Author: Andres-Papazian

ARMENIA SAYS AZERBAIJAN SHOT DOWN MILITARY HELICOPTER

Reuters
Nov 12 2014

Wed Nov 12, 2014 11:53am EST

* Armenia threatens to retaliate over incident

* Azerbaijan say helicopter intended to attack its soldiers

* Nagorno-Karabakh still flashpoint 20 years after ceasefire (Adds
new info about casualties, Azeri officer being awarded)

By Nailia Bagirova and Hasmik Lazarian

BAKU/YEREVAN, Nov 12 (Reuters) – Armenia’s Defence Ministry accused
Azerbaijan’s armed forces on Wednesday of shooting down a military
helicopter belonging to Nagorno-Karabakh, a region in Azerbaijan
which is controlled by ethnic Armenians.

The downing of the helicopter, the first such incident since a
ceasefire was agreed in 1994 after a war over the tiny mountainous
territory in the South Caucasus, ratcheted up tensions between Armenia
and oil-producing Azerbaijan.

Three crew were on board the helicopter, which was on a training
flight, Defence Ministry officials in Nagorno-Karabakh and Armenia
said.

Azerbaijan confirmed it had shot down a helicopter but said it was
an Armenian aircraft which had intended to attack Azeri soldiers near
the mined and heavily guarded line of contact around Nagorno-Karabakh.

“The enemy’s aviation, after a series of manoeuvres, attempted
to attack Azeri positions,” the Azeri Defence Ministry said in
a statement.

Officials in Azerbaijan and Nagorno-Karabakh said crew members were
believed to have been killed in the incident, although they added
that the information was not confirmed.

The Azeri defence ministry said an army officer had been honoured
for shooting down the aircraft. The officer “has been awarded a third
degree medal ‘For Distinguished Military Service’ for shooting down
the enemy’s Mi-24 helicopter, and for vigilance and heroism on combat
duty,” the ministry said.

The attack drew threats of retaliation from Armenia.

“Consequences for this unprecedented aggravation of the situation
will be very painful for the Azeri side,” Armenian Defence Minister
Artsrun Hovhannisyan said on his Facebook page.

The violence highlights the risk of tensions over Nagorno-Karabakh
triggering a wider conflict in the South Caucasus, where oil and
natural gas flow from the Caspian region to Europe.

About 30,000 people were killed in 1991 in fighting between ethnic
Azeris and Armenians which erupted as the Soviet Union collapsed.

Despite the 20-year ceasefire, mainly Muslim Azerbaijan and
predominantly Christian Armenia regularly trade accusations of inciting
violence around Nagorno-Karabakh and along the Azeri-Armenian border,
where clashes also occur.

Nagorno-Karabakh runs its own affairs with heavy military and financial
backing from Armenia. Armenian-backed forces also run seven Azeri
districts surrounding Nagorno-Karabakh seized during the war.

Efforts to reach a permanent settlement of the conflict have failed
despite mediation attempts led by France, Russia and the United
States. (Writing by Margarita Antidze; Editing by Dominic Evans)

From: A. Papazian

Jabhat al-Nusra blows up Armenian church in Deir el-Zour: A savage
blow that echoes through Armenian history

By Robert Fisk
Nov. 10, 2014

In the most savage act of vandalism against Syria’s Christians,
Islamists have blown up the great Armenian church in Deir el-Zour,
built in dedication to the one and a half million Armenians
slaughtered by the Turks during the 1915 genocide. All of the church
archives, dating back to 1841 and containing thousands of documents on
the Armenian holocaust, were burned to ashes, while the bones of
hundreds of genocide victims, packed into the church’s crypt in memory
of the mass killings 99 years ago, were thrown into the street beside
the ruins.

This act of sacrilege will cause huge pain among the Armenians
scattered across the world ` as well as in the rump state of Armenia
which emerged after the 1914-1918 war, not least because many hundreds
of thousands of victims died in death camps around the very same city
of Deir el-Zour. Jabhat al-Nusra rebels appear to have been the
culprits this time, but since many Syrians believe that the group has
received arms from Turkey, the destruction will be regarded by many
Armenians as a further stage in their historical annihilation by the
descendants of those who perpetrated the genocide 99 years ago.

