Author: Anna Tamamian

Asbarez: Aid for Armenia Included in Biden’s $106 Billion Supplemental Budget Request

Anna Tamamian
by Contributor

 

 November 1, 2023

 

in Armenia, Artsakh, Featured Story, Latest, News, Top Stories
ANCA testimony calls for security assistance to Armenia; Demands robust humanitarian aid commensurate with acute needs of Artsakh refugees
 
WASHINGTON – Responding to months of escalating pressure from the Armenian National Committee of America, Congressional allies, and a growing coalition of pro-Armenian partners, Secretary of State Antony Blinken announced Tuesday that President Biden’s proposed $106 Billion supplemental assistance package would include humanitarian assistance to Armenia, which is struggling to assist the 120,000 indigenous Armenians forcibly displaced from Artsakh as a result of Azerbaijan’s genocidal ethnic cleansing.
 
In remarks on Tuesday before the Senate Appropriations Committee on the Fiscal Year 2024 National Security Supplemental, Secretary of State Blinken announced that the proposed measure will “enable us to tackle grave humanitarian needs created by autocrats and terrorists, as well as by conflict and natural disasters in Ukraine, Gaza, Sudan, Armenia, and other places around the world.”  Later in response to a question by Senator Chris Coons (D-DE), Secretary Blinken noted that humanitarian assistance would be provided to Nagorno Karabakh, among other places.  The assistance package does not specify a monetary figure for assistance to Armenia.
 
In testimony submitted to the Senate Appropriations Committee, ANCA Programs Director Alex Galitsky welcomed the inclusion of Armenia in the proposed funding request, explaining that the $11.5 million assistance package announced by USAID Administrator Samantha Power during her visit to Armenia last month “is wholly insufficient to meet the dire needs of a population displaced due to the international community’s abject failure to constrain Azerbaijan’s aggression.”
 
Galitsky stressed that the additional funds allocated through this supplemental aid package must be “commensurate with the acute needs of those forced from their homes by Azerbaijan.” It should also support the long-term goal of “ensuring the right to return for the 150,000 Armenians displaced since the 2020 Artsakh War, with their safety and security guaranteed through a permanent international monitoring mechanism,” stated Galitsky.
 
Citing Azerbaijan’s ongoing occupation of sovereign Armenian territory and threats by President Aliyev to forcibly establish the “Zangezur Corridor” – a contiguous land bridge connecting Azerbaijan to Turkey through Armenia — the ANCA testimony called for “no less than $10,000,000 in foreign military financing (FMF) assistance to Armenia to meet the country’s immediate security needs and deter impending aggression by Azerbaijan’s authoritarian regime.”
 
The ANCA’s request for humanitarian and security assistance builds on similar requests offered in bi-partisan legislation in the Senate (S.2900 / S.3000) and U.S. House (H.R.5683 and H.R.5686).
 
In concluding remarks, Galitsky noted, “allocating humanitarian and security assistance to Armenia in this supplemental funding request can help rectify the policy of appeasement that has come to characterize the U.S. relationship with Azerbaijan – one that has treated the Armenian people as the collateral damage of misguided geopolitical priorities and undermined the security and stability of one of the region’s only democracies. The failure to do so will not only risk condemning Armenia to the whims of Azerbaijan’s tyranny – but signal to autocrats that our commitment to defending human rights and democracy will not be upheld universally, but only when politically convenient.”



Exodus and explosion: Karabakh Armenian families on their dual loss

Anna Tamamian
eurasianet
Oct 26 2023
Arpine Hovhannisyan Oct 26, 2023

On September 25, Elina Jamalyan and her family were packing their belongings in preparation to flee Nagorno-Karabakh and resettle in the Republic of Armenia. 

Days earlier Azerbaijan launched a lightning offensive to retake the region, which it had kept under blockade for the previous nine months. The local army had no help from Armenia and was badly outmatched. It capitulated within 24 hours. 

It was clear that the de facto Nagorno-Karabakh Republic's (NKR) three-decade history was coming to an end and that there would be no place for Armenians in the region as Azerbaijan established its rule. 

In the fighting of 19-20 September, Elina's parents had been evacuated to Stepanakert, the NKR's de facto capital, from their village of Gishi, in Martuni region. 

After the family gathered for one last meal in their home, Elina's husband, Artur Sargsyan, stepped out to get fuel for the long journey ahead. 

His family would never see him again. 

Artur was among the hundreds of people gathered at a fuel depot near the Haykazov military unit on Stepanakert-Askeran highway, just outside of town. According to Elina, the freshly disbanded NKR Defense Army was distributing fuel for free from its reserve funds to help the local population make the trek to Armenia. 

At about 4pm, a gasoline tank exploded at the depot, killing at least 212 people, according to the NK Investigative Committee, and wounding hundreds more. 

The precise cause is unknown and will likely stay that way given the already chaotic circumstances in which it took place and the fact that the wounded and the remains of most of the dead were hurriedly taken to Armenia. 

Azerbaijan, which now fully controls the area, has not commented on the blast other than to say that it offered to treat the wounded in nearby Shusha (a claim denied by the Armenian side).

"I think it was simply the negligence of the people who were in a state of shock and didn't observe safety precautions," Elina said.

Image

When she spoke to Eurasianet last week, her husband's remains had yet to be identified. His ID, phone, and badly damaged wallet had been discovered at the blast site and his family submitted DNA samples for comparison to victims' remains.

