There are already more than 1,000 Azerbaijanis with armored vehicles in the area of Sev Lake. They also carry out construction work, Former Armenian Prime Minister Hrant Bagratyan wrote on his Facebook page.
"More than 1,000 Azerbaijanis with armored vehicles already live in the area of the lake. They are doing construction work. So they won't go away," he noted.
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FRESNO, Calif. (FOX26) — For years, Michelle Asadoorian saw new schools in Fresno Unified named after notable figures in the Latino, Hmong and Black communities.
She was hoping this would be the year a new school would be named after a prominent Armenian American.
Specifically, the late world-renowned journalist, Fresno State professor and Fresno native Roger Tatarian.
"He taught us to be good writers, and he cared," says Asadoorian, a former student of Tatarian and Fresno Unified Board Trustee. "He was one of the kindest, gentlest man you could ever meet."
A month-long survey of the community showed overwhelming support for naming the school after Tatarian, too.
Wednesday, her hopes were dashed when Fresno Unified School Board members voted to name the newest campus in the district after philanthropists Francine and Murray Farber.
The Farbers have lived in Fresno since 2003, and established a million-dollar endowment in honor of their late son, to provide scholarships to students at Tehipite Middle School.
"I'm not sure what the motivations are," said Superintendent Bob Nelson. "Individual board members have various motivations as to why they would nominate or suggest a certain person's name."
Nelson says while the survey was meant to gather suggestions for names, the decision is ultimately up to the board.
"The idea that those people suggesting names are actually voting, and that the board is just going to ratify their vote is actually not the process," Nelson said.
More than 900 of those surveyed suggested Tatarian.
There were 88 submissions in support of the Farbers.
Asadoorian says those surveys did carry weight when she was on the board.
The proof: Vang Pao Elementary, named after the revered Hmong leader, and Gaston Middle School, named after the African-American educator and community activist.
"We're seven percent of Fresno's metropolitan population and not one school is named after Armenians," Asadoorian said.
Nelson says he sees her point.
"I think that's a major oversight, and I think that has come out of this process for certain," Nelson said, adding there could be an opportunity to still name another school after Tatarian in the future.
Even so, Asadoorian says Wednesday's decision stings.
"The good part is, is we've kind of awakened the the bear and the the Armenians have now realized that they've got to exercise their rights and powers and that's what we plan to do moving forward," she said.
Even before the British East India Company joined other European settlers in the Bengal Subah in 1612, the Armenians had already established commercial settlements in Bengal, extending as far out as Benares and Patna much before the city of Calcutta was established.
Written by Neha Banka | Kolkata |
Updated: 10:02:38 pm
Eight decades later, when British East India Company employee Job Charnock combined the villages of Sutanuti, Gobindapur and Kalikata along the banks of the Hooghly river to form the city of Calcutta, he invited the Armenians to this new urban settlement, perhaps as a return for the favours that the community had provided when the East India Company had first reached Bengal. In his book ‘History of the Armenians in India from the Earliest Times to the Present Day’, published in 1895, Mesrovb Jacob Seth writes that the community was first settled in Syedabad, a commercial suburb of Murshidabad, when the British first arrived in Bengal.
Seth points to an entry in the writings of William Bolts, a Dutch-born British employee of the East India Company who wrote a book titled ‘Considerations on India Affairs’ (1772), that explains how the company viewed the Armenian community which had been well-established in Syedabad by the time the British had arrived.
“The Armenians, who have ever been a great commercial body in Hindustan, have also long had considerable settlements in Bengal, particularly at Syedabad. Their commerce was likewise established by the Mogul’s finnan whereby the duties on the two principal articles of their trade, piece-goods and raw silk, were fixed at three-and-a-half per cent,” writes Bolt.
When the Armenians first arrived in Calcutta, they settled in the area now known as ‘Armenian Street’, a narrow street in central Kolkata. In 1688, the Armenians built the Armenian Holy Church of Nazareth on one end of the street and it was around this church that the Armenian community set up their homes and businesses in the city.
