armenians may not know is that a number of the survivors were Armenian, including Neshan Krekorian and Davit Vartanian.

— The drama of the Gerard Cafesjian v John Waters court case continues. This time Cafesjian is accusing the former Cafesjian “family office” employee of allegedly embezzling almost $3 million.

—Professor Taner Akçam will discuss his latest book, The Young Turks’ Crime Against Humanity: the Armenian Genocide and Ethnic Cleansing in the Ottoman Empire, on Sunday, April 15, beginning at 2 pm at the Armenian Library and Museum of America (ALMA) in Watertown, Massachusetts.  Akçam introduces more than 600 pieces of evidence that demonstrate in unprecedented detail that the Armenian Genocide resulted from an official effort to engage to rid the Turkish Empire of its Christian subjects.

— The managing director of the National Iranian Oil Products Company states that Armenia has expressed interest in importing oil products from Iran.

— This week, American artist Nina Katchadourian’s airplane “lavatory” portraits have been ricocheting around the internet. These delightful works created during long trips to New Zealand features the New York-based artist in traditional European poses and styles. She explains how the series came about on her website:

While in the lavatory on a domestic flight in March 2010, I spontaneously put a tissue paper toilet cover seat cover over my head and took a picture in the mirror using my cellphone. The image evoked 15th-century Flemish portraiture. I decided to add more images made in this mode and planned to take advantage of a long-haul flight from San Francisco to Auckland, guessing that there were likely to be long periods of time when no one was using the lavatory on the 14-hour flight. I made several forays to the bathroom from my aisle seat, and by the time we landed I had a large group of new photographs entitled Lavatory Self-Portraits in the Flemish Style.

—  Easter may have passed but if you need to get ready for next year, here’s a helpful guide on “How to win an Armenian-style Easter egg fight”

—  And finally, in the most bizarre Armenian-related “news,” Kim Kardashian is using the defense of being “hairy and Armenian” as a defense in an absurd hair removal product trial.

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News & Views is published every week. It is a summary of the week’s most interesting, provocatiove and thought-provoking links to articles, videos, photos and commentary of interest to the readers of Ararat.

— In the mysterious case of Armenia’s growing voter list and diminishing population, Armenia Now’s title says it all, “Armenia’s population = 2,800,000; Registered voters = 2,485,844. Mistake or Deceit?”

— According to The Armenian Reporter, a document from Wikileaks suggests that the Azerbaijanis are terrified of an Armenian military attack:

“When I was in Baku recently, they showed me a 3-D topographic map of Armenia, AZ [Azerbaijan], Nagorno [Karabakh],” the Czech related. “You can see very clearly that once (and if) the Armenians cross over with Russian backing, it is a flat path to Baku. The Russians told them during the Georgia war that Georgia could just be the first stop… pretty direct threat. The Azerbaijanis are terrified of this.

— Baltimore’s Walter Art Museum, which is home to a number of spectacular Armenian manuscripts has received a grant to digitize its medieval collection. The AP report in the Washington Post explains:

The work continues with a $315,000 grant to digitize Armenian, Byzantine, Dutch, English, Ethiopian and German manuscripts.

You can view one of the manuscripts at the Walters Art Museum on the institution’s Flickrstream.

— A new edition of the Armenian Review academic journal has been published and, according to Asbarez, features:

… a discussion by Ara Sanjian on the challenges, limitations and opportunities confronting historians conducting in-depth research about the Armenia Revolutionary Federation … Bedross Der Matossian, is a comprehensive survey of the archival material at the Armenian Patriarchate of Jerusalem … Katy E. Pearce, Howard Giles, Christopher Hajek, Valerie Barker and Charles Choi … [compare] attitudes of citizens in Armenia and the United States toward their respective police forces … Armen Baibourtian, is a hybrid of academic research and the personal accounts of a diplomat

— And finally, meet the (supposedly) last Armenian in Mumbai, Zabel Joshi.

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News & Views is published every week. It is a summary of the week’s most interesting, provocatiove and thought-provoking links to articles, videos, photos and commentary of interest to the readers of Ararat.

The Ministry of Diaspora’s announcement of the project reads, in part:

The presentation of the “Virtual Museum of the Armenian Diaspora” website (armdiasporamuseum.com) was held at the RA [Republic of Armenia] Ministry of Diaspora on March 13.

