Author: Andres-Papazian

DAVIT HARUTYUNYAN: “THE ACTIVITY OF THE PACE SUBCOMMITTEE ON NAGORNO KARABAKH ISSUE WAS FAILED DUE TO OBJECTIVE REASONS AND THERE IS NO SENSE TO RETURN TO THE PAST”

Times.am
Oct 14 2010
Armenia

Times.am reported earlier the second meeting of the representatives
of the Armenian and Azerbaijani delegations took place in the frame
of the 5th session of the PACE.

The meeting was on the initiative of the PACE Chairman Mevlut
Chavushoghlu who wants to restore the PACE subcommittee on Nagorno
Karabakh issue.

The Armenian and Azerbaijani MPs first met during the summer session
of PACE this year.

Then the representatives of Armenian delegation Davit Harutyunyan and
Armen Rostamyan said Chavushoghlu the rush in that question can make
suspects over the PACE authorities.

“We are against to make a square where the new theatre performance
will be shown and will make the strained relations more tension,”
Armenian announcement read.

And despite of this clear state of the Armenian side the PACE chairman
continues claiming on the idea of founding the PACE subcommittee on
Nagorno Karabakh issue.

“The activity of the PACE subcommittee on Nagorno Karabakh issue
is actual and we are to continue the discussions on restoration of
the structure,” said Sabir Gadjiev, the member of the Azerbaijani
delegation of PACE.

Times.am asked the head of the Armenian delegation of PACE Davit
Harutyunyan to comment on the announcement of the Azerbaijani delegate.

“Azerbaijan wants to found a subcommittee which will be without any
work to do. And this is due to the objective reasons. They want to use
this committee for discussing those questions they want to be discussed
in the whole. But we must note this mandate has a few opportunities
and won’t be able to solve important issues,” said Davit Harutyunyan.

The head of the Armenian Delegation of PACE also reported the OSCE
Minsk Group co-chairs are also against of such a subcommittee.

“The issues which are discussed in the frame of the OSCE Minsk
group can’t be examined in such a system as well,” considers Davit
Harutyunyan.

The Armenian MP also reminded the activity of such a subcommittee
was failed once due to the objective reasons and there is no sense
to return to the past once more.

From: A. Papazian

INTERNATIONAL COMMITTEE OF RED CROSS REPRESENTATIVES MEET ARMENIAN CAPTIVES IN AZERBAIJAN

Today

Oct 14 2010
Azerbaijan

The representatives of the International Committee of the Red Cross
(ICRC) met with the Armenian captives in Azerbaijan, spokesperson
for ICRC Office in Baku Ilaha Huseynova said.

She said the representatives of the ICRC visited 6 prisoners of war
and an Armenian family held in Azerbaijan. They concerned themselves
with their detention conditions and physical state.

Six Armenian prisoners of war and five civilian captives are held
in Azerbaijan. Citizens of Armenia Yegishe, Ruzanna, Alfred, Gayane
and Petros Gevorkyans are members of one family. They crossed into
Azerbaijani territory in January this year. Three of the captives
(Grant Markosyan, Alik Tevosyan and Artur Sarkisian) crossed into
Azerbaijani territory in February, 2009, two (Ohan Arutunyan and Gevorg
Tovmasyan) in May, 2009, one (Karen Arutunyan) in July, this year.

From: A. Papazian

PBS TO AIR TWO ARMENIAN DOCUMENTARIES

Thursday October 14, 2010

Filmmaker Vardan Hovhannisyan.

Yerevan – Two top Armenian documentaries – both award-winning human
stories – will be shown on public television in the US over the next
two Sundays.

On Sunday October 17, Public Television stations around the country
will show “The Last Tightrope Dancer in Armenia,” a warm, thoughtful,
beautifully-shot story about the dying art of tightrope dancers, and
the continuing competition and camaraderie between two old masters,
and the hopes they place on one young artist.

On Sunday October 24, the same public television stations will screen
“A Story of People in War and Peace,” a passionate film that follows
the lives of soldiers and nurses who spent years in the trenches
during the Karabakh war. The film has already screened on BBC, ARTE
and other international channels, and has won over 20 awards including
the FIPRESCI (International Federation of Film Critics) prize. For
its director, Vardan Hovhannisyan, the film also garnered a Best New
Documentary Filmmaker Prize at the Tribeca Film Festival in New York.

“The Last Tightrope Dancer” is the acclaimed work of two young
filmmakers — Inna Sahakyan and Arman Yeritsyan. Both have produced
several documentaries over the last decade. Sahakyan has directed more
than 10 social documentaries for Armenian television and worked as
assistant director on “A Story of People in War and Peace.” Yeritsyan
has directed a number of award-winning documentaries including,”Under
the Open Sky” and “Goodbye Fellini.”

