Tuesday 5 March 2019

Armenian News... A Topalian... 7 editorials

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Panorama, Armenia
March 2 2019
Eve of Great Lent or Great Barekendan

The Armenian Church will mark the period of Great Lent on March 3 which is defined as a time of abstinence and repentance for the faithful. Qahana.am reports that each Sunday during this period is named after an event in the Holy Bible that contains the message of the day. 

According to the calendar, the days prior to weekly fasts, as well as Great Lent are called Barekendan. The word Barekendan means “good living” or “good life”, as we are called to live cheerfully, joyfully, and to be happy on these days preceding fasting periods.

Great Barekendan commemorates the human bliss, which Adam and Eve enjoyed in the Garden of Eden. Barekendan is the manifestation of the virtues of the soul, through which people can transform mourning to joy, and torment to peace. It is with this comprehension, with bowing of our souls, penitence, fasting and hope for mercy, that each Christian individual should take his first step on the long, 40-day journey of Great Lent, culminating with the Glorious Resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ.

The period starting from the day following the Great Barekendan and lasting till the Feast of the Glorious Resurrection is called Great Lent. In the period of the Great Lent, people, refraining from bodily pleasures and sins, get prepared for the Feast of the Glorious Resurrection by means of abstinence and repentance. This period of the Great Lent is also called “Salt and bread”, as in the past during the period of the Great Lent people have eaten only salt and bread.


Armenpress.am
28 February, 2019
Armenian President pays tribute to memory of Sumgait pogrom victims in Yerevan Memorial

President of Armenia Armen Sarkissian on February 28 visited the Tsitsernakaberd Memorial in Yerevan to commemorate the innocent victims of the tragic events in Sumgait, his Office told Armenpress.

The President laid a wreath at the cross-stone dedicated to the memory of the innocent victims.

“Today together with all Armenians we are remembering the crimes of February 27-28, 1988. In response to the peaceful demonstrations of the Armenian population of Artsakh, who were exercising their right to self-determination, a mass bloody revenge has been organized against Armenians in the town of Sumgait of Soviet Azerbaijan.

Hundreds of our compatriots have been killed on the ground of national hostility, the others were subjected to brutal violence and atrocities and were violently displaced from their place of residence”, the President said. “The Sumgait crime has no expiration date, and we need to do everything that this terrible crime is strongly condemned by the international community, gets acknowledgement and right assessment”.

The President also paid tribute to the memory of the 1915 Armenian Genocide Victims near the Eternal Flame in the Memorial.
 
Edited and translated by Aneta Harutyunyan


RFE/RL Report
Armenia Set For New IMF Loan
February 27, 2019
Emil Danielyan

The International Monetary Fund has all but decided to allocate a fresh $250 million loan to Armenia, praising the Armenian government’s macroeconomic policies and “ambitious” reform agenda.

An IMF mission reported a “staff-level agreement” on the loan late on Tuesday at the end of a two-week visit to Yerevan which involved talks with Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian and other senior Armenian officials.

“The agreement is subject to approval by the IMF Executive Board, which is expected to consider it in May 2019,” the head of the mission, Hossein Samiei, said in a statement.

Samiei said that the “precautionary stand-by arrangement” would be disbursed in several instalments over the next three years. It is designed to “support the 
new government’s reform plans and strengthen resilience against external shocks,” he said.

“The new government’s ambitious structural reform agenda appropriately focuses on fighting corruption, improving the business environment, and developing 
human capital and infrastructure,” added the IMF official. “In this regard, key measures include establishing an anti-corruption agency, strengthening corporate transparency and governance, and implementing active labor market policies.”

Pashinian reaffirmed his stated commitment to these reforms when he met with Samiei earlier on Tuesday. He also stressed the importance of IMF support for their implementation.