Through the “Virtual Museum of the Armenian Diaspora” program, the RA Ministry of Diaspora has the goal of proclaiming the history of the Armenian people, their cultural heritage and achievements, shaping and radicalizing the awareness of Armenian national identity and belonging among Diaspora Armenian youth, familiarizing Diaspora Armenian communities with each other, strengthening the relations between the Homeland and the Diaspora, as well as between Diaspora Armenian communities, and contribute to the perception of the Republic of Armenia as the Homeland of all Armenians.

[...]

The website will be multilingual (Armenian, English and Russian), and the Classical Armenian [sic: Western] version will be added by the end of this year. The website already features the “Armenian Communities,” “Pan-Armenian Organizations,” “Spiritual Structures,” “Gallery,” “Films, Videos and Recordings,” “Armenian Genealogy” and other sections that are always updated and expanded.

While the Eastern Armenian and Russian versions don’t seem to have outstanding grammatical problems, the English version sounds like it was created by someone engaged in a comedic Borat impersonation. The welcome section is awkwardly titled “Greeting speech” and the gallery page is curiously labelled “Exhibition Hall.”

Most of the photos on the website are not of high quality, and some are obviously downloaded without any notation or credit from various Armenian websites, including the US-based Armenian National Institute.

And the design? Yerevan-based web developer Mikayel Ghazarian says there is none:

“Template is taken [for free] from here: www.templatemo.com.”

Armenia-based journalist and blogger Artur Papyan writes his thoughts about the project on his personal Facebook page:

‎6 million drams [roughly $15,000] for Virtual Museum of Armenian Diaspora? No proper text or photo, template-based design, no mashups, no RSS, no interactivity, just a dumb site? I understand what they spent the first $600 for. But what happened to the remaining $14,400?

I spoke to an Armenian expatriate working for Microsoft in Washington State who suspects that he wouldn’t be surprised if most of the $16,000 budget was pocketed by Ministry of Diaspora staff through kickbacks. During his student days in Armenia, he told me, it was the rule and not the exception for some NGOs and government agencies to outsource computer work to their acquaintances with the stipulation that they receive a 2/3 kickback. He can only guess that the Ministry of Diaspora personnel pocketed the majority of the project’s budget as it is not reflected in the site at all, but no one has any proof.

California-based Asbarez editor Ara Khachatourian calls the project “an insult:”

The content of the Web site is nothing more than an aggregation of information that can be culled from a quick Google search or a reworking of Wikipedia entries. It is apparent that there was no substantive research done to accumulate the information and build content for what could have been an extremely worthwhile effort.

[...]

So, to [Minister of Diaspora] Mrs. Hakopyan I say that the Diaspora is not a slogan to propel the creation of a haphazard Web site whose content is more an embarrassment than a showcase of our rich Armenian national heritage.

[...]

A glaring omission from the Virtual Museum is the Armenian press in the Diaspora. In my humble opinion as the editor of this 104-year-old publication, leaving out the press is a virtual crime for this Virtual Museum.

The Virtual Armenian Diaspora Museum is an insult to the Diaspora. It is the Diaspora Ministry’s responsibility to rectify this situation by immediately taking it down and, if the ministry is truly committed to creating this important repository, bring together experts to work on creating a Web site worthy of our national aspirations.

The Ministry of Diaspora responded to Khachatourian’s harsh review, indicating that they “are saddened that our undertaking was characterized as an ‘insult’ to the Diaspora. Our ministry was created to cooperate with the Diaspora and make the Diaspora’s voice heard, and not to insult it.”

The critics have their own critics. Armenian blogger Erik Grigoryan, currently studying in Norway, is not impressed by the Diaspora website either, but he wrote on Facebook that he finds the delivery and style of Khachatourian’s criticism “offensive, destructive and inappropriate.”

But Khachatourian is not the only author using harsh words. Hrant Gadarigian, posting on Hetq.am, writes:

I repeat, the Virtual Museum is indeed a “Virtual Embarrassment” that never should have been launched in its present form.

[...]

If this site is a work in progress, which even the editorial board acknowledges is riddled with inaccuracies, poor language and other thematic deficiencies, then why in God’s name did they put it on the world-wide web in the first place?

It is not merely a question of haphazard unprofessional planning and execution, but a lack of any clearly defined goal.

