Author: Ani Kharatian

Sports: Henrikh Mkhitaryan will not join the national team for the upcoming UEFA Nations League matches

Ani Kharatian
Panorama, Armenia
Aug 27 2020
Armenian National team will start the preparation ahead of UEFA Nations League C league group 2 matches against North Macedonia and Estonia.
 
As the Football Federation reports, in the frames of the preparations, our team will have a training camp from August 31 to September 3 in FFA technical center/football academy. The head coach Joaquin Caparros has called up 23 players. The leading player of the national team, ROMA A.S, midfielder Henrikh Mkhitaryan is not included in the list.
 
Commenting on Mkhitaryan’s absence, Caparros noted that he had held phone call with Mkhitaryan. “He spoke to me on the phone and told me that he could not join the national team at the moment. Last time he played was against Sevilla on August 6, he is on vacation nor, hasn’t trained and is not fit. Henrikh added, that he could not fully show his abilities and promised to join national team in October and make a full contribution to the team,” said the head coach.
 
As to the absence of forwards Gevorg Ghazaryan and Sargis Adamyan, Caparros said the player is is injured, while Sargis is on his way to recover. We don’t want to risk and decided not to call them this time.

Nine more Lebanese Armenian families to settle in Artsakh

Ani Kharatian
Public Radio of Armenia
Aug 27 2020

Nine more Lebanese Armenian families will settle in Artsakh, President Arayik Harutyunyan informs.

According to him, all relevant work has already been done.

President Harutyunyan discussed the issue of Lebanese Armenians with High Commissioner for Diaspora Affairs Zareh Sinanyan.

“I reiterate that every effort must be made to preserve the community in Lebanon. However, for those of our compatriots who have decided to move to another country, the preferred option should be the return to the Homeland,” the President said in a Facebook post.

The first two Lebanese Armenin families moved to Artsakh earlier this month.

The Government of Artsakh has reserved 25 million AMD (about $51,000) from its reserve funds for the Armenian community of Lebanon. Besides, more than 17 million AMD has been collected on the extra-budgetary account of the Government of Artsakh, and various initiatives are being implemented to increase it.

Earlier this month Artsakh sent humanitarian aid to Lebanon.


Prosperous Armenia Party leader surprised to hear about increase of tuition fees

Ani Kharatian
News.am, Armenia
Aug 25 2020

23:59, 25.08.2020
                          

If the authorities are raising property taxes by ten times, they need to raise salaries by five times. This is what leader of Prosperous Armenia Party Gagik Tsarukyan said during a meeting with students today.

“Take a look at other countries. No country is raising property taxes. How can people pay their property taxes when they don’t have high salaries? Today, there are 1,700,000 people who have loans and are barely making ends meet,” he said.

In response to a student’s concern about the increase of tuition fees this year, Tsarukyan got upset and said the Prosperous Armenia faction of the National Assembly will raise the issue in parliament in September. “People haven’t been working for six months. How can this be? Who made that decision? Does that person know that people are barely making ends meet?”

Youth from Treaty of Sevres signatory countries call on Turkey to pay reparations to Armenia

Ani Kharatian

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 20:40, 17 August, 2020

YEREVAN, AUGUST 17, ARMENPRESS. On the occasion of the 100th anniversary of the Treaty of Sevres, the ARF Youth Office published a joint statement with socialist and social-democratic youth organizations of countries that signed the Sevres Treaty. ARMENPRESS presents the text of the statement.

”The Treaty of Sevres represents the only international legal document which provides for just reparations of the Armenian genocide and which was signed between principle allied powers and Turkey following World War I during the Paris Peace Conference in 1920.

Based on the resolution that was unanimously adopted by the International Union of Socialists Youth (IUSY) World Council (2015) in Yerevan, which condemns the genocide of Armenians that was carried out by the Ottoman Empire․

We, as socialist and social democratic youth organizations of countries and successor states that have signed the inviolable document, reaffirm the importance of the Treaty of Sevres and call upon the Republic of Turkey to begin the process of eliminating the consequences of the Armenian Genocide by initiating the restoration of the rights of the Armenian people.

