Some of the Armenian prisoners who returned from Azerbaijani captivity on Wednesday are being questioned as victims, Armenia’s Investigative Committee said.
“All necessary investigative measures will be taken with regard to all of them. Those who are being interrogated have the victim status," Investigative Committee spokesman Gor Abrahamyan told Panorama.am on Thursday.
Azerbaijan released 32 Armenian prisoners in exchange for two soldiers held in Armenia.
12:12,
YEREVAN, DECEMBER 12, ARMENPRESS. The Armenian parliament ratified with 61 to 26 votes on Tuesday the agreement on involving a €50 million loan in budgetary support from the OPEC Fund.
The OPEC Fund for International Development (the OPEC Fund) is supporting green, inclusive and sustainable development in Armenia with a €50 million loan through its program lending instrument.
Just five days after Yuri Kim, the acting assistant secretary of state, told a Senate committee that the United States would not tolerate any military action against the Christian community in Nagorno-Karabakh, Azerbaijan's dictator ordered his army to attack. Thus ended one of the world’s oldest Christian communities, as Azerbaijani forces pushed the region’s 120,000 men, women, and children into flight.
Certainly, dictators from Beijing to Baku interpret President Joe Biden’s weakness and confusion as a green light for aggression. Diplomacy has no credibility when red lines are ephemeral. While the State Department may believe in the power of dialogue, viewing conflict only through the lens of honest disagreement often leads to failure. Ideology matters. There is ample evidence that racism colors Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev’s attitude toward Armenians. Now, it appears greed does as well.
WHY GOOGLE IS KILLING OFF MILLIONS OF ACCOUNTS STARTING THIS WEEK
Here, the case of Gubad Ibadoghlu, an Azerbaijani academic, is instructive. Arrested on Aliyev’s orders last summer, Ibadoghlu languishes in prison, denied basic medical care to treat both his diabetes and heart condition. Ibadoghlu was no gadfly oppositionist; rather, he was a careful researcher whose writings hint at why Aliyev has been desperate to silence him.
Ibadoghlu runs the Economic Research Center, a think tank he established to study macroeconomic policy and good governance. Ibadoghlu’s reports document how Aliyev seized prime agricultural land in Nagonro-Karabakh for personal benefit. While Aliyev complains about mines for propaganda purposes, this is cynical. He has forced the U.S.-funded HALO Trust to cease its own mine-clearing operations and instead demands donors channel all demining money through him. He has then directed his own deminers to clear only land his interests would farm, leaving ordinary Azerbaijanis unaided.
His goal is monopoly. Ibadoghlu documents how the Azerbaijani government does not allow other farmers to work in Karabakh. As he reveals, “All the companies that rent land in Karabakh either belong to the President's family … or to high-ranking officials.” Aliyev’s propaganda that he liberated Karabakh for ordinary Azerbaijanis is simply false.
Personal enrichment also guides construction. As President Recep Tayyip Erdogan did in Turkey, Aliyev profits double, first by channeling billions of dollars into his own construction companies and then by forcing those seeking to win Azerbaijani contracts to pay exorbitant rent. Aliyev and his propagandists may repeat, “Karabakh is Azerbaijan” as a mantra, but Azerbaijan has never before fully controlled the region. This historical reality is the reason why the Azerbaijani leader has such difficulty getting Azerbaijanis to live in Karabakh.
While Azerbaijan and its proxies sponsor lavish trips to show reconstruction to gullible Westerners, the reconstruction Azerbaijan shows off, contracts awarded to Turkish and Azerbaijani companies with close ties to the ruling regimes of both countries, represent corruption as they build empty shells to launder money.
Corruption comes in many forms. Many dictators are not satisfied with $100 million or $1 billion but want more. They might address Nagorno-Karabakh in terms of sovereignty, but the devil is in the details. A desire to profit colored the decision to go to war and drive the oldest Christian populations on Earth off their land. This just makes Washington’s silence more shameful.
One day, Armenians will return, and Turks and Azerbaijanis will reclaim the money their rulers have stolen. Until that time, the shame is on those who facilitate such schemes, not only in Ankara and Baku but also in Washington, London, and Jerusalem.