On 25th October, exactly one month after the explosion, Artur's body was identified.

Elina's family delayed their escape to Armenia. After desperately searching for Artur at all the medical facilities in town, they joined the last waves of displaced persons to leave Stepanakert on September 29.  

"Elina entered the hospital and saw all the terribly wounded people, she could even lose her sanity after that," Elina's mother Anjela recalled.

Now, thanks to aid provided by diasporan Armenian philanthropists, Elina, Anjela, and the rest of the family are renting a flat in Yerevan. Elina is trying to scrape together a living as a nail technician. 

"It's hard to get clients as most people don't know me here, I have a couple of appointments per week but that's obviously not enough to provide for the family," she said. 

Anjela remains in disbelief over the sudden Armenian exodus from Karabakh. "We could never have imagined that we'd have to leave Karabakh while the Russians were there. After the blockade, we were ready for almost anything, but a war while the Russian peacekeepers were in the territory – that we didn't expect" she said in reference to the 2,000-strong Russian peacekeeping contingent posted in the region after Azerbaijan's victory in the 2020 Second Karabakh War. 

In that war, Baku regained most of the territory it lost to Armenian forces in the first war in the early 1990s.

Just over 100,000 ethnic Armenians were forced to flee their homes in Nagorno Karabakh. Elina's family is among the many who have settled in the Armenian capital. 

According to the former NK state minister Artak Beglaryan, about 10,000 displaced Karabakh Armenians have left Armenia so far and are settling abroad. 

Still others are trying to make a home in other parts of the country, largely because of the prohibitively high rents in Yerevan triggered by the influx of Russians seeking to avoid the consequences of the Ukraine war.

Motherless and doubly displaced

The Vardanyan family is among those who settled elsewhere. I met them at the house they are renting in the village of Nor Geghi in Kotayk region, half an hour's drive from the capital. 

They are originally from the village of Sghnakh, in Nagorno-Karabakh's Askeran region, which Azerbaijan seized in the 2020 war. They then lived in Stepanakert for three years and found themselves doubly displaced after Azerbaijan's offensive last month. 

During our visit, Artak Vardanyan was in the nearby town of Abovyan searching for a new house for the family. Artak's father and son, both named Vardan, meet me at the entrance. The family tells me the house they're currently inhabiting is "too big, expensive and in poor condition – and especially unsuitable for winter."

"We always lived in Karabakh, all my family members, dating back to the 1600s,'' says Vardan Sr. as he begins to list his ancestors. "I could never have imagined we would have to leave our ancestral land. It seemed impossible."  

"The explosion only hastened the exodus. People were scared of everything after that, no place was safe anymore. Even the government members were leaving, trying to take their families as far away as possible," Vardan the elder recalled.

His daughter-in-law, Artak's wife Narine, was among those killed in the September 25 blast. 

She had gone together with some neighbors to the Haykazov military base to get fuel. "I told her to not worry about fuel as my son would bring it eventually, but she was in a rush to flee," Vardan said. Her body ended up in a mortuary in the southern Armenian town of Kapan. Her remains were badly burnt, and she was identified on October 5th based on the photos of her four children found in her pockets. 

The funeral was held four days later. 

Image)

The eldest of the children, 11-year-old Zoya, helps her father and grandfather by taking care of her younger brothers. 

She says she doesn't like her new school, and misses her village and old friends. "Our house was really big, with two floors, and so beautiful, not like this one," she recalls. 

At night, the youngest child, Tigran, 2 and half years old, regularly calls out for his mother and cries himself to sleep. 

"He doesn't understand that mom died even though he was present at her funeral," Zoya says.

The family plans to start a new life in Abovyan soon, and hopes that this time it will be the final destination.

https://eurasianet.org/exodus-and-explosion-karabakh-armenian-families-on-their-dual-loss

Armenia launching charm offensive in City to attract UK investment

Anna Tamamian
This is Money, UK
Oct 28 2023

By CALUM MUIRHEAD

Armenia is launching a charm offensive in the City to attract UK investment.

The country's economy minister and diplomats held meetings this week with major banks in the City as it looks to pivot away from Russia.

Vahan Kerobyan, Armenia's minister of economy and a former HSBC banker, has been shuttling around the UK capital in a bid to strengthen ties between the two countries.

Located in the Caucus region between Russia and the Middle East, Armenia is looking to boost its connections with Western financial centres and shift its geopolitical alignment following war in Ukraine.

While it is not a major trading partner for the UK, the value of goods and services exchanged between the nations has been growing rapidly. Last year, trade between the two countries amounted to £92m, up 156 per cent year-on-year.

Kerobyan told the Mail that the government is aiming to increase this to around £1bn within the next three years, ideally with the help of investment from Western banks.

The delegation has already met with HSBC, his former employer, and also arranged a meeting with US banking giant JP Morgan yesterday.

'We really need to diversify our economic ties,' he said.

No floats of Armenian companies are planned on the London market yet but Kerobyan says this is a possibility for the future.

The government is keen to promote its tech sector, concentrated in the capital Yerevan. Its status as a tech hub dates back to the USSR, when as one of its constituent republics it served as a centre for research. It has previously been dubbed the 'Silicon Valley of the Soviet Union.'

Armenia is now looking to regain that crown, with Kerobyan noting that multinational tech giants such as computer chip group Nvidia, IT giant Oracle and communications group Cisco all have a presence in the country.