Turkey, of course, miserably claims there was no genocide ` the
equivalent of modern day Germany denying the Jewish Holocaust ` but
hundreds of historians, including one prominent Turkish academic, have
proved beyond any doubt that the Armenians were deliberately massacred
on the orders of the Ottoman Turkish government across all of
modern-day Turkey and inside the desert of what is now northern Syria
` the very region where Isis and its kindred ideological armed groups
now hold. Even Israelis refer to the Armenian genocide with the same
Hebrew word they use for their own destruction by Nazi Germany:
`Shoah’, which means `holocaust’.

The Armenian priest responsible for the Deir el-Zour district,
Monsignor Antranik Ayvazian, revealed to me that before the explosions
tore the church apart towards the end of September, he received a
message from the Islamists promising to spare the church archives if
he acknowledged them as the legislative authority in that part of
Syria. `I refused,’ he said. `And after I refused, they destroyed all
our papers and endowments. The only genocide victims’ bones left were
further north in the Murgada sanctuary and I buried them before I
left. They destroyed the church there, but now if I could go back, I
don’t even know if I could find where I put the bones.’

Msr Ayvazian later received a photograph taken in secret and smuggled
to him from the Isis-controlled area, showing clearly that only part
of the central tower of the Deir el-Zour church, built in 1846 and
renovated 43 years later, remains. Every Armenian who has returned to
the killing fields of the genocide has prayed at the church. Across
these same lands, broken skulls and bones from 1915 still lie in the
sand. When I investigated the death marches in this same region 22
years ago with a French photographer, we uncovered dozens of skeletons
in the crevasse of a hill at a point where so many Armenian dead were
thrown into the waters of the Khabur that the river changed its course
forever. I gave some of the skulls and bones we found to an Armenian
friend who placed them in the crypt of the Deir el-Zour church ` the
very same building which now lies in ruins.

`During the Armenian genocide, the Turks entered the church and killed
its priest, Father Petrus Terzibashian, in front of the congregation,’
Msr Ayvazian said. `Then they threw his body into the Euphrates. This
time when the Islamists came, our priest there fled for his life.’ Msr
Ayvazian suffered his own personal loss in the Syrian war when
Islamist fighters broke into the Mediterranean town of Qassab on 22
April this year. `They burned all my books and documents, many of them
very old, and left my library with nothing but 60cm of ash on the
floor.’ Msr Ayvazian showed me a photograph of the Qassab church
altar, upon which one of the Islamists had written in Arabic: `Thanks
be to God for al-Qaeda, the Nusra Front and Bilal al-Sham’ (another
Islamist group). The town was retaken by Syrian government troops on
22 June.

Msr Ayvazian recounted his own extraordinary story of how he tried to
prevent foreign Islamist fighters from taking over or destroying an
Armenian-built hospital ` how he drove to meet the Islamist gunmen and
agreed to recover the corpses of some of their comrades killed in
battle in return for a promise not to damage the hospital. `As I
approached the hospital, a Syrian jet flew over me and dropped a bomb
40 metres from the building. I know the officer who sent the aircraft.
He said it was his way of trying to warn the rebels not to harm me.
They came out of the hospital like rats ` but they did not harm me.’

I spoke later to the local Syrian military air force dispatcher and he
confirmed that he had indeed sent a MiG fighter-bomber to attack waste
ground near the building. Msr Ayvazian subsequently went to the old
battlefield with Syrian government permission and recovered several
bodies, all in a state of advanced decay and one with a leg eaten off
by dogs. But he bravely set off with trucks carrying the dead and
handed the remains to the Islamists. `They kept their word and later
withdrew all their foreign fighters from the province of Hassake. I
later received a letter from one of their emirs, very polite, telling
me ` and here the priest produced a copy of the note ` that: `We vow
to keep your property and your cherished possessions, which we also
hold dear to us.’ Msr Ayvazian looked scornfully at the letter. `Look,
here at the start,’ he said, `they have even made a mistake in their
first quotation from the Koran! And then look what happened at Deir
el-Zour. It was all for nothing.’