Both films are produced by Bars Media, which was established by Vardan
Hovhannisyan in 1993. Bars Media specializes in making documentaries
about human stories, culture, history and other social issues. The
studio currently develops documentary films in Africa, Russia and
Afghanistan.

The Public Television showings on October 17 and 24 offer a unique
opportunity for the Armenian-American public and the public at large to
enjoy these excellent productions. Both films have English subtitles.

Information about cities and airing time at:

From: A. Papazian

OSCE PREPARING INTERNAL REPORT ON SITUATION IN AZERBAIJAN’S OCCUPIED TERRITORIES

Today

Oct 14 2010
Azerbaijan

The OSCE Minsk Group Co-Chairs, Ambassadors Bernard Fassier (France),
Robert Bradtke (the United States), and Igor Popov (Russia) carried out
the Field Assessment Mission to the occupied territories surrounding
Nagorno-Karabakh.

This Mission took place on October 7-13, 2010, along modalities they
had previously discussed with all sides involved.

The Co-Chairs’ Mission was supported by OSCE Personal Representative
of the Chairman-in-Office Ambassador Andrzej Kasprzyk and his staff,
working with de facto local authorities. On the Co-Chairs’ invitation,
three technical experts, including two from the United Nations High
Commission for Refugees (UNHCR), assisted them in their tasks.

Prior to undertaking their Mission, the Co-Chairs met separately on
October 6, 2010 with Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev and Armenian
President Serzh Sargsyan to present details of the Mission and
introduce their team. They also had a similar meeting on October 7,
2010 with the de facto authorities in Stepanakert/Khankendi.

The Mission provided an important opportunity for the Co-Chairs to meet
with numerous people on the ground and familiarize themselves with
the overall current situation in the territories, in all aspects,
including humanitarian needs. The unprecedented participation
of technical experts from the UNHCR allowed the Mission team to
understand better the rights, within the framework of international
humanitarian law, of all refugees and displaced persons in the region
and the conditions now facing those living in these territories.

The Co-Chairs, with input from the experts, are now compiling the
information gathered during their Mission. After completing this work,
they will prepare an internal OSCE report, which will be shared with
all sides.

The OSCE Assessment Mission examines the situation in the occupied
territories of Azerbaijan on Azerbaijan’s initiative. During their
most recent visit the co-chairs visited these areas and familiarized
themselves with the situation. The mediators are expected to prepare
a report on the current situation in the occupied lands.

From: A. Papazian

“OSCE SUMMIT IN ASTANA HARDLY TO MARK BREAKTHROUGH IN NAGORNO-KARABAKH CONFLICT”

Today

Oct 14 2010
Azerbaijan

It does not worth to expect from the Astana summit in December certain
decisions, that will change the situation around Nagorno-Karabakh,
Alexei Vlasov, deputy dean of the Faculty of History at the Moscow
State University, a member of Trend Expert Council, said.

“Kanat Saudabayev, the OSCE chairman in-office, has repeatedly
attempted to advance the idea of a road map of conflict settlement
on the Caucasus. However, Kazakhstan’s initiative does not have real
outcomes,” Vlasov, editor-in-chief of analytical information portal
Vestnik Kavkaza (Bulletin of the Caucasus), told Trend journalists
at a meeting today.

He said the OSCE summit in Astana will focus on economic security,
national minorities and the OSCE reform, aimed at a more dynamic and
effective response of the organization to new risks and challenges.

“It would be a great optimism to expect new breakthrough solutions
to Nagorno-Karabakh to be prepared for the summit,” Vlasov said.

Vlasov said one can expect the situation to change in 2011 under
certain circumstances.

Vlasov said the mediators of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict settlement
understand that public discontent is growing in Azerbaijan. The talks
to return back territories adjoining Nagorno-Karabakh will be resumed
in 2011.

“Time will tell whether the rumors will be justified and whether
the mediators will convince Yerevan that such steps are necessary,”
Vlasov said.

He said that the mediators, in particular Russia, and foreign players
such as Turkey, are solving the dilemma whether to move from stalemate
in the Nagorno-Karabakh or to leave everything at the level of virtual
challenge. Much depends on how the situation will evolve over Iran,
political analyst said.

“If the U.S. decides to solve Iran’s problem in 2011, the issue of
Nagorno-Karabakh will remain. If everything is limited by diplomatic
and economic pressure on Iran and world powers wish to demonstrate that
they are able to achieve settlement of the problems through the talks,
then, perhaps, we will see concessions from Yerevan by late 2011,”
Vlasov said.

He said that it does not worth exaggerating the influence of Turkey
on the conflict, given the internal divisions in the country.

“Turkish authorities have not determined their foreign policy yet,
therefore, the Armenian issue was inscribed for Ankara in a more
general context of Turkey’s role in Central Asia, the Caucasus and
the Caspian Sea in the nearest future. Turkey still prefers to use
tactical decisions without declaring its strategy. Therefore, the
possibilities to put pressure on Armenia are limited,” he said.

