Author: Andres-Papazian

ARMENIA’S JUSTICE MINISTER VOWS NO SUPPORT TO SELF-MUTILATED INMATES

TERT.AM
20.11.12

The penitentiary facilities in Armenia will not offer support to the
demands of self-mutilated inmates pursuant to an instruction by the
minister of justice.

Speaking at the National Assembly on Tuesday, Hrant Tovmasyan said that
the practice has centuries’ history, with convicts often resorting
to self-mutilation in an attempt to attract attention and urge the
prison authorities to grant them privileges

“If those demands are met, the inmates in the prisons of Armenia,
but also around the world will become uncontrollable,” he said,
adding that a denial has never led to murders in prisons.

The hearing was organized by the National Assembly’s Standing
Committees on Human Rights, and European Integration.

Several inmates at the Nubarashen Penitentiary sew their mouths shut
on Friday, threatening to mutilate themselves by extracting organs.

In an address to Armenia’s human rights defender, Artak Abrahamyan, one
of inmates, complained about a degrading treatment by a prison employee
and threatened to commit suicide in case the prison authorities fail
to provide any solution to the problem.

Minister Tovmasyan said that a checkup in the prison wards had helped
find and confiscate 2,607 pieces of cutting and piercing tools. He
told the parliament members that not meeting the prisoners’ demands
does not imply indifference at all.

Tovmasyan called for treating the topic with delicacy, considering
the other side of the problem, i.e. “orphaned children, mothers and
relatives of killed prisoners” etc.

“It’s not just 4,000-5,000 people we take care of, but some 3 million,
to prevent this from happening again,” he said.

Four prisoners in Nubarashen had earlier declared a hunger-strike
complaining, about their verdicts and the situation in prison. Their
protest letter with the cut little finger of an inmate was later
published published the Henaran.am website.

From: A. Papazian

ILLEGAL DEFORESTATION

Tue, 11/20/2012 – 11:40

As ‘Pastinfo.am’ was informed by the RA Police, on October 31 at
01:30 Police Vanadzor Division officers checked on Narekatsi street
‘Ford Transit’ car of Vahan M., born in 1992, with the allegation
of transportation of illegal wood products, revealed in the coach of
the car without proper documents.

It was found out that the same day Vahan M. cut oaks and hornbeam trees
from the Lorut area of the ‘Hayantar’ Dsegh forest industry branch.

A professional examination was appointed. The size of the damage is
being revealed. An investigation is on.

From: A. Papazian

ROTATING AROUND PRESIDENTS: KOCHARYAN’S “SHADOW” A CURSE OR A BLESSING FOR ARMENIA?
By GAYANE ABRAHAMYAN

ArmeniaNow
ANALYSIS | 20.11.12 | 13:57

Photo:

Armenia’s domestic political life that reminds a poor “family tree”
with interwoven branches of the three presidents’ offspring, will not
be free of the “circulation” of the presidents for many more years
ahead. The most influential among them, nonetheless, is the second
president’s “shadow” periodically emerging behind one political
force or individual or another and stirring up the logic of the
“genealogical” development.

Despite the fact that Armenia’s second president Robert Kocharyan has
been out of political processes for at least the past five years, his
“shadow” and “omnipresence” do not leave alone either the opposition,
or the authorities, or the society.

At least twice a year since the end of Kocharyan’s decade-long
presidency in 2008, news have been circulated on Kocharyan’s return;
with the same frequency the second president shows up to give an
interview or make a statement reminding the society about his existence
and denying the opposition’s claims of his “political demise”.

Kocharyan’s possible return is among the most discussed subjects and
the most often condemned political prospects.

The answers to why the potential revival of “kocharyanism” – a term
introduced by oppositionist David Shahnazaryan – bothers the society
and the political forces so much can be found not only in the realm
of politics but also social psychology.

The period of Kocharyan’s presidency was rather controversial.

The bloodiest events in the two decades of independent Armenia’s
history happened during his rule – October 27 [1999 parliamentary
shootout] and March 1 [2008 deadly post-election clashes], on the
other hand those were years of the construction boom and “tiger leap”
of economy.

>>From the psychological viewpoint Kocharyan’s periodical response to
political events and issues creates subjective and objective situations
prompting people to discuss him and keep him in the focus of attention.

“Since his responses are rare and become an event in our political
life, appearing in the focus of attention, the ideas and thoughts he
voices become messages with subtext, which further get interpreted by
various forces however they want,” psychologist Armine Ghazaryan, an
expert at the Armenian Center for National and International Studies,
told ArmeniaNow.

The expert, nonetheless, stressed an important circumstance of
collective public memory – to the society Kocharyan’s “tenure isn’t
over, he carries a burden of liability remembered by the society
which is waiting for answers”.

