Monday 4 February 2019

Armenian News... A Topalian... 16 editorials

Some time ago, I was requested to distribute  only good news about Armenia.
To do so would exclude the following heart-breaking story from the BBC.
We need to be aware of all aspects of the republic and the diaspora

BBC Radio 4
The Art of Now
Nick Danziger's Shutter  Stories

Photographer Nick Danziger travels to Armenia, revisiting isolated elderly people.



Armenpress.am
26 January, 2019
Armenian President offers condolences on Michel Legrand’s passing

President Armen Sarkissian has extended condolences over the passing of French composer Michel Legrand. 

“Maestro Legrand is one of world music’s legends, an artist who has won praise and admiration”, Sarkissian said in a condolence cable, according to his office.

“His contribution to the development of modern music is invaluable. His contribution to strengthening and expanding the Armenian-French cultural ties is undeniable. The maestro’s art is loved by the Armenian audience. I express my deepest condolences to Michel Legrand’s family, friends and thousands of his music’s fans,” Sarkissian said.

Renowned composer Michel Legrand has died on January 26 at the age of 86, French media reported.

Michel Legrand won three Oscars and five Grammy awards during a career spanning more than half a century.

He has more than 100 albums in his discography.

Legrand worked with the brightest stars of 20th century Hollywood, including Frank Sinatra and Barbara Streisand.

Legrand was of Armenian descent: his mother was Armenian.

The cause of death wasn’t immediately clear.

Edited and translated by Stepan Kocharyan

BBC Radio 2 - Carte Blanche, Composer Michel Legrand recalls his greatest collaborations


DEFENSE and SECURITY (Russia)
January 28, 2019 Monday
IT IS INAPT FOR PASHINYAN THAT PUTIN HAS NO TIME TO MEET HIM

Russia expects convincing evidence of loyalty from Armenia, Yerevan expects reciprocity from Moscow
Yuri Simonyan

Presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov urged not to look for the pitfalls: "As far as I know, no talks are planned, Friday is a busy day for the president ... I don't know if there will be any changes, but so far no contacts have been agreed upon," - he said, noting that Putin and Pashinyan "quite often communicate by telephone and very often meet."
 
Nevertheless, there are certain reasons to believe that relations between Moscow and Yerevan are not completely cloudless. The Russian side, according to an informed NG source, still does not sufficiently trust the new authorities in Armenia. Some statements, in particular, about attempts to establish military-trade relations with China or Sweden, of course, did not go unnoticed in Moscow. Inspections in economic entities belonging to the Russian Federation could not increase the degree of trust, either, not to mention the criminal cases against former officials, to this or that degree connected with Russian political or business circles. The most important of them is the second president, Robert Kocharyan, who remains in custody, who is rumored to be a personal friend of Putin.
 
Yerevan has counterclaims to the strategic partner, the main and most offensive one is the continued supply of arms to Azerbaijan.
 
The present working visit of Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan to Moscow was the fourth one after the "velvet revolution" and the first one when the Armenian leader arrived in an absolutely legitimate status, without the prefix "acting" or in the informal position of the "new Armenian leader." The visit is dedicated to the beginning chairmanship of Armenia in the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU), and Pashinyan is expected to give a speech at the Eurasian Economic Commission (EEC). The current visit of Pashinyan to Moscow may be the first one when he is not to meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

[Translated from Russian]


armenpress.am
26 January, 2019
‘Well above the world average’ – Armenia ranked 47th among 180 countries in 2019 Economic Freedom Index


Panorama, Armenia
Jan 28 2019

The head of Jewish community concerned about the absence of UN representatives at Holocaust memorial event in Yerevan

Special event dedicated to the UN International Day of Holocaust Victims Memory was held on January 27 in Yerevan. The event took place at the Holocaust victims memorial in Yerevan and was attended by members of the Jewish community, the director of the Armenian Genocide Museum-Institute, Lieutenant General Hayk Kotanjian, residents of the capital Yerevan. The participants laid flowers at the monument and lit candles in memory of the victims.

In an interview with Panorama.am, the chairwoman of the Jewish community of Armenia Rima Varzhapetyan noted that the key message of the event is to prevent future genocides through remembering the past crimes. Varzhapetyan, however, voices her surprise that no representative from the UN Office in Armenia was present at the event despite the invitation that had earlier been sent to them.