The IMF’s most recent lending program for Armenia, worth roughly $115 million, was launched in 2014 and completed in 2017. Samiei indicated the fund’s readiness to provide a fresh loan to the country during a March 2018 visit to Yerevan. He said he held “productive discussions” with then Prime Minister Karen Karapetian and members of his cabinet.

That visit came just weeks before the start of Pashinian-led mass protests that led to the resignation of Armenia’s former government. The new government, 
which took office in May, pledged to carry on with its predecessor’s IMF-backed efforts to improve tax collection and cut the state budget deficit.

In his latest statement, Samiei gave a largely positive assessment of the macroeconomic situation in Armenia. He cited “robust” economic growth recorded last year, the government’s rising tax revenues, a falling fiscal deficit, and low inflation.

“Looking ahead, growth is expected to moderate to about 4.5 percent in 2019, reflecting a weaker global environment and copper prices, and remain in the 4-5 
percent range over the medium term,” he said.

Samiei at the same time called for a further improvement in tax administration, saying that is critical for offsetting short-term “revenue losses” which he said will inevitably result from major tax cuts planned by Pashinian’s government.

Income tax rates in Armenia currently range from 23 percent to 36 percent. The highest rate is set for individuals earning 2 million drams ($4,100) or more.

A government bill which the Armenian parliament is expected to debate soon would introduce a flat rate for all individual taxpayers. It would be initially set at 23 percent and gradually cut to 20 percent. Government officials say that this will discourage tax evasion and stimulate faster growth in the country.

Samiei cautioned that the tax cuts could have positive effects on the economy only in the medium term. “Therefore, it is crucial to implement the envisaged 
package of tax policy measures to fully offset these [tax revenue] losses, while being mindful of the reform’s possible impact on equity,” said the IMF official.


News.am, Armenia
March 2 2019
346 people deported from Germany to Armenia last year 
                  
The number of deportations from Germany to Armenia increased last year, Der Spiegel reports quoting the data provided by the Ministry of Interior.

Overall, there were 346 deportations last year as compared to 184 in 2017. The number of deportations to Russia also increased significantly from 184 to 422.


PanArmenian, Armenia
March 1 2019
British expert weighs in on Armenia, Azerbaijan's stance on Karabakh 

British journalist and writer Thomas de Waal has weighed in on the Armenian and Azerbaijani sides' policies over the Nagorno Karabakh conflict in a new interview with Eurasia Diary.

According to him, Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan who took the post after leading nationwide protests against former authorities last April-May, is a different kind of leader for two reasons.

"First, he is much of a natural democrat than his predecessors. He genuinely wants to talk to society and hear the opinions of ordinary people. Secondly, he is from Yerevan and not from Karabakh, unlike his two predecessors. So he is more hesitant in saying that he can speak on behalf of the Karabakh Armenians. 

The previous political regime is also still in power in Karabakh and they are not Pashinyan’s natural allies. This explains Pashinyan’s different approach to the negotiations. He is ready to start a different kind of debate but he is not in a hurry," the expert says.

"Pashinyan says publicly that he wants the Karabakh Armenians to take part in the negotiations, as they did in the 1990s. To some extent, I believe he is taking this position to “play for time.” He does not want to rush ahead with an intensive negotiation process and wants to focus on domestic issues in Armenia. But I also believe he is genuine about this position. I am sure that, like every leader of Armenia, he understands the need for compromise on the Karabakh issue, but he wants to have genuine discussions inside society about this and he wants to reassure the Karabakh Armenians that he will not force them to take positions they do not like."

De Waal maintains that Azerbaijan’s fundamental position remains the same, but it has softened its stance on some smaller issues recently, so as to give Pashinyan more of a chance, to “cut him some slack.”

"The most significant move in my view is that Baku has agreed to the establishing of a “hot line” between military commanders on both sides. This will make the Line of Contact more predictable and undoubtedly save lives of young soldiers. So I see some progresses in de-escalating tensions on the front-line and resolving security problems. However the political positions of the two sides remain unchanged and it is much harder to see how they can make progress on political issues in the near future," he says.


