Author: Andranik Taslakhchian

DigiTec Expo technological exhibition launches in Armenia

Andranik Taslakhchian
PanArmenian, Armenia
Sept 29 2017
DigiTec Expo technological exhibition launches in Armenia

The 13th annual international DigiTec Expo technological exhibition launched in Armenia on Friday, September 29.

This year, the DigiTec is unprecedented in terms of the number of participants, with around 150 participants attending the event.

The participants of DigiTec have started unveiling the latest developments and trends of the sector, innovations and job opportunities of the current market. Business meetings, competitions, forums, seminars and other events are also being held.

Among the participants of DigiTec 2017 are such Armenian leading companies as Joomag, Ucom, Arpinet, VOLO, Zangi, Monitis, SFL, ArmSoft.

DigiTec 2017 hosts participants and delegations from Japan, China, India, Sweden, Russia, USA, Canada and other countries. Among the international participants such companies as the Dahua Technology from China, Hitachi Construction Machinery Eurasia and Mitsubishi Heavy Industries from Japan, Ericsson from Sweden, Jabra from Denmark and others will participate.

The delegation of the National Armenian Educational and Cultural Union visited the Ministry of Diaspora

Andranik Taslakhchian 
Please find the attached press release of the Ministry of Diaspora.
Sincerely,
Media and PR Department:
( 374 10) 585601, internal 805
----------------------
Sincerely
Department of Press and Public Relations
( 374 10) 585601, extension 805


375. RA Minister of Diaspora received the delegation of Hamazkayin.docx
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No Classes Today in Pyunik; Parents Protest Government Decision to Close Village School

Andranik Taslakhchian
16:00, September 1, 2017


Instead of presenting their new teachers with flowers today, the first day of the new school year, first graders in the Kotayk village of Pyunik, escorted by their parents, gathered in the village square to protest an August 24 government decision that will close the school in two months and have the pupils attend classes in the the neighboring village of Artavaz.

 Parents in Pyunik say that closing the village school is synonymous with closing the village.

Administratively, Pyunik (population 450) is specified as a part of the larger Artavaz community. Their combined population is 1,116. The two are populated by Armenians who fled Azerbaijan in the late 1980s.

There are nine 1st graders in Pyunik this year, and residents say their numbers are increasing.

Residents are fearful that the closing of the school will result in people leaving Pyunik. They also point out that kids will have to travel three kilometers to the school in Artavaz, often on foot, due to the lack of reliable transportation.

“Imagine what the children will have to go through in the winter, with snow on the ground,” said Irina Logvenova, a mother of four. Three of her children attend school; one is in the first grade.

“They all end at different times of the day. How will I manage picking them up? No parent will let their child attend that school. We’ll hold classes in the schoolyard until the government realizes something must be done,” Logvenova said.

Pyunik resident Lousineh Vardanyan said that the government really threw cold water on the village’s September 1 festivities.

“The government has decided to darken our children’s days. Is this how they raise the education level? When it snows, the streets aren’t cleaned for days. Those with a car can get around. Those who don’t stay home. How will a six-year-old get to that other school every day?” Vardanyan asks.

Pyunik parents also believe their school is in better shape than the one in Artavaz.

Principal Gagik Marabyan and the teachers waited patiently inside, but none of their pupils ever entered the building.

Marabyan said that he couldn’t participate in the protest in his capacity as principal. He wasn’t aware that as principal, he was obligated to convene a meeting and sit down with parents to discuss the problem, and to then contact the provincial governor.

It appears that the provincial government was aware that parents will planning to boycott the school, since it sent a bulletin to Marabyan yesterday.

Marabyan believes the protest is ill-timed and that parents should have sent their children to school today.

He said that parents should have waited a month to see if the government was willing to review its decision. The principal is optimistic that it will.

Resident Yervand Naltakyan employed a bit of satire to describe how the village has been mistreated by the central government.

“Tigran Sargsyan’s government did us a favor when he gave some of our lands to a Saudi sheikh in an eminent domain deal. Today, Prime Minister Karen Karapetyan does us a favor by closing the school. It’s an education, a spiritual center. Does optimization mean closing schools? It’s sacrilege.”

