The Armenian Weekly | June 14, 2008

NEW YORK (A.W.)--Scholars, writers, and activists from around the world gathered to exchange ideas at the Armenian Revolutionary Federation's third annual "Armenians and Progressive Politics" (APP) conference on May 30-31 in New York City.   The meeting was designed to offer a forum for progressive activists and thinkers who tie Armenian issues to a broader political field.

Empire and Its Discontents

The plenary session on “The New Imperialism” featured noted progressive intellectuals Tariq Ali, David Barsamian, and Neil Smith, who discussed the politics of empire and globalization, and how these might affect dispossessed peoples and fledgling nation-states such as Armenia.

Carte blanche

During his presentation, Barsamian said, “Turkey bombs Iraq, that’s all OK. As long as you are on the side of empire, you have carte blanche, you can do anything you like. But if you are a designated enemy, then look out. All aspects of international law will be applied, you’ll be held under great scrutiny, and you’ll be subjected to boycotts, sanctions, and military attacks.”
Barsamian noted that although the U.S. is posing as a kind of honest broker in the Middle East peace process and trying to deliver confidence-building measures, Washington is still far from being honest and fair.

Going beyond the Middle east, he said, “I have been spending a lot of my time in west Asia and south Asia, and more and more people are telling me that they think the policy of the U.S. is basically to keep the region in turmoil, constant upheaval, because this allows for the presence of American military bases, the sale of weaponry in tens of billions of dollars.”
He ended with a comment from Frederick Douglas, an African-American freedom fighter who once said, “Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never has and it never will.”

The world is flat, not!

In turn, Smith said, “Today’s imperial wars have managed to collapse any social and geographical difference. This is a war over Muslim and Arab bodies in particular, but also a war that is just supposed to protect the security of certain white bodies.”

“This is also, simultaneously, a global war,” he added. “The war is very much about U.S. global power. But not just U.S. global power. It is also a project of transnational grouping.”
He explained, “[New York Times columnist] Thomas Friedman has told us that the world is flat. The evidence is coming out about the extraordinary unevenness, disparity, inequality that’s being created by a globalization process that was supposed to level the playing field, if you still remember that phrase. But in order to understand Friedman, you have to have a class perspective and understand the class from which Friedman comes. In the first pages of his books, he tells us about flying to India where he certainly has this revelation: ‘Honey, the earth is flat.’”

He concluded, “It’s very easy at business class, at 35 thousand feet, to think that the world is flat!”

According to Smith, imperial wars are always justified on the basis of—if not human rights directly—some form of civilizational conquest. It’s not at all an accident, therefore, to hear Bush arguing that “freedom is the direction of history."

“Just in case,” Smith said, “Bush of course has the U.S. military at hand to make sure history gets it right in this process.”

Smith noted that what is new is a shift from a geo-political calculus to a geo-economic calculus around imperial war. “Instead of geopolitics being a strategy—which is true for the British Empire in the 19th century, to take land, because land was power; the ultimate goal was economic but the strategy was geopolitical—now, the strategy is geo-economic. There is no requirement to hold the land. The military bases, yes, but not the land. The geo-economic calculation is the strategic calculation and geopolitics becomes tactical.”

Because we could

Talking about the post-Soviet era, Ali noted, “People began to imagine that because the Soviet Union had collapsed, perhaps imperialism, too, had ceased to exist. If you had used the word “empire” and “imperialism” in the late 90’s, people would have laughed at you, saying you are living in the past, you are dinosaurs, you don’t know what’s going on in the world. But essentially, there was absolutely no reason why the U.S. as the world’s largest and most powerful empire also ceased to exist simply because its old enemies had collapsed. What it had to do was to readjust itself to the new world order.”

Ali explained how the history of 19th and 20th-century imperialism was the history of imperial states fighting each other. Both World War I and II were largely fought between imperial states fighting for colonies, more land, markets, and profits, he said. “And some of the worst atrocities that took place were as a result of these conflicts, including the three best known cases of genocide: [The first], the wiping off of 12 million Congolese in the Belgian colonialism of the Congo. The Congo was one of those great colonies that was the personal property of the king of Belgium. Actually his personal property. Then he transferred it to the Belgian state. And Adam Hochschild’s book “King Leopold’s Ghost” gives a very moving and horrific account of what they did to the Congolese. The second genocide is one, of course, you are familiar with, which took place with the break up of the Ottoman Empire, which was the wiping off of whatever figure you agree on of Armenians. And the third was of course the Judeocide of the second World War, which actually was decided on at the height of the war in 1942.”

Ali noted that the Iraq war was not about oil as such, though every conflict in that region concerns oil in some way or another. “I’ve always thought of the war in Iraq as a war to assert U.S. global hegemony. In the early days, when they were confidently triumphalist about it, one of the neo-cons—when asked why the U.S. invaded Iraq—said ‘because we could.’ Which is not a totally wrong answer, by the way. They thought there was no power in the world that could stop them from doing what they want. They thought this would be a model for transforming the Middle East. The next targets were Syria and Iran. I don’t know if you remember, the day after Baghdad fell, before the resistance began, the Israeli Ambassador to the U.S. congratulated the U.S. and said, Don’t stop now, forward to Tehran and Damascus. That was the plan. A year and a half later, when asked what went wrong in Iraq, Wolfowitz said, We never predicted a resistance.”