Vlasov said that it is necessary to understand that it does not worth
to expect changes in the structure and format of Nagorno-Karabakh talks
in the nearest future because it will take much time and it will turn
out that specific decisions are postponed for an indefinite period.

From: A. Papazian

DEPORTATION DEATH RAISES QUESTIONS OVER ‘PROPORTIONATE FORCE’
Matthew Taylor

guardian.co.uk
Thursday 14 October 2010 20.19 BST

Death of Jimmy Mubenga on a flight to Angola is first death during
deportation for 17 years

Jimmy Mubenga, who lost consciousness while the flight deporting him
was on the runway at Heathrow. Photograph: Public domain

Whatever happened on flight BA77 on Tuesday night, the death of
Jimmy Mubenga is likely to place a spotlight on Britain’s deportation
techniques. The 46-year-old is thought to be the first person to have
died in the process of being deported for 17 years.

The last death – that of Joy Gardner, who police tried to restrain in
her north London flat – proved hugely inflammatory. She was bound and
gagged by police using 13 feet of sticky tape as she resisted their
attempts to deport her in July 1993.

A jury found two police officers not guilty of her manslaughter during
a trial two years later. The officers said that Gardner, aged 40,
had become extremely violent.

Her death stirred up community tension in an area of north London
that had only recently recovered from the Broadwater Farm estate
riots in 1985.

Since then deportation has remained highly controversial. In a report
produced for the Home Office in March this year, Lady Nuala O’Loan
found complaints about abuse during detention were not being properly
investigated and that private security firms were not adequately
managing the use of force by their staff.

Her inquiry was prompted by a report in 2008, in which medical
practitioners and lawyers documented what they said was “widespread
and seemingly systematic abuse” of detainees being forcibly deported
by private contractors. O’Loan did not share that particular finding.

However she clearly sympathised with some concerns raised by the
report’s authors, which included Birnberg Peirce, Medical Justice and
the National Coalition of Anti-Deportation Campaigns. O’Loan looked
in detail at 29 of the 48 cases in which complaints had been made
and found an inadequate or no investigation at all had been carried
out by UK Border Agency in 18 cases.

In some cases staff were shown not to have even considered whether
the use of force had been “proportionate or necessary” before applying
handcuffs or other restraint techniques.

The 2008 report, Outsourcing Abuse, evaluated 300 allegations of
assaults during deportations between 2004 and 2008. The authors found
one asylum seeker ended up with his leg in a plaster while another
– a woman – was pushed through the airport after having allegedly
been assaulted.

One man, an Armenian, claimed to have suffered a punctured lung after
being kicked and stamped on as he tried to resist deportation by
clinging to railings at Heathrow airport. Another, a failed asylum
seeker from Cameroon, suffered a dislocated knee while, he alleged,
a guard told him: “You will go to your fucking country today, we will
fucking show you what illegal people deserve in our country.”

In both cases complaints were made to police, who decided there
was no case to answer. Nearly half of the alleged assaults – 48% –
occurred in the airport before the detainee was taken to the plane,
while around a quarter took placed “on the aeroplane before take-off”.

From: A. Papazian

ICRC REPS VISIT ARMENIAN PRISONERS IN AZERBAIJAN

news.am
Oct 14 2010
Armenia

ICRC representatives have met with Armenian prisoners in Azerbaijan,
Ashot Astabatsyan, ICRC Yerevan, told NEWS.am. He did not report any
information on the prisoners’ state, it being confidential.

Negotiations are under way with the Azerbaijani authorities.

Confidential talks on the return of Manvel Saribekyan’s body are
going on as well.

Azerbaijani mass media report on six Armenian POWs and five civilians
in Azerbaijan. The Armenian citizens are members of one family. They
are Yeghishe, Ruzanna, Alfred, Gayane, and Petros Gevorgyans. They
were taken prisoners this January.

According to Azeri mass media, six Armenian servicemen are prisoners
in Azerbaijan: Hrank Markosyan, Alik Tevosyan, Artur Sargsyan, Ohan
Harutyunyan, Gevorg Tovmasyan and Karen Harutyunyan.

From: A. Papazian

LEADING AZERI COMPANY SELLS CONTROL STOCK TO “WRONG” COMPANY

news.am
Oct 14 2010
Armenia

Representatives of the French insurance company AXA Group caused
confusion among Azerbaijani journalists by publicly announcing in
Baku that the company was paying compensations to the descendants of
Armenian Genocide victims.

The APA News Agency reports that Frederick Flegeur, Director for new
markets development, Ð~PÐ¥Ð~P MedLa Region stressed that the company
has no intention to comment on the past.

