Month: February 2021

UN human rights experts today called for the prompt release of prisoners of war and other captives from the recent Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, and for the return of bodies to families for burial with due respect for cultural customs, according to the statement released by the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (UN Human Rights)

“Everyone deprived of their liberty for reasons related to the conflict should be returned to their homes, and relatives of those killed must be able to receive the mortal remains of their loved ones, in line with the ceasefire agreement signed on 9 November 2020,” the experts said.

“We are alarmed at allegations that prisoners of war and other protected persons have been subjected to extrajudicial killing, enforced disappearance, torture and other ill-treatment,” the experts said, adding: “No exceptional circumstances whatsoever – whether a state of war, internal political instability or any other public emergency – may be invoked as a justification of torture and enforced disappearances,” they said. “Such acts, when perpetrated in armed conflict, may also constitute war crimes.”

It is reminded of numerous reports of human rights violations against civilians and military captives, and of desecration of the dead.

“We are seriously alarmed at reported acts of ill-treatment and the desecration of bodies,” the experts said. “We note that both parties have commenced the return of prisoners of war and other captives, and we call on them to complete the all for all exchange, to clarify the fate and whereabouts of the disappeared, and to treat dead bodies with dignity.

“We appeal to the authorities of Armenia and Azerbaijan to carry out thorough, prompt, independent and impartial investigations into allegations of serious human rights violations committed during the conflict and its aftermath in order to hold perpetrators to account and provide redress to the victims. These actions will facilitate truth, reconciliation and healing,” they said.

The experts will continue to engage with the authorities of both countries and closely monitor the situation, according to the statement. 

Dudukman Production company and Lecturer at Yerevan State Conservatory Emanuel Hovhannisyan have initiated an international duduk festival-contest to take place in Yerevan from April 5 to May 5. As the organizers of the festival report, the event is aimed at promoting the legacy of the Armenian unique instrument as well as reveal new talents among young musicians. 

The festival-contest is open to young duduk players under 22 from over the world. 

The contest will take place in three stages. All performances of the contest will be recorded and shared on social media platforms of Dudukman Production. The best musicians will have an opportunity to cooperate with well-known musicians as well as take master classes from best specialists of the sphere. 

The Jury of the competition will comprise of renowned musicians and specialists. The deadline for participation is March 15 with submission to be sent to  and [email protected] email addresses. 

Belgian-Armenian pianist Ashot Khachatourian will perform with the Armenian National Philharmonic Orchestra on February 4 at 19:00 at Aram Khachaturian Concert Hall in Yerevan. As the Orchestra reported in a release, before the main concert, Khachatourian along with his friends will perform a charity concert on February 2  proceeds of which will be used to buy a grand piano for Stepanakert musical school. The February 4 concert programme features Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No.3 and Symphony No.2. 

Ahot Khachatourian is considered as one of the most inspiring artists of his generation. He started playing the piano at the age of five with Valentina Melikyan and Elena Galustova at the Charles Aznavour Music School in his home country. He then continued his studies with Gerard Wyss in Basel, Switzerland,  Eliso Virssaladze in Fiesole, Italy, and Maria João Pires at the Queen Elisabeth Music Chapel in Brussels. He is a member of the Partitura Movement created by Maria João Pires.

Ashot Khachatourian has particularly excelled in his interpretations of Rachmaninov’s 2nd and 3rd concertos. He won the 1st Prize of the Rachmaninov Piano Competition in 2006 and the 1st Prize of the Martha Argerich Piano Competition in 2007. He is also a Prize winner of the Top of the World Piano Competition in 2011 and Concours d’Epinal in 2013.

The young virtuoso has been invited to perform in BBC Radio London St Luke’sand with many important orchestras such as the London Chamber Orchestra, the Norway Radio Orchestra, Orchestra of the Eighteenth Century, the Basel Symphony Orchestra, the Wallonie Royal Chamber Orchestra, The Olympique Orchestra, and to collaborate with masters such as Jan Caeyers, Rodolfo Fisher, Augustin Dumay, Daniele Gatti, Thomas Søndergård, Christopher Warren-Green and others.

"The intentions of the ultra-right nationalist Turkish Nationalist Movement Party and its affiliated extremist neo-fascist organization ‘Gray Wolves’ to implement certain projects in the occupied territories of the Republic of Artsakh, in particular, in the town of Shushi, are of great concern, Artsakhj Foreign Ministry said in a statement. 