“Why the hell didn’t you predict a resistance?” Ali asked.

‘Changing Gender Roles in the Diaspora’

By Andy Turpin

NEW YORK (A.W.)— Poet and writer Nancy Agabian, UN journalist Florence Avakian, actress and producer Nora Armani, and poet Lola Koundakjian discussed the “Changing Gender Roles in the Diaspora,” with Doug Geogerian acting as moderator, during the third APP conference on May 31.

“This panel today is meant to examine what possibilities exist for change in progressive context for Armenian women,” Geogerian explained. “When many of us look at the Armenian situation, we often think in abstract terms like ‘nationalism’ and ‘state building’ and often neglect just who composes the Armenian community and of the gender dynamics.”

Let’s talk about sex

Agabian began by reading a list of writing prompts—titled “Notes from the Un-Space”—from workshops she’d conducted with women’s writing groups. Women in Armenia, she said, were ready to seek outlets to explore their femininity and distance themselves from the dominant patriarchal power structures ever present in the country. “We had some of the most lively conversations by Armenian women after reading Armenian-American female texts,” she explained, although many of those women lacked both the courage and the means to form a cohesive and organic feminist movement.

Regarding feminism truly taking root in Armenia, Agabian noted that the role mothers there play in shaping their daughters’ views of their own femininity can become overbearing and only perpetuate patriarchal structures under the guise of traditionalism. She quoted from one of her workshop texts, in which an Armenian mother says to her daughter (of her and her husband’s connubial sleeping arrangements), “It’s a shame to sleep naked, it is time you separate your beds.”

She spoke of the apprehensions of many Armenian women to talk about sex openly. Agabian spoke of her own hurdles in overcoming personal and emotional restrictions imposed on her by “my critical, not always supportive Armenian family” that would “imagine all the bad things people will say about them”—a worry that is generally common among Armenian and Armenian-American women who live in close-knit communities. Once, after reading an erotic piece she had written, a white woman in the audience commented, “You don’t have to reveal so much.” But Agabian explained to the audience that as an Armenian-American woman, “I felt there had been a world of sex unknown to me.”

Of her 2000 book Princess Freak, Agabian said that “During my time in Armenia, I found that the draw to my writings was that they expressed feelings many younger Armenians are afraid to express. But it’s funny, because people feel they know me through my writings. But it’s a younger me they know.”

Regarding Armenian and Armenian-American women’s struggles in life and writing to get past the repression of their own traditions and families, Agabian commented poignantly that in her view, “To be able to live, an Armenian woman must on some level internally kill her parents.”
She continued, “There is a feeling in Armenia that women want to take over the world and castrate men.” Agabian recounted a workshop in Armenia in which a particularly chauvinist (and drunk) intellectual stated—when the audience was asked for feedback and Q&A—that “asking questions was inherently male.”

When it came to Armenians and Armenian women, she noted, “perhaps Armenians seek to answer questions because we have so many in our own lives.”
Agabian ended by stating, “I hope Armenian women’s writing will provide clear decisions and direction of purpose for Armenian women.”

The question is more important

Avakian precluded her remarks by stating, “I’m going to speak from my experiences in the U.S. and as a journalist.”

She recounted of her childhood, “My father had a very conservative view of things. When it came to his daughters he thought, ‘Not too much school. Learn sewing and cooking and being a nice Armenian wife, so you’ll be protected the rest of your life.’ But we lost him in life at a very young age and my mother had other ideas.”

When she first started in journalism as a woman, no Armenian journalist would help her get on her feet, she said. “It was a black American woman working at Reuters news agency that took me under her wing and said, ‘Be forceful and aggressive.’” Those qualities came more naturally to her, she said, because, “In our family we were taught to be strong.”

Avakian recalled an instance in which she questioned the Turkish ambassador on issues of genocide and human rights. “It’s always the question that’s important in journalism, because these people know how to say nothing for 20 minutes,” she explained. The ambassador deflected the questions at the time by decrying, “There isn’t enough love in the world.” When Avakian persisted in her inquiries, she was invited to conduct a full interview with the ambassador in Turkey. She remembers telling her mother about the invitation, and hearing the response, “Even if St. Gregory and Jesus Christ go with you, you’re still not going.”

The most arduous piece she ever wrote was an op-ed on the Armenian Genocide for the New York Times in the mid-1980’s—an assignment whose blowback few Armenian journalists and scholars, male or female, were anxious to expose themselves to at the time.

Avakian explained, “Writing op-ed pieces are the most difficult thing, because they count every word. I got 150 words. … The New York Times Opinion editor, a Jewish man, called me back and said I needed to look over my text. He said, ‘You’re not saying anything about those Armenian terrorists that are killing Turks.’” She asked him how many articles were written every year about the Holocaust that had to defend or note the position of the perpetrators or proponents.

