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Associated Press International

May 27, 2019 Monday 5:10 PM GMT

Churches strike deal to restore Jerusalem holy site

 

JERUSALEM (AP) - The three churches in charge of Jerusalem's holiest Christian site say they have reached an agreement to begin a multi-million dollar renovation of the Church of the Holy Sepulcher.

 

Leaders of the Greek Orthodox, Catholic and Armenian churches issued a statement Monday announcing the project to restore the foundations and flooring of the church, where many Christians believe Jesus was crucified, entombed and resurrected.

 

A Greek team headed the 2016 restoration project to preserve the aedicule, a large structure inside the church housing the tomb. The upcoming second rehabilitation project will involve two Italian institutions.

 

The Church of the Holy Sepulcher is shared by multiple Christian sects under a status quo management agreement. Even perceived alterations to the status quo have resulted in arguments or violence.

Panorama, Armenia

May 28 2019

Armenia marks 101st anniversary of First Republic

May 28 is a remarkable day in the history of the Armenian people as the country is celebrating the 101st anniversary of a statehood born after the heavy battles of Bash-Aparan, Karakilisa and Sardarapat.

It was the Battle of Karakilisa of May 21-28, 1918, when the Armenian regular military forces and volunteers managed to repel the Ottoman forces, which broke the armistice signed in December 1917 with Transcaucasian commissariat entering Western Armenia, conquering Erznka, Erzerum, Sarighamish, Kars and Alexandropol and reaching Karakilisa. The victory here and in Sardarapat and Aparan was instrumental in allowing the Democratic Republic of Armenia to come into existence.

On June 4, 1918, the Armenian-Turkish peace treaty was signed in Batumi, which remapped Armenia. Yerevan, Etchmiadzin, Alexandropol, Karalagyaz, Kazakh, Borchalu and Nor Bayazet were perceived as Armenia, which in accordance with the treaty was established in the territory of 11,000 square meters.

On August 1, 1918, a ceremony of opening the Armenian parliament took place at the City Hall in Yerevan. Avetik Sahakyan (Father Abraham) was elected as Speaker of the parliament, with Hovannes Kajaznuni becoming the first Prime Minister. 

The First Republic had a short-lived existence, surviving until December 2, 1920, when the Soviet rule was established in Armenia.

Interfax

May 27 2019

'All for all' swap of captives could boost Karabakh talks - Azerbaijani FM

BAKU. 

An 'all for all' swap of captives between Azerbaijan and Armenia could boost the Karabakh settlement talks, Azerbaijani Foreign Minister Elmar Mammadyarov told the newspaper Kommersant in an interview.

"Azerbaijan has repeatedly called for exchanging captives held by both sides on the 'all for all' principles," Mammadyarov said.

He said the proposal was backed by the Russian, French, and U.S. co-chairs of the OSCE Minsk Group.

"We are confident that could create a more favorable atmosphere and promote progress at the talks and preparations [...] of the two countries for peace," Mammadyarov said.

The minister also called for building humanitarian relations between Azerbaijan and Armenia, such as visits of journalists and captives' families. "We should focus on concrete, well-considered proposals, considering how sensitive the issue is to both sides. In short, we should be working to foster peace, instead of harming it," he said.

Azerbaijan is holding three Armenian citizens, Arsen Bagdasaryan, Karen Kazaryan, and Zaven Karapetyan, whom Baku dubs as saboteurs and war criminals.

Bagdasaryan was detained by Azerbaijani servicemen in December 2014 and sentenced to 15 years in prison.

Azerbaijani servicemen detained Kazaryan in the middle of July of 2018. He was sentenced to 20 years in prison in February 2019 for committing crimes against Azerbaijan.

Karapetyan was detained in June 2017. Armenia says he is a civilian. The Azerbaijani authorities are verifying his status.

Armenia is holding two citizens of Azerbaijan, Shahbaz Guliyev and Dilgam Askerov. They were detained by Armenian servicemen in Karabakh in July 2014. A court in the unrecognized Nagorno-Karabakh Republic sentenced Askerov to life in jail and Guliyev to 22 years.