We believe that this is the only way to create mutual trust between the people of both nations and to establish peace within the region”.

Co-signed by the following organizations:

Armenia – Armenian Youth Federation – Youth Organization of the ARF-Dashnaktsutyun
Belgium – Young Socialists (Jongesocialisten)
Belgium – Movement of Young Socialists (Mouvement des Jeunes Socialistes)
Canada – New Democratic Youth of Canada
Croatia – Croatian Social Democratic Youth
Czech Republic – Young Social Democrats
France – Movement of Young Socialists (Mouvement des Jeunes Socialistes)
Greece – Panhellenic Socialist Movement – PASOK Youth
India – Young Voters Party
Italy – Young Democrats (Giovani Democratici)
New Zealand – New Zealand Young Labour
Portugal – Young Socialists (Juventude Socialista)
Poland – Union of Young Social Democrats
Republic of North Macedonia – Social Democratic Youth of Macedonia
Slovenia – Young Forum of Socialist Democrats (Mladi forum Socialnih demokratov)
Serbia – Youth of Freedom and Justice Party
Turkey – HDP (Peoples’ Democratic Party) Youth


Renewed clashes at Armenian gold mine highlight government indecision

Ani Kharatian
EurasiaNet.org
Aug 11 2020
Ani Mejlumyan Aug 11, 2020

  Protesters watch as police carry away guard trailers that sparked a new round of demonstrations at a controversial gold mine. (photo courtesy of Tehmine Yenoqyan)

Recent renewed conflicts over a controversial gold mine have highlighted the Armenian government’s continuing indecisiveness over the future of the project.

On August 4, clashes between activists, local residents, police, and mining company officials broke out at the entrance of the mine, near the eastern Armenian city of Jermuk. Officials from the company operating the mine, Lydian Armenia (the local subsidiary of a British mining firm), attempted to remove some cabins that had been set up by activists who have been protesting there since 2018, and to replace them with new cabins for company guards.

The activists complained that the guards, from a recently hired security company, had been behaving inappropriately. “They are armed, provoking people, swearing at them,” activist Themnine Yenokyan told the local service of RFE/RL. The protesters are demanding that the government cancel the project, which they say will badly damage the surrounding ecology and the water supply.

The mine contract, which was signed by the previous government, ousted by Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan in 2018, has been one of the most sensitive issues that the new government has had to face. It has pitted grassroots activists, of the type that were instrumental in bringing Pashinyan to power, against proponents of the project – including Western embassies and investors – who insist that it will provide the kind of jobs that he has promised.

In an effort to resolve the deadlock, Armenia’s Investigative Committee ordered an environmental impact assessment, which was released a year ago and which Pashinyan took as a green light to let the development of the mine proceed. The impact to groundwater resources would be as small as “washing a car on the beach,” he said last August.

But just two weeks later, his government reversed course following a spirited public debate, and said it would study the issue further. Since then the issue has languished, one that to many Armenians has exemplified the government’s inability to make difficult decisions. Lydian, meanwhile, has threatened to sue if the government cancels the project.

At Amulsar, eventually police removed the Lydian-installed cabins, representing a victory for the protesters.

The demonstrations then moved to Yerevan. On August 10, several activists picketed parliament with signs like “Amulsar is a mountain, our struggle is just.” Police soon broke up the protests.

“They started to inflict violence on me and others WITHOUT ANY WARNING OR DEMAND,” one of the activists, Arman Gharibyan, posted on Facebook (in English). “I was screaming that their actions are illegal that they don’t have the right to arrest me. Nobody was listening. Later in the police unit they were not giving me even a glass of water telling that there is no water in the unit and nearby shops.”

The government has remained silent over the recent developments.

Human rights activist Nina Karapetyants told journalists covering the protest in front of parliament that, “If this was before the revolution, 40-50 percent of [members of the current] National Assembly would be by our side. Today, they value their positions and bonuses much higher than the words and rights of their friends, their voters and the people.” She said the silence of the authorities suggested that they were waiting “to see whoever wins and then stand by them.”

 

Ani Mejlumyan is a reporter based in Yerevan.