Avakian was apprehensive over how the piece’s reception would effect her, but that day “on the street I saw an elderly Armenian man with a huge sheaf of newspapers under his arm who said, ‘They have an article about the genocide in the New York Times!’ When I told him I wrote it, he hugged me so hard I think my spleen went where my gall bladder should be, but it was worth it just for that.”

At the UN, Avakian’s reception was not so cordial. In plain view a Turkish official tacitly threatened her by saying, “You better not think of going to Turkey.” to ,which Avakian replied, “I have no intension to, until it becomes a free country.”

Speaking as an Armenian woman, Avakian said, “I think our [Armenian] society is still very patriarchal.” She concluded by stating of feminist initiative, “I think we [Armenian women] have a long way to go, but it’s up to individual people to do this. If you’re not willing to take the first steps yourself, no one will help you, and there needs to be more women doing this.”

Leadership roles

Actress and stage/screen producer Nora Armani began her remarks by saying of Agabian and Avakian, “I am so thrilled to have just heard two wonderful presenters of women from the diaspora we should aspire to.”

She moved the discussion from Armenian women’s involvement in journalism and writing to their lesser-known yet pivotal historical role as actresses, particularly during the Ottoman period. “As an actress,” she said, “I’m so fascinated by the history of Armenian women’s involvement in theater that helped build the foundations of Turkish theater.”

Armani explained that in the 19th century, due to Ottoman Turkish cultural constraints and devout Islam, “There were no Turkish actresses and theaters relied on Armenian actresses. … There was even a form of theatrical speech to be spoken always with a slight Armenian accent.”

Armani visited Armenia last year after a 14-year absence. In 1991, she said, “When you went to restaurants, there would be absolutely no women. … I know men must have looked at me sitting alone at a table and said, ‘Wow, that’s a good bitch,’ because to see a woman in a restaurant, it was always a wealthy man’s mistress, the wives were always at home.”

Armani said of Armenian women collectively, “I believe that Armenian women are much more collaborative and less competitive than the men and need to take leadership roles in our politics—or our professions, if you’re not the leadership type.”

A glass ceiling

Poet/journalist Lola Koundakjian spoke next, posing the question as to whether the current ebb in Armenian feminism is “economy or destiny?”

“There seems to be still a glass ceiling in the community,” she said. “How many Armenian women are in roles of influence?”

She continued, “The second aspect is the lack of parental attitudes towards encouraging our women and daughters,” as well as the detrimental factors of Armenian community racism and ethnocentrism: “It seems that only Armenians can hold conferences on Armenians and be Armenologists.”

She advised, “We need to work with the international press much more. We need to incorporate more in the world, acknowledging that we have other ideas—about our identity, our goals, and our gender relations. It’s important and we need to move forward.”
Koundakjian asked, “Why is it we are unable to have such dialogues inside the Armenian community, when we can have it outside the community?”

Armenian feminism

Asked as panelists to synthesize the conversation and point to the problems inherent in dealing with Armenian feminism and gender-relation reform, Agabian replied, “I think in Armenia, the mother has a powerful role. The dynamic of the mother having power and the daughter-in-law not is still very present.”

Agabian said that it is crucial to confront and overcome issues of domestic violence in Armenia and Armenian communities in the diaspora. “I think attitudes towards [domestic violence] are generally changing as other influences come into Armenia,” she noted.

Armani seconded the notion that domestic violence is a major cause for alarm and action in Armenian communities and cited the Armenian International Women’s Association conference that took place in London in 1994, where these issues were discussed. “There were three very aggressive responses to the topic. Young Armenian women applauded, little old ladies said ‘How could this happen?’ and a female former Armenian parliament member accused me of over-generalizing.”

Armani said of the current relative lack of Armenian feminism that “Women play a part. A person can only be put down as much as they allow themselves to be put down.”

Speaking to this point from the audience, Armenian Weekly editor Khatchig Mouradian noted that following the genocide, as Armenians created what today is the diaspora, “Women built this nation. All the men were dead and the women raised the families, but at a certain point tradition took over.” Implicit in that Armenian traditionalism was the re-imposition of patriarchal gender roles.

Asked why Armenian women seem to hold secondary positions even on small-scale committees and within Armenian organizations, Armani said, “It’s not because they’re under-qualified, it’s because they’re over-qualified but yet seem to run away. I think a lot of feminists thought there wasn’t a place for them.”

But, she added, “Now they’re returning.”

Asked how much of Armenian feminism is today organic and how much is imported, Koundakjian responded, “Fundamentally, something is still lacking when the attitudes towards the [female] gender have not changed.”

Agabian stated, “There is this idea in Armenia that ‘feminism’ is a foreign influence. So women are trying to bring out the trends of Armenian feminists from the pre-Soviet periods. Not enough women know about these histories.”