It is noted that the presence of any kind of foreign forces in the occupied territories of Artsakh, promoting the ideology of pan-Turkism and neo-fascism and resorting to terror as the main means of achieving their goals, poses a great threat not only to the Republic of Artsakh, but also to regional and global security. "The fact that these forces are supported by the top leaderships of Turkey and Azerbaijan for the implementation of their projects in occupied Shushi testifies to the plans of Ankara and Baku to create hotbeds of tensions in the region and the neighboring countries, as well as to undermine the efforts of the international community for the peaceful, comprehensive, and just settlement of the Azerbaijan-Karabakh conflict," said the ministry. 

According to the source, the dispatch of ultra-right neo-fascist forces to the occupied territories of Artsakh, as well as the use of international terrorists during the period of armed aggression against Artsakh, are links in the same chain in Turkey's expansionist policy towards not only Artsakh and the South Caucasus, but also to the neighboring regions.

"This policy of Turkey and Azerbaijan deserves the most severe condemnation and requires the international community, interested organizations and structures to take appropriate immediate actions aimed at preventing and suppressing such destructive initiatives," the statement concluded. 

Armenian political scientist Suren Sargsyan took to Facebook on Monday to comment on “failed” relations between Armenia and China.

"The past 2.5-3 years were marked by a total failure in foreign policy. Both the Armenian-Russian strategic relations and the Armenian-US and Armenian-Chinese friendly ties have failed,” he said.

The expert noted that Armenian-Chinese relations have always been at a high level, adding both sides have always highlighted that Armenia and China have similar or identical positions on various international issues.

“Unfortunately, in recent years, as a result of a number of serious failures of the Armenian authorities, a different attitude has been adopted towards us.

“1. In May 2019 the prime minister visited China. As a result of the high-level meetings, a number of agreements were reached (including on the “One Belt, One Road"), but due to the incompetence and amateurism of the authorities, they were not implemented.

“2. In 2019 Taiwan’s minister of economy visited Armenia. Meanwhile, we have signed a declaration with China, according to which Armenia has undertaken not to establish any official relations with Taiwan. Naturally, denials (clarifications, pledges) followed, but the Chinese side had already drawn appropriate conclusions.

“3. In 2019 Armenia joined the International Religious Freedom Alliance. a movement that is strongly against China and the Trump administration did not hide it. The Armenian side tried to substantiate the "unfounded". No serious argument was made as to why joining the movement was in Armenia's interests. The Chinese side made appropriate conclusions.

“Even after all this, you are still surprised by China's position in the UN Security Council,” Sargsyan wrote. 

Russian Security Council Deputy Chairman Dmitry Medvedev called President Vladimir Putin’s efforts on normalization of situation in Nagorno-Karabakh ‘precision work’ on Monday, TASS reported. 

Speaking in an interview for the media, he reminded about the 2016 escalation between Azerbaijan and Armenia, adding that "a roadmap was prepared at the time, but, unfortunately, the two countries did not use it the," which "led to a new conflict, a prolonged one, with many victims."

"It is very good that, thanks to the efforts of the Russian President – and this was precision work, I watched Vladimir Vladimirovich work once, he engaged in hours-long discussions with all participants of this conflict –without this work, this conflict could have continued right now," Medvedev underscored.

He added that "it is a huge work that both Armenia and Azerbaijan should be very grateful for to the Russian president."

Medvedev said that after the "hot phase" of the conflict ended in November 2020, "the situation has mostly settled, and this is the most important thing, people don’t die, and there are opportunities for development." 

Azerbaijan did not allow search operations for killed and missing servicemen in the Nagorno-Karabakh (Artsakh) war zone on Sunday, the State Service of Emergency Situations of Artsakh’s Ministry of Internal Affairs said on Monday.

The Azerbaijani authorities did not specify a reason for their decision, Hunan Tadevosyan, the head of the Information and Public Relations Department of the State Service of Emergency Situations, told Panorama.am.

Search operations continue today in Hadrut and Varanda (Fizuli) regions.

Since the end of the 2020 Artsakh war, rescue squads have recovered 1,345 bodies of fallen soldiers and civilians from the battle zones.

The rights of Armenian citizens should be at the core of decisions in the process of determining Armenia’s state borders, Human Rights Defender (Ombudsman) Arman Tatoyan said in a statement late on Sunday. The full text of his statement is below.

"When in 1923, in order to artificially separate Armenia from Artsakh, “Red Kurdistan” was formed, the border disputes with Zangezur of the Armenian SSR intensified. One of the main concerns consistently raised by the people of Zangezur at the time was the issue of the rights of the villagers to the lands, along with the winter and summer time pastures and gardens.

