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FAITH & CHARITY: ARMENIAN EVANGELICALS REMEMBER THEIR PEOPLE'S TRAGIC HISTORY
By Linda Rubin
Patch.com
http://studiocity.patch.com/articles/faith-charity-armenian-evangelicals-remember-their-people-s-tragic-history#video-9716152
April 26, 2012
Sunday's service was devoted to commemorating Armenian Martyr's Day
In the Armenian diaspora, April 24 marks the date when 250 Armenian
intellectuals were rounded up in the Ottoman capital of Constantinople
(now Istanbul) and executed or deported.
Reverend Ron Tovmassian, senior pastor of Studio City's United Armenian
Congregational Church said in the video interview that the seizure
of the poets, musicians, publicists, editors, lawyers and doctors
was the government's way of "cutting off the head" of the Armenian
people in Turkey.
While the Armenians, along with other Christians in the Ottoman Empire,
had already been subjected to repression - even violent pogroms - for
years, the deportation of Armenian notables, also known as Red Sunday,
is regarded as the historic start of a campaign of displacement and
murder now known as the Armenian Genocide*.
An estimated 1 to 1.5 million people died as a result of massacres,
forced marches, rapes and starvation as the population was forced into
the Syrian desert. A reporter for The New York Times in August 1914
repeated an unattributed report that "the roads and the Euphrates are
strewn with corpses of exiles, and those who survive are doomed to
certain death. It is a plan to exterminate the whole Armenian people."
Assyrians, Syrians, and Anatolian and Pontic Greeks were also among
those victimized.
Every year members of Southern California's Armenian Evangelical Union
hold a joint service to commemorate the sad date. This year the program
took place in Studio City. Prior to the traditional Protestant Sabbath
service, a standing room only crowd watched two historical lectures.
Rev. Vatche Ekmekjian of Downey's Immanuel Armenian Congregational
Church presented, in Armenian, a slide show depicting significant
churches and educational institutions in the old country, as well as
their leaders, all lost to Armenian evangelicals between 1895 and 1923.
Zaven Khanjian, a member of the Studio City congregation who describes
himself as an activist, showed a DVD narrated in Turkish by Hrant
Dink an Armenian journalist and newspaper editor in that country who
was decrying the 1980 seizure of an Armenian-owned summer camp by the
Turkish government. Shortly after recording the video, and only two
months after visiting the Studio City church in 2007, 52-year-old
Dink was assassinated on an Instanbul street by a teenaged Turkish
nationalist.
Following coffee and traditional honey-soaked pastries, the audience
and dozens more took seats in the church sanctuary where they heard
hymns from a joint choir, messages in English and Armenian and a
recital by students of Merdinian Armenian Evangelical School in
Sherman Oaks. Highlights are captured in the video.
*In 1997 the International Association of Genocide Scholars (IAGS)
passed a resolution unanimously recognizing the Ottoman massacres of
Armenians as genocide however United State, Turkey and Israel are
among the nations that have not yet accepted the resolution. In a
sad irony, Jews of Israel and the diaspora commemorated Yom Hashoah,
Holocaust Remembrance Day, on April 18.
From: A. Papazian
By Linda Rubin
Patch.com
http://studiocity.patch.com/articles/faith-charity-armenian-evangelicals-remember-their-people-s-tragic-history#video-9716152
April 26, 2012
Sunday's service was devoted to commemorating Armenian Martyr's Day
In the Armenian diaspora, April 24 marks the date when 250 Armenian
intellectuals were rounded up in the Ottoman capital of Constantinople
(now Istanbul) and executed or deported.
Reverend Ron Tovmassian, senior pastor of Studio City's United Armenian
Congregational Church said in the video interview that the seizure
of the poets, musicians, publicists, editors, lawyers and doctors
was the government's way of "cutting off the head" of the Armenian
people in Turkey.
While the Armenians, along with other Christians in the Ottoman Empire,
had already been subjected to repression - even violent pogroms - for
years, the deportation of Armenian notables, also known as Red Sunday,
is regarded as the historic start of a campaign of displacement and
murder now known as the Armenian Genocide*.
An estimated 1 to 1.5 million people died as a result of massacres,
forced marches, rapes and starvation as the population was forced into
the Syrian desert. A reporter for The New York Times in August 1914
repeated an unattributed report that "the roads and the Euphrates are
strewn with corpses of exiles, and those who survive are doomed to
certain death. It is a plan to exterminate the whole Armenian people."
Assyrians, Syrians, and Anatolian and Pontic Greeks were also among
those victimized.
Every year members of Southern California's Armenian Evangelical Union
hold a joint service to commemorate the sad date. This year the program
took place in Studio City. Prior to the traditional Protestant Sabbath
service, a standing room only crowd watched two historical lectures.
Rev. Vatche Ekmekjian of Downey's Immanuel Armenian Congregational
Church presented, in Armenian, a slide show depicting significant
churches and educational institutions in the old country, as well as
their leaders, all lost to Armenian evangelicals between 1895 and 1923.
Zaven Khanjian, a member of the Studio City congregation who describes
himself as an activist, showed a DVD narrated in Turkish by Hrant
Dink an Armenian journalist and newspaper editor in that country who
was decrying the 1980 seizure of an Armenian-owned summer camp by the
Turkish government. Shortly after recording the video, and only two
months after visiting the Studio City church in 2007, 52-year-old
Dink was assassinated on an Instanbul street by a teenaged Turkish
nationalist.
Following coffee and traditional honey-soaked pastries, the audience
and dozens more took seats in the church sanctuary where they heard
hymns from a joint choir, messages in English and Armenian and a
recital by students of Merdinian Armenian Evangelical School in
Sherman Oaks. Highlights are captured in the video.
*In 1997 the International Association of Genocide Scholars (IAGS)
passed a resolution unanimously recognizing the Ottoman massacres of
Armenians as genocide however United State, Turkey and Israel are
among the nations that have not yet accepted the resolution. In a
sad irony, Jews of Israel and the diaspora commemorated Yom Hashoah,
Holocaust Remembrance Day, on April 18.
From: A. Papazian