Your Namak for Friday, June 10
Nikol Pashinyan and Sergey Lavrov meet in Yerevan, dozens injured in ongoing anti-government protests, and Armenian defense minister announces ministry restructuring.
Hi there, here’s your weekly briefing of Armenian news in English, curated, reported and fact-checked by journalists Astrig Agopian and Maral Tavitian.
Nikol Pashinyan and Sergey Lavrov Meet in Armenia
On June 9, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov met with Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan in Yerevan. National security and settlement of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict were the main items on the agenda. Lavrov said Russia was willing to help negotiate a regional peace deal, and that future rail routes between Armenia and Azerbaijan had been agreed on. The Russian Foreign Minister also praised Armenia for welcoming a large number of Russian citizens who have moved to the country in recent months.
Dozen Injured As Clashes Between Police and Opposition Protesters Continue
Dozens were injured after Armenian opposition protesters clashed with police in continued demonstrations over the government's handling of the post-war situation in Nagorno-Karabakh. The demonstrations over the last two weeks have been some of the most violent since the Armenian opposition started organizing anti-government actions in April. Armenia’s Ministry of Health reported that 60 people were hospitalized, including 39 police officers, following clashes in front of the prime minister’s residence on June 3. According to official figures, more than 2,100 protestors have been detained by law enforcement thus far, amid sustained criticism by Armenia’s Human Rights Defender about excessive use of force by police.
Defense Minister Announces Restructuring of Ministry
In an interview with Armenian Public Television on June 6, Armenian Minister of Defense Suren Papikyan announced that the National Assembly would soon take up legislation to restructure the Defense Ministry. Should the changes be approved, Papikyan said the Chief of the General Staff will concurrently serve as the First Deputy Minister of Defense. Armenia has gone without a Chief of the General Staff, who is tasked with overseeing the Armed Forces, since late February, when Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan dismissed Artak Davtyan and four other high-ranking military officials.
Angela Brussel: Meet a Beirut-based artist exploring the Armenian diaspora, one city at a time
“The seeds of the pomegranate represented for me the diaspora scattered across the earth.”
When she is not writing, you will find Angela Brussel wandering the streets of Beirut, where she moved three years ago. Carefully listening to the music of her surroundings, she follows her curiosity to discover the untold stories of people and places.
The 31-year-old artist was born and raised in Los Angeles by a Lebanese-Armenian mother and a Jewish father. “There were ghosts in the house, whose language I did not understand,” Angela says. Although she was surrounded by Armenian culture, mostly through music and food, she never learned the language and did not explore her identity for a long time.
After studying art history at the University of California, Los Angeles and completing her master’s degree in writing at Goldsmiths in London, Angela moved to New York where she freelanced as a fiction and non-fiction writer. But in 2019, her first trips to Armenia and Lebanon changed her life’s path.
Angela’s mother was born and raised in Soviet Armenia, as her parents moved from Beirut to Yerevan in the 1940s, during the “repatriation” organized by Stalin. She left the Armenian capital for the United States as a young adult, and returned four decades later with Angela.
“It was beautiful and staggering. Some things suddenly made sense and others became more confusing,” Angela says of her first time in Armenia. “I felt very connected to the land, more than to the people.”
After that trip, Angela traveled to Lebanon to explore more of her roots. “That was explosive,” she says. “I felt with the people in Beirut what I didn’t feel with the people in Armenia because they’re diaspora too and it made more sense to me.”
The writer decided to look for traces of her family in the country. Angela's great grandfather learned the art of watchmaking around the time of the Armenian Genocide; when he arrived in Lebanon as a refugee, he opened his own watch shop in the city of Baalbeck.
With photos, descriptions from her grandmother and help from locals, she found the shop’s original location. “I wasn’t expecting my reaction. They took me there. I started hysterically crying,” she says. “I went back to New York, packed my bags and moved to Lebanon.”
Angela moved to Beirut during Lebanon’s October 17, 2019 Revolution. Life in a country plagued by perpetual crisis is challenging, but still worth it for the young writer. “A friend of mine said you came for your roots and you got them on fire,” she says. “It’s true, but I felt like I wanted to belong to something and I owed it to my family.”
When the Beirut explosion happened in August 2020, Angela was in the U.S. She immediately came back to the Lebanese capital. A few weeks later, the 44-Day Nagorno-Karabakh War began. “It felt like the box of trans-generational trauma was opened again,” Angela says.
That same year, Angela started “Nour Jan,” a multimedia platform dedicated to the cultural heritage of Armenians across the diaspora. Through podcasts, video, words and photography, Angela talks to different generations of Armenians all over the world about their identity.
“I wanted ‘nour’ because I wanted something that would be in Armenian and Arabic. Pomegranate in Armenian and light in Arabic,” Angela says. Of course, the first episode focused on Beirut. But she has also explored the Armenian communities in Los Angeles and Buenos Aires, and plans to go to Greece, Ethiopia and France next.
“The seeds of the pomegranate represented for me the diaspora scattered across the earth, because when you look at the etymology of the word diaspora, it comes from dispersion,” Angela explains. Her mother suggested the word “jan,” meaning “dear” in Armenian, since Armenians use that term of endearment so easily.
“The reception was equally strong with people who are not Armenian and even not diasporan themselves,” Angela says. Building on this warm response, in future seasons she hopes to expand the project to highlight diasporas from diverse cultures.
To listen: Armenian Photography in Ottoman Anatolia, an episode of the Ottoman History Podcast about the unique photographic lens of the Dildilian family, who documented provincial life in Anatolia.
To read: Vintage Armenian Sounds Make a Comeback Thanks to Armenian DJs, an article about the young generation of musicians reinventing old Armenian tunes.
To listen: Beirut focus, the first podcast episode of the Nour Jan project about Armenian diasporas in the Lebanese capital. Close your eyes…and enjoy the ride, welcome to Beirut!
That’s it for today, see you next week!
Questions? Story ideas? An urge to say barev/parev? You can send us a secure email at namaknews@protonmail.com.