Michael Rubin (@mrubin1971) is a contributor to the Washington Examiner's Beltway Confidential blog. He is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/did-azerbaijan-target-christians-for-its-dictators-personal-profit
The European Investment Bank (EIB) Group has donated €200,000 to address the mental health and winter-related needs of the Karabakh Armenian children. It will support up to 26,000 children who have fled to Armenia following the military escalation in September 2023.
The donation is made via the EIB’s philanthropic arm, the EIB Institute, and delivered through UNICEF.
Thanks to the EIB Group donation, UNICEF will establish and operate a mental health helpline staffed by 20 trained counsellors for two years. The children and their caregivers will also receive face-to-face psychological support through play therapy, art therapy, and group sessions. The donation will also support refugee families through vouchers that will help them to cover their essential needs as the winter season begins.
In late September, more than 100,000 people took refuge in Armenia with children making up more than one-third of the displaced population, the EIB said.
“Children have suffered most from the conflict and displacement,” said Shiva Dustdar, director and dean of the EIB Institute. “It is a top priority for the EIB Institute to help them access the support and care they need to settle down and look forward to a brighter future.”
Find out more
Press release
https://euneighbourseast.eu/news/latest-news/armenia-eib-group-donates-e200000-to-unicef-for-psycho-social-support-for-refugees/
It was clear, even before the concert began, that the enthusiastic, nattily well-dressed, largely Armenian crowd that gathered Tuesday night at Symphony Hall anticipated a extraordinary evening of music and kinship. I almost felt like I was crashing a huge family reunion. It was the friendliest and most happily expectant crowd I’d seen at a concert in a long time. The first balcony and floor were packed.
Armenia has had an extremely tough time of it historically, especially since the genocide of 1915. This concert aimed to redress the most recent heartbreaking humanitarian disaster and help out 120,000 displaced refugees from the community of Artsakh. It was extraordinary to see the devotion of Boston’s Armenian community of kindred spirits.
The concert, featuring the extraordinary Armenian-born pianist Sergei Babayan, paid tribute to Aram Khachaturian’s 120th and Sergei Rachmaninoff’s 150th anniversaries. The mostly youthful Armenian National Orchestra, conducted by Eduard Topchjan, opened with selections from Khachaturian’s “Spartacus Ballet Suites.” Played with enthusiasm, featuring a multitude of instrumental colors, and rarely performed here, it made for terrific opener. Of the three numbers, Variation of Aegina and Bacchanalia, Adagio of Spartacus and Phrygia, and Dance of Gaditanae-Victory of Spartacus, which was a bit rambunctious, I liked the Adagio best; its lovely oboe solos and a prominent harp accompaniment (some composers know what a harpist/critic likes to hear) gave much pleasure. It was hard not to notice that the concertmaster Karen Tosunyan and most of the strings were youngish women sporting four-inch heels and sparkly tops. The episodes moved by with great commitment, and the audience seemed to be enjoying itself. But the best was yet to come.
The phenomenal Sergei Babayan delivered a sensitive, utterly thrilling performance of Rachmaninoff’s 3rd Piano Concerto (Opus 30), making short work of the sprawling concerto’s technical difficulties. It turns out that this concerto, and Rachmaninoff’s solo piano music, are two of his specialties (check out his take on Rach 3 HERE). I first heard Babayan several years ago on the Celebrity Series of Boston with his former pupil, Daniil Trifonov (who appeared impressively just last week again, on Celebrity Series). But at the duo concert, it was Babayan who captured my attention, and I grabbed the chance to see him live again. While he is hardly a household name, he’s won a slew of competitions, and, to boot, his recent duo partner is the great Martha Argerich. Artist-in-Residence at Cleveland Institute of Music for many years, he has been teaching at Juilliard since 2014. I have resolved never to miss him live, although he is hardly a frequenter of these parts.
Sergei Babayan
The ultra-virtuosic concerto had a particular moment of fame when it was featured in the movie Shine in which the pianist David Helfgott is driven to madness by the concerto’s technical and emotional demands. Rachmaninoff wrote it for his own formidably gifted self, though he had trouble playing his own cadenza, and later simplified it. After the brief nerve-wracking first few bars, in which the orchestra commenced at a tempo decidedly different than the one Babayan was anticipating, he came in and played magnificently, with perfectly executed dynamics and lyricism, his magisterial technique almost was thrilling as his tender musicality…and he had no trouble with the demanding first version of the cadenza. Next time he is in Boston, RUN to see him!