“Kocharyan’s figure cannot leave the field for as long as people half
“a sense of incompleteness”. In order for us to be able to move on to
the next, more democratic stage of civil society development, we have
to be able to free ourselves of the three presidents’ whirlpool. But
the society, maybe subconsciously, is unable to turn the “Kocharyan
page” because of the resentment it holds against him,” she says,
and adds:

“The “Kocharyan complex” has another facet to it – he is remembered
among people as the “punishing” president. Let’s take his university
mate’s murder (in a cafe Kocharyan’s bodyguards beat Poghos Poghosyan
to death because of approaching the president and addressing
him “Rob”). From this perspective there is an element of gloomy
anticipation of his return.”

Nevertheless, the most recent history tells a different story:
Armenia’s first president’s tenure was also quite turbulent and
controversial, but the challenging years of energy crisis, the
gratification from the hard-won war, the accusations of him founding
the vicious circle of corrupt regime and setting the tradition of
fraudulent elections, his unexpected resignation – it all fell into
oblivion with time.

Ghazaryan believes that first president Levon Ter-Petrosyan took
advantage of his decade-long silence.

“First of all, the attitude to Ter-Petrosyan was different – regardless
of the fact that in 1996 he took the presidential chair by force, he
is still perceived among the society as a symbol, because of being
the first president. His silence helped him to simply become part
of independent Armenia’s history. The criticism of his presidency
is not personified, and is more against the system on the whole than
against Ter-Petrosyan personally,” says the psychologist.

At the same time Ghazaryan stresses that when the first president
re-entered the big politics, people put aside their still living
memories of the hardship they saw during his tenure because “the
purpose and the need for his return were correctly formulated and
presented”; people joined him not because it was Ter-Petrosyan, but
because they saw him as a candidate or as he called himself “a tool”
to achieve change of power.

Whereas in Kocharyan’s case the development of the information field
has been working against him – if in five years after his resignation
Ter-Petrosyan was hardly remembered and only a limited group of people
had access to any information about him, today’s level of development
of information technologies makes “forgetting” Kocharyan almost an
impossible task.

Although political analysts stress that the news about the presence
of Kocharyan’s “shadow” is circulated on purpose to let him be left
out of the political field, from the psychological perspective it
is the ever-presence of that very “shadow” that keeps people from
forgetting him and, by doing so, forgiving him.

From: A. Papazian

PEOPLE ARE LEAVING BUT NOT RETURNING TO ARMENIA – NEWSPAPER

news.am
November 20, 2012 | 09:00

YEREVAN. – In line with the data which the Armenian State Migration
Agency made public on Monday, 1,880,000 people have left Armenia and
1,791,000 people have returned to the country in the first ten months
of this year. The negative ratio is 88,241 people, Haykakan Zhamanak
daily reports.

“The negative ratio-that is, the number of those who left and did not
return-was around 81,500 people in the same time period last year. In
other words, the negative ratio grew by 6,700, as compared with the
year past,” Haykakan Zhamanak writes.

From: A. Papazian

A SIGHT FROM YEREVAN: WILL THE WEST SUPPORT AZERBAIJAN?
by David Stepanyan

arminfo
Monday, November 19, 21:38

The West will support Azerbaijan if its oil and gas infrastructure is
under threat. This is the title of an article by the Senior Research
Fellow for Russian and Eurasian Studies and International Energy
Policy at the Heritage Foundation, Ariel Cohen, on the Voice of
America website. Even if we do not discuss in details the ideas of
an American expert, in general, this opus may be characterized like
an open provocation directed at removal of the status-quo which today
is the only stabilizing factor in the Karabakh conflict zone.

By the way, Mr Cohen’s thread of thoughts is clear and obvious,
taking into consideration the fact that the problem of oil extraction
and transportation in Caspian Sea zone, is one of the key spheres
of professional expertise of this international expert, and ethnic
conflicts and Russia’s relations with CIS countries. It is no secret,
that the world community in its approaches to the third countries
was always guided by material but not ideological factors. As for
the old Nagornyy Karabakh conflict, because of the same reasons, the
West cannot ignore oil and gas boreholes, that is to say, territorial
integrity of Azerbaijan for fair settlement of the Karabakh conflict
on the basis the peoples’ right for self-determination. For this
reason, one should look for the logic of the ideas of an American
expert-“oilman” just in the oil and gas holes of the Aliyev’s
Azerbaijan.

This logic is simple but not perfect. Forgetting about bellicose
statements by the dynastical regime of Azerbaijan, heroization of a
scum Safarov, numerous threats to Stepanakert and Yerevan, Cohen made
the last statements by President of Armenia Serzh Sargsyan, the key
of his article. But the expert “forgot” that president of Armenia just
promised Baku to take relevant response measures, if Aliyev will be the
first to start an open aggression against the two Armenian republics,
and addressed these threats nit only to Baku but also “to the energy
and strategic interests of the West in the Caspian region”.

