Monday,
Top Law-Enforcement Official Resigns
Armenia - Aghvan Hovsepian, head of the Investigative Committee, arrives for a
meeting in Yerevan, 10 December 2014.
Aghvan Hovsepian, one of Armenia’s most powerful and controversial
law-enforcement officials, resigned on Monday one month after the dramatic
change of the country’s government.
Hovsepian, 65, has headed the Investigative Committee ever since its
establishment in 2014. The law-enforcement agency comprises former police and
Defense Ministry divisions conducting criminal investigations.
Hovsepian announced his resignation at a meeting with Investigative Committee
officials. An official statement on the meeting did not quote him as giving any
reason for his decision.
“I want to thank all those with whom I have worked in the law-enforcement
system for 45 years,” he was reported to tell his subordinates. “I want to
thank you. We have worked together for nearly four years.”
Hovsepian defended his track record, claiming that the Investigative Committee
has become an independent body legally protected against undue influence from
the government, prosecutors, courts and other state bodies. He expressed hope
that his successor will maintain this “independence.”
Hovsepian also urged investigators to steer clear of “politics.” “But this
doesn’t mean that you should stay away from public life,” he said.
The head of another Armenian law-enforcement agency, the Special Investigative
Service (SIS), likewise stepped down on June 6. Vahram Shahinian cited the
“existing circumstances” in a letter of resignation submitted to Prime Minister
Nikol Pashinian. The SIS is primarily tasked with prosecuting state officials
accused of abuse of power.
Also resigning last week was Arman Mkrtumian, head of the Court of Cassation,
Armenia’s highest body of criminal and civil justice. Lawyers had for years
accused him of restricting judicial independence.
Mkrtumian and Hovsepian were widely regarded as key pillars of the former
ruling regime swept from power by a wave of mass protests led by Pashinian.
Hovsepian served as Armenia’s prosecutor-general from 1998-1999 and 2004-2013.
He was appointed in 2014 to run the newly created Investigative Committee by
then President Serzh Sarkisian.
Throughout his long tenure Hovsepian was dogged by allegations of serious human
rights violations voiced by opposition and civic groups. As chief prosecutor,
he also played a key role in government crackdowns on the opposition, notably
the deadly suppression of 2008 post-election protests in Yerevan. Dozens of
opposition members, including Pashinian, were jailed on controversial charges
at the time.
Myanmar Activist Wins Prize Created In Memory Of Armenian Genocide
• Artak Hambardzumian
Armenia - Ronhingya community lawyer Kyaw Hla Aung receives the 2018 Aurora
Prize for Awakening Humanity at a ceremony in Yerevan, .
A veteran lawyer defending the rights of Myanmar’s persecuted Rohingya Muslim
minority received at the weekend an international humanitarian award created in
memory of the 1915 Armenian genocide in Ottoman Turkey.
Kyaw Hla Aung was declared the winner of the 2018 Aurora Prize for Awakening
Humanity at a pre-dawn ceremony held near an ancient Armenian monastery,
against the backdrop of Mount Ararat located just across Armenia’s border with
Turkey. He received the prize carrying a $100,000 personal grant during another
solemn event held in Yerevan on Sunday evening.
“The support of the Aurora Prize serves as important recognition for all of the
Muslim victims of human rights violations,” he said.
The annual award was established in 2015 by three prominent Diaspora Armenians:
philanthropists Ruben Vardanyan and Noubar Afeyan, and Vartan Gregorian, the
president of the Carnegie Corporation of New York. It is designed to honor
individuals around the world who risk their lives to help others.
The prize is named after Aurora Mardiganian, an Armenian genocide survivor who
witnessed the massacre of relatives and told her story in a book and film.
Armenia - The main official ceremony of the 2018 Aurora Prize for Awakening
Humanity in Yerevan, .
Kyaw Hla Aung was selected by an international committee from among 750
nominations submitted from 115 countries. The selection committee comprises
dignitaries such as Mexico’s former President Ernesto Zedillo, former French
Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner and former U.S. Ambassador to the United
Nations Samantha Power.
Kyaw Hla Aung has for decades been trying to protect the Rohingya community
against discrimination and grave human rights abuses committed by Myanmar
authorities. He has spent a total of 12 years in prison as a result of his
efforts.
Kyaw Hla Aung is based in Sittwe, the capital of Myanmar’s northwestern Rakhine
state where more than one million Rohingya lived until a year ago. Myanmar’s
armed forces launched last summer a brutal crackdown on them in response to
armed attacks by Rohingya insurgents.