[...]

One would have expected the Diaspora Ministry, an arm of the RA government, to have tackled such a monumental task with a higher degree of accountability and understanding.

Armenians aren’t the only ones that will be visiting this site. We might excuse its serious shortcomings as yet another example of “business as usual,” a project of show more than substance.

I will not go into detail regarding the unacceptable translation, lack of a cohesive thematic thread regarding the Diaspora, its historical underpinnings, relations/symbiosis with the homeland, etc.

[...]

The Ministry cannot escape accountability by saying “this is what we’ve done, good or bad” and then solicit assistance from experts and the community at large. It’s not how things are done on this scale.

Didn’t the editorial board realize that their “in-house” resources were not up to the task at hand?

Goar Rshtuni, writing in Russian, has questions about the site:

The idea is good, but as always … For some reason they have ignored the Russian [Armenian] society … And why in the gallery there are only monuments of pain? Maybe this is the rough-draft. Will wait.

As the founder and executive director of the virtually unfunded Djulfa Virtual Memorial and Museum, a comprehensive and impartial project documenting the deliberate destruction of the world’s largest medieval Armenian cemetery, this author does not see justification in the pretentious yet disappointing product that the Ministry of Diaspora has delivered at this extraoridnary cost. The website is not reflective of the Armenian people in the homeland or in the diaspora, but is rather the mirror of corruption and lack of accountability in Armenia’s government.

— Express.am is reporting that writer Hovhannes Ishkhanyan may face criminal charges for his novel The Day of Discharge. Ishkhanyan told the news site that:

… he was called in for questioning by the military police, who asked him to give a written explanation regarding certain excerpts of the book, especially those related to the military, and tell them to what extent this work of fiction corresponds to real-life events.

The Armenian police are considering if they will press charges.

— ArmeniaNow has an update on the situation and an interview with Ishkhanyan, who says:

… he wrote the book in part before his army experience and completed it after his service and that the language in the book – while fictional — is based on his experience.

“There is a problem of esthetics here. I have used the real language which exists in the army, which has caused shock among officials. Had I written it in nice words, they would not have complained,” Ishkhanyan says.

— US Congressman Brad Sherman (D-CA) is pressing USAID for aid to the Armenian region of Javakh in the Republic of Georgia. According to Asbarez:

In his question to USAID Director Shah, Rep. Sherman outlined the difficult economic conditions facing many of the regions in the Republic of Georgia, and his efforts, in conjunction with the Armenian American community, to focus targeted assistance to the population in Javakhk.

— BBC has just published a photo essay regarding the small Armenian population of Calcutta. It is a fascinating window into this historically important community.

— Reports suggest Iran and Armenia are cooperating to create an international wildlife park.

— According to the LA Times, the LA Police Department have achieved another small victory against the Armenian Power gang in Southern California as four members are convicted of bank fraud and identity theft.

— The Tobacco Atlas, which is maintained by the American Cancer Society and World Lung Foundation, has an extensive fact sheet about the impact of smoking in Armenia. According to their statistics 50.9% of men in Armenia smoke, 33% of men die of tobacco-related illness and almost 90% of children in that country are exposed to second-hand smoke at home.

— A recent survey in Armenia revealed that most people in that country stay up-to-date about politics through the Internet:

… this survey on political awareness demonstrates that the future belongs to the Internet, and that the youth gradually prefer the Internet over television for receiving information.

— In today’s dose of humor: the Armenian student group at Rutgers University in New Jersey held a choreg eating contest last month. Here’s the YouTube video.

— And finally, in pop culture news, Madonna’s new music video “Girls Gone Wild” features the four members of Ukrainian pop sensation Kazaky. One of the band members is Armenian and name Artur Gasparyan (aka Artur Gaspar). h/t ArtMika

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News & Views is published every week. It is a summary of the week’s most interesting,   and thought-provoking links to articles, videos, photos and commentary of interest to the readers of Ararat.

In particular, although Georgia also withdrew after an aborted attempt to enter an anti-Putin song following the August 2008 war with Russia, bitter rivalry has particularly emerged between Armenia and Azerbaijan.