Cohen grounded the warning by Serzh Sargsyan with the forthcoming
presidential election in Armenia, and said that the statements may
be followed by the actions which will have rather tragic consequences.

Taking into consideration an unprecidentally large military exercise
recently held in Nagornyy Karabakh, during which the Armed Forces
selected the options of the missile blow with a distance more than
300 km, Yerevan obviously watches the option of attacking the energy
infrastructure of Azerbaijan, Cohen said.

Not disproving justice of Cohen’s idea, we can just say that such
attack by Yerevan cannot be of a preventive nature, as not political
suiciders are in the power in Armenia. The attacking of the energy
infrastructure of Azerbaijan may follow only as a response to the mass
attacking of the Karabakh positions, when Armenia will have no other
way out than to protect Karabakh residents by all the forces that it
owns. But putting aside this key argument in favor of breaking the
status-quo, the American expert preferred to touch in his article
only, how Armenia will be punished by the West for confrontation
to the Azerbaijani aggression. He thinks that protection of their
territory of the Armenians will contradict not only the interests
of the West, Israel and Turkey, which set hopes on the gas of the
Caspian region and have been cooperation with Baku in the sphere of
oil and gas production, but also the interests of the key ally of
Armenia – Russia. He explained his position by the threat to foreign
investments in Azerbaijan, the plans of the EU on diversification of
the gas sources and decrease of dependence on the Russian “Gasprom”,
as well as to construction of TANAP gas pipeline. So, taking into
consideration that attaching of Azerbaijan’s infrastructure will become
catastrophe for all the South Caucasus, Russia, Europe and the USA,
Cohen calls on the West to take efforts to refuse “the policy of
escalation and to prevent tragic development of events”.

To be honest, we have to agree to the last part of the statement
by an American expert. Taking into consideration the capacity and
the types of weapon placed at both sides of the front line of the
Karabakhi-Azerbaijani confrontation, the new Karabakh war will
strongly damage not only the South Caucasus but also the bordering
countries. There is also no doubt that the response blows by Armenian
and Karabakhi armed forces will pock to pieces the entire energy
infrastructure of Azerbaijan, the major part of which belongs to
Western companies and British Petroleum first of all. I think that
in this context it would be more logical not to threat the Armenian
parties to Nagornyy Karabakh conflict, demanding from Yerevan and
Stepanakert to refuse an intention to protect their own people from
Aliyev’s endless aggression. Today, the only way to prevent another
escalation of Nagornyy Karabakh conflict is to preserve the existing
status-quo, which Aliyev, sitting at the bags full of the oil dollars,
does not like at all.

So, Mr.Cohen and other such experts have to stop disseminating
political well-paid provocation, and start true political analyzing
of the situation. There is only one reality that has no alternative.

Neither Armenia nor NKR, Georgia, Turkey, Iran, the EU, the USA, Russia
and even Azerbaijan, though it is paradoxical, are not interested in
the new regional war. The reasons of it are obvious. For this reason,
only peaceful negotiating process, based on mutual compromises,
may lead to certain progress in settlement of Nagornyy Karabakh
conflict. And not only the parties to the Karabakh conflict but also
the superpowers, presented in the OSCE Minsk Group, should be ready to
these compromises. Today the frozen Karabakh conflict is a conditional
button, which superpowers manipulate with if they want.

For this reason, they are not going to settle the Karabakh conflict
today. However, today nobody needs true but not declarative resolving
of the Karabakh conflict. Adventurism and inadequacy, but not the
wish of the Armenian leadership to protect their own people, as some
persons have been trying to plant in our minds, are the only true
threat to the everlasting energy interests of the West.

From: A. Papazian

ARMENIAN JUSTICE MINISTER: PENITENTIARY INSTITUTIONS FACE A HOST OF CHALLENGES

Panorama.am
13:32 20/11/2012

Positive changes were revealed in penitentiary institutions during
visits, but there are also many shortcomings in this system, which the
Justice Minister will also admit, chair of NA Standing Committee on
Protection of Human Rights Elinar Vardanyan stated at the beginning of
parliamentary hearings on the condition of human rights in penitentiary
institutions and places of detention.

According to Armenian Justice Minister Hrayr Tovmasyan, penitentiary
institutions face a host of challenges, they bear the negative imprint
of Soviet penal system, and he said it as early as several years ago
when he assumed the position of Justice Minister. Mr Tovmasyan said
that he is well aware of the situation, problems and shortcomings,
but stressed that “I am not going to offer superficial solutions,
I stand for long-range solution of problems existing in this field.”