New documentary explores Gaza in photos of Armenian photographer Kegham Djeghalian

Ani Kharatian
Public Radio of Armenia
Aug 13 2020
 
 
 
 
 
A new Deutsche Welle documentary retraces the work of Armenian photographer Kegham Djeghalian, who captured life in Gaza, between Israel and Egypt, from the 1940s to the 1970s.
 
At his home in Gaza City, Marwan Tarazi keeps a little treasure wrapped in plastic bags and stored in boxes: photos and negatives from the 1940s to the 1970s. They portray a part of life in the Gaza Strip during that period and are part of the legacy of Armenian photographer Kegham Djeghalian, who opened one of the first photo studios in Gaza City in the 1940s, Deutsche Welle reports.
 
The black-and-white photos show a little-known side of Gaza. Some photos show the train station along the Gaza-Egypt railroad which has been long destroyed. Others are artistically lit studio portraits from the pre-selfie era, when a visit to a photographer was something special.
 
Kegham’s lens also captured political events: The Palestinian refugee crisis after the creation of the State of Israel in 1948 and the Egyptian rule in Gaza until 1967.
 
Kegham Djeghalian’s mother had to flee with him as a toddler when the Armenian Genocide took place after 1915. First, they were displaced to Syria. Later, when his mother died, he was sent as a teenager to stay with relatives in Jerusalem, which was under the British Mandate at that time.
 
Then in the early 1940s, Kegham Djeghalian went to Gaza and started to work as photographer.
 
“I don’t know why my father went to Gaza at that time,” DW quotes his daughter Anahid Boutin as saying. Born in Gaza, she lives in France today.
 
“Maybe my father thought this is the best place to find work,” she adds, as many Armenians went to the Middle East looking for work at the time.
 
Several prominent Armenian photographers became known for documenting events in Jerusalem and other places during the early part of 20th century.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Political scientist: Nikol Pashinyan has serious disagreements with Soros

Ani Kharatian
News.am, Armenia
Aug 15 2020

00:18, 15.08.2020
                  

Armenia sends more than 12 tons of planeload in third relief flight to Beirut

Ani Kharatian

Armenia sends more than 12 tonnes of planeload in third relief flight to Beirut

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 16:45,

YEREVAN, AUGUST 11, ARMENPRESS. The third plane carrying humanitarian aid to Lebanon will take off on August 11 from Armenia. 

Deputy PM Tigran Avinyan’s spokeperson Vahan Hunanyan told ARMENPRESS that the third aircraft will deliver more than 12 tonnes in aid to Beirut, the Lebanese capital that was devastated by the August 4 major explosion in the port.

The first and second relief flights were sent on August 8 and August 9.

Editing and Translating by Stepan Kocharyan

Syrian-Armenian man brutally beaten for parking space in Yerevan

Ani Kharatian
News.am, Armenia
Aug 10 2020

00:18, 11.08.2020
                  

President Sarkissian holds phone conversation with Aram I over Beirut blast aftermath

Ani Kharatian

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 12:50, 5 August, 2020

YEREVAN, AUGUST 5, ARMENPRESS. Armenian President Armen Sarkissian held a phone conversation with Aram I, the Catholicos of the Great House of Cilicia.

The President inquired about details from the Beirut explosion and expressed “his deep concern around the situation”, Sarkissian’s Office said in a readout.

“President Sarkissian expressed concern about the situation of the Armenian-populated Bourj Hammoud neighborhood which has been damaged by the blast, the damages suffered at the Antelias Cathedral and the condition of our Lebanese-Armenian compatriots”.

Sarkissian extended condolences to Aram I on the deaths, which includes also Lebanese-Armenians. The President wished speedy recovery to those injured.

“Expressing support to the Catholicos of the Great House of Cilicia, and in person of him the Lebanese-Armenian community, President Sarkissian also expressed readiness to assist. The President expressed conviction that the Lebanese-Armenians, who have passed through and have overcome numerous challenges, together with the entire brotherly people of Lebanon will be able to overcome this difficult challenge as well”.

Editing and Translating by Stepan Kocharyan