Sky News

May 29 2019

Arsenal fans wearing Henrikh Mkhitaryan shirts stopped by police in Baku 'for their safety'

 

The team's Armenian forward chose not to travel to Azerbaijan because of tensions over the disputed Nagorno-Karabakh region

 

Arsenal fans wearing Henrikh Mkhitaryan shirts have been filmed being stopped by Azerbaijan police in Baku ahead of the Europa League final.

 

Supporters have also been subject to spot checks by the country's security forces to ensure they do not have the name of the Armenian forward on their tops.

 

Azerbaijan's regime claims fans have been stopped for their own safety.

 

Mkhitaryan fans are feeling the long arm of the law in Baku ahead of the Europa League final…. 

The police force in the Azerbaijani capital have been criticised for their treatment of some supporters in the build-up to Arsenal's Europa League final against Chelsea tonight.

 

Mkhitaryan chose not to travel to Baku for personal reasons because of the unresolved dispute between Azerbaijan and Armenia over Nagorno-Karabakh, which has previously descended into war claiming tens of thousands of lives.

Tensions remain high between Azerbaijan, in which the landlocked mountainous region lies, and its ethnic Armenian majority, backed by neighbouring Armenia.

Despite a Russian-brokered ceasefire being signed in 1994, there have been a number of serious violations leading to deadly violence in recent years.

Armenpress.am

28 May, 2019

Armenia under cyberattack from Azerbaijan

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As Armenia is celebrating Republic Day on May 28, Azerbaijani hackers launched an online attack and leaked Facebook login and password data of more than 2000 Armenians, information security expert Samvel Martirosyan said.

“Many are still not hacked, so you’ll manage to quickly change your password if you are in this list,” he said on Facebook, posting an online list of the affected accounts and urging users to change their personal data if they find their names in it.

He said Armenian users of the mail.ru email service have also been targeted.

Edited and translated by Stepan Kocharyan

[On BBC TV News before kick off, the Azeri sports minister said that hosting they football game reflected on Azerbaijan's democracy. Don;t think he knows what that word means]

Agence France Presse / France 24

May 27, 2019 

Azerbaijan's sporting glitz conceals grim reality

The Europa League final on Wednesday in Baku is just the latest major sporting event Azerbaijan has hosted in an attempt to smooth over its atrocious human rights record.

 

Hosting events such as the 2015 European Games and an annual Formula 1 Grand Prix, the oil-rich Caspian nation has spent its petrodollars to assert itself on the world's sporting map.

 

Following the Europa League final between British teams Arsenal and Chelsea, Baku is already lined up as a venue for Euro 2020 matches.

 

"Each of these events strengthens Azerbaijan's place on the world map and creates the conditions for boosting tourism," Azerbaijan's Minister of Sport Azad Rahimov told AFP, boasting of the "83 million viewers that watched the Formula 1 Grand Prix held in Baku in 2018."

 

But rights groups say hosting such glitzy competitions helps the ex-Soviet country of some 10 million people to conceal systematic political repression and widespread corruption under the Aliyev dynasty that has ruled since 1993.

 

"We must ensure that Azerbaijan isn't allowed to 'sportswash' its appalling human rights record as a result of the football fanfare," said Amnesty International's UK director, Kate Allen.

 

Human Rights Watch said in a report last year "at least 43 human rights defenders, journalists, political and religious activists remained wrongfully imprisoned" in Azerbaijan.

 

It said other persistent abuses included "systemic torture, undue interference in the work of lawyers and restrictions on media freedoms".

 

The anti-corruption NGO Transparency International this year ranked Azerbaijan 152 out of 180 countries in its index of perceptions of corruption.

 

- 'A whim of authoritarian leaders' -

 

"The leaders of authoritarian countries like to organize grandiose events. That's their whim," said prominent Azerbaijani opposition journalist Khadija Ismayilova, who has spent years in prison for her investigations.

 

"The projects also enable corruption," she said. "The company that organises the Formula 1 motor race in Baku is owned by the son of the sports minister. This is undisguised corruption."

 

The sports minister in question, for his part, defended Azerbaijan's "sports diplomacy" as "a legacy left to the people."