Artavaz School Principal Borik Kondjoryan told Hetq that his school has an enrollment of 70, and the one in Pyunik, 42. He says that conditions in the two are similar. He says that argument of parents in Pyunik that the roads are closed for days due to the snow isn’t correct, and that there was only one day last winter when he couldn’t drive his car from Hrazdan to Artavaz. Kondjoryan says that there are even teachers who travel every day from Hrazdan to Artavaz.

As the day wore on, police appeared on the scene. Soon after, Kotayk Deputy Provincial Governor Moushegh Manasyan arrived and said he wanted to hear the concerns of parents. He refrained from expressing any opinion on the matter.

When we asked Artavaz Mayor Rem Hovhannisyan how much money is spent on cleaning roads during the winter, he replied, 100,000 AM.

Deputy Provincial Governor Moushegh Manasyan told Hetq that all school in smaller villages are set to merge.

Currently, the central government allocates 17million AMD yearly to keep it running. Parents say they can raise the amount from benefactors if need be; just to keep the school from closing.

Pyunik residents say that will march on the Government Building in Yerevan if the decision to close the school isn’t revised, and will hand over the flowers the children brought to school today to Prime Minister Karen Karapetyan and Minister of Education Levon Mkrtchyan.

Until then, parents will keep their children at home.

In the first half of 2017, Armenia increased the volume of polished exports by 92.5% per annum, with imports growing by 52.4%

Andranik Taslakhchian 
ARMINFO News Agency, Armenia
 Saturday
In the first half of 2017, Armenia increased the volume of polished
exports by 92.5% per annum, with imports growing by 52.4%
Yerevan August 26
Alina Hovhannisyan. In the first half of 2017, Armenia sharply
increased polished exports - by 92.5% per annum, against growth of 2.3
times for the same period in 2016, and by 70% in the same period in
2015. A positive trend was also registered for the import of products
of the lapidary industry, where in quantitative terms the volumes of
supplies increased by 52.4% in the first half of 2017 (against the
growth of 2 times in the same period in 2016, and a decrease of 57% in
the same period of 2015).
According to the data of the RA Customs Service, in the first half of
the year 2017, Armenia exported 133.8 thousand carats of diamonds, the
customs value of which increased by 17.9% per annum to $ 53.1 million.
From Armenia, raw materials are exported mainly to the United Arab
Emirates (38.4%), Russia (24.3%), Belgium (19.5% %), Switzerland
(7.4%), and the rest is in the USA, Canada, and Germany.
Meanwhile, during the reporting period, 244.2 thousand carats of rough
diamonds worth $ 75.3 million (with an annual growth of 28.2%) were
imported to the republic. Primarily, rough diamonds are imported to
Armenia from the United Arab Emirates (53%), Belgium (11.1%), Russia
(8%), Switzerland (7.9%), Canada (6.8%), India (6.7%) and the rest
from Thailand, South Africa, and Hong Kong. By way of comparison, we
note that for the first half of the year in 2016 Armenia exported 69.5
thousand carats of diamonds worth $ 45 million, and imported 160.2
thousand tons of diamonds carat with a total value of $ 59 million.
Armenia does not have its own diamond deposits and imports rough
diamonds for further processing and export of diamonds mainly to the
same countries from which raw materials are imported. Traditionally,
the import of diamonds exceeds exports, which is explained in the
Ministry of Economy by their re-export to third countries. Armenia's
accession to the Eurasian Economic Union has banned the re-export of
rough diamonds.
Many international experts are inclined to believe that for almost the
whole year the precious stones market will be stable. But by the end
of the year the situation can change significantly. This is due to the
fact that recently there is a strong shortage of stones. To this state
of affairs has led to the fact that the existing resources are quite
exhausted. In other words, the resources of mines where stones are
mined are very much depleted. Worldwide, very few diamonds are
currently mined. It is this state of affairs that will lead to the
fact that the demand for these stones will increase significantly. But
the very diamond will be very small in order to fill the market.
According to some experts in the diamond market, the demand for
diamonds will be observed for a long time. Therefore, there is a great
opportunity to invest in diamonds. International experts believe that
the polished market will be quite stable until 2020. The growth in the
value of polished diamonds may be further influenced only by
macroeconomic uncertainty, which will inevitably be combined with
access to financing. But, despite this the minimum cost of precious
stones is not expected.