Returning to the point that following the genocide Armenian women replaced traditional patriarchal structures as a form of returning to normalcy; Armani spoke to how such roles are perpetuated by women themselves in seemingly banal ways. She noted, “How many times have women told the men [in gatherings] to get out of the kitchen. How often are we willing to give up our strongholds of the kitchen and the boudoir?”

Avakian noted that when it came to finding strong female role models, her own mother found hers in Mrs. McCormack, the kitchen-spice heiress who helped her mother immigrate after the genocide to America. She stated, “My parents learned from her how to be strong and independent.”

Looking for an Armenian Progressive Agenda

NEW YORK (A.W.)—The panel addressing the question “What Would a Global Armenian Progressive Agenda Look Like?” included the following panelists: lawyer and human rights activist Armineh Arakelian, former Weekly editor Antranig Kasbarian, and member of the Presidential Board of the Permanent Human Rights Assembly in Argentina Pedro Mouratian, with Levon Chorbajian moderating.

Reworking nationalism

“For at least the last several decades, most of Armenian political groupings have remained immune to progressive ideas and practices,” said Kasbarian. He explained that due to this immunity, Armenian issues have often been framed narrowly and conventionally and “too often derive from concepts and terms deriving from ruling elites.” He underlined that Armenians often practice “outdated forms of nationalism” or, especially in Armenia today, an ascended neo-liberalism. “We can come up with more crisp at times radical terms and concepts that can define our political agenda,” he said.

Kasbarian stressed the importance of accounting for class disparities, environmental degradation, women’s rights, and a host of other issues that traditionally have not been addressed in Armenian political discourse, which he considered “pragmatic at best, vague and reactionary at worst.”

Arguing that today, “oppression cuts across class lines just as sharply as it cuts along national lines,” Kasparian noted that, heretical as it might sound, we must do away with concepts like “national unity.” Uniting all Armenian around issues like Karabakh is important, he said, “but frankly, I won’t be too upset if I have nothing in common with certain Armenians and have nothing to do with them. The less I have to do with oligarchs in Armenia, the better off I am.” He added, “This kind of nationalism, in which you rationalize and say ‘lav eli, hay e’ (‘well, he is Armenian’) needs to come to an end.”

In his concluding remarks, he stressed, “Frankly, I do not want all Armenians as my
friends and allies. What I want to have is deeper ties, deeper connections than simply ethnicity.” He noted that “our nationalism as an organizing principle needs to be reworked and revamped.”

Beyond genocide

Mouratian asked, “Why do we say that we’re progressives and not socialists? This is because for 70 years, we lived under a communist regime that used socialism as its mantra. And that regime, even if it came to power in the name of radical ideals, eventually metamorphosed into a dictatorship. Based on this experience, we retreated from socialist tendencies and became more and more bourgeois.”

He continued, “How do we make sense of what it means to be progressive today? People have very real social needs that political policies are simply not addressing. … For 70 years before the fall of the Soviet Union, Armenians fought to maintain their communities, fought for liberty, fought to genocide recognition, but today we have a free and independent Armenia, and within that context, are we prepared to go beyond the genocide issue, or is that going to remain the main underpinning of our identity?” he asked.

Degenerate elite

Arakelian, talking about foreign aid, said, “Being an expert and professional who worked in the UN, EU, and elsewhere on issues of democracy building and human rights promotion, I was very much aware that foreign aid sometimes helps. But most often it doesn’t really help in society building and state building because those institutions providing the assistance don’t have a developmental approach. It’s more of a post-colonial approach of getting into these countries, sometimes consciously sometimes subconsciously, with their own foreign policy agendas.”

She noted that there is a real need for an alternative formulated agenda and program for Armenians and especially in Armenia.

Speaking about the important of developing a global Armenian progressive agenda, Arakelian said that there are some prerequisites and principles we should take into account. She explained that Armenian progressives cannot be alone and work as a ghetto. “They should follow closely other progressive movements, influence them, and get inspired by them. This is a big gap we have. We are very far from progressive movements and groups.”

“Our elite is degenerated,” she noted, “especially in Armenia. Writers, journalists, artists, and singers are not aware of their own function as elites. It is important to change the elite. It’s not a question of generation and age, it’s a mindset and thinking issue.” She explained that we need a new elite not cut off from the grassroots and people, both in Armenia and diaspora.

“National issues and nationalism is not just defending Artsakh and Armenia’s national security. It is creating progressive society, based on social justice, solidarity, and equality of opportunities,” she said, noting that human beings in Armenia are not valued as human beings and are treated with no respect.

She noted, “People are exploited in Armenia, they work for 12-18 hours for 3 thousand drams [10 dollars], and people—teachers, workers—don’t get organized. Not even students do. They don’t dare or prefer to bribe teachers and officials and get their diplomas than have a problem with their teachers.”