 

"We can say proudly that the sports infrastructure serves the people," he said referring to Baku's National Gymnastics Arena, its Aquatic Palace for swimming events and the Olympic Stadium.

 

These were all built for the inaugural European Games in 2015, a multi-discipline event contested by athletes from European nations.

 

The Azerbaijani government is estimated to have spent a billion dollars on hosting the Games, which attracted only limited international interest.

 

The Europa League final will be played at 1900 GMT on Wednesday in the 70,000-seat Olympic stadium that will also host first-round matches and a quarter-final at the next European Championships in June and July 2020.

 

Azerbaijan's investment in sport is not limited to organising events.

 

The state-run oil company SOCAR has been a major sponsor of UEFA, European football's governing body, since 2013 and the country's "Land of Fire" slogan used to feature on Spanish side Atletico Madrid's jerseys.

 

These investments however have not prevented the scandals surrounding Wednesday's game.

 

Chelsea and Arsenal fans have been angered by the high costs of travel to Baku and the overpriced seats.

 

UEFA only reserved 12,000 tickets for fans in the final -- far below the demand from supporters of the two clubs.

 

Adding to the controversy, Arsenal announced last week their Armenian midfielder, Henrikh Mkhitaryan -- and his country's captain -- would miss the game over safety fears.

 

Azerbaijan and Armenia are locked in a decades-long conflict over the disputed Nagorny Karabakh region and Baku does not generally allow Armenians or those of Armenian origin to visit.

 

Despite a 1994 ceasefire, frequent exchanges of fire along Karabakh's volatile frontline have at times risked escalating into an all-out war.

 

News.am, Armenia

May 29 2019

MFA: Armenian Genocide recognition is priority issue of Armenia’s foreign policy 

                  

The recognition of the Armenian Genocide is not only on the agenda of bilateral relations, but it is also one of the priorities of the Armenian foreign policy, Armenian Minister of Foreign Affairs Zohrab Mnatsakanyan said in the Armenian National Assembly on Wednesday.

His remark came in response to comment on My Step Bloc MP Vahe Hovhannisyan's question on whether recognition of the Armenian Genocide by Beijing is possible, given the latest statement by Chinese President Xi Jinping about the ‘tragic events that occurred to the Armenian people’ made at a meeting with Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan.

In response, the minister noted that the issue of recognizing the Armenian Genocide is a problem of restoring justice.

“This is not only a question of Armenia or the Armenian people. It concerns any state, any nation that take seriously prevention of genocides,” he said.

The Minister noted that the recognition process is complex and is taking place against the background of acute manifestations of intolerance, racism and xenophobia in different parts of the world.

At the same time, the Armenian MFA takes this issue into account in relations with different countries, including China.

RFE/RL Report

Armenian, Azeri FMs To Meet Again

May 27, 2019

Susan Badalian

 Aza Babayan

The foreign ministers of Armenia and Azerbaijan will meet again soon for further talks on the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, the Armenian Foreign Ministry 

said on Monday.

The ministry spokeswoman, Anna Naghdalian, said Foreign Minister Zohrab Mnatsakanian and U.S., Russian and French mediators discussed in Yerevan 

preparations his “upcoming” talks with his Azerbaijani counterpart Elmar Mammadyarov.

The three mediators co-chairing the OSCE Minsk Group visited the Armenian capital at the start of a fresh tour of the Karabakh conflict zone. They met 

with Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian later in the day.

Naghdalian gave no date of Mnatsakanian’s planned talks with Mammadyarov.

The top Armenian and Azerbaijani diplomats most recently met in Moscow on April 15 in the presence of Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov. A joint statement released by the three ministers said the warring sides reaffirmed their stated intention to strengthen the ceasefire regime around Karabakh and along the Armenian-Azerbaijani border and to take other take confidence-building measures.

Pashinian and Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev briefly spoke with each other when they visited Brussels on May 13. It was Pashinian’s and Aliyev’s fifth face-to-face contact in about eight months. Their first meeting held in Tajikistan in September was followed by a significant decrease in ceasefire 

violations on the frontlines.