When other mortals would have been soaking their hands post-concerto in ice water, Babayan returned to play an important short and vanishingly quiet encore by Arvo Pärt. According to my laptop genie, Pärt’s mature style was inaugurated in 1976 with this very piece, “Für Alina,” that remains one of his best-known works. It is governed by the compositional system that he called “tintinnabuli,” derived from the Latin word for “bells.” The tintinnabuli method pairs each note of the melody with a note that comes from a harmonizing chord, so they ring together with bell-like resonance.” I loved my first hearing. A very moving, soul-cleansing piece. Thank you, Mr. Babayan.
Rachmaninoff’s wildly popular, soul-on-his-sleeve Symphony No. 2 in E Minor, Opus 27 is so beloved because one gorgeous tune just morphs into the next glorious and memorable one. Clarinets must live to play their solos in this piece, and the French horns also notably excelled. I often imagine I am listening to Rachmaninoff whispering in my ear, “If you think this tune its fabulous, listen to this!” The ultra-Romantic 3rd Movement felt sluggish, and balances did not always allow the important solos to bloom in the hall (a problem unfortunately frequent under Topchjan’s leadership).
My publisher reports that orchestra encored with an armed-for bears take on Khachaturian’s Masquerade Waltz. Topchjan’s insistent rolling arm gestures kept things moving at warp speed and resounding volume.
It takes a huge, committed community to organize and fundraise something as wonderful as this concert. Due to the generosity of the sponsors, all of the revenue from ticket sales supported the humanitarian needs of the people of Artsakh. I love a community that is there to help its own. This concert provided a perfect example of unity and solidarity.
The remarks highlighted Armenia's growing rift with its powerful ally after Russian peacekeepers failed to prevent Azerbaijan's offensive to retake its Armenian-controlled separatist enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh.
"There is a problem related to the delivery of (Russian) weaponry and equipment for which we have already paid," Pashinyan said in televised remarks.
"Discussions are currently underway on the mechanisms to resolve this problem."
"We know that the Russian Federation itself needs weapons," he said, in an apparent reference to Russia's war on Ukraine.
He also said there were "certain problems" with respecting a bilateral agreement "stipulating that no efforts should be made to interfere in internal affairs or destabilize the domestic political situation in the country" by the two countries' broadcast media.
Pashinyan said Yerevan had invited Moscow to hold consultations "so that we can resolve this issue in a friendly and normal atmosphere."
Armenia is part of the Moscow-led Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) which obliges Russia to defend Armenia in the event of a foreign invasion.
Pashinyan has accused the CSTO of failing to fulfill that obligation, including when Armenia said its neighbor and arch-foe Azerbaijan had seized small pockets of its territory over the past three years.
On Thursday, Armenia refused to participate in a CSTO summit in Belarus, the latest _expression_ of Yerevan's growing discontent.
In a lightning military operation in September, Azerbaijan reclaimed its breakaway region of Karabakh from Armenian separatist forces which had controlled the mountainous territory for three decades.
https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2023/11/24/armenia-pm-criticizes-russia-as-rift-with-moscow-grows-wider-a83215
13:34,
YEREVAN, NOVEMBER 24, ARMENPRESS. Armenia is preparing an amendment in its fourth interstate complaint filed against Azerbaijan in the European Court of Human Rights.
The amendment pertains to the issue of restoring the right to property of the people of Nagorno-Karabakh, Hasmik Samvelyan, the spokesperson of the Office of the Representative of Armenia o n International Legal Matters told Armenpress.
Samvelyan said the complaint will be filed in the coming months.
Posted onNovember 16, 2023
YEREVAN – Over the past month, legacy and social media have been saturated with reports of the Netanyahu regime’s war on Gaza, which is being met with growing calls from the international community to invoke the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.
Less known, however, is the role the Israeli government has played in another genocide that took place in West Asia only a month and a half ago. This genocide, little noted in the Western press, involved the ancient Christian community of Armenians in Nagorno-Karabakh, known within Armenia as the Republic of Artsakh, that was ethnically cleansed by the Ilham Aliyev, the Shia dictator of Azerbaijan, in late September and early October. The muted response to Azerbaijan’s crime might plausibly be chalked up to the strength of its well-funded and influential lobby in Washington which profits off of the oil and gas revenue generated by SOCAR, the State Oil Company of the Azerbaijan Republic. SOCAR has links to the Podesta Group (co-founder John Podesta currently serves as a senior adviser to President Biden), lobbying powerhouse BGR Government Affairs, LLC, as well as numerous think tanks and academics associated with, among others, The Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) and the American Foreign Policy Council.