“Despite the fact that the Remembrance Day is designated by the United Nations General Assembly Resolution, the UN representatives in Armenia have not attended the Remembrance Day event for the second year. Couple of years ago, they were the initiators of the memorial events,” she said.

At a remark that Israel who people suffered Holocaust has not recognized the Armenian Genocide, Varzhapetyan said that as a civil state Israel acknowledges the fact of the Armenian Genocide, studies the Yeghern and many publications and films are released over the topic.     (eh?!)

“Those activities are very important. I have an arrangement with a Knesset member about screening Manvel Saribekyan’s film about the Armenian Genocide right in the Israeli parliament, once it is formed. The film was screened last year at one of the largest cinema houses of Tel-Aviv. As you understand, the Israeli non-recognition is conditioned with economic and security factors. Turkey is a strong state and any controversy with it always contains major risks especially for Israel for which Turkey is the only Muslim state it holds relations. Therefore, I would not concentrate on Israeli recognition too much as the fact of the Armenian Genocide is recognized by the world, including by Israel,” our interlocutor said.

To note, the Holocaust, also referred to as the Shoah, was a genocide during World War II in which Nazi Germany, aided by its collaborators, systematically murdered some six million European Jews, around two-thirds of the Jewish population of Europe, between 1941 and 1945.
January 27 marks the International Holocaust Remembrance Day. In 1939, Adolf Hitler referenced the Armenian Genocide as justification for the Holocaust saying, “Who, after all, today speaks of the annihilation of the Armenians?" The creator of the word “genocide,” Holocaust survivor and lawyer Raphael Lemkin, said he conceived the word to describe the pattern of ethnic cleansing seen in WWI with the Armenians and WWII with the Jewish people.


Global Voices
Jan 27 2019
Why are Armenian displaced persons still living in a hotel, 30 years after fleeing Azerbaijan?
           
The following is a story by Chai-Khana.org and is republished by Global Voices under a partnership agreement. Text and video by Aren Melikyan and Hermine Virabian.

The number 29 on the sign should be changed to 30, as 30 years have now passed since 64 refugee families first moved into Hotel Nairi in Yerevan.

Today, the hotel is home to three generations, including the grandchildren and the children of the people who were forced to flee Azerbaijan in the 1980s, during the period leading up to the Karabakh conflict. Despite the wait, they have not lost hope that one day they will be given houses in Armenia.

For years, many of their calls and written pleas for help have fallen on deaf ears. Even those who have received answers from officials got nothing but promises.

After thirty years of living in 11-square-meter “apartments” in a building notable for its poor infrastructure, some families are demanding new living quarters from the state. But they fear in doing so they risk losing the rooms they have at Hotel Nairi.

View the video at


RFE/RL Report
Armenian Army ‘Affected’ By Coup Charges Against Generals
January 28, 2019
Ruzanna Stepanian

Criminal charges leveled against three retired top generals in connection with the 2008 post-election violence in Yerevan have affected morale within the Armenian military, Defense Minister Davit Tonoyan said on Monday.

“Of course that is affecting the mood in the armed forces,” Tonoyan told 
journalists. “But as I said, we are coping well and doing more than enough [for national security.]”

The charges stem from the violent breakup of opposition protests staged in the wake of the disputed February 2008 presidential election. Former President Robert Kocharian as well as Generals Mikael Harutiunian, Seyran Ohanian and Yuri Khachaturov stand accused of illegally using army units against the protesters. They all deny the accusations.

Ohanian, who was the chief of the army’s General Staff during the March 2008 violence, went farther at the weekend, accusing the Armenian authorities of “attempting to drive a wedge between the army and the people.” In a lengthy Facebook post, he again insisted that army units were not involved in vicious street clashes that left eight protesters and two policemen dead.

Ohanian also suggested that the alleged efforts to “discredit the high-ranking army command” may be designed to facilitate significant Armenian concessions to Azerbaijan in the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. “Maybe this is aimed at ‘preparing the peoples for peace,’” he said, using a phrase from a statement which international mediators issued after a recent meeting of the Armenian and Azerbaijani foreign ministers.