In an interview with the Russian daily “Kommersant” published on Monday, Mammadyarov sounded cautiously optimistic about further Armenian-Azerbaijani peace talks. He said Baku last year give Armenia’s new leadership time to “familiarize itself with details of the negotiation process.”

“That transitional phase ended, and negotiations resumed at the level of both the leaders of the two countries and the foreign ministers … The dialogue is 

going on in the existing format and under a particular agenda, which gives rise to certain optimism,” he said.

Mammadyarov also stressed that confidence-building measures by the two sides 

must go hand in hand with “real steps in the negotiation process” and “elimination of severe consequences” of the conflict. That first and foremost means a “withdrawal of occupation forces from Azerbaijan’s territories,” he said.

RFE/RL Report

Armenian Judges Demand Say On Court Reform

May 28, 2019

Naira Bulghadarian

Armenia - Yervand Khundkarian (second from left), chairman of the Court of Cassation, and other judges meet with the press, Yerevan, May 27, 2019.

Armenian judges have voiced support for a thorough reform of the national judicial system, while saying that the authorities must consult with them and “strictly” adhere to Armenia’s laws and international commitments.

In a statement issued on Monday night, they also deplored attempts to disrupt “the normal work of courts” and lambasted a state body overseeing the Armenian judiciary.

The statement was adopted at an emergency “general assembly” in Yerevan attended by 163 of the country’s 229 judges. They discussed recent days’ 

dramatic developments that followed the Armenian government’s strong criticism of the judiciary.

Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian urged supporters to block the entrances to all court buildings after a Yerevan district court ordered his bitter foe and 

former President Robert Kocharian released from custody on May 18. Pashinian demanded a mandatory “vetting” of all judges on May 20, saying that many of them remain linked to Armenia’s “corrupt” former leaders and cannot be independent. He reaffirmed his plans for a far-reaching judicial reform at a May 24 meeting with foreign diplomats.

The judges acknowledged the need for a major court reform. They said none of them objects to public access to information about their incomes and assets, which is expected to be one of the criteria in the planned vetting.

At the same time the judges urged “relevant bodies” to “stand above parochial interests” and ensure that the resulting legislative changes conform to 

Armenia’s constitution and international obligations.

“The General Assembly of Judges welcomes any measure to strengthen confidence in the judicial authority which would be taken in strict compliance with the law,” said their statement read out to reporters by Yervand Khundkarian, the chairman of Armenia’s Court of Cassation.

The statement stressed that a “constructive dialogue of all branches of government” is essential for the success of the planned reform. In that context, it described judges’ involvement in reform-related discussions as “mandatory.”

The statement went on to condemn the “inactivity” of the Supreme Judicial Council (SJC), a body nominating new judges and monitoring courts. “In effect, that body does not guarantee the independence of judges,” it declared.

It was not clear whether the judges are unhappy with the SJC’s cautious reaction to the May 20 court blockade. In an apparent reference to the blockade, they denounced actions “hampering the normal work of courts.”

The SJC chairman, Gagik Harutiunian, resigned on May 24. In a letter to other members of the judicial watchdog, Harutiunian cited his concerns over “ongoing developments relating to the judicial authority.”

The resignation was announced the day after the European Union expressed readiness to help the Armenian authorities reform the domestic judiciary with “technical and financial assistance.”

The Sunday Telegraph (London)

May 26, 2019

I was a daytripper to a theme pub in Armenia

LETTERS ; LETTER OF THE WEEK

 

 

Exploring Yerevan, in Armenia, I came across a special find - the Beatles Pub. Being a lifelong fan of the Fab Four, and grateful for a taste of home on a long trip to the Caucasus, I had to give it a try.

 

Posters and tributes to the band adorned the walls of the cool little bar, and I asked the owner - a local guy in his 20s - why he had opened such a place. Was he a fan? "Of course!" he enthusiastically exclaimed. "A lot of our younger generation don't have much awareness of the band, so I wanted to show them how special and important they were."

 

It made me proud to be British, and especially a northerner. Hearing the Beatles' music in bars in the four corners of the world is guaranteed to make me homesick and not a little bit sentimental. 

DAVID SHUTTLEWORTH, 

FROM MANCHESTER, WINS A £500 MCKINLAY KIDD VOUCHER