News.am, Armenia
March 1 2019
Expert sees no progress in Armenia's agriculture sector 
                  
There is no progress in the agriculture sector in Armenia. This is what President of the Farmers' Movement NGO Sargis Sedrakyan told journalists on 1 March.

The expert emphasized that this was due to the uncertain future of the state policy in this sector. “Villagers don’t know if they will receive fuel, seeds and fertilizers or not. In the past, regional governors and government officials were corrupt. Now they are simply incompetent,” Sedrakyan added.

The expert noted that half of the country’s arable lands aren’t cultivated and it’s not clear how the issue of management efficiency is going to be solved without the existence of a ministry for agriculture. He also complained that the government continues to enlarge communities just like the former government was doing and that this will make villagers become poverty-stricken

Through its plan for optimization of the state apparatus, the government has decided to join the Ministry of Agriculture with the Ministry of Economic Development and Investments, but the draft law on joining the ministries has not been discussed in parliament yet.

[unbelievable amounts!]

Armenpress.am
28 February, 2019
Serzh Sargsyan’s brother donated $19,600,000 for military procurement – new details

The nearly $20,000,000 that former President Serzh Sargsyan’s brother Alexander Sargsyan donated to the state will be used for acquiring armaments for the military.

The National Security Service has disclosed details from the criminal case around Sargsyan in a response to an inquiry from RFE/RL’s Armenian service Azatutyun.

According to the report, Alexander Sargsyan has paid more than 3 billion drams in taxes as result of tax inspections amid the investigation, and has also voluntarily donated 19,600,000 dollars with the purpose of buying weaponry for the armed forces.

Alexander Sargsyan, a former lawmaker, is charged with fraud. He has been confined to the country limits with a signature bond, the National Security Service told Azatutyun.

According to the same source, Alexander Sargsyan’s other assets are frozen. These include nearly 4 million dollars.

Edited and translated by Stepan Kocharyan


The Guardian, UK
March 1 2019
Monumental loss: Azerbaijan and 'the worst cultural genocide of the 21st century'
 
A damning new report details an attempted erasure by Azerbaijan of its Armenian cultural heritage, including the destruction of tens of thousands of UNESCO-protected ancient stone carvings
by Dale Berning Sawa
 
Lost to time … some of Djulfa’s thousands of khachkars, circa 16th century, photographed in the 1970s before their destruction. Photograph: © Argam Ayvazyan archives, 1970-81
 
The 21st century’s most extensive campaign of cultural cleansing to date may not have happened in Syria, as you might assume, but a largely ignored part of the Transcaucasian plateau.
 
According to a lengthy report published in the art journal Hyperallergic in February, the Azerbaijani government has, over the past 30 years, been engaging in a systematic erasure of the country’s historic Armenian heritage. This official, albeit covert, destruction of cultural and religious artefacts exceeds Islamic State’s self-promotional dynamiting of Palmyra, according to the report’s authors, Simon Maghakyan and Sarah Pickman.
 
Maghakyan, a Denver-based analyst, activist and lecturer in political science, labels it “the greatest cultural genocide of the 21st century”. He grew up with stories about his father visiting a beautiful, mysterious place called Djulfa. Located in the Azerbaijani enclave of Nakhichevan, on the banks of the Araxes river, it was the site of a medieval necropolis, the largest ancient Armenian cemetery in the world. Visitors through the centuries, from Alexandre de Rhodes to William Ouseley, had noted the remote location’s splendour.
 
At its height, the graveyard counted around 10,000 khachkars, or cross stones, standing to attention, the earliest dating back to the 6th century. Unique to Armenian burial traditions, these distinctive tall steles of pinkish red and yellow stone feature crosses, figurative scenes and symbols, and highly decorative relief patterning. By the time the Soviets formalised the autonomous regions of Nagorno-Karabakh and Nakhichevan in 1920, after decades of plunder, less than 3,000 khachkars remained. Subsequent episodic vandalism led Unesco in 2000 to order that the monuments be preserved.
 