Nearly 700,000 Rohingya have fled to neighboring Bangladesh since August,
creating one of the world’s largest refugee camps. The refugees have reported
systematic killings, burnings, looting and rape committed by security forces.
The United Nations and the United States have described the crackdown as ethnic
cleansing - an accusation which Myanmar denies.
BANGLADESH -- Rohingya refugee children struggle as they wait to receive food
outside the distribution center at Palong Khali refugee camp near Cox's Bazar,
Bangladesh, November 17, 2017.
“Kyaw Hla Aung’s work personifies the spirit of the Aurora Prize,” said Mary
Robinson, a former UN high commissioner for human rights and another member of
the selection committee.
Power, for her part, lamented what she called the international community’s
inadequate response to the Rohingya refugee crisis. “An entire people has been
systematically murdered, raped and deported from their country, and no contact
group has been formed,” the former U.S. envoy said in Yerevan.
Vardanyan, who is an Armenian-born Russian businessman, drew parallels between
the plight of Rohingya Muslims and Armenians deported and massacred by the
Ottoman Turks during the First World War. “I think there was something symbolic
[about the choice of the 2018 prize winner,]” he told RFE/RL’s Armenian
service. “But it was really not our decision.”
Like the previous two Aurora Prize winners, Kyaw Hla Aung was also awarded an
additional $1 million to donate to organizations that inspired his work. He
chose three charities providing medical and other relief aid to Rohingya
refugees.
No Major Change In Armenian Policy On Karabakh, Says Official
• Ruzanna Stepanian
Armenia - Deputy Foreign Minister Ruben Rubinian speaks to RFE/RL in Yerevan,
.
Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian has not significantly changed Armenia’s position
on the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, a senior Armenian official insisted on Monday.
Deputy Foreign Minister Ruben Rubinian said there are “no big differences”
between the new and former Armenian governments’ views on how to end the
long-running dispute with Azerbaijan. In that regard, he downplayed Pashinian’s
calls for Karabakh representatives’ direct involvement in Armenian-Azerbaijani
peace talks.
Speaking in the Armenian parliament last week, the premier again said that he
has no mandate to “negotiate on behalf of the Karabakh people.” The Armenian
premier said at the same time that he is “ready to negotiate Azerbaijan’s
President Ilham Aliyev.”
The Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry denounced Pashinian’s remarks and reiterated
that it will not directly negotiate with the Karabakh Armenians.
Rubinian, who is a senior member of Pashinian’s Civil Contract party, insisted
that Yerevan is not setting any preconditions for renewed talks with Baku.
“Pashinian did not say that he won’t be negotiating on behalf of
Nagorno-Karabakh,” he told RFE/RL’s Armenian service (Azatutyun.am). “He simply
made arguments in support of our view that in order to increase the
effectiveness of negotiations Artsakh (Karabakh) needs to be involved in them.”
Rubinian stressed that Yerevan is keen to “maintain the dynamic” of the
negotiation process. “Mr. Pashinian has repeatedly said that he is ready to
meet and negotiate with [Azerbaijani President] Ilham Aliyev,” he said.
Both leaders have been invited by Russian President Vladimir Putin due to visit
Moscow next week to watch matches of the 2018 football World Cup hosted by
Russia. A spokesman for Putin said on Monday he will hold fresh talks with the
Armenian leader.
Rubinian said that “as of now” there are no plans to organize Pashinian’s first
meeting with Aliyev.
Pashinian has yet to publicly clarify his view on a framework Karabakh peace
accord that has been advanced by U.S., Russian and French mediators for more
than a decade. It calls for a phased settlement that would start with the
liberation of virtually all seven districts around Karabakh which were fully or
partly occupied by Karabakh Armenian forces during the 1991-1994 war. In
return, Karabakh’s predominantly ethnic Armenian population would determine the
territory’s internationally recognized status in a future referendum.
The former Armenian government headed by Serzh Sarkisian said all along that
this peace formula is largely acceptable to it.
Pashinian, Dashnak Minister Spar Over Pension Reform
• Sargis Harutyunyan
Armenia - Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian arrives for a cabinet meeting in
Yerevan, .
Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian rebuked on Monday a member of his cabinet
affiliated with the Armenian Revolutionary Federation (Dashnaktsutyun) for
objecting to an unpopular reform of Armenia’s pension system which he believes
must be completed this year.