The minister also noted Armenia's vast reserves of copper, key for electrification and renewable energy, as well as what he said was its 'booming' solar power industry.

Recent events in the region have also accelerated Armenia's drive to boost its economy. The country is accommodating around 100,000 refugees from Nagorno-Karabakh, an Armenian-populated enclave which last month was seized by its neighbour Azerbaijan.

But Kerobyan seemed outwardly unfazed by the flare-up in the region, saying the assault on Nagorno-Karabakh would not present risks to Armenia's fiscal stability.

He noted that the country's credit rating had been upgraded in August by S&P Global Rating, a leading US rating agency, after an influx of professionals from Russia. The emigres boosted the IT sector, which grew by 51 per cent last year.

Asbarez: The Smoke of Fire: Armenian Library

Anna Tamamian
by Contributor

 

 

 

in Latest, News, Top Stories

BY KARINE DERKEVORKIAN
Translated by Herand Markarian

Library: Armenian script and literature, printed in Diaspora and the Homeland, in Western and Eastern Armenian dialects, in foreign languages; documents, works of art, antiquities with a history of centuries; handicrafts and various other relics. And all that in today’s reality. On one hand, clothes and necessities are being collected to be sent to our migrants arriving Armenia. On the other hand, the library of the Armenian culture center is being established.

And thus, the long-standing project of Lark Musical Society, i.e., the establishment of the center-library of Armenian culture, becomes a reality. When crying and mourning transform into a constructive mission supporting the survival of the nation, when you push aside the veil of grief and look ahead, you find a way out of the abyss, then you have inadvertently defeated the enemy. 

This is our destiny that emerges out of the fire and continues living.

The preface was long, but in the last days the thoughts were gathered.

Back to our library.

Aris Sevag

In 2007, Lark Musical Society appeared in the Armenian press with a message. “Dear compatriots, dear people, at all times, we have been affected by urgent national issues: historical, political, cultural and others. Our country and people have often had transitional periods connected with changes in both internal and external world… 

The Lark Musical Society has a Library-Museum program, the implementation of which will give an opportunity to the culture-loving society to gather, meet, learn and discuss issues that interest us. The future library already has several thousand names of literature from different people…

Taking on new moral and material obligations, the Lark Musical Society welcomes those who support the program and continues its mission.

“The Life & Work of Dikran Tchouhadjian” book cover, translated by Aris Sevag

Sixteen years had passed, those who believed in the program continued to donate to the library. Belatedly, however, the bookcases were ready, and sorting work had begun with the support of officials and volunteers. Suddenly, news is received that one of the main donors of the library is coming from Philadelphia and wants to visit Lark. Sorting works are speeding up as much as possible, and the library staff welcomes the donor Asdghig Sevag, the wife of the late Aris Sevag, whose voluminous library she had donated to the library.

Asdghig says, “When I entered the library, I felt Aris’s presence, his breath, I thought his soul was here. In vain, Aris would say that these books will be thrown into the garbage after my death. It was a miracle that Lark took care of Aris’s library, transported them from New York to Glendale, California (some 5,700 books, 80 boxes). Very few books were left with me as a memory and security cover. I am sure my daughters would not have been able to take care of these books either. Day and night, I will pray for the Barsoumians for this great sacrifice they made. Vache is the first person I have seen after Aris who does such selfless work for the Armenian nation.” 

Mrs. Asdghig says that Mr. and Mrs. Hagop and Marie-Louise Balian were friends both of Aris Sevag and the Barsoumian families, and through their intervention this donation and transfer was made possible after Aris’s passing.

We were interested to know more about Aris Sevag’s literary and translation activity. We had read H. Balian’s article, entitled “Aris Sevak, the Armenian by origin and the anti-fact of…”, where the author had noted the points that define this great intellectual that Aris was. Here is one quote: “In the multifaceted sorrows of the Diaspora, wild flowers grow that do not follow the general rule, and which give color and hue to defeat we call realism”.

We learned about Aris, this unusual person, from his wife, Asdghig. “His father was a Dashnag party sympathizer, but was not a party member. Aris had been the editor of the “Ararat” periodical (New York), as well as the editor of the “Armenian Reporter” weekly for more than 20 years. During the last five years of his life, he worked as a translator in the AGBU New York office. In the early years of his career, he worked as an Armenian teacher at the National Ferahian High School in California. 

“Armenian Golgotha” book cover, translated by Aris Sevag

One son and three daughters from successive marriages and an immeasurable fruitful work to serve the culture of his people – this is the tangible legacy left by Aris Sevag, as well as the library that is now gloriously located in the complex of the Lark Musical Society.

Asdghig says, “He was absolutely not interested in material reward. it was important for him that materials about our Genocide be translated into English and be presented to the public. Many, many people would come to him bringing pages, books, papers, saying, “it was left by my grandfather, or grandmother, or, saying I found it in our closet”. Aris would translate everything with love and elation to add more pages to documentation of  the Genocide.

In 2001, responding to a request from Lark, Aris Sevag had translated Tahmizian’s two volume “The life and work of Tigran Choukhajian” published by “Drazark” publishing house in Pasadena.

In 2010, Rev. Grigoris Balakian’s two-volume English memoir entitled “Armenian Calvary” was published, the main translator of the Armenian text was Aris Sevag in collaboration with Peter Balakian. On the international literature website Words Without Borders, it is valued as a “comprehensive and sensational English translation of a document.”