Each year, thousands of Armenians have gathered at their church in
Deir el-Zour on 25 April ` the date they commemorate the start of the
genocide, when Armenian lawyers, teachers and doctors were arrested
and later executed by the Turks outside Istanbul ` to remember their
million and a half dead. The 100th anniversary of the mass slaughter
would have been a major event in Deir ez-Zour’s history. And although
Syrian soldiers are still holding out in part of the town today, and
Syrian authorities have promised to rebuild Armenian churches when
their lands are retaken from the Islamists, there is little hope that
any Armenians will be able to visit the ruins of their church in five
months’ time. As for the Turks, they will do their best to stifle
interest in the Armenian holocaust by holding their own commemorations
next year ` to mark their victory over Allied troops at the 1915
battle for Gallipoli.

From: A. Papazian

Foundation for the Presevation of Wildlife and Culture
Nr. 5, Byron Street
Yerevan
Republic of Armenia
375009
Tel: 00374 10 529340
Fax: 00374 10 564484

10 November 2014

Foundation for the Preservation of Wildlife and Cultural Assets (FPWC)
Contact: Syuzanna Petrosyan
[email protected], +374 77 933772

`Pumpkin Day’

On November 15 at 2pm, the Foundation for the Preservation of Wildlife
and Cultural Assets (FPWC), along with its General Partner
VivaCell-MTS, will organize the annual `Pumpkin Day’ at the Yerevan
Zoo.

Children from all parts of Armenia are invited to the zoo on this
joyful day to make a special meal for their favorite animal. The zoo
will be filled with hundreds of pumpkins, fruits and vegetables so
that the little chefs can prepare the freshest and most festive dish.

The `Pumpkin Day’ contest will have three prize categories which
include: The Most Innovative Meal, The Best Idea, and Animal’s
Favorite Dish. The contest also comes with specific rules. For
example, the meals have to be fresh, so no pre-packaged foods are
allowed. In addition, toothpicks, paper, or plastic materials cannot
be used during the preparation of the meal.

Although only registered student groups are allowed to participate in
the contest, all children at the age of 16 and under can enter the zoo
free of charge, as well as elders who are 70 and up. Children can
closely interact with the animals, enjoy entertainment, and take part
in various activities and games, during which they will have an
opportunity to win a photo camera and a bicycle among other prizes.

`Pumpkin Day’ falls within FPWC’s framework of environmental
education, the purpose of which is to teach children the value of
animals and nature around them, to motivate them to learn about
environmental issues, and to encourage them to find ways to solve
these issues in the future.

About FPWC
Established in 2002, FPWC is Armenia’s leading foundation for the
protection and conservation of the country’s unique natural heritage.
Working at the crossroads of wildlife protection, environmental
education, as well as community and infrastructure development, the
foundation emphasizes the involvement of rural populations in the
sustainable development of Armenia. In all its projects, FPWC
advocates for mutual respect between human beings, the natural
environment, and cultural heritage, as these are indispensable
conditions for the positive development of Armenia.

From: A. Papazian

ARAVOT: YEGHISHE CHARENTS MONUMENT DESECRATED IN YEREVAN

Tuesday,
November
11

Some young people took it into their heads to write declarations of
love and words showing their poor knowledge of English on the Monument
to Yeghishe Charents in Yerevan, “Aravot” paper writes.

“In this way they desecrated the monument to the great Armenian poet
Charents. We wonder how many Armenian writers do these authors of
modern “cuneiform” know?” the paper writes.

From: A. Papazian

L’ARMENIE N’A PAS DE PRISONNIERS POLITIQUES, DIT LE PRESIDENT DU PARLEMENT

ARMENIE

Il n’y a pas de prisonniers politiques en Armenie, a declare le
president du parlement armenien Galust Sahakian interroge par les
journalistes afin de commenter l’issue du procès de Shant Harutyunyan
et de ses partisans.

