Pan-Armenian Games Seek Ethnic Unity Amidst Divisions
Argentinian-Armenian Team, Vazgen Sarkisyan Stadium, Pan-Armenian Games, Yerevan, Republic of Armenia © Onnik Krikorian / Oneworld Multimedia for EurasiaNet 2007
EurasiaNet has just published my text and photos from the Pan-Armenian Games held last week in Yerevan. Although the idea of the game in itself is great, serious problems continue to emerge in attempts to unite Armenians through this sporting event. Moreover, although the spectacular opening and closing ceremonies were well-attended and broadcast live, the sporting events themselves appeared to be considered less important — especially as Armenia has entered into the unofficial campaign period for the 2008 presidential election.
It should also be noted that attempts to portray the event as symbolic of an Armenia-Diaspora unity that many consider does not exist were very draconian in practice. For example, many teams such as the Argentinian-Armenian one above brought the national flags of their country of origin to proudly display their dual identities, but security and organizers at the opening ceremony confiscated them instead.
In their defense, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs told myself and another journalist covering the games that the official rules of the Pan-Armenian Games specifically prohibit the display of any flag other than the Armenian tricolor. Before they were confiscated, however, I saw teams with Argentinian, Lebanese, Australian, Canadian, Spanish, Georgian, German, English and Greek flags, and other teams apparently had theirs as well.
In theory, it was all about unity. But the tensions on display at the IV Pan-Armenian Games, a mini-Olympics style event that attracted some 2,500 competitors from Armenian communities worldwide, indicated that divisions can run as deep as consensus in Armenia’s far-flung Diaspora.
On the surface, though, positive PR prevailed. Diaspora members make up the bulk of the estimated 10 million Armenians worldwide, and already play a critical role in providing investment in Armenia’s economy and support for its cultural and educational institutions. The August 18-26 Games, with events ranging from table tennis to volleyball and swimming, were meant to strengthen those ties still further.
As a sign of that aim, Armenian Foreign Minister Vartan Oskanian chairs the Games’ executive committee. Mohammad Aliabadi, vice president of Iran, which has an estimated ethnic Armenian population of a few hundred thousand, attended the event’s August 18 opening ceremony in Yerevan’s Vazgen Sarkisyan soccer stadium.
But domestic politics also played a role. Prime Minister Serzh Sarkisian, who has announced his intentions to run for president in 2008, took center stage in the August 26 finale, handing out awards and crowning the most beautiful sportswoman, Miss Pan-Armenian Games.
[…]
Opposition political activists were given a less warm official welcome. At the opening ceremony attended by Armenian President Robert Kocharian, Foreign Minister Oskanian and Armenian Apostolic Church Catholicos Karekin II, police detained three activists from the anti-Kocharian Impeachment bloc as they handed out leaflets calling for the release of alleged political prisoners.
One parliamentary deputy from the opposition Heritage Party, Zaruhi Postanjian, who works as a human rights lawyer, alleges that stadium police took a bag containing client documents from her.
Most events, however, were poorly attended, with many local Armenians unaware of where the venues were situated, and media access was tightly controlled. Despite accreditations, only film crews from Public Television H1, which was beaming the Games worldwide via satellite, were given unrestricted access to competitions.
[…]
On August 19, things turned ugly when a basketball team from Glendale, California, attacked their counterparts from the Armenian community in Istanbul. Local media were not present at the game.
Turkish Armenian players charged that the American-Armenians called them “dirty Turkish dogs.” Representatives of the California team denied the allegation. Police intervened on court to break up the ensuing fight and separate the two teams.
Police were again called on court in the game that immediately followed after local basketball players attacked Egyptian players with their fists and chairs. Four Diaspora Armenians from Cairo were reportedly hospitalized as a result. The Yerevan basketball team was disqualified from the Games the following day allegedly in return for the Cairo team not pressing charges.
[…]
Local reaction to the Games was muted, with many potential spectators disinterested or unaware that they were even happening. Zara Gevorgian, a 21-year-old recent university graduate, attended only because she says she knew some of the local players taking part. “The opening ceremony was terrible and reminded me of Komsomol events during Soviet times,” she said. Nor are player fights a rare occurrence, according to Gevorgian. “Every time I go something happens…”
For the vast majority of those taking part in the Games from the Diaspora, however, such spars barely registered. Speaking on the sidelines of a women’s basketball match, athlete Valya Efstathiou Vajraduni, a 23-year-old Greek-Armenian on her first visit to Armenia, termed the event “wonderful.”
One Lebanese-Armenian academic, however, was more critical and argued that more systematized and efficient activities than the Pan Armenian Games, which started in 1999, or Armenia-Diaspora conferences are needed to engage the Diaspora.