There isn’t much known about what the area around Armenian Street looked like when the community first settled here, but in his book ‘Calcutta in the Olden Time: Its Localities & Its People’ (1852), James Long provides some details. “The Armenians are among the oldest residents, and their quarter attracts by its antique air, constructed with conspicuous modern buildings in Calcutta,” Long writes.
The community’s commercial success allowed them to invest in the building of schools, chapels and other public spaces, mostly for the Armenians in the city. When the 18th-century Armenian Apostolic church burned down, it was rebuilt in the same location in 1724 by philanthropist Agha Jakob Nazar. In their writings, both Seth and Long have meticulously detailed all the ways in which the community found favour with the British East India Company, which in part helped them become enormously successful.
“The Armenians, like the Jews, were famous for their mercantile zeal, and in the early days, were much employed by the English as the Gomasthas—they are to be commended for their always having retained the oriental dress—they never had much intercourse with the English,” writes Long. Gomasthas were agents of the British East India Company, who signed bonds with locals to deliver goods to the Company and were appointed by the Company.
The community did not remain limited to the neighbourhoods around Armenian Street, but over the years shifted out to other parts of the city and were instrumental in the redevelopment of some of the city’s most iconic neighbourhoods and the buildings that continue to stand there. Park Street’s mansions, which today house a mix of residential apartments and commercial enterprises, are some of the most visible examples of the community’s contributions to the city’s architectural landscape.
Historian P. Thankappan Nair writes in his book ‘A History of Calcutta’s Streets’ (1987) that according to an entry in the Calcutta Municipal Gazette of April 1958, it appears that the city’s Municipal Corporation had been considering the renaming of Armenian Street, with a proposal for it to be named Akshay Kumar Mullick Street. That proposal did not materialise and the street retains its original name. It is unclear who Mullick was or even what his contributions to the city of Calcutta were, for the municipal corporation to consider renaming an entire street after him, especially one that is among the city’s oldest neighbourhoods and of importance to the Armenian community here.
There is little on Armenian Street that reflects the community’s history today. The street has been overtaken by shops and hawkers who have set up their wares wherever they find space on the pavement. But upon entering the church complex, the chaos fades away behind its thick white walls. For the dwindling Armenian community, it is this church and the 200-year-old Armenian College & Philanthropic Academy on Mirza Ghalib Street that is helping keep the community’s unique cultural traditions alive.
Azerbaijan is just one of many client governments whose war crimes the U.S. ignores to keep military assistance flowing.
The U.S. has a habit of ignoring its own laws when it comes to arming and supporting authoritarian regimes. The latest example of this came last month when the Biden administration waived Section 907 of the Freedom Support Act, which was created to block U.S. military assistance to Azerbaijan during and after the first Karabakh war.
One administration after another has issued this waiver since it became available in 2002 in the name of counter-terrorism cooperation, but events in the last year have made the usual rubber-stamping of supplying weapons to the Aliyev regime much more controversial, and rightly so. Azerbaijan’s aggressive military campaign in Karabakh last year was exactly what the original cutoff in military assistance was intended to discourage, and the assault on Karabakh proved that Baku’s commitment to diplomacy was a lie. Issuing the waiver in the wake of the second Karabakh war is indefensible. Doing so shortly after recognizing the Armenian genocide is a slap in the face to the Armenian-American community, and it makes a mockery of the Biden administration’s pretensions to making human rights central to its foreign policy.
Azerbaijan is just one of many client governments whose war crimes the U.S. has ignored in order to keep military assistance flowing. Enabling further aggression against the people of Karabakh and Armenia is a particularly obnoxious and shameful example of how our government’s partnerships with corrupt authoritarian states puts innocent lives in jeopardy.
Within weeks of the administration’s decision, there were already reports of new incursions by Azerbaijan’s forces into Armenian territory. These incursions come on the heels of reports that as many as 19 Armenian prisoners held in captivity by Azerbaijan have been tortured and executed. Instead of holding Aliyev’s government accountable for these outrages and the many other war crimes committed during the war, the Biden administration acts as if nothing has happened and everything is business as usual.