> a declare le President Sahakian,
cite par Aysor.am.

From: A. Papazian

30 000 SOLDATS PARTICIPENT AUX GRANDES MANOEUVRES MILITAIRES DES ARMEES D’ARMENIE ET DU HAUT KARABAGH

ARMEE ARMENIENNE

Les forces armees de l’Armenie et de la Republique > du Haut
Karabagh ont debute le 6 novembre un vaste programme de manoeuvres
militaires de très grande echelle qui porte le nom de >.

Selon le ministère de la Defense du Haut Karabagh plus de 30 000
militaires participent a ces operations militaires avec 1550 canons,
600 chars, 1300 armements anti-chars, 3000 vehicules militaires, des
helicoptères et des centaines d’autres materiels militaires d’attaque.

Ces manoeuvres qui se deroulement > visent
a ameliorer la capacite des troupes et l’utilisation du materiel
militaire dans des situations de combats simules.

Krikor Amirzayan

mardi 11 novembre 2014, Krikor Amirzayan (c)armenews.com

From: A. Papazian

LES MILITANTES OPPOSEES AUX CHANGEMENTS DANS LA REGLEMENTATION DES PRESTATIONS DE MATERNITE SATISFAITES DES CONCESSIONS DU GOUVERNEMENT

ARMENIE

Ceux qui luttent contre l’initiative legislative du gouvernement de
reduire les conges grossesse et les prestations de maternite sont
heureux parce qu’ils ont reussi a avoir les promesses du gouvernement
sur un reexamen des changements au projet de loi.

Selon la chef de projet Anna Nikoghosyan de l’ONG Societe sans
violence l’executif va changer le projet de loi actuel qui apporte des
modifications a la loi >
meme si le gouvernement ne pourra satisfaire toutes leurs demandes
a la fois.

From: A. Papazian

Silk Road Reporters
Nov 8 2014

Armenia’s Nuclear Problem

Published by John C. K. Daly
November 8, 2014

The Soviet Union may have imploded more than two decades ago, but
debris from its headlong industrialization drive still litters the
post-Soviet landscape, and nothing more unsettles the population of
the fifteen new nations carved out of the USSR than its nuclear
legacy.

The Caucasus nuclear concerns focus on the region’s sole nuclear power
plant (NPP), Armenia’s aging Metsamor facility, which provides nearly
40 percent of the country’s electricity. Despite concerns about the
elderly NPP from neighboring Azerbaijan, Georgia, Turkey and, farther
afield, the European Union, on Nov. 4 Deputy Minister of Energy and
Natural Resources Ara Simonyan during a parliamentary discussion of
the 2015 draft budget said that Armenia and Russia before the end of
the year will sign an intergovernmental agreement to extend Metsamor’s
service life until 2026.

This is a turnaround on previous Armenian government policy, as only
six months earlier it approved extending Metsamor’s service life only
until 2016. Concurrent with the announcement Armenian President Serzh
Sargsian said at the Third Nuclear Security Summit in The Hague, `We
are closely cooperating with the IAEA on the provision of safety for
the Armenian NPP by consistently complying with the requirements of
the IAEA Technical Document. This is evidenced by the results of the
IAEA’s OSART (Operational Safety Review Team) mission.’ Azerbaijan’s
President Ilham Aliyev was not nearly so sanguine about Metsamor’s
safety despite Sargsian’s assertions, telling the summit that the NPP
was outmoded and dangerous and should be closed immediately.

Metsamor NPP, which began operations in 1976, is located in one of the
world’s most earthquake-prone regions, and is only 19 miles west of
the Armenian capital Yerevan in the Armavir region. Metsamor NPP
contains two VVER-400 V230 376 megawatt nuclear reactors generating
about 2 million kilowatt hours of energy annually, providing about 40
percent of Armenia’s electricity.