Author Meline Toumani to give Luther College Opening Convocation address

Andranik Taslakhchian
Decorah Journal

Aug 23 2017


Wednesday, 8:36 AM

Interested in seeing the humanity in those with whom we are at odds, Meline Toumani, author of “There Was and There Was Not,” will give the Luther College Opening Convocation address Thursday, Aug. 31.


Convocation begins at 9:40 a.m. in the Center for Faith and Life Main Hall on the Luther campus and is open to the public with no charge for admission.
Toumani will address “The Identities We Inherit, the Identities We Create.” Specifically, she will focus on humanity and recognizing humanity in others. She’ll discuss how to process information given as children, maintain a sense of identity and move into adulthood, and how to live with unanswerable questions and process atrocities as both the victim and the participant.

Her first book, “There Was and There Was Not: A Journey Through Hate and Possibility in Turkey, Armenia, and Beyond,” was a finalist for the 2014 National Book Critics Circle Award and the 2015 Dayton Literary Peace Prize. The nonfiction work explores the questions surrounding what happened in Armenia in 1915 and searches for the truth behind the drive for genocide recognition and denial.

Toumani uses her own heritage as an ethnic Armenian raised in the United States to question what she perceives as a hatred for the Turks by her Armenian-American community. In an effort to learn more, she traveled to Turkey. For four years, Toumani interviewed Turkish scholars, visited Armenian villages and developed friendships with both Turks and Kurds. The result is a book that humanizes Turks but also encourages them to acknowledge the genocide. At the same time, she raises questions for Armenians about the ultimate value of genocide recognition in relation to other political and economic priorities.

A Boston Globe book review described Toumani’s efforts as a “clear-eyed, nuanced memoir…As Toumani bravely exposes the fissures in her thinking about identity, she is also cautiously optimistic that Turks are moving toward recognizing what happened in 1915.”

The memoir was chosen as the all-college 2017 summer reading.

“There Was and There Was Not,” published in 2014, is Toumani’s first book. She has written for The New York Times Sunday Magazine, in addition to Harper’s, The Nation, The Boston Globe, Newsday, The National and other cultural pages. As a foreign reporter, she’s worked in Turkey, Armenia, Georgia and Russia. She’s held staff editorial positions at The New York Times Magazine, KQED Public Media and GreatSchools.

Toumani graduated from the University of California Berkeley with high honors in English and public policy. She went on to earn a master’s degree in journalism from the Cultural Reporting and Criticism Program at New York University. From 2002 to 2003, she was the coordinator of the Russian American Journalism Institute in Rostov-On-Don, Russia. She was a journalism fellow in residence at the Institute for Human Sciences in Vienna in 2007. 

A national liberal arts college with an enrollment of 2,000, Luther offers an academic curriculum that leads to the bachelor of arts degree in more than 60 majors and pre-professional programs. For more information about Luther, visit the college’s website: luther.edu.


German author arrested during vacation in Spain on Turkey’s behest

Andranik Taslakhchian 
dpa-AFX International , Germany
 Saturday 5:42 PM GMT
German author arrested during vacation in Spain on Turkey's behest
Berlin (dpa) - Dogan Akhanli, a Germany-based author of Turkish
origin, has been detained in Spain on the behest of Turkey, his lawyer
told dpa, though it is unclear what he is being accused of. The German
Foreign Ministry on Saturday confirmed only that it knew of the
incident and was working on offering consular support.
Spanish police, who also said the detention request came from Turkey,
told local media that Akhanli would be handed over to authorities.
Akhanli's lawyer, Ilias Uyar, told a German newspaper that a so-called
red notice from Interpol had been out for the author. He was therefore
arrested Saturday morning while on vacation in Granada. Akhanli has
written extensively about the Armenian genocide, and the arrest was
meant as the latest shot in the ongoing spat between Turkey and
Germany, according to Spiegel, citing security sources. The PEN
writer's association said the arrest was 'clearly politically
motivated,' and the head of the group's German branch, Sascha
Feuchert, called on Spain not to extradite Akhanli to Turkey. Akhanli,
a German citizen, has been living in Germany since he fled Turkey in
1991. Akhanli was cleared in absentia by a Turkish court in 2011 after
being wanted for robbery and homicide since 1989. However, his
exoneration was later overturned by a higher court, saying he was
linked to terrorists. A red notice issued by Interpol is a request
from a member country or international tribunal to arrest an
individual pending extradition. However, member countries are not
forced to arrest those flagged. Copyright dpa