AXA Group paid a total of â~B¬12.7m to 7,000 Armenians. Earlier it
paid compensations to the descendants of Jewish Holocaust victims.

The point is that the leading Azerbaijani insurance company MBASK
and AXA Group (France) have signed an agreement on the sale of the
former’s control stock (51%) to the latter.

NEWS.am reminds readers that Azerbaijan is denying the Armenian
Genocide in Ottoman Turkey eve more vigorously than Turkey itself.

From: A. Papazian

ARMEN KAZARIAN CHARGED AS VOR OF MIRZOYAN TERDJANIAN

LA Late News

Oct 14 2010
GLENDALE

Glendale’s Armen Kazarian, has been arrested, charged with being
the Vor (aka Pzo or Qerop) of Mirzoyan-Terdjanian Organization,
a Armenian-American organized crime ring. Kazarian is accused of
being the mastermind of the largest Armenian-American crime ring in
the U.S. ever; 44 alleged members and associates were indicted today
for actions against 118 medical clinics in 25 states for which they
submitted $100 fake claims to Medicare. “The alleged $100 million
Medicare fraud scheme identified today is the largest, single Medicare
fraud ever charged” said Preet Bharar, the lead Attorney General on
the case.

The alleged scheme was elaborate, comprehensive, and didn’t use normal
clinics. Rather, the charged defendants allegedly set up 118 phantom
clinics in which they ran a “fraud franchise” said Bharar. “In terms
of profitability, geographic scope, and sheer ambition, the elaborate
health care scam we charge today highlights the emerging and serious
threat of international organized crime. … As charged, they stole
taxpayer dollars earmarked for the elderly and infirm and got away
with it, until now. Today’s indictments send a strong message to these
groups that we will use every tool and resource at our disposal to
stop them in their tracks.”

It’s particularly hard to count how many of the residents were from
Southern California. There were fifteen in Glendale and Burbank,
another four from Glendale. The reported Glendale residents charged
are Pogos Satamyan, 31, Andranik Satamyan, 20, Grisha Sayadyan, 59,
and Allen Sayadyan, 30. There are three from Van Nuys charged. Burbank
residents charged are Karen Markosian, 37, Artur Yepiskoposyan, 31, and
Herayer Baghoumian, 54, also face fraud-related charges. The following
Glendale defendants were also charged in a New York indictment – Armen
Kazarian, 46; Davit Mirzoyan, 34; Jacob Pogosian, 35; Karen Simonian,
33; Vartan Boyzadzhyan, 38; Gourgen Mirimanian, 46; Armen Grigorian,
39; and Anna Termartirosyan, 35.

Edward Tarver, the United States Attorney for the Southern District
of Georgia, said of the New York case that it “illustrate that health
care fraud is a national problem and that a national response from law
enforcement is necessary. The charges announced today also provide
additional evidence of the efforts by international organized crime
to defraud the Medicare system.”

Bill Lewis, the FBI’s Los Angeles Criminal Division’s Special Agent in
Charge, said of today’s indictment “Because we arrested many people
in the communities of Glendale, Burbank and Van Nuys, I want to be
sure we are not too quick any particular community, city or ethnic
group as organized crime.” . This is the first time a Vor has ever
been charged and arrested for federal racketeering crimes.

“And even though it was a very lavish fraudulent scheme, it’s amazing
how they were able to maintain a low overhead. They actually did an
awful lot of their operations out of a very small office over an
auto-body shop on Coney Island Avenue in Brooklyn. And one woman,

From: A. Papazian

ARMENIAN HOUSE PRESIDENT VISITS CYPRUS

Cyprus Mail
Oct 14 2010

The President of the Armenian National Assembly Hovik Abrahamyan
arrived in Cyprus today for an official visit, aiming at deepening
ties between the Parliaments of the two countries.

On arrival at Larnaca International Airport, Abrahamyan spoke of the
outstanding relations between the two countries in various fields
and said that he “feels like home.”

“With this visit we will do our utmost to improve and expand our
cooperation,” he said, speaking through an interpreter, pointing out
that the President of Armenia will pay an official visit to Cyprus
this coming January.

Welcoming Abrahamyan, House President Marios Garoyian of Armenian
origin, described his Armenian counterpart as “a very good friend of
Cyprus,” who “believes in and promotes the relations between Cyprus
and Armenia as well as the relations between the Armenian and the
Cypriot Parliaments.”

“We will have the opportunity to exchange thoughts, views and ideas for
the expansion, strengthening and the greater promotion of relations
between the two Parliaments, as well as to strengthen the broader
effort to boost even further the excellent ties between the two
countries, our peoples and the Parliaments,” he added.

During his visit in Cyprus, Abrahamyan will meet President Demetris
Christofias and hold a meeting with Garoyian. He will also attend
the plenary session of the House of Representatives.

From: A. Papazian