Many environmentalists regard Metsamor NPP as a rickety, unsafe
accident waiting to happen. Metsamor was the first Soviet NPP designed
to be built in a region of high seismicity. Plans for units 3 & 4 at
the site were abandoned after the 1986 Chernobyl `incident.’ The South
Caucasus region is a zone of high seismic activity, as colliding
Arabian and Eurasian tectonic plates roil destructive tremors across
the Caucasus, eastern Turkey and northwestern Iran. The Armenian
government closed Metsamor’s Unit 1 in February 1989 and Unit 2 the
next month following a massive December 1988 earthquake in Spitak in
the Leninakan-Spitak-Kirovakan area of northern Armenia. The 6.8
Richter scale earthquake, whose epicenter was only 45 miles from
Metsamor, killed more than 25,000, injured 19,000 and rendered 500,000
homeless, leaving much of northern Armenia in ruins and caused more
than an estimated $16 billion in damage.

The facility remained shuttered for seven years until power shortages
forced the Armenian government to bring it back online. In 1993, the
government decided to restart the NPP and, in late 1995, Unit 2 came
back on line. During the winter of 1994-95, Yerevan residents often
had only 1-2 hours of electricity daily. With the restart of Unit 2,
they were expected to have electricity for 10-12 hours daily.

Perhaps not surprisingly, the facility itself is a hostage to the
vicious politics disrupting the Caucasus. Armenia went to war with
Azerbaijan in February 1988 over the disputed Nagorno-Karabakh
enclave. During the clash, which lasted until May 1994, Azerbaijan
blockaded roads, rail lines and energy supplies, leading to severe
energy shortages in Armenia. In 1991 pressure to restart Metsamor
increased after a natural gas pipeline from Turkmenistan was blocked
by a Turkish and Azeri fuel embargo. Since then, thermal power and
hydroelectric energy sources have decreased the blackouts, but the
country remains wedded to power generating by Metsamor, whatever
concerns are raised by environmentalists.

The European Union has repeatedly called for the plant to be closed
down, arguing that it poses a threat to the region, classifying
Metsamor’s reactors as the `oldest and least reliable’ category of all
the 66 Soviet reactors built in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet
Union. In 2004 the European Union’s envoy called Metsamor `a danger to
the entire region,’ but Armenia later turned down the EU’s offer of a
200 million euro loan to finance Metsamor’s shutdown, countering that
the Metsamor NPP has undergone considerable upgrades over the past
decade and had been passed as acceptable by the International Atomic
Energy Agency.

Azerbaijan National Academy of Sciences President Mahmud Karimov in
September 2011 voiced his country’s concerns over Metsamor, stating,
`The European Union also expressed the need to close the plant.
Despite regular inspections of the plant by international
organizations, the results of these inspections are kept secret and no
information is given to Azerbaijan about them.

The countries of the region ` Azerbaijan, Turkey and Georgia ` have
repeatedly proposed allowing the specialists of these countries to
examine the Metsamor nuclear power plant. But the reports on Metsamor
are not available to these three countries. The Armenian side says ten
different committees have checked the Metsamor NPP in 2011. But the
test results are not available to neighboring countries, that is, the
inspections lack transparency.’

There is also environmental opposition to Metsamor in Armenia itself.
Echoing Karimov’s concerns, Yerevan’s Greens’ Union environmental
group chairman Hakob Sanasarian noted, `There are five earthquake
tectonic breaks (near Metsamor) ‘ one is 21 miles, another is 10 miles
away, and one is at a distance of less than a third of a mile. And
(yet) today they say it is safe. The one who controls such a facility
would, of course, praise it.’

Opposition to Metsamor is also rising in Turkey. On March 21 during a
visit to IÄ?dır province on Turkey’s border with Armenia, Turkey’s
Minister of Energy and Natural Resources Taner Yıldız said that Turkey
had sent an official appeal to the International Atomic Energy Agency
concerning shutting down Metsamor, telling reporters, `The nuclear
plant, which came online in 1980, has had a lifespan of 30 years. This
plant has expired and should be immediately closed.’ Yıldız stressed
that Metsamor is just 10 miles away from Turkey’s border, and it was
necessary to bring the issue to international attention to obtain
support for the plant’s closure.