APP Panel on Foreign Aid Deconstructs Armenia’s Corruption and Where the Goodwill Buck Actually Stops

By Andy Turpin

NEW YORK (A.W.)—On May 31, as part of APP’s 3rd annual conference, panelists held a discussion entitled, “Foreign Assistance to Armenia: Toward Prosperity or Dependency?”
The panelists included University of Massachusetts professor of sociology Levon Chorbajian and human rights advocate and researcher Karen Hakobyan. Writer and solidarity worker Markar Melkonian was represented in absentia on the panel by Dikran Kaligian, chair of the ANCA Eastern United States and an ANCA national board member.

Elizabeth Chouldjian, communications director of the ANCA, was a discussant on the panel and provided its introduction, stating, “The goal of this panel is to problemitize foreign aid to Armenia, which is often considered inherently good.”

Chorbajian spoke first, stating, “Much of my research presented here today comes from an earlier paper I presented at the first Progressive Armenians conference [then Armenians and the Left], but there’s a new chapter on neo-liberalism and globalization.”

“Globalization over the last half of the millennium refers to significantly powerful European states that were able to take over the world. Globalization eliminates any critical examination of these systems,” he explained.

Comparing modern day U.S. heads of state to the British sovereign whose economic polices instigated the American Revolution, Chorbajian stated, “Bush, Clinton, Carter—who they are structurally is George III in foreign garb. However, with the advent of neo-liberalism, you no longer have to own the colonies. You just have to be in a position to allow multi-national corporations access to the resources.”

Speaking of today’s international financial institutions, he continued, “When you look at what the WTO and the World Bank actually do, they break down protectionist legislations erected by nations over their raw materials. If they go against these organizations, they are considered to be ‘impeding free trade.’”

“Because of these constraints,” he added, “third world countries are often forced to reduce expenditures on welfare policies like education, public transit, housing, etc. There are dissenters from this program, but that’s the program.”

He noted, “There are definitely economic classes that benefit from such programs but the reality of globalization and neo-liberalism has to be hidden to present it as something contrary to what it really is, in order to rope people into going along with it.”

Chorbajian compared Jamaica and its recent history to Armenia’s present situation, saying, “When we look at what’s happened in Jamaica we can get an idea of what’s probably going to happen in Armenia in the future. … Their government’s been told by the U.S. that they cannot give low-interest loans to their farmers because it interferes with the free markets of U.S. farmers. As a result, it’s destroyed Jamaica’s dairy industry.”

“Many people in Armenia now live off charities, aid, remittances, and soup kitchens. When I visited Armenia in 1986 in the Soviet period, the standard of living was actually rather good, but I don’t want to endorse that there weren’t many problems in that system.”

Chorbajian pointed out that the public and the Armenian diaspora should not be led astray by Armenian government number padding, saying, “We do have good news from Armenia in terms of growth in the GDP and GNP, but this growth is misleading. The Armenian government has a standard for poverty that is so low that there are vast amounts of people not counted as poor in studies. USAID is a central conspirator in globalization and neo-liberal programs and even they say the poverty measuring standards are low.”

He added, “Remittances are now amounting to a billion dollars a year. For many families there is no other system or source of income, but remittances and university fees are now a significant barrier for students not attending college.”

Citing a major problem in Armenia, Chorbajian spoke to the country’s healthcare crisis, saying, “Since 1993, hospitals have been allowed to deny services if individuals cannot pay. The infant mortality rates in Armenia are currently double the rate of Russia, with the rate of death of mothers in childbirth seven times that of in western Europe.”

He stated poignantly that “another benchmark is who owns the means of production in Armenia—and it’s not Armenians, it’s Russians. Russians are now heavily invested in all sectors of the Armenian economy.”

He ended saying, “Armenia has chosen a late-19th century U.S. economic model based on robber-baron capitalism. Eighty percent of the U.S. population has not benefited from such systems in the last 30 years—nor have Armenians.”

Hakobyan spoke next on “Armenian Foreign Aids: A Means of Corruption.” He precluded his remarks by warning of the deception of language in public policy and its often stark contrast to reality, saying, “For all aid programs, ‘help’ is a main word and ‘help’ is always correlated with a better economy, better life and with ‘democracy.’”

USAID, he said, has contributed $1.2 billion annually since 1992, but “the Armenian government spends no money on civil society, which makes the people themselves dependent on foreign aid or making friends in government.”

Hakobyan has been at U.S. aid organization pitch meetings and decried, “Armenians are very good at saying we believe in democracy, but in responsiveness, many Armenians don’t actually believe in democracy at all. We’re very good at creating the right texts and words to get money. We have very bright people working at desks.”

Not laying blame, however, exclusively on the U.S., Hakobyan spoke of Britain too, stating, “DFID [British aid to Armenia] has given 1.8 million pounds annually, and 2.5 million pounds annually since ‘04-‘06. But there was no regulation on the spending processes and the Armenian government workers weren’t interested in regulation because it was their extra salaries.”

Of the root causes of corruption in Armenia, Hakobyan said, “No one is going to complain and no one is going to watch. In our mentality, we always make room for corruption. I think it exists in every country, but in Armenia we’re a talking about a homogenous country.”
“People are being physically beaten now, in Armenian courtrooms, during proceedings on foreign aid monies,” he added. “You wouldn’t believe it’s true until you see it broadcast on YouTube.”