Posthumously, in 2020, Bedros Gelgik’s Armenian-American Sketches, containing 29 stories was published, of which 20 stories were translated by the “late prolific translator” Ais Sevag. In addition to our conversation with Asdghig, we had benefitted from the Internet as well.

We were interested to know if there are any unpublished works by Aris Sevag. It turns out there are. Sevag had written, in English, the history of the Achabahian princely dynasty of Sis in Cilician Armenia, which had inherited the Holy Rights, considered the symbols of the Catholicosate power. Aris Sevag had spent 10 years on this work. His family however considered this very personal and did not want to have it published. After his passing, Asdghig had gathered the writings and handed them over to Greta Avedisian, a family member, who has decided to have them published.

Aris Sevag also had a plan to translate the literary-historical heritage left by his father professor Manase Sevag, a Genocide survivor, an American-Armenian scientist, member of the Armenian and American Academy of Sciences was born in Sis, Cilicia migrated to the United States in 1920 and died in 1967 in New York. He had written stories and poems about our massacres. Manase Sevag’s writings published in the press can be read on the Internet. However, Aris did not finish the plan; premature death had left this translation work unfinished. 

Asdghig Sevag has handed those archives to the Prelacy of Armenian Churches of Eastern USA where historian Vartan Matteosian will work on those works.

Asdghig is now reflecting on what a great work the Armenia-loving intellectual has done. “I had no idea that it would be possible to do so many translations. A person should have lived another century to do so much.”

In 2007, during the tribute by Hamazkayin Armenian Educational and Cultural Society of New York to Aris Sevag, on the occasion of the 40th year of translational life, Dr. Herand Markarian labeled Aris as “The All-Armenian Translator”.

Asdghig Sevag has been an active member of Hamazkayin of New York chapter and the Chairperson of the Parents’ Committee of St. Illuminator’s Day School she is still trying to place her beloved husband’s literary merit in a worthy way, as a legacy to the next generations, because that was Aris Sevag’s wish and message that our history must be passed on to those who continue our march.

BY KARINE DERKEVORKIAN
Translated by Herand Markarian

Library: Armenian script and literature, printed in Diaspora and the Homeland, in Western and Eastern Armenian dialects, in foreign languages; documents, works of art, antiquities with a history of centuries; handicrafts and various other relics. And all that in today’s reality. On one hand, clothes and necessities are being collected to be sent to our migrants arriving Armenia. On the other hand, the library of the Armenian culture center is being established.

And thus, the long-standing project of Lark Musical Society, i.e., the establishment of the center-library of Armenian culture, becomes a reality. When crying and mourning transform into a constructive mission supporting the survival of the nation, when you push aside the veil of grief and look ahead, you find a way out of the abyss, then you have inadvertently defeated the enemy. 

This is our destiny that emerges out of the fire and continues living.

The preface was long, but in the last days the thoughts were gathered.

Back to our library.

In 2007, Lark Musical Society appeared in the Armenian press with a message. “Dear compatriots, dear people, at all times, we have been affected by urgent national issues: historical, political, cultural and others. Our country and people have often had transitional periods connected with changes in both internal and external world… 

The Lark Musical Society has a Library-Museum program, the implementation of which will give an opportunity to the culture-loving society to gather, meet, learn and discuss issues that interest us. The future library already has several thousand names of literature from different people…

Taking on new moral and material obligations, the Lark Musical Society welcomes those who support the program and continues its mission.

Sixteen years had passed, those who believed in the program continued to donate to the library. Belatedly, however, the bookcases were ready, and sorting work had begun with the support of officials and volunteers. Suddenly, news is received that one of the main donors of the library is coming from Philadelphia and wants to visit Lark. Sorting works are speeding up as much as possible, and the library staff welcomes the donor Asdghig Sevag, the wife of the late Aris Sevag, whose voluminous library she had donated to the library.

Asdghig says, “When I entered the library, I felt Aris’s presence, his breath, I thought his soul was here. In vain, Aris would say that these books will be thrown into the garbage after my death. It was a miracle that Lark took care of Aris’s library, transported them from New York to Glendale, California (some 5,700 books, 80 boxes). Very few books were left with me as a memory and security cover. I am sure my daughters would not have been able to take care of these books either. Day and night, I will pray for the Barsoumians for this great sacrifice they made. Vache is the first person I have seen after Aris who does such selfless work for the Armenian nation.” 

Mrs. Asdghig says that Mr. and Mrs. Hagop and Marie-Louise Balian were friends both of Aris Sevag and the Barsoumian families, and through their intervention this donation and transfer was made possible after Aris’s passing.

We were interested to know more about Aris Sevag’s literary and translation activity. We had read H. Balian’s article, entitled “Aris Sevak, the Armenian by origin and the anti-fact of…”, where the author had noted the points that define this great intellectual that Aris was. Here is one quote: “In the multifaceted sorrows of the Diaspora, wild flowers grow that do not follow the general rule, and which give color and hue to defeat we call realism”.

We learned about Aris, this unusual person, from his wife, Asdghig. “His father was a Dashnag party sympathizer, but was not a party member. Aris had been the editor of the “Ararat” periodical (New York), as well as the editor of the “Armenian Reporter” weekly for more than 20 years. During the last five years of his life, he worked as a translator in the AGBU New York office. In the early years of his career, he worked as an Armenian teacher at the National Ferahian High School in California. 