“The Diaspora is tired of the last 17 years,” said Asbed Kotchikian, a visiting lecturer and political analyst from the University of Florida at a press conference earlier in the week. “The Diaspora assists Armenia, but receives only declarative gratitude… There is no unification or practical policy.”
One local journalist, deriding the event’s “lyrical digressions,” agreed with Kotchikian’s take, but considered that the Games did at least highlight the prejudices and problems facing Armenians.
“[A]ll the sides of the Fatherland should be shown to the Diasporans,” wrote Hakob Badalyan in the Lragir newspaper, an online publication often critical of the government, the day after the Yerevan-Cairo fight. “Not only the sights, but also the hospitals.”
An alternate view of the Games has also been published today by Armenia Now. The full EurasiaNet article, accompanied by photographs, can be read online here, and further coverage can be viewed on my blog under the relevant category. There are also 163 photos available on my Flickr page.
UPDATE 5 September: The Russian version of the article is now online here.
Georgian-Armenian Team, Vazgen Sarkisyan Stadium, Pan-Armenian Games, Yerevan, Republic of Armenia © Onnik Krikorian / Oneworld Multimedia for EurasiaNet 2007
Lebanese-Armenian Team, Vazgen Sarkisyan Stadium, Pan-Armenian Games, Yerevan, Republic of Armenia © Onnik Krikorian / Oneworld Multimedia for EurasiaNet 2007
The Australian flag came in handy when it rained, Vazgen Sarkisyan Stadium, Pan-Armenian Games, Yerevan, Republic of Armenia © Onnik Krikorian / Oneworld Multimedia for EurasiaNet 2007
Yikes, sword fighting!
Comment by Onnik — September 1, 2007 @ 3:07 am
Onnik,
While I always appreciate your unique coverage and perspective on Armenian issues and events, I view the issue of the Pan Armenian games from a somewhat different vantage point. As a former competitive high school athlete and participant in Diasporan AYF Olympics, I would get fired up and want to use any advantage to “gain victory over my opponent”-whether its team or individual sports. As such, like in European soccer/American football/Asian Ping-Pong, tempers will flare based on the spirit of the game, and the heat of the moment. I personally condone a healthy competitive environment and would expect there to be some scrums every now and again. In fact, it would be strangely generic and unnatural for sporting events NOT to have a good fight every once in a while. It shows passion, loyalty to team, and sometimes stupidity. And it’s all never perfect. A great example is Zidane and the Italian guy in the world cup. I am not sure this means the end of the world for the World Cup, relations between Italy and France, or anything else.
I am surprised that comments and blogs would try and link poor sportsmanship in athletics to anything more than it is. It’s no secret that Hayastansi’s and Diasporans have cultural differences. It’s also not a secret that there is division between Hayastansi’s and Karabaghsi’s. Between Yerevansi’s and people from the villages. From LA Armenians and Boston Armenians. From Beirutsi’s and Iran-Armenians. Between Diasporans Armenians and Jewish people.
I think the key thing is that important to highlight is that Diasporans from all over the world made a financial and spiritual (and for the love of the game) decision to visit Armenia and compete in sports and take in the Homeland.
Expecting people to get along in harmony just goes against human nature.
Comment by Raffi Meneshian — September 1, 2007 @ 4:30 am
Raffi, you’re entitled to your opinion and as you come from a community where the only Armenian news is GOOD Armenian news filtered for digestion, your comment is predictable and has been made before on this blog. Firstly, there is a difference between Zidane and entire basketball teams smashing the shit out of each other in two consequtive matches, and especially in a competition that can not be compared to the World Cup, the Olympics or indeed any regional junior amateur athletics competition in Europe or the United States.
Besides, what happened is that competition and tensions exposed deep underlying tensions between Diasporan communities and also between local Armenians and the Diaspora. They exist and they are significant. To be sure, I can not remember such a small-scale event resulting in so many clashes, so much state-control — including the detention of activists OUTSIDE the stadium, the harrasing of an opposition MP, confiscation of flags, and total disregard of media accreditation by police plus incorrect and hard to discover games schedules.
On the other hand, as one foreign journalist said to me, what was the Armenian Government thinking by coming up with the idea of bringing “Armenians together” when the struggle to do so is already an uphill one, and where the medium for doing so is sports — something that usually reveals the deep underlying bigotry, prejudice and xenophobia of any race. In that sense, if sport does do that to people, there is a lot to bring out in Armenians and so perhaps we should recognize that and now look to resolve the problem rather than rationalize it as you do.
Anyway, whatever. The majority of people are disappointed by continuing fights and even the Pan-Armenian Games organizers didn’t come up with the argument you did to limit the damage. They just said that there were fewer fights than normal, so the last Games must have been something really quite disappointing. As I said, this was not the Olympics, it was not even a major sporting competition. It is meant to be a way to bring Armenians together.