Speaking of the IMF/World Bank’s role in the problem, Hakobyan stated, “From ‘04-’08, the World Bank and IMF instituted the Country Assistance Strategy Programme. It’s interesting how this is a key point of corruption. The IMF doesn’t care about corruption at all, as long as you’re committed to their policies.”

Like Chorbajian, Hakobyan pointed to Russian economic buyouts as a major roadblock to reform in Armenian society, stating, “All the industries in which we could makes changes are all under Russian control now.”

Speaking about potential solutions to the corruption problems, Hakobyan advocated the eminent need for aid money oversight from donor nations. “If oversight is not controlled here in the U.S. and other aid countries, problems will be doubled when they reach Armenia,” he said. An audience member noted in consensus with Hakobyan that the State Department is not accountable to Congress for its fund expenditures.

Hakobyan explained how aid organizations perpetrated their corruption under benign guises day-to-day. “Corruption is implemented in NGOs and aid organizations and when resistance occurs in the form of people not willing to enable corruption, then the group changes its ‘goals of their main idea’ in order to shut out the resister,” he explained.

He concluded by admonishing the long-term challenges of Armenian corruption, saying, “Real democracy never actually comes to Armenia. You just get people professionally good at corruption.”

The People vs. the ADL

NEW YORK (A.W.)—The panel on the ADL issue, titled “The ADL and the Armenian Genocide: Pursuing Common Goals Through Grassroots Activism,” brought together Boston area activists Sevag Arzoumanian and Laura Boghosian, Jewcy media president Joey Kurtzman, and Professor Jack Nusan Porter. Armenian Weekly editor Khatchig Mouradian was moderator.

Grassroots democracy

Arzoumanian and Boghosian provided a detailed account and analysis of the ADL issue. Arzoumanian noted how over 25 public, town hall meetings took place in the late summer and fall of 2007 to persuade Massachusetts towns and cities to sever ties with the ADL. He noted that the meetings “all had the feel of a general uprising, or an exercise in radical democracy. … It was grassroots democracy at its best.”

“So what made this movement ‘progressive?’” Arzoumanian asked. “First and foremost, it was the fact that this was a movement initiated and propelled by ordinary people, not by political or social elites. It was ‘power percolating upwards from the people,’ as one of the activists put it at the first Newton meeting.”

He went on to explain that traditional Armenian organizations, political leaders, and elected officials were either silent or kept a very low profile during the first few weeks of the campaign. “The exception, of course, were the Armenian National Committees of Massachusetts who were the only entities sticking their necks out during those first few weeks,” he said.

A contest of power

Boghosian asked, “What made this campaign so successful?” At first glance, she said, it appeared highly unlikely that a handful of Armenians could realistically challenge an organization as powerful as the ADL. She then quoted grassroots organizer Saul Alinsky who said, “It becomes a contest of power: those who have money and those who have people. We have nothing but people.”

Boghosian explained, “Although the Armenian National Committee coordinated efforts, this was a classic grassroots movement using classic grassroots tactics. Beginning in Watertown, news spread through word-of-mouth and sometimes people who did not even know each other formed committees to coordinate local efforts. It didn’t matter what political organization or what community they were affiliated with—as Armenians, they came together to seek justice.”

She noted that in taking on the ADL, Boston area Armenians forged ties with several Jewish organizations, both progressive and mainstream. “Although Armenian and Jewish genocide scholars have been working together for years, often those links were nonexistent at the local level despite our shared history as victims of genocide. That is now changing,” she said. “ With so many Jews advocating for recognition of the Armenian Genocide, it was clear that the leadership of the national Jewish organizations was not speaking for the community as a whole.”

Moral sensitivity

Both Porter and Kurtzman talked about the role the Jewish community in the U.S. and the Israelis can play in the issue. “Israel needs a new generation of young people,” noted Porter. “The average Israeli is on your side. The average Israeli wants to do the right thing and recognize the Armenian Genocide.”

In a poignant talk, Kurtzman—whose blog/magazine has been at the forefront of the struggle for ADL’s recognition of the genocide—explained, “I was raised in a community that taught me very effectively that essentially the spirit of Raphael Lemkin is what we have. We have a moral sensitivity that came from a history of suffering, and this is what we came into the world with. And I believed it. I really valued it. And I thought I was lucky to be born into this community.”
He added, “I learned that genocide is not something that can be used as a political football. It’s not something you play tactics with, for geo-political advantage. I assimilated this lesson better than the Jewish community is going to wish that I had.”

Talking about his experience with the ADL issue, he called it “a profound challenge.” He added, “This is an issue I won’t ever let go.”

APP Student Panel Discusses Armenian Activism

By Andy Turpin

NEW YORK (A.W.)—On May 31, APP panelists held an Armenian student activist discussion titled “New Work of an Activist Bent.”