No murder has been recorded in Armenian penitentiary institutions over
the past 3-4 years, noted the Minister. Yes, inmates are unhappy with
the prison conditions and the prison administration’s attitude.

However, no penitentiary institution in the world is free of these
problems, said Mr Tovmasyan, adding that they work normally, the
evidence of which is that this year alone, 2607 cutting and stabbing
instruments were seized from inmates.

“We have 13 penitentiary institutions where about 5,000 inmates are
held. Each inmate costs an average of about $3,000 a year, which is
allocated from the state budget,” said the Minister.

One of our urgent problems, overloading of penitentiary institutions,
will be solved partially next September by the construction of
Armavir penitentiary institution designed to hold 400 inmates, noted
Mr Tovmasyan.

Among the problems is also cadre training, in particular the lack of
penitentiary doctors, he concluded.

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From: A. Papazian

THE ELECTIONS OF THE NEW ARMENIAN PATRIARCH OF JERUSALEM WILL BE HELD IN JANUARY

11:50, 19 November, 2012

YEREVAN, NOVEMBER 19, ARMENPRESS. The elections of the new patriarch
of Jerusalem will be held in the Armenian Patriarchate on January
23-25. The Vicar of the Armenian Patriarch of Jerusalem Archbishop
Aris Shirvanian announced this in a conversation with “Armenpress”.

Archbishop Aris Shirvanian stated: “As you know the funerals of the
deceased Patriarch are over now and 40 days after his death, the
election of the new patriarch must be held. Notwithstanding this does
not mean that the elections must be convened right in the 41st day,
hence the Armenian Patriarchate of Jerusalem has decided to fix the
date of the elections on January 23, 24 and 25.”

Secret ballot is held at the council, where 5 candidacies are involved
and after the second votes one of these 5 will become patriarch.

On October 12 Armenian Patriarch of Jerusalem Archbishop Torkom
Manoukyan passed away. He was a chairman of “Religion in American Life”
Council. He also was a member of the council of directors of “Call of
Conscience” foundation. He was the author of more than 20 monographs
including three books of poetry, a study on Armenian Devine Liturgy,
books dedicated to the Armenian Genocide and detailed guide to the
holy sites of Jerusalem. Also the deceased Patriarch was a prominent
expert on Komitas.

From: A. Papazian

OPPOSITION REP SLAMS 2013 STATE BUDGET

tert.am
19.11.12

It is strange that on the eve of the upcoming presidential elections
the government has drafted a state budget that tells do not elect me,
you do not need me, Armenian National Congress (ANC) member Vahagn
Khachatryan said at the State Budget 2013 discussion on Monday.

He said it is not serious document either in respect of economics or
from the point of view of professionalism. It only says there is no
need to wait a good thing from authorities.

“This budget was the most unsuccessful of the past four years and
does not promise any perspective to any citizen of Armenia, to a
state servicemen, business,” he said.

The speaker said inflation has been forecasted but no raise in
salaries, pensions. “If the inflation’s scenario is implemented,
the citizens will become poor,” Khachatryan said.

“Today there is a need to create such conditions that will make
Armenian citizens stay in the country, while the budget does not create
such conditions. The Armenian government does not care of us sending,”
he said.

The speaker said the budget lacks even necessary development conditions
for the coming year.

The ANC member said this year’s budget has been imposed on the
Government, having no development prospect in it.

From: A. Papazian

ARMENIAN CHESS PLAYERS TAKE TWO SILVER MEDALS AT WORLD YOUTH CHAMPIONSHIP 2012

armradio.am
12:25 19.11.20120

Two Armenian chess players won silver medals at the World Youth
Championships held in Maribor, Slovenia.

GM Hovhannes Gabuzyan took became World U18 Vice-Champion with 8.5
points out of 11 possible.

Shant Sargsyan gained nine points and took the silver in the U10
competition.

Samuel Sevian representing the United States became World U12 Champion
in the World Youth Championship.

From: A. Papazian

SINGLE CANDIDATE FROM OPPOSITION HARDLY SEEN – RICHARD GIRAGOSIAN

news.am
November 19, 2012 | 13:14

YEREVAN.- It is still difficult to see who may become a single
candidate from the opposition, head of Regional Studies Center Richard
Giragosian told reporters.

Any political elections in Armenia’s modern history were preceded by
partly real, partly false “consultations”, analyst said.

“We are witnessing a serious political conflict between the former
coalition partners but, I believe, a single candidate from the
opposition is hardly seen,” he said.

Giragosian is confident that oligarchy is Armenia’s main problem. In
this context, former president Robert Kocharyan’s criticism must be
welcomed although the system became oligarchic under his regime

From: A. Papazian