To issue the waiver, the Secretary of State had to certify that U.S. military assistance will not “undermine or hamper ongoing efforts to negotiate a peaceful settlement between Armenia and Azerbaijan or be used for offensive purposes against Armenia.” Blinken’s decision to make that certification was a terrible mistake. Letting Azerbaijan off the hook for its recent war crimes against Armenian civilians and prisoners is bound to hamper efforts at reaching a peaceful settlement, and it is likely to encourage Azerbaijan to launch another attack. Azerbaijan was the aggressor in last year’s war, and now they are being rewarded for that aggression. It is not hard to imagine that Aliyev could interpret this as tacit approval for starting another war in the future. At the very least, it sends the message to Aliyev and other authoritarian clients that the U.S. privileges supporting them over upholding the requirements of our own laws and international law.
Rep. Adam Schiff, the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, has criticized the Biden administration’s decision to issue the waiver: “We should not be providing military funding to a nation that habitually engages in human rights violations and violates the sovereignty of its neighbors.”
Congress should demand that the Biden administration justify the decision to waive the restriction on military assistance. Specifically, members of Congress should insist that Secretary Blinken explain why he signed off on this when the government of Azerbaijan is putting its war crimes on display in its appalling Military Trophies Park, complete with “ghoulish displays of helmets and caricatured mannequins of Armenian soldiers.” The dehumanization of Armenians has become a major feature of Azerbaijan’s official ideology, and by supporting Azerbaijan’s government the U.S. is giving its stamp of approval to a regime that both denies the Armenian genocide and threatens to commit another one.
Another condition for issuing the waiver requires that it is deemed necessary to support U.S. efforts to counter international terrorism. Blinken’s decision to issue the waiver doesn’t make much sense here, either, since it is well-documented that Azerbaijan was recruiting mercenaries from among Syrian jihadists to support its attack on Karabakh. Far from being a reliable partner in counter-terrorism, Azerbaijan has been recruiting terrorists so that it can commit acts of aggression against its neighbors.
It is no accident that the amendment that created the waiver for Section 907 was passed just a few months after the September 11 attacks. Our government’s “war on terror” has spawned a host of destructive policies, and establishing a closer security relationship with the dictatorship in Azerbaijan in the name of combating terrorism was one of them.
We need to consider carefully why the U.S. provides military assistance to Azerbaijan in the first place. Azerbaijan is not a treaty ally. The U.S. does not owe their government anything. The country has been an important route for logistical support for the war in Afghanistan, but now that U.S. involvement in the war is drawing to a close that will no longer be necessary. There might be extraordinary circumstances where the U.S. is forced to work with an abusive and corrupt dictatorship like Azerbaijan as a temporary expedient, but that isn’t the case here. The U.S. doesn’t benefit from this relationship enough to justify a long-term partnership with such an odious government. The U.S. has no compelling reason to continue providing military assistance to Azerbaijan. It is time for our government to follow the law and put an end to it.
There are some hard-liners in Washington that were cheerleading for Azerbaijan during its aggressive war in Karabakh, and they are no doubt pleased with the Biden administration’s decision to ignore Azerbaijan’s many crimes. According to the hard-liners’ view, backing Azerbaijan is not only tolerable but necessary to counter Russian and Iranian influence in the region. This is a warped view that has nothing to do with U.S. interests, but this latest indulgence by the Biden administration will give the hard-liners’ position a boost in Washington.
As a candidate, Joe Biden liked to call out the Trump administration and Donald Trump personally for his indulgence and flattery of dictators around the world. Biden gave everyone reason to expect that he would not simply cater to authoritarian regimes and do them favors once he was president. Since taking office, however, Biden has made a series of wrong decisions that have rewarded authoritarian clients and allowed some of Trump’s worst policies to remain intact.
Presented with the opportunity to undo Trump’s decision to recognize Moroccan sovereignty over Western Sahara, Biden has demurred, and it now appears that no reversal of that decision will be forthcoming. Given the chance to block an unjustifiable $23 billion sale of advanced weapons to the United Arab Emirates, Biden has let it go ahead. Issuing the waiver for military assistance to Azerbaijan makes the same kind of mistake.