Locked in a bitter dispute over Karabakh, the war that broke out in the early 1990s saw around 25,000 people killed and a million flee their homes. And although a cease-fire agreement was signed in 1994, the two sides are still no closer to finding a lasting peace, with scores of conscripts from both sides dying on the frontline in cross-border skirmishes and sniper incidents every year. With the International Crisis Group (ICG) warning of the dangers of a new accidental war in the future, Eurovision, in a sense, has become a new battleground.

Scandals between the two countries, in fact, have become a regular feature of the song contest watched by over 150 million people. In 2009, for example, the inclusion in Armenia’s promotional video of a statue in the breakaway mainly Armenian-populated region prompted a strong response from Azerbaijan. And even then, when the offending monument was removed from the clip, it was anyway included as the backdrop and main image adorning the clipboard of Sirusho, Armenia’s presenter during the international televoting broadcast live on air.

The same year, in perhaps the worst incident, 43 Azerbaijanis who voted for Armenia were reportedly called in for questioning by their own National Security Service. The telephone number for viewers in Azerbaijan to vote for Armenia had, of course, been obscured locally, but some had anyway managed to work it out. One even explained his voting preference by saying Armenia’s entry sounded “more Azeri” than Azerbaijan’s entry. So, when Azerbaijan won last year’s Eurovision in Germany, earning itself the right to host the competition, alarm bells naturally rang in Yerevan.

The situation had already become controversial when questions were raised about attitudes towards members of the local and international LGBT community, let alone the prospect of Armenians performing in the capital of its regional foe. Armenia, in particular, demanded additional security guarantees for its delegation from the EBU.

In response, the European organization stated that it could not intervene, but that it was satisfied with the security provisions promised for any delegation. Indeed, the provisions for receiving a visa at Baku’s Heydar Aliyev airport were such that any Eurovision-ticket holder or EBU-accredited journalist would be granted a visa, available at a much lower rate than normal, on arrival in the country. Although not stated implicitly, that meant that anyone arriving for the event, even with an Armenian surname, could enter the country albeit only if they hadn’t visited Karabakh without official Baku’s permission.

But, with the local media increasingly full of articles seemingly preparing Armenians for a withdrawal, it anyway didn’t matter, and not least when a statement from well-known singers in Armenia called for a boycott of the competition. In particular, they made reference to the February 24 shooting of an Armenian conscript, reportedly by an Azerbaijani sniper. Somewhat embarrassingly, however, after human rights activists examined the case, the Armenian Ministry of Defense later confirmed that the conscript had actually been shot by one of his own fellow servicemen.

Left without the death to justify withdrawal from Eurovision, Armenian Public TV finally found an excuse in the form of a speech by Azerbaijan’s president, Ilham Aliyev, declaring all Armenians worldwide to be the enemy, and it formally withdrew from Eurovision on March 7. In reality, though, it appeared that Armenia had already decided not to participate even if, in 2010, His Holiness Karekin II, Catholicos of All Armenians, had made an official visit to Baku, conducting a religious service in the Armenian Church downtown, as had members of the nationalist Armenian Revolutionary Federation — Dashnaktsutyun such as Giro Manoyan.

True, Armenian boxers who competed last year at a sporting event in the Azerbaijani capital were momentarily subjected to an incident involving the throwing of stones from the Karabakh Liberation Organization comprising Azerbaijani War Veterans, but the culprits were anyway arrested. Armenian wrestlers also experienced no problems competing in Baku in 2007.

“We can conclude that the president of a Eurovision host country is officially stating that all Armenians, including those who would be included in the Eurovision delegation, are the enemies of Azerbaijan,” Public TV nevertheless announced. “Therefore, it would make no sense to send our participant to a country where they would be received as an enemy … We are convinced that the atmosphere created by this and other anti-Armenian statements and actions cannot ensure equal conditions for all singers participating in Eurovision.”

“W​​e are truly disappointed by the broadcaster’s decision to withdraw,” Eurovision Executive Supervisor Jon Ola Sand responded to the news. “Despite the efforts of the EBU and the Host Broadcaster to ensure a smooth participation for the Armenian delegation in this year’s Contest, circumstances beyond our control lead to this unfortunate decision.”

Some such as Mika Artyan, perhaps Armenia’s best-known online Eurovision commentator, were also disappointed. “They could have announced it much earlier, with dignity, with a kind of reasoning that would have gained them respect,” he wrote on his Unzipped blog. “Instead, they resorted to stupid propaganda games and outright lies. They undignified themselves to the extent of exploiting [the] death of the Armenian soldier … A disgrace.”