One son and three daughters from successive marriages and an immeasurable fruitful work to serve the culture of his people – this is the tangible legacy left by Aris Sevag, as well as the library that is now gloriously located in the complex of the Lark Musical Society.

Asdghig says, “He was absolutely not interested in material reward. it was important for him that materials about our Genocide be translated into English and be presented to the public. Many, many people would come to him bringing pages, books, papers, saying, “it was left by my grandfather, or grandmother, or, saying I found it in our closet”. Aris would translate everything with love and elation to add more pages to documentation of  the Genocide.

In 2001, responding to a request from Lark, Aris Sevag had translated Tahmizian’s two volume “The life and work of Tigran Choukhajian” published by “Drazark” publishing house in Pasadena.

In 2010, Rev. Grigoris Balakian’s two-volume English memoir entitled “Armenian Calvary” was published, the main translator of the Armenian text was Aris Sevag in collaboration with Peter Balakian. On the international literature website Words Without Borders, it is valued as a “comprehensive and sensational English translation of a document.”

Posthumously, in 2020, Bedros Gelgik’s Armenian-American Sketches, containing 29 stories was published, of which 20 stories were translated by the “late prolific translator” Ais Sevag. In addition to our conversation with Asdghig, we had benefitted from the Internet as well.

We were interested to know if there are any unpublished works by Aris Sevag. It turns out there are. Sevag had written, in English, the history of the Achabahian princely dynasty of Sis in Cilician Armenia, which had inherited the Holy Rights, considered the symbols of the Catholicosate power. Aris Sevag had spent 10 years on this work. His family however considered this very personal and did not want to have it published. After his passing, Asdghig had gathered the writings and handed them over to Greta Avedisian, a family member, who has decided to have them published.

Aris Sevag also had a plan to translate the literary-historical heritage left by his father professor Manase Sevag, a Genocide survivor, an American-Armenian scientist, member of the Armenian and American Academy of Sciences was born in Sis, Cilicia migrated to the United States in 1920 and died in 1967 in New York. He had written stories and poems about our massacres. Manase Sevag’s writings published in the press can be read on the Internet. However, Aris did not finish the plan; premature death had left this translation work unfinished. 

Asdghig Sevag has handed those archives to the Prelacy of Armenian Churches of Eastern USA where historian Vartan Matteosian will work on those works.

Asdghig is now reflecting on what a great work the Armenia-loving intellectual has done. “I had no idea that it would be possible to do so many translations. A person should have lived another century to do so much.”

In 2007, during the tribute by Hamazkayin Armenian Educational and Cultural Society of New York to Aris Sevag, on the occasion of the 40th year of translational life, Dr. Herand Markarian labeled Aris as “The All-Armenian Translator”.

Asdghig Sevag has been an active member of Hamazkayin of New York chapter and the Chairperson of the Parents’ Committee of St. Illuminator’s Day School she is still trying to place her beloved husband’s literary merit in a worthy way, as a legacy to the next generations, because that was Aris Sevag’s wish and message that our history must be passed on to those who continue our march.


Putin proposes holding Armenia-Azerbaijan peace talks in Moscow

Anna Tamamian
Oct 13 2023
Reuters | Bishkek
Russian President Vladimir Putin on Friday said Moscow was ready to help Armenia and Azerbaijan sign a peace deal and proposed holding talks in Moscow.

Azerbaijan restored control over the breakaway region of Nagorno-Karabakh last month with a 24-hour military operation which triggered the exodus of most of the territory's 120,000 ethnic Armenians to Armenia.

https://www.devdiscourse.com/article/law-order/2628681-putin-proposes-holding-armenia-azerbaijan-peace-talks-in-moscow

Baku Publicizes ‘Reintegration’ Plans for Artsakh Armenians after Almost Complete Depopulation

Anna Tamamian
by Contributor

 

 October 2, 2023

 

in Armenia, Artsakh, Featured Story, Latest, News, Top Stories

Artsakh residents stage a protest in Stepanakert to demand an end to Azerbaijan's blockade on Jul. 25


YEREVAN (Azatutyun.am)—The Azerbaijani government publicized on Monday a plan to “reintegrate” Nagorno-Karabakh’s ethnic Armenian residents one day after the end of their mass exodus to Armenia that left Karabakh almost completely depopulated.

The outgoing authorities in Stepanakert said late on Sunday that the last group of residents was evacuated by bus and that only Karabakh’s leadership as well as a search-and-rescue team and a small number of possibly “helpless” civilians remain in the region.

The Armenian government reported the following day that the total number of Karabakh Armenians who have left their homeland since Azerbaijan’s September 19-20 offensive barely changed overnight and reached 100,520.

“This means that the flow of people [to Armenia] has basically stopped and that mainly officials and a tiny segment of the population remain in Karabakh,” a government spokeswoman, Nazeli Baghdasarian, told the press.

Karabakh’s population officially stood at around 120,000 prior to the exodus. The figure presumably included at least 10,000 Karabakh Armenians who fled their homes during and after the 2020 war as well as thousands of others who were unable to return to Karabakh due to the Azerbaijani blockade of the Lachin corridor.