Panelists included Celina Agaian, a graduate student at CUNY Hunter College majoring in socio-cultural anthropology with a concentration in Armenian culture and identity; Lori Janbazian, a masters student in political science focusing on international human rights and genocide; and Zohrab Sarkissian, a business graduate from the American University of Beirut and McGill. APP conference facilitator Arousiag Markarian moderated the discussion.

Janbazian spoke first, stating, “I’ll be focusing on issues of cultural genocide as they relate to international law.” She said that Raphael Lemkin first coined a definition for cultural genocide in 1948; however, at the times most cases of cultural genocide were still regarded as mere vandalism. The UN created a draft declaration with an inclusive clause for cases of cultural genocide and action to be taken by the international community against the perpetrators of such acts. But, as Janbazian noted, “Since the declaration is only a draft, it is not legally binding.”

Janbazian recounted the final destruction of the Old Julfa monuments and khatchkars [Armenian cross-stones] in Nakhichevan in 2006 at the hands of Azeri soldiers with pickaxes and parallel cases of ruin that have occurred within Turkey’s borders. She explained that Nakhichevan’s destruction appalled the Canadian Armenian youth and activists who “vowed we would fight. We organized a peaceful protest in front of the UNESCO building in Ottawa. We became participants and not just spectators. We were able to raise awareness in Canada of actions against the Armenian people.”

She stated of the necessity for Armenian youth activism and its methods that, “We need to get inside power structures in order to make changes.”

Janbazian continued, “We [Armenian youth activists] should be using the media more. It is important that language be accurate and precise to avoid misunderstandings later. Using the media involves making press releases and giving interviews.” She also cited the importance of letter-writing campaigns.

Janbazian then commented on the importance of Armenian political lobbying to invoke change, stating, “Why do we lobby? We believe it will get us what we want, that our point of view is correct, and that it will benefit us and the greater community.”

Sarkissian spoke next, prefacing, “I will be speaking about preserving our Armenian identity and using components of our identity to prevent assimilation.”

He gave a historic overview of the culmination of events, including the genocide, that led to the creation of the Armenian diaspora and its unique nuances of Armenian identity.

Sarkissian explained his views on Armenian identity, stating, “The Armenian family is the foundation on which any Armenian-ness is based. The family is the key to the survival of the Armenians. The challenge is to create an environment conducive to learning the Armenian language.”

He added, “The Armenian language is in danger of disappearing in some parts of the diaspora. In order for our culture to survive, we must speak, read, and write Armenian.”
Sarkissian ended, “Our Armenian culture should become a daily and crucial component in our lives. Simply feeling Armenian is purely symbolic.”

Agaian spoke third, stating, “I want to talk about this term ‘identity.’ I want to talk about how we’re viewed as a stagnant group obsessed only with the genocide. I want to talk about museums and how they are generators of identity.”

Contrary to Sarkissian’s checklist style notion of indicators that do, or do not, compose a true individualized Armenian identity, Agaian noted, “With time, culture changes. This idea of identity is very flexible.” She explained of diasporan Armenian identity, “The host country molds the hybrid identity for Armenians in each country. The shared past should be held in reverence, but always with care.”

She commented on the typical Armenian diasporan family that sets high achievement goals for its children as a form of guilt and compensation for relatives lost during the genocide; that chooses traumatic events as integral parts of their identity; or sees less intermarriage compared to other ethnic groups.

Agaian said of Armenian museums in the diaspora that they “are translators of identity and help shape the emergent model of what an Armenian is, especially in the host country.” With this thought in mind, she explained, “How is a non-Armenian going to understand Armenian identity if they’re only shown relics of genocide? Museums have a special place in the representation of facts.”

Agaian admonished that Armenian museums should work to preserve all aspects of the Armenian identity and experience, but should not be so strong in their genocide emphasis and so exclusively geared only to educate fellow Armenians that they perpetrate a purely victim identity to the non-Armenian world.

She ended by noting, “My intentions are not to denounce any museum on Armenian identity that has or will exist.”

Where to, Armenia?

NEW YORK (A.W.)—Panelists Armineh Arakelian, www.ArmeniaNow.com creator John Huges, and blogger Simon Maghakyan tackled the question “Unrest in Armenia: New Seeds of Democracy or Destabilizing Acts?” The panel was moderated by Kim Hekimian-Arzoumanian.

Spiritual divide

“My life in Armenia is shaped by my interaction with common folk,” Hughes explained, “and perspectives I give may not be academic but anecdotal and often personal. I fear that will make me sound naive, but I hope that voices that don’t come from textbooks—but just from the mouths of average people—will have a place in this debate.”

“Armenians themselves must find a way to end the polarization that either through apathy or through misplaced passion has created political divide that threatens to sink Armenia rather than steer her,” he said. “That has created a spiritual divide that has turned this Haiastan into a rancorous community, hardly recognized by those of us who have known her only a short time.”

Throwing a bullet on the table, Hughes added, “[This is] my reminder that something awful happened and all of us should hope never happens again. This is a spent round from a gun meant for defense of a country, not for the death of its own people.”

He noted that the soldiers who took part in what happened on March 1 say they were caught between the imposed interests of the state and the safety of their own people.