For example, in October of 1925, a member of the State Committee of the Armenian SSR, A. Yerznkyan, by way of a reference stated that the areas West of the border with Meghri and Karyagino (Jabrayil) were mainly winter pastures, which were actually used by the residents of the villages of Kapan and Meghri without grasslands. One of the main reasons was that without these pastures, the livestock of the villages in the referenced regions would be paralyzed.

In another case, the head of the local commission for demarcation of the borders of Zangezur "between the provinces of Kurdistan," Ya. Kochetkov, by way of an example, based his disagreement with the Azeri proposals on the village of Teghut on the fact that it is one of the districts of Shvanidzor, where the lands (gardens and pastures) are so intertwined that it will be impossible to separate them.

The same disputes over the rights of the villagers took place between the villages of Kapan and Zangelan, Khoznavar and Azerbaijan.

In 1924, 1926, 1929, and 1935 sessions of the local commission of the USSR tasked with resolving the border disputes and relevant issues, it is clear from the materials memorializing the efforts of these years, that discussions pertaining to the rights of the villagers of the USSR have repeatedly been woefully inadequate. For example, Zangezur's scarcity of "village-to-village" connections (administrative, economic, etc.) was ignored, and without an accounting of the difficulties that might arise for the rights of villagers.

Complete add careful attention was also not paid to the security of the villages (attacks by various gangs on Armenian villages from Kurdistan, thefts, etc.), which directly affected the use of pastures and other lands by the villagers (for example, when the 21 villages of the Voghji Basut River Basin were handed over to the Jabrail Province of Azerbaijan).

All of these shortcomings once again confirm that the rights of the citizens of the Republic of Armenia should be the basis of decisions when engaged in the process of determining the borders; it is necessary to take into account all the mistakes made in the past; to learn the necessary lessons from them; and to not permit violations or disregard of rights."

Armenian Doctor of History, Professor Hamlet Petrosyan, who leads the archeological excavations in Artsakh’s Tigranakert, reacted to another slander by Azerbaijan in a statement on Sunday. The full text of the statement is below.

"In the Azerbaijani media domain, they post pictures from my Facebook page, which show, among others, the packaging of the materials of the Tigranakert Archaeological Museum. The Azerbaijanis present the materials of the excavations in Tigranakert as "the result of illegal excavations", describing the evacuation of these items from the war zone as "theft of Azerbaijani cultural heritage".

I would like to remind the semi-literate propagandists of the aggressive state that the archeological excavations in Tigranakert were carried out at the official invitation and with the permission of the Artsakh authorities, that they were financed from the Artsakh state budget. The Tigranakert Archaeological Museum was established, operated by the decision of the legitimate authorities of Artsakh, with funding of the government of Artsakh. The archeological research of Tigranakert was carried out on a full legal basis, with high professionalism, the results of the research were regularly presented to the international scientific community. It's just ridiculous to talk about a secret process.

Let me mention that Azerbaijani archaeologists, who worked in the area in the 60s and 80s of the last century, did not see the archeological traces of the old city. I urge them not to be so jealous of what they have not been able to find.

During the 44-day war, Tigranakert became an area of enemy shelling, about which we have warned more than once. As a result, the Tigranakert archeological site were completely destroyed. The Artsakh authorities and I, our research team, could not allow the Tigranakert Archaeological Museum to suffer such a fate. The archeological findings of Tigranakert are the property of the people of Artsakh, the issues of its protection are not within the competence of Baku, but Stepanakert. In case of peace, they will be returned to Stepanakert and will be exhibited in the museum to be created for it.

The fact that Artsakh is not politically recognized does not deprive its indigenous people of their right to culture. Including the right to research and promote cultural heritage. So, the archeological research of Tigranakert was carried out on an absolutely legal basis.

The Azerbaijani ideology of depriving the people of Artsakh of their cultural heritage is a continuation of the genocide of the Armenian cultural heritage. Genocide, which we have witnessed for decades, genocide, which culminated in 2005-2006 by destruction of thousands of khachkars in Jugha, the genocide that gained momentum during Azerbaijan's and Turkey’s recent aggression, continues every day. And it can not be justified by false political statements and false accusations.

My colleagues and I will continue the research of Artsakh's cultural heritage, its popularization and the revelations of Azerbaijani vandalism. Aggression, military domination, defamation of international bodies are not competent and cannot deprive the people of Artsakh of the right to preserve their identity with their cultural heritage."