Ohanian was appointed as Armenia’s defense minister in April 2008. He held that post until October 2016. Tonoyan served as first deputy defense minister from 2010-2017.

The minister spoke to reporters at Yerevan’s Yerablur military cemetery where he and other senior officials led by President Armen Sarkissian and Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian laid flowers on Monday. The ceremony was part of official celebrations of Army Day, a public holiday in Armenia.

Kocharian, Harutiunian and Khachaturov were charged with an “overthrow of the constitutional order” shortly Pashinian swept to power in May on a wave of mass protests that brought down the country’s previous government. Pashinian, who was one of the main speakers during the 2008 protests, has repeatedly denied any political motives behind the charges.

One of the premier’s close associates, deputy parliament speaker Alen Simonian, brushed aside Ohanian’s latest claims, saying that the Armenian armed forces cannot be associated with a few retired generals. “That’s an absurd statement,” Simonian told RFE/RL’s Armenian service (Azatutyun.am).

By contrast, the high-profile criminal case was criticized by Vitaly 
Balasanian, another retired general who is now the secretary of 
Nagorno-Karabakh’s Security Council. “This accusation of overthrowing the constitutional order is a bit ridiculous,” Balasanian told reporters after attending the wreath laying ceremony at Yerablur.

“Can you imagine Nikol Pashinian overthrowing the constitutional order to stay on as prime minister?” he said. “Only a force that’s not in government could overthrow the constitutional order. Why would people in power overthrow the constitutional order?”


armenpress.am
28 January, 2019
 ‘Return to life and feel appreciated’: Wounded soldier Gor Darmanyan works at Presidential Office

Soldier Gor Darmanyan, who was wounded in 2015 while preventing the Azerbaijani sabotage operation in Artsakh, is currently working at the Armenian Presidential Office. He is the first beneficiary of the Homeland’s Defender initiative which aims at assisting the servicemen who became disabled during the military service by providing them with jobs.

“I have been employed at the presidential administration in June 2018. It was on the proposal of the Armenian President. In line with this I am also studying at the Law faculty of the Yerevan State University. This is a very important initiative. It provides great opportunities to soldiers who put their lives under danger during the military service. I am very happy that this initiative will be continuous, and many like me will pass training and will be employed. This initiative enables the boys who put their health under danger to return to life, feel appreciated and learn something new”, Gor Darmanyan told reporters at the Presidential Palace.

He remembered the 2015 March events, stating that they pushed back the adversary’s sabotage operation.

“Gor and his friends gave such a counter attack, carried out such operations that the adversary was unable to attack for a year”, Chief Military Inspector Movses Hakobyan said in his turn.

President Armen Sarkissian talked about the Homeland’s Defender initiative and stated that they cannot forget all boys, who served in the Army and endangered their lives.

“Yes, we are not forgetting them, they receive pension, but in addition to this, there is one simple issue. They are young people and cannot receive pension for 60 years, we need to bring them back to life. They undoubtedly have some talent, we need to find that, to teach, help and train. Gor comes to work every day, receives salary, and this is very good”, Armen Sarkissian told reporters.

He said he has put the launch of this initiative, but hopes that the businessmen and the public sector will also react to this. As a result, the number of employed military disabled persons will increase.

“Eventually, if a businessman has 100 employees, he can definitely hire one disabled person. I encourage so that this work continues in the country. I will personally meet with major businessmen, will encourage and ask them to do the same. As a result, hundreds of disabled soldiers will have jobs and will return to active life”, the President said.

Edited and translated by Aneta Harutyunyan


Armenian TV airs unprecedented report on bygone Armenian-Azerbaijani friendships
Jan 29, 2019 
Many have connected the report to a recent agreement by the foreign ministers of the two countries to “prepare their populations for peace.”
Ani Mejlumyan 

Armenian public television has broadcast a report suggesting that peace might be restored between Armenians and Azerbaijanis, raising criticism from many in the country who say that it was premature and played into Azerbaijan’s hands.

The report, aired several times on January 21 during news programs on Armenian Public Television, featured interviews with residents of a village on the border with Azerbaijan, Aygepar, who reminisced about their friendships with Azerbaijanis before the war over Nagorno-Karabakh in the early 1990s. It came just days after the foreign ministers of the two countries met and issued an unprecedented statement on the need to “prepare the populations for peace,” leading to speculation that the report was an early effort toward that end.  