“Unity through Sport,” is the slogan, so perhaps they really got it wrong. Besides, unity works both ways, and few people here in Armenia knew much about the games, and even less actually cared. In that sense, the event was a failure unless you view the event from the perspective of the government who did indeed manage to attract an extra 5,000 tourists to Armenia in one week. Meanwhile, as I said at the beginning, the issue of violence in sports and in particular in these games, has been made in the previous post so let’s avoid repeating more of the same here.
Interestingly, what struck me most about the comments on that post was how hatred between Armenians really is a reality, especially on geopolitical and geographic grounds.
http://oneworld.blogsome.com/2007/08/20/fights-mar-pan-armenian-games-day-2/
It got even more intense in the comments on the Life Around Me post on the Yerevan-Cairo fight.
http://lifearoundme.wordpress.com/2007/08/20/yerevan-vs-cahier-%e2%80%93-fighting/
Huge divisions exist within Armenian communities based on background and many other things, and like other extremist nations, there is no tolerance of difference. There is none at all. I would probably argue that there is more hate and division among Armenians than unity so these Games were an attempt to resolve that and as Badalyan wrote, maybe they went some of the way by exposing the problem again. As I said, the idea of the Games is a good one, in my personal opinion, but significant problems exist.
When the Games did work, however, they worked well, in my opinion. Just the idea of having Turkish Armenians playing volleyball agaisnt Iranian Armenians in Yerevan was refreshing, for example. Now, rather than ignore the problem that everyone who is honest will admit exists, isn’t it time we addressed it? At the very least we seem to have concluded that sports brings out the worst in people, and bad blood among some — but not all — Diaspora communities.
If the idea is unity and resolving those problems highlighted by the Games, let people now work on it, but first they have to recognize they exist.
Comment by Onnik Krikorian — September 1, 2007 @ 10:06 am
Incidentally, one other complaint raised in the Armenia Now article is that of refereeing. Interestingly, the same attempt to rationalize and overlook the problem was made by Roland Sharoyan when asked by Armenia Now about the problem. Again, there were attempts to compare the Pan-Armenian Games to huge sporting events such as the World Cup and Olympics.
Well, sorry, in the World Cup and other sporting events, refereeing is a problem, but it is not one issue that is raised in so many matches. Here the complaints were widespread, but to give the organizers credit, at least they did have some Diasporan referees. Nevertheless, proper training needs to be undertaken for referees before the next Games. Justification for the two of what appears to be three major fights between teams was that a) one side was playing roughly, and b) the other side were making racial taunts.
My question is, why didn’t the referee penalize those players for either before the matches erupted into fights. Also, I saw lots of problems with bad decisions — more than in any professional sporting competition. Anyway, it’s a problem that needs to be rectified. Add to that the fact that the schedule was often inaccurate and no maps were provided to find venues stuck in places or on streets that nobody know and some serious re-thinking needs to happen for the next Games. I raised this issue, and that of accreditation with the MFA organizers and this is pretty much how the conversation went.
Basically, we had a schedule because we requested it, and I had to make several phone calls before I got sent one. Otherwise, there were none posted anywhere in Yerevan other than the schedules of specific types of games posted at their venues. How can you expect people to turn up when nobody makes an attempt to inform potential spectators?
Another issue is that the people assigned responsibility for the teams did not know where they were, including what hotels they were staying in or what their schedules were. I also will repeat what I said about prohibiting the national flags of the teams was a mistake. It was trying to force the appearance of Armenian “unity” through official rules for the sake of the cameras, no doubt.
Instead, I think that the diversity of the Diaspora is a blessing and there will be no unity until that fact is accepted and any divisions addressed. However, I will end on a positive note. I do actually like the general idea of the Games and think that in order for them to go forward these problems need to be addressed. Obviously, from speaking to people who attended the last Games, the same problems keep on happening.
So, for the sake of the Pan-Armenian Games and their ability to be one aspect of attempts to bring Armenia and the Diaspora together, I’d like to see the problems accepted and addressed in time for the next one. The event could have been much more and its potential is there. As in other countries, however, critically assessing the Games will be the only way they can be improved and the idea behind them strengthened.
Comment by Onnik — September 1, 2007 @ 11:18 am
Last point is this, I can’t remember at least three fights between say, teams competing in the Commonwealth Games i.e. teams representing countries with plenty of bad history to vent with England. Nor can I remember at least three fights breaking out between teams in the Olympics. However, we had at least three fights break out between ethnic Armenians in this year’s Pan-Armenian Games.
According to the admission of Roland Sharoyan, the Vice-Chair of the Organizing Committee, this year marked progress because there were even more fights at past Pan-Armenian Games although I’d say the Cairo-Yerevan clash was really quite extreme.