If Biden and Blinken want to make good on their rhetoric about emphasizing the importance of human rights in their foreign policy, they should begin by cutting off all military assistance to Azerbaijan. U.S. and Turkish support for Azerbaijan have served to create a menace in the Caucasus. The least that the U.S. can do is to stop aiding that menace as it threatens the stability of the region.
– 17:39 AMT
PanARMENIAN.Net – The Russian Federation stands for the arrangement of a UNESCO mission to Nagorno-Karabakh as soon as possible, the official representative of the Russian Foreign Ministry Maria Zakharova told reporters on Friday, May 21.
Her comments came in response to a question about Russia's position as a co-chair of the OSCE Minsk Group on the vandalism of Azerbaijan against Armenian cultural heritage in Karabakh. UNESCO has said on multiple occasions that Azerbaijani is delaying its approval for a mission to Karabakh (Artsakh) to assess damage to cultural and religious sites.
“The preservation of cultural and historical heritage in Nagorno-Karabakh and adjacent regions is regularly discussed in our contacts with Baku and Yerevan. The matter was discussed during the working visit of Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov to Armenia and Azerbaijan in the first half of May. We support the early organization of a UNESCO mission to the region. We also work along the lines of the OSCE Minsk Group co-chairs, ”Zakharova noted.
She added that a statement issued by the co-chairs on April 13 mentioned that the preservation and protection of religious and cultural heritage are among the issues that require additional efforts from Azerbaijan and Armenia.
During the recent military hostilities, Azerbaijani forces launched two targeted attacks on the Holy Savior Ghazanchetsots Cathedral in Shushi. Azerbaijan earlier "restored" a church by replacing its Armenian inscription with glass art. Furthermore, Azeri President Ilham Aliyev visited the region of Hadrut in territories occupied by Azerbaijan and declared his intention to "renovate" a 12th century Armenian church, which he claimed to "an Albanian church". Aliyev went so far as to accuse Armenians of leaving "fake inscriptions" in the Armenian language.
Zangezur TV visited on May 20 Khoznavar settlement of enlarged Tegh community of Armenia’s Syunik province.
The information that the adversary again violated Armenia’s border in the territory of Lake Sev has officially been confirmed. The enemy has taken under target Khoznavar which is just 2km away from adversary’s positions.
The residents of the settlement first of all demand weapon for defense. One of the residents said after learning the news the women and children of the settlement were evacuated in an hour.
The community office though assures that the situation in Khoznavar settlement is calm.
“Late in the evening head of the community Nerses Shadunts, border guards of army corpus and squad of Tegh village returned to their starting positions. Everything is being done to keep the situation stable. At this moment all the positions of the community are under our control. The residents passed to their routine,” the press release said.
With alleged document no territory of Armenia will be conceded, My Step deputy Ruben Rubinyan told the reporters on Friday.
“No handing over or exchanging of territories has been discussed,” Rubinyan said.
Asked whether there are exact timeframes of signing the document, Rubinyan said it depends on whether Armenia's condition is accepted or not.
To note, Armenia’s former ambassador Mikayel Minasyan published an extract from a document Armenian PM, Russian and Azerbaijani leaders are going to sign.
Minasyan said with it the Armenian authorities are handing to Azeri side five villages of Tavush province and one in Ararat.
Later, at the cabinet sitting on Thursday, Pashinyan stated that if Azerbaijan carries out the arrangements he will sign the document.
On May 20 Armenia’s Ministry of Defense organized the visit of the military attaches of foreign embassies accredited in Armenian to Syunik province to get familiarized with the situation created as a result of incursion of Azeri militaries into the territory of Armenia on spot.
Armenia MOD reports that the representatives of the commandership responsible sub-division of the Armenian Armed Forces briefed to the military attaches the situation created after May 12 and the developments, the actions undertaken by the Armenian side, answered to the questions the military attaches were interested in.
Accompanied with the commandership representatives, the military attaches visited the territory near Lake Sev, recorded the presence of the Azerbaijani militaries in the territory of Armenia, observed the deployment of the Armenian and Azerbaijani forces in the area.