“From Aygepar to the Azerbaijani village of Alibeyli is only one and a half kilometers,” the report’s narrator said. “During the Soviet years, the residents of these two villages were friends and visited each other. Some of the people of Aygepar even worked in Alibeyli, and residents of Alibeyli in Aygepar. Every morning they went to work, and in the evenings returned to their country-home.” It quoted one elderly resident of Aygepar who fondly recalled his ties with Azerbaijanis. “Everything was good during the communist times,” he said. “I had many pals there.”

Tatul Hakobyan, a journalist and coordinator of the ANI Armenian Research Center, was quoted in the report expressing confidence that Armenians and Azerbaijanis will someday again live side-by-side. “At the first opportunity Armenians will bring pomegranates from Ganja to sell, and the Azerbaijanis will take Armenian cognac from here,” he told the interviewer. (Hakobyan declined to talk to Eurasianet about the report.)
Armenian Public Television’s news content is highly monitored, if not often directed, by the government, and its position – particularly on a political or Karabakh-related issue – is generally seen as the government’s position. 

“The impression is that the authorities have begun to implement the arrangements of the foreign ministers to prepare the populations for peace,” wrote commentator Hrant Melik-Shahnazaryan, known for his strongly anti-Azerbaijani positions, on his Facebook page. “See what kind of report they made. See with what kind of longing the people of Aygepar talk about the days when they visited Alibeyli.”

The report’s approach rubbed many Armenians the wrong way, however. Many objected that it was the Azerbaijanis who should take the first step. 

"It will be necessary to start a series of reports in the direction of peace building, but it must be done on both sides,” said Harutyun Harutyunyan, a former director of the station’s news and analytical department, in an interview with Eurasianet. In more than a decade at the station, he said, he never recalled airing such a report. “The theme is very sensitive and should be treated with caution. I do not think that the report was spontaneous.”

One article in the newspaper Golos Armenii objected that while Baku does not demonstrate "even a trace of desire to give up Armenophobia,” some groups in Armenia “have started, with unintelligible enthusiasm, preparing the people for peace,” according to an account by BBC Monitoring. The newspaper added that Baku's "main peace message is that the conflict must be resolved on its terms exclusively, saying that otherwise a new military aggression is imminent.”

One reason for the backlash was the report’s framing of the Armenia-Azerbaijan conflict as a “territorial dispute,” while Armenians generally prefer to deemphasize the question of territory in favor of a narrative of self-determination for the Armenian population of Karabakh. (Before the war, the population of Nagorno-Karabakh was about three-quarters Armenian with most of the rest Azerbaijani; today it is nearly 100 percent Armenian.)

“At the negotiations the Azerbaijani side also is trying to qualify the Artsakh conflict and present it as a territorial dispute,” wrote the Armenian news website Aysor, in a piece about the TV report. (Artsakh is the Armenian word for Nagorno-Karabakh.) The piece suggested that the first steps toward peace should come from the Azerbaijani side, and concluded: “Hopefully, those in the neighboring village will not forget about peace and will not open fire from their posts in the direction of their once friendly residents of Aygepar.”

“The other reason [for the backlash] is that the report was weak and incoherent and it was seen as ‘hammer propaganda,’" crudely beating a narrative into public opinion, Harutyunyan added. “That couldn’t go unnoticed.”

Officials at Armenian Public Television denied that the report was directed from the government. They also pointed to a segment of the report which compared the situation between Armenia and Azerbaijan to that of Georgia and South Ossetia, arguing that while the Georgian government does not object to Georgians’ ties with Ossetians, the Azerbaijani government has striven to restrict people-to-people contacts between the two sides. 

“We weren’t showing the similarity but the difference of the conflicts,” Petros Ghazaryan, the current head of the news and analytical department, told Eurasianet. “In the report we say that [Azerbaijan President Ilham] Aliyev urged people not to visit Armenia or Artsakh and [he] spread hatred for years. With the Ossetian and Georgian example, we show that this kind of hate and hate speech doesn’t exist in personal relations, instead Georgians try to integrate Ossetians into society.”

Ani Mejlumyan is a reporter based in Yerevan.

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