Karabakh’s human rights ombudsman, Gegham Stepanian, said that those who have “credible information about lonely or helpless people left behind in Artsakh” should contact the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC). A spokeswoman for the ICRC office in Yerevan, Zara Amatuni, confirmed that the Red Cross is ready to help locate such individuals.

“As regards people who remain [in Karabakh,] want to relocate but can’t do that for some reasons — for example, disability or other situations that left them helpless — our organization is trying to track those cases and help them move to Armenia,” Amatuni told RFE/RL’s Armenian Service.

She said the ICRC office has received hundreds of phone calls from Karabakh refugees who lost contact with their relatives during the exodus sparked by the Azerbaijani offensive that left at least 200 Karabakh soldiers and civilians dead.

The exodus paved the way for the restoration of full Azerbaijani control over Karabakh. Azerbaijan’s leadership has denied a deliberate policy of “ethnic cleansing” and pledged to protect the rights of Karabakh Armenians willing to live under Azerbaijani rule.

Baku released on Monday a five-point program of “reintegrating” such people on the basis of the “territorial integrity and sovereignty over Azerbaijan.” The document says that the region will be governed by special representatives to be named by Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev.

Karabakh’s former premier Ruben Vardanyan, former Foreign Minister Davit Babayan, former army commander Levon Mnatsakanyan and his ex-deputy Davit Manukyan were arrested by Azerbaijani security forces while traveling to Armenia through the Lachin corridor last week.

Azerbaijan’s prosecutor-general said on Sunday that Baku also wants to arrest and prosecute about 300 other current or former political and military leaders of Karabakh. They apparently include three former Karabakh presidents: Arayik Harutyunyan, Bako Sahakian and Arkadi Ghukasian. Samvel Shahramanyaan, the current president, is reportedly trying to convince Azerbaijani authorities to let them as well as other prominent Karabakh Armenians leave the region.

Citing an unnamed Karabakh source, the Russian TASS news agency reported on Monday that Harutyunyan, Sahakian and Ghukasian remained in Stepanakert as of noon amid continuing negotiations with the Azerbaijani side.

Any new Armenia conflict would be France’s fault, Azerbaijan’s president says Reuters

Anna Tamamian
Reuters
Oct 8 2023
Reuters
  • Azerbaijan scolds France
  • Aliyev visits Georgia
  • Armenian envoy: Azerbaijan will invade soon

MOSCOW, Oct 8 (Reuters) – Azerbaijan's president scolded the European Union and warned that France's decision to send military aid to Armenia could trigger a new conflict in the South Caucasus after a lightening Azerbaijani military operation last month.

Azerbaijan's President Ilham Aliyev last week pulled out of an EU-brokered meeting with Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan at which Brussels said it was standing by Armenia.

But Aliyev criticised the EU's approach – and particularly France's position – when European Council, Charles Michel, telephoned him, according to an Azerbaijani statement issued late on Saturday.

President Ilham Aliyev said "that due to the well-known position of France, Azerbaijan did not participate in the meeting in Granada," the Azerbaijani presidential office said.

"The head of state emphasized that the provision of weapons by France to Armenia was an approach that was not serving peace, but one intended to inflate a new conflict, and if any new conflict occurs in the region, France would be responsible for causing it."

France has agreed on future contracts with Armenia to supply it with military equipment to help ensure its defences, Foreign Minister Catherine Colonna said Oct. 3 during a visit to Yerevan.

She declined to elaborate on what sort of military aid was envisaged for Armenia under future supply contracts. French President Emmanuel Macron scolded Azerbaijan, saying that Baku appeared to have a problem with international law.

Aliyev restored control over the breakaway region of Nagorno-Karabakh last month with a 24-hour military operation which triggered the exodus of most of the territory's 120,000 ethnic Armenians to Armenia.

Aliyev said he had acted in accordance with international law, adding that eight villages in Azerbaijan were "still under Armenian occupation, and stressed the importance of liberating these villages from occupation."

The Azerbaijani president visited Georgia on Sunday and thanked Tbilisi for offering to mediate for a peace agreement between Azerbaijan and Armenia.

But an Armenian envoy said he feared Azerbaijan could invade within weeks.

"We are now under imminent threat of invasion," the Armenian ambassador-designate to the EU, Tigran Balayan, told Brussels Signal.

Reporting by Reuters, Editing by Guy Faulconbridge

 

345 forcibly displaced persons from Nagorno-Karabakh hospitalized in Armenia

Anna Tamamian

 12:50, 4 October 2023

YEREVAN, OCTOBER 4, ARMENPRESS. 345 forcibly displaced persons from Nagorno-Karabakh are hospitalized in various towns in Armenia as of 12:00, October 4, the prime minister’s spokesperson Nazeli Baghdasaryan said at a press briefing citing data from the healthcare ministry.

“102 of them are in serious condition, while 37 others are in critical condition. 9 children are in intensive care,” she added.

The number of forcibly displaced persons from Nagorno-Karabakh who’ve arrived to Armenia stood at 100,625 as of 12:00, October 4.

Armenians who fled Turkish rule decades ago despair over Nagorno-Karabakh. ‘This appears to be our fate’

Anna Tamamian
Los Angeles Times
Oct 6 2023

BY NABIH BULOSFOREIGN CORRESPONDENT

ANJAR, Lebanon — Hilda Doumanian stood in the main hall of the Anjar museum, scanning the glass cases holding items her ethnic Armenian forebears salvaged from their lands before they escaped to Lebanon more than eight decades ago.