Now, in my post on the fights themselves, it was said by some that the Glendale-Istanbul fight had nothing to do with the fact that one team came from Istanbul. No, according to one of the Glendale players, the team was “half-Armenian” after all. However, another wrote on this blog in that post that the Istanbul Armenians “acted like Turks,” whatever that means.
And as has been pointed out in Lragir and also on this blog after the ARF-D and Hnchaks held a discussion on the problem, this issue of discrimination is one that doesn’t just occur during Pan-Armenian Games. It happens all year round in other walks of life, so I’m sorry, Raffi, it’s about time people owned up tot he problem and tried to address the problem rather than hide their heads in the sand and pretend it doesn’t exist.
These fights are not one-off incidents. They happen frequently and in all walks of life of being Armenian. Moreover, just as I do expect the British press to report on say, racism among English football fans which they generally do, I also expect the Armenian media to properly represent and report on the same thing when it happens in Armenian circles.
As I’ve said before, if this happened in say a Pan-Azerbaijan or Pan-Turkish Games, you wouldn’t be rationalizing the matter or trying to explain away the problem. Actually, you’d be doing the opposite. You’d be milking it for all it’s worth. Problems are significant when they happen to other countries — especially the “enemy.” However, some would prefer such incidents overlooked or hushed up when they happen here.
If all aspects of the country should be seen by the Diaspora, let us also report on all aspects of the Games and the problems that confront Armenia and the Diaspora. Nothing will change otherwise, just as it won’t elsewhere either. The inability to recognize that fact is also another problem with Armenia and the Diaspora in general.
Comment by Onnik — September 1, 2007 @ 12:56 pm
You’re compairing the scale of the Commonwealth Games to the Pan-Armenian games? lol… Mate, the athletes competing in the Commonwealth Games are professionals, they have international reputations to uphold. The competitors in the Pan-Armenian games are primarily young upstarts who can’t even grasp the concept of civility.
If someone causes trouble in the CW Games they’ll be fined, suspended, sponsorship contracts will become shakey and international sporting bodies will black mark their records permanently. There are just too many eyes watching the CW Games for it to be taken lightly.
I’d say it’s a bit more serious than the Pan-Armenian games.
PS. They’re adding Fencing? That’d be great! My relo is a French national champion.
Comment by Eso — September 3, 2007 @ 4:16 am
This is getting tiring. One reader in the Diaspora uses a professional sports person to illustrate how we shouldn’t be concerned by these fights, and another says to counter that argument I shouldn’t because we’re dealing with amateurs.
So, let me try to have another stab at this. In nether most professional OR amateur competitions do we have such a number of fights between teams that they have become predictable for each competition. Of course, others would say that the difference between these Games and other sporting events worldwide is that we’re dealing with Armenians!!!
Now, Eso, you might be write about the disciplinary procedures and Sharoyan says they might introduce them into the next Games. Here, at least, someone offered a solution to the problem, which is what people should have done in the first place rather than just try to ignore it. However, with problems raised about partisan refereeing they’ll need to sort out a lot more before they do this fairly.
Still, let’s hope they do.
Comment by Onnik — September 3, 2007 @ 10:54 am
“This is getting tiring…” Hahaha, you see!? Who says democracy is synonymous with progression. All hail the iron fist of communism!!!
Seriously though, I was thinking, perhaps if there was more media coverage and larger crowds, people wouldn’t be so inclined to behave like trouble-makers. Maybe next year get some people to wear BBC/CNN marked vests and walk around with cameras. Trick the players into thinking their ugly mugs are going to be seen across the globe.
Comment by Eso — September 3, 2007 @ 11:22 am
Note I said this was tiring and I haven’t closed the comments section or censored any comments. That is democracy and freedom of speech.
As for media and spectators it won’t happen next year as the next games are not going to be held, but for sure they need to properly advertise the games AND INCLUDE A MAP OF VENUES as well as inform the police that official accreditation should be recognized.
Unfortunately, it appeared as though the main media here, and the powers that be, only really cared about the opening and closing ceremonies. Still, as long as the criticism of the games are noted and steps made to rectify the problems, the games have potential as part of a larger strategy.
Comment by Onnik — September 3, 2007 @ 11:31 am
Not to belabour the point but the ArmeniaNow article says that the Stepanakert soccer team was disqualified for fighting. What were the details there? Whow ere they playing aginst?
Comment by R — September 4, 2007 @ 7:58 pm
Yeah, I saw that and have heard no news on that particular incident. Interesting, though. Remember, there was very little coverage of the Games themselves except at the beginning and also at the end. Anyone else know?
Comment by Onnik — September 4, 2007 @ 9:09 pm