Your Namak for Monday, January 30
Diaspora Armenians call for end of Nagorno-Karabakh blockade, Armenian community of Jerusalem rattled by attack on convent, and Russia says EU mission in Armenia might “harm” Armenian interests.
Hi there, here’s your weekly briefing of Armenian news in English, curated, reported and fact-checked by journalists Astrig Agopian and Maral Tavitian.
Armenians Rally Across Diaspora, Call For End of Nagorno-Karabakh Blockade
While Lebanese-Armenians rallied in Beirut on January 25 to express their solidarity with Armenians in blockaded Nagorno-Karabakh, American-Armenians discovered racist flyers in Los Angeles where they held their own march on January 28. Thousands of Lebanese-Armenians gathered in Bourj Hammoud, a historically Armenian neighborhood of Beirut, to show their support for the people of Nagorno-Karabakh and call for an end to the blockade.
Along the route of a march to the Azerbaijani Consulate in Los Angeles, participants discovered flyers with anti-Armenian messages, describing Azerbaijan, Turkey, Pakistan and Israel as “four brothers” who will “wipe Armenia off the map.” The Beverly Hills Police Department reported that it was investigating the incident.
Armenian Community of Jerusalem Rattled by Attack on Convent
On January 28, in an incident captured on video and reported by the Armenian Patriarchate of Jerusalem, a group of Israeli settlers attempted to vandalize the city’s historic Armenian monastery. According to a statement published on the Facebook page of the Armenian Quarter of Jerusalem, a physical altercation ensued when Armenian residents confronted the settlers as they sought to remove the Armenian flag and deface the exterior of the convent. Soldiers of the Israeli Defense Forces intervened, beating an Armenian civilian to the ground before placing him under arrest.
“This is the climax of a spate of attacks by settlers who during the past month also wrote graffiti on the walls of the Armenian convent: ‘Death to the Armenians, Christians and Arabs,’” the statement explained. Representatives of the Armenian community in Jerusalem called on the Israeli government “to take immediate action to stop these vandalous attacks.” In a separate incident earlier in the week, settlers attacked an Armenian restaurant in East Jerusalem, destroying the outdoor dining area and throwing tables and chairs at patrons.
Russia Says EU Mission in Armenia Might “Harm” Armenian Interests
The Russian Foreign Ministry said in a statement that the EU’s decision to establish a civilian mission in Armenia “can only bring geopolitical confrontation to the region and exacerbate existing contradictions.” Russia denounced Europe for trying to “gain a foothold in Armenia at any cost,” and said that could “harm” the fundamental interests of Armenia. The Ministry accused Yerevan of choosing the EU over the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), a military alliance consisting of Russia and five former Soviet states. This exchange comes amid growing tension between Armenia and Russia after the CSTO did not intervene when Azerbaijan attacked Armenia proper in September 2022. On January 26, Armenia and the EU held their first Political and Security Dialogue.
Arman Kacharian: Meet a Ukrainian-Armenian doctor who went from modernizing the country’s healthcare system to helping it survive the war
“Ukrainian-Armenians love both countries and are ready to share their skills and time to help both countries develop, once wars are over.”
Arman Kacharian speaks fluent Armenian with a slight Ukrainian accent. The 30-year-old doctor was born to an Armenian father who fled the Baku pogroms during the First Nagorno-Karabakh War, and a Ukrainian mother. But his connection to his Armenian roots mostly happened outside of the house.
“I went to play football and had Armenian language classes with the group of the Armenian diaspora in Ukraine, and that’s how I really learned the language,” Arman says.
From a very young age, he was passionate about biology and science, participating in Olympiads. That naturally led him to study medicine at the University of Kyiv.
“As I was graduating, in 2019, Ukraine was starting to change, in a good way. And I wanted to also take part in that change, to make this country a better place. And I saw a post on social media, it said something like ‘If you want to change something in your country, join us,’ so I took the exams to start working for the Ministry of Health,” he says.
Arman began working at the Ukrainian Ministry of Health as a policymaker. “We made a big revolution to shift from the old Soviet times inherited organization to a modern one,” he says.
As he is a clinical oncologist, Arman mainly worked on health issues related to cancer treatment, but also on a pilot project for transplants in Ukraine. However, in February 2022, with the Russian invasion of the country, everything changed.
“I expected the war. I know many did not, or at least not a full-scale war,” he says. “But I thought that gathering so many troops was not easy, and that if Russia did that, it was probably to really attack and not just to add pressure.”
For a week he stayed in Kyiv, before moving to the western Ukrainian city of Ivano-Frankivsk with some of his colleagues. They kept working from there before returning to the capital in April.
“Of course at the beginning of the invasion it was messy, but very quickly, we reorganized and I think even Ukrainians themselves were surprised by how we resisted. We all surprised ourselves,” Arman says.
He is now the head of a group of experts on innovation created during the war, and also works with the European Union commission, to send patients to be treated in EU countries, for complex surgeries, where highly specialized skills are needed. So far more than 2,000 people, civilians and soldiers, have accessed care in Poland, Germany, the Netherlands, France, Spain and other European countries.
“It’s hard with the war because we live with the sword of Damocles above our heads,” Arman says. “But I mean for me, I have spent so much time and energy on studying and working here, to make this country better, that it’s just impossible to leave, even though it’s going through a hard time and horrible war. We can still make Ukraine a better place after this war.”
It’s the first time Arman lives through a war, but not the first time he is trying to help. In 2020, when the 44-Day Nagorno-Karabakh War began, the Ukrainian-Armenian community sprung into action, fundraising and sending aid to assist with the war effort. “We were so desperate to help here,” he says.
“Ukrainian-Armenians love both countries and are ready to share their skills and time to help both countries develop, once wars are over,” Arman concludes.
To read: Mothers and Soldiers: A Woman’s Place in Armenian Defense, an article by Karena Avedissian in EVN Report, exploring the evolution of the role of Armenian women in defense and war, and their increasing presence on the battlefield.
To listen: Koyamard, by the Lebanese-Armenian band Hekyat, which revitalizes traditional Armenian music and culture with modern arrangements.
To read: The Cairo Photographer Whose Studio Became a Dream Machine, a piece by Negar Azimi in Aperture, about the Egyptian-Armenian photographer Van Leo, born Levon Boyadjian, and the hundreds of iconic and uncanny self-portraits he took in the late 1930s.
That’s it for today, see you next week!
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