Even National Geographic has highlighted Metsamor’s environmental
threat, on April 11, 2011 running a story entitled, `Is Armenia’s
Nuclear Plant the World’s Most Dangerous?’

But far from the Armenian government bowing to international concerns
over the NPP, it has plans to extend its operational life still
further. On July 4 Armenia’s Minister of Energy and Natural Resources
Yervand Zakharyan attended a session of the shareholders of the
Armenian Nuclear Power Plant (ANPP) in Metsamor, where the NPP’s 2013
operations were reviewed. Zakharyan announced that Armenia and Russia
would sign a document on funding extending the plant’s operation and
that furthermore, Armenia had reached agreement with Rosatom on the
provision of nuclear fuel for the plant until 2026 while Rosatom
announced that it had signed documents to construct an additional
power unit at Metsamor.

Armenia’s determination to press forward with Metsamor even is at
variance with UN bodies. On June 5 the United Nations Economic and
Social Council’s Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE) issued a news
release that Parties to the Espoo Convention on Environmental Impact
Assessment in a Transboundary Context and its Protocol on Strategic
Environmental Assessment adopted a declaration on the application of
those instruments to nuclear energy issues which found that `Armenia
was found to be in non-compliance with its obligation to notify about
the planned construction of its NPP in Metsamor.’

Reconstruction work continues in the meantime prior to construction of
a new reactor unit. On Oct. 7 Zakharyan visited Metsamor and told
journalists that the 45-day renovation work at the plant will not
impact electric power supplies and that the $7 million reconstruction
costs would not change the electricity tariff, providing some relief
to Armenian consumers if not the international environmental
community.

As Armenia seems prepared to brush aside international concerns about
extending the NPP’s active life another 12 years to 2026, it is
perhaps not coincidental that Metsamor’s meaning in Armenian is `black
swamp’ or `black quicksand.’

Dr. John C. K. Daly is a non-resident Fellow at the Johns Hopkins
Central Asia Caucasus Institute in Washington DC.

From: A. Papazian

Bismarck Tribune, North Dakota
Nov 8 2014

Armenian art exhibit now open

By Faith Harron

A new art exhibition is open at the Heritage Center and State Museum.

“God Given: Cultural Treasures of Armenia” will be on display for one
year and features the work of traditional/folk artists Norik and Irina
Astvatsaturov, who fled, with their children, from ethnic and
religious persecution in Baku, Azerbaijan, and came to North Dakota.

Their artwork is representative of their heritage, history and
experiences. Norik Astvatsaturov is a Bush Foundation Artist
Fellowship recipient whose work consists of copper and bronze repousse
work with inlaid semi-precious stones. Irina Astvatsaturov works with
Russian and Eastern European beadwork techniques to create colorful
beadwork on black velvet.

North Dakota Council on the Arts’ folklorist, Troyd Geist, wrote a
complementary piece, while a documentary about the artists will
repeatedly air in the new theater at the Heritage Center and State
Museum.

From: A. Papazian

DEFENSE and SECURITY (Russia)
November 7, 2014 Friday

MEET NEW DEPUTY COMMANDER OF THE RUSSIAN MILITARY BASE IN ARMENIA

By a decree of the President Colonel Alexei Polyukhovich was appointed
as deputy commander of the Russian military base in Armenia for work
with the personnel. Polyukhovich was born on October 29 of 1971 in
Uryupinsk (Volgograd Region). He served on various posts in Arctic
units and in the North Caucasus. Before his appointment Colonel
Polyukhovich served on the post of deputy director of the department
for organization of moral and psychological support of the 58th army
of the Southern Military District. Colonel Pavel Olexyuk who had
formerly had the post of deputy commander of the base for work with
the personnel was moved to the Central Military District for
continuation of military service.

Source: Website of the Defense Ministry of Russia, November 05, 2014

From: A. Papazian