Perplexed, even Dorians, the front-runner to represent Armenia in this year’s Eurovision, noted the irony in the withdrawal, mentioning that the country didn’t boycott the competition when it was held in Russia in 2010. “When we were going to Russia for Eurovision, no one was speaking of security — even though in Russia nationalism knows no bounds. There, every day an Armenian is killed, but we weren’t afraid to go,” the band, which had frequently expressed its willingness to perform in Baku, wrote on its Facebook page. “Let’s remove the hatred injected within us, people of the world … Life happens only once — let us live in peace and without wars.”

But, with online activists and journalists facing intimidation, detention, and imprisonment in the oil-rich former Soviet republic, human rights and other organizations have also cast doubts on the country’s suitability to stage Eurovision. In particular, they point to forced evictions of homeowners in downtown Baku to construct the Crystal Hall Stadium where Eurovision will be held in May. “There are quite a few genuine reasons that Armenia’s Public TV may have considered to withdraw from the competition without resorting to [the reasons otherwise given],” wrote Artyan in another post on his blog.

And, although Armenians are divided on the matter with many supporting the boycott, other bloggers agreed even if for different reasons. “There was initially controversy revolving around the question of whether Armenian participants would be allowed, and if their safety would be guaranteed, and finally whether Armenian fans would be allowed and their safety would be guaranteed,” wrote Cilicia.com’s Raffi Kojian. “After much teeth gnashing by Baku, they agreed to all of these Eurovision requirements. Remarkable I’d say, but they had invested a lot in this and wanted it that bad.”

“This … is approximately the millionth time Azerbaijan has made racist and hateful comments about Armenians,” Kojian continued. “But this time Armenia decided for some reason that because of this we are not going to participate in Eurovision to punish Azerbaijan and show them. Well guess what, that’s exactly what Azerbaijan wants — so it’s a reward, not a punishment. We’ll now be a tiny, tiny footnote in the contest as non-participants, and few will hear of or care about Karabakh. We’d have had to spend millions of dollars to get the kind of PR we just threw out the window.”

“Party time in Baku, while we shot ourselves in the foot,” the well-known Diasporan blogger concluded.

— Atom Egoyan will be delivering the Dr. Berj H. Haidostian Annual Distinguished Lecture today at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor on “Ararat, 10 Years After.” You can watch it live here.

— The violence in Syria is starting to directly impact the large Armenian community in that country. Yesterday, an explosion in the largely Christian neighborhood of Sulemaniyeh claimed the life of one Armenian, Araxie Bedrossian, according to the French-language Nouvelles d’Armenie. At least three people are dead and dozens of others were injured in the attack.

— According to PanArmenian.net, an Armenian representative of Reporters Without Borders, Shushan Doydoyan, says online media — unlike other media — is not censored in Armenia. It is worth noting that internet penetration and usage is very low in the country with only 19% of the population having access to the internet in 2011.

— HETQ is continuing a series on the “Armenian-speaking Muslims of Hamshen.” The author travels to a Black Sea city in Turkey and has a telling experience with some local Hamshens:

When the shop owner found out that we were from Armenia, a change came over him. He didn’t grow sullen like Hadji Süleyman, on the contrary, his face started to glow. “Do they know about us over there?” he asked. Khachik told him that they didn’t know all that much. “Eh … we sold our religion. We sold our Christianity and became Muslims.”

Even those Hamshens who avoid calling themselves Armenian and who regard themselves as Turks can’t escape the scorn heaped upon them by the other peoples of the region who call them ermeni in contempt. “I don’t know why but they call us ermeni kök,” said a village woman from Çamurlu. (Ermeni kök – Armenian offspring)

— Armenia Now reports that the Vatican will present an exhibition and book with documents and information on the Armenian Genocide. Included in the volume will be:

An eyewitness from Erzrum writes: “I saw how they were slaughtering many children. My nephew was running away from home with a two year-old child on his shoulders, but he got shot and collapsed, two soldiers approached and killed him as the child watched… I saw how they killed the spiritual leader of our town: they dug out his eyes, tore off his beard. Before killing him the soldiers had made him dance.”

