Author: Babajanian Karo

ARMENIAN CLERGYMAN CONDEMNS ABORTIONS

Tert.am
23.11.11

An artificial termination of pregnancy implies nothing more than
homicide, according to a Armenian clergyman.

At a news conference on Wednesday, Fr Kyuregh Talyan, a priest from the
St Katoghike Church of Jrvezh (Kotayk region), criticized abortions,
calling for the church’s strong measures in that direction.

“A human being begins life from the moment of conception. To me,
an emotionless concept like ‘artificial termination of pregnancy’
is nothing more than homicide,” he said.

Speaking of the modern world’s perceptions of human rights and a
woman’s freedom to do whatever she wants with her body, he said such
mentality implies sexual licentiousness and brutality.

“A decline of religious values has caused such moral degradation. What
answer are we going to give to God?” he said, adding that the Armenian
nation might have new geniuses and gifted persons if there were
no abortions.

ARTSAKH’S IT SPHERE TO DEVELOP IN PARALLEL WITH ARMENIAN

ARMENPRESS
NOVEMBER 23, 2011
YEREVAN

The events during the past two years implemented in the information
technology and telecommunication sphere will give an opportunity to the
Republic of Nagorno Karabakh not to stay back from the developments
taking place in the same sphere in Yerevan. General Manager of
Viva-Cell-MTS company Ralf Yirikian said attempts are being made to
first make Internet more available in the Nagorno Karabakh through
reducing the tariff.

Executive director of Synopsys-Armenia company Hovik Musayelyan pointed
out that for the development of mentioned spheres it is necessary to
apply corresponding educational systems.

“Many schools already have computer saloons and classes are being
conducted. At the same time it is necessary to increase the level
of engagement in the higher educational system,” he said adding
an attempt is being made to fill this gap through the potential of
Armenia’s intellectual youth.

ARMENIA, UK PRAISE COOPERATION IN DEFENSE SECTOR

PanARMENIAN.Net
November 23, 2011 – 15:15 AMT

PanARMENIAN.Net – On November 23, Armenian Defense Minister Seyran
Ohanyan met with UK ambassador to Armenia Charles Lonsdale who is
completing his diplomatic mission in the country.

Minister Ohanyan thanked the ambassador for his contribution to
Armenian-British military cooperation.

Mr. Lonsdale, in turn, praised productive bilateral collaboration,
giving high assessment to reforms in Armenia’s defense sector,
ministerial press service reported.

ARTSAKH PRESIDENT MEETS WITH ARMENIAN TRADITIONAL PARTIES’ MEMBERS IN LA

PanARMENIAN.Net
November 23, 2011 – 12:42 AMT

PanARMENIAN.Net – On November 22, Artsakh Republic President Bako
Sahakyan met in Los Angeles with members of the governing body of the
Western USA Central Committee of the Armenian Revolutionary Federation
(Dashnaktsutyun), Western USA Social Democrat Hunchakian Party and
Western USA Regional committee of the Ramkavar Azatakan Party.

The socioeconomic situation in the Artsakh Republic, regional
developments as well as cooperation between Artsakh and Diaspora were
in the focus of the meetings.

President Bako Sahakyan praised the role of the traditional Armenian
parties in the Diaspora’s life, their input in cementing ties with
the Motherland and continuous support to Artsakh.

Primate of the Artsakh Diocese of the Armenian Apostolic Church
Archbishop Pargev Martirosyan, head of the central information
department of the office of the Artsakh Republic President David
Babayan, NKR permanent representative to USA and Canada Robert
Avetisyan attended the meetings, reported the Central Information
Department of the Office of the Artsakh Republic President.

CONGRESSWOMAN NIKI TSONGAS PLEDGES CONTINUED SUPPORT TO ARMENIANS

armradio.am
23.11.2011 13:49

Since taking office four years ago, Congresswoman Niki Tsongas has
pledged her unwavering support to Armenia. She’s not about to stop now.

“As a member of the Armenian Congressional Caucus, I look forward
to continue promoting the mutual interest of our two countries and
celebrate our rich history together,” she said at a meeting with
representatives of the Armenian National Committee of Merrimack Valley.

“I will continue working to see that the mass murders by the Ottoman
Empire against the Armenians are appropriately recognized as genocide
in Congress,” Tsongas said.

Tsongas agreed to sign House Resolution 306, calling for the return of
confiscated church properties. In doing so, she joins 39 co-sponsors,
including the chairs of the Armenian, Hellenic, and Human Rights
Caucuses.

The bill urges the Republic of Turkey to safeguard the area’s Christian
heritage and join the United States in preserving the rights of
national, religious, and ethnic groups worldwide.

Tsongas had earlier affixed her name to the genocide resolution,
H.Res.304, which drew 84 co-sponsors, and is currently studying a
third resolution, H.J.Res.83, seeking to stop an arms sale to Turkey.