“This appears to be our fate: to be forcibly displaced every few decades,” she said, walking up to one of the displays: A collection of rust-encrusted kitchenware and bundles of braided silk from a village loom. Ancient-looking rifles. Religious vessels. Bibles so old their pages appeared more suspended dust than paper.

“The Armenian genocide was the first genocide of the 20th century,” she said, slowly shaking her head in resignation, referring to the 1915 genocide by the Ottoman Empire.

“Now in the 21st century we see the first genocide, and it’s Armenians again.”

A gardener tends to the plants at the Armenian Genocide Memorial in the historic town of Anjar in Lebanon’s eastern Bekaa Valley. The memorial commemorates the mass killings of Armenians as part of the genocide under the Ottoman Empire in 1915. (Joseph Eid / AFP via Getty Images)

On Doumanian’s mind was the exodus taking place over the last two weeks from what many Armenians see as their ancestral homelands — a further erasure of their history.

More than 100,000 ethnic Armenians, fearing ethnic cleansing at the hands of their Azerbaijani adversaries, have abandoned their homes in Nagorno-Karabakh, the mountainous enclave inside Azerbaijan’s internationally recognized borders where they had established their self-declared state.

WORLD & NATION

Amid fury over Nagorno-Karabakh, could Armenia’s government fall next?

Sept. 27, 2023

In the more than 30 years of its existence, the Republic of Artsakh, not formally recognized by any nation, had established the trappings of a country — a government, a standing army, a flag. But it all crumbled before a withering Azerbaijani blitzkrieg last month, with the enclave’s leaders forced to surrender and announce the republic’s dissolution by the end of the year.

Though Azerbaijan’s government offered to integrate Nagorno-Karabakh’s ethnic Armenian population as equal citizens, most, unwilling to countenance Azerbaijani rule, fled into Armenia in a refugee convoy that at its peak stretched more than 60 miles. Fewer than a thousand remain behind. Those who fled cite the Azeris’ decades-old animus toward Armenians and the triumphalist rhetoric of Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev for their distrust, no matter what Azerbaijan says.

For millions in Armenia and the diaspora, the loss of Nagorno-Karabakh, and the long-held dream of constructing a state on Armenian homeland, was a blow. The shock resonates in a personal way in Anjar, whose residents are almost all ethnic Armenians whose ancestors fled here from Musa Dagh, or Moses Mountain, a territory in what is now southern Turkey.

An ethnic Armenian woman from Nagorno-Karabakh carries her suitcase to a tent camp after arriving in Goris, Armenia. (Vasily Krestyaninov / Associated Press)

When the people of Musa Dagh heard of the coming genocidal campaign in 1915, they refused to obey Turkish authorities’ command to leave their houses in the mountains. They resisted for a month and a half, losing 18 people before a French naval vessel rescued and took them to Egypt, where they stayed for four years, returning after the Ottoman Empire’s loss in World War I.

In 1939, when French authorities controlling the area under a postwar mandate handed it to Turkey, the inhabitants of Musa Dagh faced yet another agonizing choice: Accept Turkish control or leave. Fearing a repeat of the bloodshed in 1915, they were escorted out by French troops to settle in Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley, on land bought from an Ottoman feudal lord.

WORLD & NATION

‘Staying, for us, is impossible.’ Thousands of ethnic Armenians flee Nagorno-Karabakh

Sept. 26, 2023

“We refused to live under the Turks, because we knew they would do the same thing as before,” Doumanian said.

Watching a new wave of displacement hit Armenians brought back memories of long-held pain, said Isabel Kendirjian, a bedridden but alert 90-year-old who still remembers coming to Anjar when she was 6.

“It’s the same thing that happened to us. This is how we felt back then,” she said.

“They gave us eight days to leave Musa Dagh. We took everything we could and went on the buses to here,” she said. “There was nothing. Very few trees. We lived in tents.”

The new Anjaris stayed in those tents for roughly two years while authorities built up the town, organizing it into six neighborhoods, each named after a village in Musa Dagh. The houses the French provided were single-room structures measuring 12 square feet along with a bathroom.

“Four people, 20 people, it didn’t matter. Everyone was in one room,” Doumanian said.”We still call them beit Faransi, a French house, to this day.”

Tensions between Muslim Turks and Christian Armenians date to the days of the Ottoman Empire, but the war for Nagorno-Karabakh was rooted in the fall of a more contemporary empire: the Soviet Union.

In 1988, inside the roiling Soviet landscape, the enclave’s ethnic Armenian majority chose to secede from one Soviet republic, Azerbaijan, and unite with another, Armenia. The move sparked an ethnic conflict with Azeris that saw massacres and pogroms on both sides, and an estimated million displaced people, mostly Azeris.

Six years later, by which time the Soviet Union had collapsed, the ethnic Armenians won. They claimed Nagorno-Karabakh (which Armenians call Artsakh) and its surrounding districts in what other nations viewed as a violation of international law.

Donations poured in from the Armenian diaspora, including from the the late California businessman and philanthropist Kirk Kerkorian, whose largesse helped funnel hundreds of millions of dollars to fund schools and a major highway in the fledgling republic. Stop-start negotiations over the years never got anywhere.