Speaking about the larger picture, he noted, “Locals are fed up, re-pats are nervous, the international community wishes it would all just go away, and the diaspora...well you can tell me.”
He added, “There’s plenty that still needs to be said about March 1.And there’s so little solution in the corrective methods that have so far been implemented.”

Two-way process

In turn, Maghakyan said, “No one in the diaspora expected Armenians to go out into the streets and kill each other. But the situation of March 1 needs to make us address some questions of why it happened, what was the message, and what we can do about it.”

He said there needs to be more justice in Armenia in terms of having an accountable and responsive government, “which unfortunately is not the case since 1991.”

“But I’d also suggest it’s not just the government that’s had corruption and no respect for the people,” he added. “On many levels of society there’s corruption going on, everywhere from kindergartens to universities. So the question we get is, Can you change the institutions before changing the society? Or maybe it’s a two-way process.”

Disgraceful and stupid

Arakelian called the events of March 1 a “disgraceful, stupid action by the Armenian rulers, political elite, and intellectuals with very serious consequences for Armenia, Karabagh, and Armenians in general.”

She asked, “Could we have expected this? Yes, if we were really following what was happening in Armenia after independence. Could we avoid it? No. We didn’t have progressive thinkers and actors in Armenia and Karabagh and outside who are well organized, well-mobilized, to make these rulers and the opposition led by Ter-Petrossian be wiser and think, for once, for the interest of nation and society.”

“We have to fight the mentality that the people that we are electing are our masters, and we their servants. They are elected to serve us,” she noted.

“At this moment, genocide [recognition] for me is not a priority. For me, the future of the state, the future of Karabagh is what is important,” she said, explaining that if we don’t have a strong state, we will lose everything.

On a positive note, though, “There is hope, but it depends on us,” she said. “If we don’t do anything, the instability is going to continue.”

Coalition Building

NEW YORK (A.W.)—The closing plenary, titled, “Coalition Building Among Dispossessed Peoples,” featured panelists Tariq Ali, David Barsamian, and Prof. Nubar Hovsepian, with Antranig Kasbarian moderating.

The panel looked at possible coalition-building strategies for dispossessed peoples—including, but not limited to the Armenians. It also looked at those issues that can unite or separate the Armenian Cause from other, similar movements.

The non-Armenian Armenian

I’m going to explain to you first what I am not, in order to engage in a dialectical fashion what I might be,” Hovsepian started. “Building on an essay by Isaac Doiter titled, ‘The non-Jewish Jew’—in which the author extrapolates the need for a universal sense of belonging and identity—allow me to speak as the non-Armenian Armenian. My students at Chapman University hear me say that I am the ‘non-Political science political scientist,’ because I disdain the field because most of my colleagues want to serve power while I want to deconstruct power. They are dying to be budding Machiavellis and I am opposing political power.”

Hovsepian, recounting some of his experiences as an Armenian growing up in Cairo and later, revisiting the country, said, “The strength of the Middle East is in its diversity.”

“I don’t have a Yerevan experience, but I do have a Cairo and Beirut experience,” he added.
Hovsepian said that what animated him was the struggle for justice in the Middle East. “That struggle was intricately connected with the injustice endured by the Palestinians and the possibility of building a non-sectarian political order in Lebanon.” He noted that Palestinians could very well become the perpetual exiles that Armenians had become. “I am an Armenian—probably not a good one—but the Armenian in me requires that I deal with this question.”

“As an Armenian, I have to exist in a larger society and my impact has to be within the larger society. There is a relationship between the particular and the universal,” Hovsepian concluded.

Bigger than a particular crime

“What is the price of independence if you have to be permanently on your knees before an Imperial power. How are you independent? It’s not independence, it’s just a tiny league getting a lot of money and a few people getting very rich,” Ali said.

“The issues that we have to discuss are much bigger than a particular crime and a particular nationality, especially in the 21st century and especially in this country. This [The U.S.] is an Imperial country that creates mayhem in large parts of the world. And it suits the needs of the state perfectly if people remain divided. What doesn’t suit it is a larger, more universal way of understanding what is going on,” he added.

Breaking borders

“Many Armenians in this country, especially the older generation, have forgotten their own background and do not feel very generous with immigrants today,” Barsamian said. “It takes a hell of a lot for someone to leave their land and to give up everything. For example, why are millions of Mexicans leaving Mexico and coming to a much colder country—literally and figuratively—where they don’t speak the language, where most people are not catholic, where they don’t feel welcomed? It’s U.S. economic policy, under these so-called free-trade agreements, that is absolutely destroying the agricultural sector in rural Mexico.”

“How to break borders, build coalitions? I think a lot of us—and I am not excluding myself—live in a kind of mental straightjackets. And we need to get out of it. There is a great deal of wealth in the rainbow, in the many colors. Moving from the micro to the macro doesn’t mean you abandoned who you are, you never speak Armenian, you anglicize your name, etc. It means opening to a larger political and spiritual possibility,” he noted.