Yet another reason for the subdued response by Washington is the well documented ‘special relationship’ between the 51st US state, Israel, and Azerbaijan. A discussion I had last week with the Armenian academic Dr. Benyamin Poghosyan, who serves as Chairman of the Center for Political and Economic Strategic Studies and Senior Research Fellow on Foreign Policy at the Applied Policy Research Institute (APRI) of Armenia, shed some light on the role the Israeli government and its defense industry has played in enabling Azerbaijan – and why.
The relationship between the two countries began to deepen around 15 years ago when Azerbaijan, flush with revenue from its oil and gas deposits in the Caspian basin, began looking to purchase advanced weapons systems.
According to Poghosyan, “as late as September 2023, just before the most recent Azerbaijani attackseveral cargo planes went to Israel and came back to Azerbaijan full of weapons. And there is even information that Israel continued to supply weapons to Azerbaijan even after October 7th.”
The AP reports that it is estimated that Israel has supplied Azerbaijan with “nearly 70% of its arsenal between 2016 and 2020.”And just this week it was reported that Azerbaijan inked a $1.2 billion dollar deal with Israel Aerospace Industries to purchase the Barak MX air defense system, described as “a modular air defense system… designed to address missile and aircraft threats.”
The question then arises: Why is Israel, which claims to be under a near constant threat of missile attacks from the south in Gaza and potentially from the north by Hezbollah, doing this?
Poghosyan notes that he doesn’t think money is the reason, after all, fully 20 percent of the Israeli defense budget is covered by the American taxpayer.
The real reason has to do with Iran.
According to Poghosyan, Azerbaijan has agreed “to allow Israel to use their territory for anti-Iranian activities. And we are speaking about covert activities, foreign intelligence… Azerbaijan gave the green light to Israeli special services, especially its foreign intelligence service, to do whatever they want in Azerbaijan. Of course now they have access to that security zone around Nagorno-Karabakh, which borders Iran.”
Poghosyan notes that in recent years (in the aftermath of its earlier attempt to subjugate Nagorno Karabakh in 2020) Azerbaijan constructed two airports in the territory it gained around Nagorno Karabakh. “They are,” says Poghosyan “supposedly civilian airports, yet they are located very close to Azerbaijani-Iranian border – a distance of 30, 40 kilometers from the border. There are a lot of reports that Israeli military intelligence or foreign intelligence operatives are using these airports for operations against Iran.”
Israel’s role in assisting Azerbaijan’s ethnic cleansing of Nagorno-Karabakh is well known inside Israel, which it must be said, conducts a far more robust debate over Israel’s foreign policy than is allowed here in the United States.
The estimable Israeli newspaper Haaretz recently editorialized that Israel has, in their words, “its fingerprints” all over Azerbaijan’s ethnic cleansing in Nagorno-Karabakh. Haaretz also contends that “Israel hasn’t just supplied Azerbaijan with arms. It has also helped it distort history” by its refusal to recognize the Armenian genocide, which the Israeli regime merely defines as a “tragedy.”
Meanwhile, the situation in Armenia grows more ominous by the day, as Azerbaijan escalates its rhetoric (last week accusing Armenia of, among other things, illegally “occupying” eight villages on the Azerbaijan-Armenia border) and stands ready, with the eager help of Tel Aviv, to once again make a mockery of both international law and common decency.
James W. Carden is a columnist and former adviser to the US-Russia Bilateral Presidential Commission at the U.S. Department of State. His articles and essays have appeared in a wide variety of publications including The Nation, The American Conservative, Responsible Statecraft, The Spectator, UnHerd, The National Interest, Quartz, The Los Angeles Times, and American Affairs.
https://original.antiwar.com/james-carden/2023/11/15/israels-other-war-ethnic-cleansing-in-the-south-caucasus/
16:35,
YEREVAN, NOVEMBER 16, ARMENPRESS. The delegation led by the Minister of Defense of Georgia Juansher Burchuladze has arrived in the Republic of Armenia on an official visit, the Ministry of Defense has said.