In the meantime, Azerbaijan had used its vast oil and gas riches to retool its army. Armenia’s confidence in its ability to keep the status quo in Nagorno-Karabakh, not to mention its contempt for an enemy it had long dismissed as cowardly, meant that it was woefully unprepared when Azerbaijan launched an assault in 2020 and snatched back most of the land it lost.

A cease-fire guaranteed by Russia, Armenia’s main patron, was to be the prelude to a peace treaty. But tensions continued, culminating in Azerbaijan blockading the territory in December, then launching a lightning onslaught last month that routed the Artsakh Republic’s army. Moscow, preoccupied with its war on Ukraine and displeased with Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan’s recent overtures to the West, stood by as Azerbaijan pursued its campaign.

Pashinyan, aware of his military’s limitations and with little diplomatic backing, refused to intervene, infuriating many Armenians.

Varian Khoshian, the mayor of Anjar, feels ashamed at the loss. His passion about the concept of Artsakh runs so deep that he named his son — now an officer in the Lebanese army — after it.

He blamed the rout on Pashinyan and his policy of antagonizing Armenia’s traditional ally, Russia, for the West’s sake, pointing to another sign of fraying ties with Moscow that came Tuesday when Armenia’s parliament ratified the International Criminal Court’s founding Rome Statute.

Because the court in March issued an arrest warrant for Russian President Vladimir Putin for the war in Ukraine, the ratification means Armenia would have to arrest Putin if he stepped on Armenian soil. The Kremlin called the decision “incorrect,” a position with which Khoshian agreed.

“We had a strong umbrella. We like the West, sure, but we got a smaller umbrella from America that doesn’t cover us,” he said.

During Lebanon’s 15-year civil war, Khoshian learned to work with groups he didn’t like, but it was for the good of Anjar; Pashinyan should have done the same, the mayor said.

“I don’t love the Russians. But I need them for my homeland,” Khoshian said. “That’s how you have to think. Otherwise you lose.”

Despite all that, he insisted the war for Nagorno-Karabakh was not over.

“I can’t give up. We will come back. We have to,” he said. “Those lands are the property of our ancestors.”

And it was more than just a matter of emotions.

“We know the value of Artsakh, its strategic location for Armenia,” Khoshian said.

Azerbaijan, he continued, was intent on taking parts of southern Armenia for a land corridor linking its territory to Nakhchivan, Azerbaijan’s exclave on Armenia’s southwestern side.

“It’s the first domino. Once Artsakh falls, you’ll find other Armenian cities in the south falling.”

Armenians have been demanding a stronger military response, with protests among diaspora groups in Southern California and frequent demonstrations in Yerevan, Armenia’s capital, against Pashinyan and what many see as his capitulation.

In Armenian-dominated neighborhoods in Beirut, graffiti targets Azerbaijan’s president, Aliyev, and his top ally, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. The stenciled graffiti calls Aliyev a killer and declares that Karabakh will always be Armenian. Lebanon’s main Armenian party held a demonstration in front of the Azerbaijani Embassy that turned violent. In Anjar, high schoolers had their own anti-Turkish protest, carrying placards with Erdogan’s face and chanting their support for Artsakh.

Yessayi Havatian, an agricultural supplies merchant and Anjar historian, wondered whether the future fate of Karabakh Armenians would be to go to war again, or whether they would become like the Armenians of Musa Dagh, cut off from their ancestral lands.

“Our people thought of going back. For 14 years they refused to plant orchards on the land here. Why? Because they said, ‘We’re not going to stay that long.’ They believed they would go home,” Havatian said.

Whatever Karabakh Armenians choose, he added, it was clear that Armenians couldn’t pursue the war as they had in the past.

“We the Armenians made a mistake: We relied on someone other than us to defend us. The world watched our people forcibly displaced and did nothing. And no one will do anything,” he said.

“No one will defend Armenia other than the Armenians. That’s the solution.”

Boston-area groups to protest weekly at JFK Building in Boston, demanding U.S. response

Anna Tamamian
October 5, 2023 Guest Contributor Diaspora, Announcements 0

BOSTON, Mass.—A coalition of Boston-area youth, activist and advocacy groups has organized a series of protests/vigils in front of the JFK Federal Building in Boston to demand forceful action by the U.S. government to stop the ethnic cleansing of Artsakh Armenians and to sanction the perpetrator Azeri regime.

The JFK Federal Building is the most prominent U.S. federal landmark in New England. It houses the offices of Senators Ed Markey and Elizabeth Warren and is the regional headquarters of a number of U.S. Federal Agencies.

This series of silent protests will be held every Thursday in October, during office hours from 2 to 6 p.m., to grab the attention of U.S. senatorial and federal agency staff who work in this building.

Attendees are encouraged to arrive when they can and to depart when they must, within the four-hour time window.

The first protest is today, Oct 5, 2-6 pm. The FB Event Page has details on all upcoming  protest dates.

The organizers have compiled a list of statements, trusted news articles, videos and other resources about Artsakh onto the following website: https://artsakhsos.carrd.co . We will disseminate this resource via QR code to passers-by.

This series of protests is organized and co-sponsored by the following Boston-area organizations: Zoravik Activist Collective, Armenian General Benevolent Union Young Professionals-Boston, Armenian Assembly of America-Massachusetts, Armenian National Committee of Massachusetts, Armenian Youth Federation-Boston Njdeh Chapter.

Organizations and ASAs that would like to join or co-sponsor this effort, should email [email protected].