Armenian Bar Association Protests Americana’s Rejection of Film Ad

Andranik Taslakhchian
ASBAREZ

Aug 11 2017

Armenian Bar Association

GLENDALE—The Armenian Bar Association, along with its Armenian Rights Watch and Armenian Genocide Reparations committees, has lent its voice to the community-wide uproar and anger over the rejection by Americana at Brand to advertise an Armenian Genocide documentary.

In letter to Americana parent company Caruso Affiliates and Glendale Mayor Vartan Gharpetian, the Armenian Bar Association has expressed its protest over the decision to reject advertisements for “Architects of Denial,” a documentary centering on the denial of the Armenian Genocide and other human rights issues.

In its letter to Caruso Affiliates, the organization argued that the message of the film is not controversial, saying, “The film is about human rights and the prevention of genocide. If the actions which are being taken here against the Architects of Denial were attempted at The Grove on a film that exposes Holocaust denial, there would most certainly be amplified rebuke and scorn by civil and Jewish rights organizations, and the equally certain demand for apology and revelation of the specter of litigation. The same situation is presented here.”

“We believe that banning the advertisement of the film Architects of Denial is arbitrary, discriminatory and capricious. Of note, is the fact that part of the Americana at Brand property is dedicated as a public park where the right to _expression_ is particularly protected. At the very least, the suppression of speech in this context illustrates a profound insensitivity to that which is of significant importance to a majority of Glendale’s citizens,” the Armenian Bar Association letter emphasized.

The letter was signed by Saro K. Kerkonian, Chairman of the Board of Governors; Garo B. Ghazarian, two-term past chairman of the board, current board member and co-chairman of the Armenian Rights Watch Committee; Armen K. Hovannisian, three-term past chairman, current board member and chairman of the Armenian Genocide Reparations Committee; and Karnig Kerkonian, board member and co-chairman of the Armenian Rights Watch Committee.

The same signatories also sent a letter to Glendale Mayor Gharpetian asking for a meeting to discuss this issue.

BAKU: MG co-chair says trust should be strengthened between sides to Karabakh conflict

Andranik Taslakhchian
AzerNews, Azerbaijan

Aug 11 2017
15:25 (UTC+04:00)

By Rashid Shirinov

Time has come for the parties to the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict to take steps to strengthen the trust, said Richard Hoagland, Report informs.

The U.S. co-chair of the OSCE Minsk Group, talking to the Voice of America, expressed hope that certain steps will be taken in this direction in near future.

Hoagland noted that the basis for the settlement of the conflict is the search for compromises, which would demilitarize the situation and bring peace, welfare and security to the people of the region.

“The U.S. keeps on working with Russia over this issue, despite the worsening of the relations between the two countries,” he said. “Nothing has changed in our work with each other, the relations between the co-chairs have not altered. Politicians may collide with each other, but we intend to continue the work.”

Azerbaijan and Armenia fought a lengthy war that ended with signing of a fragile ceasefire in 1994. Since the war, Armenian armed forces have occupied 20 percent of Azerbaijan’s territory, including Nagorno-Karabakh and seven surrounding regions. More than 20,000 Azerbaijanis were killed and over 1 million were displaced as a result of the large-scale hostilities.

While the OSCE Minsk Group acted as the only mediator in resolution of the conflict, the occupation of the territory of the sovereign state with its internationally recognized boundaries has been left out of due attention of the international community for years.

Armenia ignores four UN Security Council resolutions on immediate withdrawal from the occupied territory of Azerbaijan, thus keeping tension high in the region.