But that had little effect. On 15 December 2005, the prelate of northern Iran’s Armenian church, Bishop Nshan Topouzian, filmed – from across the river in Iran – the Azerbaijani military methodically laying waste with sledgehammers to all that remained of Djulfa. The soldiers loaded the debris on to truck beds and dumped it into the Araxes.
 
 
The footage can be found in a 2006 film entitled The New Tears of Araxes posted on YouTube, 

edited by Maghakyan and scripted by Pickman. It is chilling. Satellite research shows that, in 2003, the uneven, textured landscape was dotted with multiple small structures. By 2009, it is flattened and empty.
 
The Azerbaijani government has repeatedly refused international inspectors entry to the site, it has not responded to requests for comment – including for this article – and it has denied Armenians ever lived in Nakhichevan. Such stonewalling renders independent verification difficult, but the sheer amount of forensic evidence that Maghakyan and Pickman present makes a rock-solid case for at least not being deterred. Their contention is that the dramatic events at Djulfa marked the final stage of a broader campaign to denude Nakhichevan of its indigenous Armenian Christian past.
 
Underlining quite how little international attention has been paid to this story, most of the material on which this report is based was gathered not by official bodies but by individuals, who, like Maghakyan and Pickman, have operated on their own dime.
 
Local researcher Argam Ayvazyan, now exiled in Armenia, photographed 89 Armenian churches, 5,840 khachkars, and 22,000 tombstones between 1964 and 1987 – which the report states have all disappeared. A Scotsman named Steven Sim travelled on a whim to eastern Turkey in 1984 and has taken in excess of 80,000 slides and photographs over the past 35 years documenting ancient Armenian heritage across the region: “It was the nearest faraway place to Britain, at the time, that was cheap to go to,” he says. He’s been regularly returning ever since, amassing a 1,000-tome library – with many books by Ayvazyan – mostly on Armenian architecture.
 
Azerbaijan’s erstwhile national treasure Akram Aylisli, meanwhile, has lived under virtual house arrest since 2013, when he published writing critical of his government’s actions. He first protested what he termed “evil vandalism” in a 1997 telegram to the country’s president. “Such senseless action,” he wrote, “will be perceived by the world community as a manifestation of disrespect for religious and moral values.”
 
Sim points out that the Hyperallergic report fails to adequately explain the artistic value of what has been lost. Armenian architecture is unique, he says – deceptively minimal in appearance but highly sophisticated structurally and built to withstand the landscape’s seismic volatility. He describes the diminutive churches as more sculpture than building; single-volume dome-topped structures that look like they’ve been cast in stone. The khachkars, meanwhile, are regional, the meaning of the iconography and symbolism they display largely lost to time. That loss is most keenly felt with the destruction of the Djulfa cross stones, which featured scenes of daily medieval life – people riding horses, carrying water jugs, or picnicking in gardens, the food laid out on carpets – and strange mythical creatures including a four-legged hooved beast with two bodies, a single head and wings. “I’ve looked at thousands of khachkars throughout Armenia,” Sim says, “and I’ve only ever seen one which has this twin-bodied single-headed animal. But they all had them in Djulfa.”
 
The world rightfully recognised Isis’s wrecking of Palmyra as a war crime, an immense loss for the Syrian people and humanity as a whole. Maghakyan hopes Armenians and Azerbaijanis alike will see what has happened in Nakhichevan as a crime against all, committed by a ruthless regime. The Azerbaijani historian who acted as peer reviewer for the article, but wished to remain anonymous due to fears for their safety, told Maghakyan that the report was “for all of us, regardless of ethnicity and religion”, but especially for Azerbaijanis who had not lost or surrendered their conscience.

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