The new Western-backed system, which the former Armenian government started
introducing in January 2014, is to cover 270,000 or so Armenian workers born
after 1973. It requires them to earn most of their future pensions by
contributing sums equivalent to at least 5 percent of their gross wages to
private pension funds until their retirement.
The former government said that the previous mechanism for retirement benefits
is not sustainable because of the country’s aging and shrinking population.
The reform met with fierce resistance from many affected workers mostly
employed by private firms. Thousands of them demonstrated in Yerevan in early
2014.
Armenia’s Constitutional Court effectively froze the reform in April 2014. In
response, the government enacted a law that allowed people working for private
entities to opt out of the new system until July 2018. Officials say some
200,000 workers are already covered by it.
Pashinian raised questions about the future of the reform when he appointed one
of the leaders of the 2014 protests, Mane Tandilian, as minister for labor and
social affairs last month. Tandilian said later in May that the reform should
remain optional for private sector employees for at least one more year.
Pashinian defended the reform, however, when he presented the new government’s
policy program to the parliament last week. But he made a major concession to
Armenians affected by it. A bill approved by his cabinet would cut the pension
tax rate from 5 percent to 2.5 percent.
Armenia -- Nikol Pashinian (L) and Artsvik Minasian.
Minister for Economic Development Artsvik Minasian openly opposed the bill
during a cabinet meeting in Yerevan. “I am against this mandatory pension
system, while realizing that today’s solution is a forced one,” Minasian told
Pashinian.
“I don’t want to criticize the decision which is being made,” he said at the
same time.
A visibly irritated Pashinian responded by saying that all ministers must share
“collective responsibility” for government decisions. “Those who don’t shoulder
this responsibility are not with us,” he warned bluntly. “I want us to make
this clear.”
Minasian assured the premier that he will comply with any decision approved by
fellow ministers.
Pashinian remained unimpressed. “It could not be otherwise,” he told Minasian.
“You are thereby not doing anyone a favor.”
Minasian is one of the two ministers representing Dashnaktsutyun in the new
government. The party, which was also represented in former President Serzh
Sarkisian’s government, cut an effective power-sharing deal with Pashinian
after he swept to power in a nationwide wave of mass protests a month ago.
Karabakh Leader Vows To Quit In 2020
Nagorno-Karabakh -- Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian and Karabakh
President Bako Sahakian emerge from a government building in Stepanakert, 9 May
2018.
Bako Sahakian, Nagorno-Karabakh’s president, announced on Monday that he will
not again seek reelection when his current term in office ends in 2020.
Sahakian controversially extended his decade-long rule after Karabakh enacted a
new constitution in a referendum held in February 2017. The new constitution
calls for the Armenian-populated region’s transition by 2020 to a fully
presidential system of government.
The authorities in Stepanakert said that this change will put Karabakh in a
better position to cope with the unresolved conflict with Azerbaijan. Their
opponents insisted, however, that Sahakian is simply keen to hold on to power.
In July, the Karabakh parliament voted to allow Sahakian to remain in power
during the three-year “transition period.” The Karabakh leader did not say
until now whether he will run in the next presidential election due in 2020.
“I want to officially declare that I will not participate in those elections as
a presidential candidate,” Sahakian told Armenia’s and Karabakh’s public
televisions. Instead, he said in remarks cited by the Armenpress news agency,
he will take “all necessary measures” to ensure that the vote is free and fair.
The announcement followed the resignations of several top Karabakh officials
resulting from a June 1 violent dispute in Stepanakert between several officers
of Karabakh’s National Security Service (NSS) and other local residents.
The brawl triggered angry demonstrations against what their participants see as
impunity enjoyed by law-enforcement officials and their relatives. About 200
people blocked Stepanakert’s main avenue for four days, demanding the
resignation of the NSS and police chiefs.
Several individuals, including three NSS officers, were arrested and the
Karabakh government pledged to ensure an objective criminal investigation.
These assurances failed to satisfy the protesters. The protests ended only
after a June 4 appeal from Armenia’s Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian.
Two days later, the chiefs of the local police and NSS as well as the Karabakh
state minister, Arayik Harutiunian, tendered their resignations.
Sahakian insisted on Monday that the protests did not cause a political crisis
in Karabakh. He admitted, though, that they exposed public discontent with his
administration and especially some of its officials. He said the authorities in
Stepanakert will draw necessary “conclusions” from the unrest. In particular,
he said, they will now appoint more competent individuals enjoying “the
people’s trust” to key positions.
Reprinted on ANN/Armenian News with permission from RFE/RL
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