— Armenian philanthropist Gerard Cafesjian has been embroiled in a number of court battles over the past few years, first with the Armenian Assembly of America over the Genocide Museum, and now with the former director of his family foundation, John Waters. The Star Tribune reports:

The longtime director of Cafesjian’s family foundation says in a federal lawsuit that Cafesjian was also a tough boss who has become increasingly paranoid, miserly and vindictive as he has aged — and who stiffed the employee out of more than $5 million in salary.

— Lydia Peelle is the 2012 winner of the Anahid Literary Prize given by Columbia University’s Armenian Center for her book of short stories Reasons for and Advantages of Breathing. The book was a New York Times Editor’s Choice book and a finalist for the Orion Book Award, and received an honorable mention for the Pen/Hemingway Award. [Armenian Mirror-Spectator]

*   *   *

News & Views is published every week. It is a summary of the week’s most interesting, provocatiove and thought-provoking links to articles, videos, photos and commentary of interest to the readers of Ararat.

The program, of course, aired in February — the worst month of the conflict. Starting on February 26, 1988, a pogrom targeted the Armenian population of the Azerbaijani town of Sumgait, arguably setting the stage for the war. Exactly four years later, Azerbaijani civilians were killed during the Armenian takeover of  the town of Khojaly in the largest massacre of the war. And ten years after the 1994 ceasefire (in force until today) on February 19, 2004, Azerbaijani officer Ramil Safarov murdered his Armenian counterpart Gurgen Margaryan at a Hungary-based English-language training through a NATO program ironically called Partnership for Peace.

Before being recently removed by Facebook administrators, an online Azerbaijani group celebrating convicted murderer Ramil Safarov had over 20,000 “like”s. Compare that number to the less than 100 “likes” that an unprecedented online initiative called Our Pain, the first joint commemoration for all victims of the Karabakh conflict, has received. The initiative, sponsored by the Imagine Center for Conflict Transformation in collaboration with this author, invites people to “like” the following statement (available in Armenian, Azeri, English, and Russian):

The Nagorno-Karabakh conflict has caused tens of thousands of deaths and brought suffering to many more people. While Armenian and Azerbaijani societies have fundamental disagreements related to the causes of the conflict and responsibility for it, the shared pain of all sides remains overlooked. We commemorate the victims of the conflict — known and unknown, recognized, and unrecognized, remembered, and forgotten. We mourn — for all of them — and share the pain.

The spirit of Our Pain doesn’t resonate with the mutually exclusive commemorations for the victims of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. Virtually, commemorations included hacking of websites, with a group called Armenian Cyber Army hacking about 20 Azerbaijani websites and posting the photo of cruelly murdered officer Gurgen Margaryan. Although Azerbaijani hackers have a longer track of hacking Armenian websites, there were no major reports of such attacks against Armenian websites, but there were reported attacks against third-party ones.

There were commemorative events, including protests worldwide, especially in front of Armenian and Azerbaijani embassies/consulates. Some had hundreds of participants; one had only one. The largest commemoration was a hateful protest in Istanbul, Turkey, where over twenty thousand nationalists recalled the 20th anniversary of the Khojaly massacre by holding racist signs, such as “You are all Armenians, You are all bastards,” and shouting, according to the Associated Press, “Nagorno-Karabakh will be a grave for Armenians.”

The grave threat is ironic, of course, as Azerbaijan doesn’t even tolerate Armenian graveyards because of their proof of Armenian history. In Azerbaijan’s Nizh village, for instance, Armenian inscriptions on tombstones were polished off while the decorations were preserved in 2005. The vandalism was made known through public protests by the Norwegian Ambassador to Azerbaijan at the time, Steinar Gil. A much worse tragedy happened in December of the same year, when Azerbaijan’s army used heavy machinery to annihilate every single intricately carved khachkar (cross-stone) of the celebrated medieval Djulfa cemetery over the period of several days. Official Azerbaijan denies the destruction of Djulfa despite video, photo, eyewitness, and satellite evidence.

Djulfa’s destruction and its February 2006 condemnation by the European Parliament was the opening line in a statement by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Armenia commemorating the 24th anniversary of the Sumgait pogrom:

In early February 2006, the European Parliament passed a resolution condemning Azerbaijan’s destruction of Armenian religious and cultural monuments in their formerly Armenian-populated region of Nakhichevan. The same resolution says that efforts must be made to stop the practice of ethnic cleansing.

[...]

Those pogroms of Armenians in Sumgait in February 1988 have the dubious honor of being the first — the first time that ethnic cleansing was utilized in what was still Soviet space — even before this scourge of modern humanity reared its head in the Balkans.

The Nagorno Karabakh problem, which still festers in the South Caucasus, began 20 years ago as a series of peaceful demonstrations by Armenians who wished to determine their own lives, their own futures, NOT under the jurisdiction of Azerbaijan. The Azerbaijani government responded to these calls with violence and repression.

The statement includes a paragraph on the Khojaly massacre that denies Armenian wrongdoing in the killings. Before coming to power, however, the now-ruling Republican Party of Armenia published a booklet in 2002 about the 1915 Armenian Genocide and its aftermath, in which one ultra-nationalist author not only acknowledges but also celebrates the Khojaly massacre as a revenge for the Genocide. The particular Armenian article is available online on ultra-nationalist Armenian websites:

And, finally, the best example of our sacred national revenge was Khojaly’s liberation operation in February of 1992. The enemy, drunk from the bloodbaths of Armenians from Sumgayit, Kirovabadab [sic], Baku and other places, was massacred without mercy, we would say, in Armenian-style. Not only do we need to understand, but we need to teach our future generations, that the Armenian, if needed, is capable to [sic] massacre and should massacre!

The above statement is the only known instance of an Armenian public figure’s celebration of the Khojaly massacre. Contrast it with a Facebook post by up-and-coming Armenian-American International Relations specialist Harout Harry Semerdjian, who has studied at UCLA, Fletcher, and Oxford:

Armenians and Azeris this month mark tragic events that unfolded as part of the Nagorno-Karabakh War. Both sides suffered and continue to suffer military and civilian casualties. Sumgait, Maragha, Baku, Khojalu, Kirovabad all remind of the pain the conflict caused both sides. While both peoples are entitled to memory and mourning, to take a single particle of the war and capitalize on it for purposes of political expediency is insincere and will only complicate the negotiation and settlement process of the conflict. Further, funds wasted on PR can be better spent on peace and improving the lives of poverty-stricken populations.

Semerdjian’s message is not unique. Eldar Mamedov, foreign policy adviser to Social-Democrats at the European Parliament, also commemorates the massacres on Facebook:

My heart and thoughts are with the victims of Khojaly and Sumgait. May they rest in peace and may those responsible be brought to justice one day!

Azerbaijani journalist Alekper Aliyev, known for a novel he wrote about an Armenian-Azerbaijani gay couple, responds to an Armenian reader in Russian:

Vandals were both on your and our side. Is the talk about that? I don’t recall denying [the pogroms of] Baku, Sumgait, or [the destruction of] the khachkars of Djulfa. That is our shame. And the shame of Armenians is Agdam, [a city] wiped off the face of the earth.

A progressive Turkish columnist, who often writes about Turkey’s denial of the Armenian Genocide, thinks that Armenia should take the high road first. Orhan Kemal Cengiz writes:

Instead of this blatant denial [of the Khojaly massacre], [Armenia] could have tried to create an inspiring model for Turkey by recognizing the atrocities it committed in the past.

Some might argue that recognizing Khojaly without anticipation of reciprocity would increase Armenia’s soft power by demonstrating maturity, credibility, and a universal commitment to human rights.

But official Armenia is not the only side laying the blame on Azerbaijan for civilian deaths in Khojaly. Azerbaijan’s most famous former Amnesty International prisoner of conscience Eynulla Fatullayev, who was recently released from prison, still argues that Azerbaijani forces were responsible for the killings. His testimony is among those listed on an Armenian website that denies Armenian responsibility in Khojaly. Even many progressive Armenians, and those fighting the denial of the Armenian Genocide, seem to subscribe to Armenia’s official account of the Khojaly massacre, which basically denies any Armenian responsibility for the killings.

“It’s been a tough week for me,” says Nigar, an Azerbaijani journalist working in Turkey, ”but I’m telling myself that Armenia’s denial of the Khojaly Massacre must be beneficial in some sense to know what the denial of the Armenian Genocide feels like.”

Comparing the government-sanctioned intentional destruction of an entire people that killed over a million to a massacre of several hundred civilians during a military attack may offend many. But denial of either event beats the same nationalist drum: they did the same to us, they deserved it, they are lying.