Throughout her brief tenure in Congress, Tsongas has supported U.S.
investments that have helped spur Armenia’s economic growth and advance
the development of Armenia’s democratic institutions while also helping
the people of Armenia survive, despite Turkish and Azeri blockades.

“It is critical that the United States demonstrate appropriate
diplomacy to improve relations between Armenia and Turkey,” she
confirmed. “I’m hopeful that with American leadership, normalization
may soon take place. Armenians have made Merrimack Valley a more
enriched ethnic community.”

YURI DOKHOIAN TO COACH RUSSIAN MEN’S CHESS TEAM

PanARMENIAN.Net
November 22, 2011 – 11:25 AMT

PanARMENIAN.Net – During November 21 meeting of the Supervisory
Board of the Russian Chess Federation Board Chairman Ilya Levitov
announced candidacy of GM Yuri Dokhoian to the post of the chief
coach of Russian men’s national team.

According to the Chairman of Trainers’ Council Anatoli Bikhovsli,
the idea of appointing Dokhoian to the post was born not long ago
due to Dokhoian’s readiness to take up the position.

The appointment will take place during the Trainers’ Council
in January with Dokhoian to present the team’s working plan,
chess-news.ru reports.

For many years Dokhoian has been Garry Kasparov’s second. In 2009, he
started cooperating with Sergey Karjakin, being at the same time the
coach of the Russian women’s team. He is also the coach of the female
world class players, the sisters Tatiana and Nadezhda Kosintseva. In
2007, he was awarded the title of FIDE Senior Trainer.

ARMENIAN PREMIER EMBEZZLED $70 MILLION?

November 21, 2011

Chairman of the Ramkavar-Azatakan Party of Armenia (HRAK) Harutyun
Arakelyan accuses Prime Minister Tigran Sargsyan and his brother
Ashot Sargsyan, Deputy Director of Nairit plant of embezzling $
31 million dollars.

According to the HRAK Leader, during the study of public documents
he revealed that in 2006, the 90% of the plant’s state stocks were
not sold (as it was officially reported), but donated to an offshore
company named Rhinoville Property Limited.

Mr. Arakelyan explained the mechanism of donation in the following
way: the Russian company pawned the stocks to receive a loan of $
70 million, $ 39 million of which were added to the RA state budget
while the fate of the remaining $ 31 million is still unknown.

The HRAK Chairman says that the then Central Bank President Tigran
Sargsyan and his brother Ashot Sargsyan had direct participation in
the machination.

ARMENIAN CHURCH IN BRITAIN AND IRELAND CELEBRATES ITS NEW BISHOP

21 Nov 2011

Religion and SocietyNews Briefarmeniaarmenianarmenian orthodoxharry
hagopianUK NewsArmenian Church in Britain and Ireland celebrates its
new bishop

The Armenian Church in Britain and Ireland has been celebrating its
new bishop over the second weekend in November.

The Very Rev Fr Vahan Hovhanessian, who was elected Primate of the
Armenian Church on 14 December 2009, has now become The Rt Rev Dr
Vahan Hovhanessian, Bishop of the Armenian Church, following his
Episcopal ordination by HH Catholicos Karekin II at Holy Etchmiadzin
in Armenia on 6 November 2011.

Since then, and on Sunday, 20 November 2011, the newly-ordained
bishop also celebrated his first Badarak or Holy Divine Liturgy at
St Yeghishe Armenian Church in London.

The Armenian Apostolic Church is the world’s oldest national church.

Part of the Oriental Orthodox tradition, it is one of the ancient
Christian communities with a continuing, living presence in the
21st century.

Armenia was the first country to adopt Christianity officially, in
301 CE. The Armenian Church traces its origins to the missions of
Apostles Bartholomew and Thaddeus in the 1st century.

There has been an Armenian presence in the UK since the 18th century.

There are up to 18,000 ethnic Armenians including those who are
British-born and of part Armenian descent, living in Britain at
present.

By way of personal introduction and reflection, Dr Harry Hagopian
writes:

Born in Baghdad almost five decades ago, Bishop Vahan received
his BA in Electrical Engineering from Iraq. He later pursued his
graduate studies in Theology at St Nerses’ Armenian Seminary and at St
Vladimir’s Orthodox Theological Seminary. His Master of Divinity from
St Vladimir was titled “The Council of Shahabivan 445AD: Introduction,
Translation and Commentary.” He later continued with his doctoral
studies in Scriptures at the Jesuitical Fordham University in New
York and successfully defended his thesis titled “Third Corinthians:
Reclaiming Paul for Orthodox Christianity”.

Bishop Vahan is also the author of numerous articles and books in the
fields of biblical studies, theology and Armenian Church history. His
publications include In Remembrance of the Lord: Biblical Introduction,
Historical Review and Contemporary Commentary (2008) as well as
Exegesis and Hermeneutics in the Churches of the East (2009) and The
Old Testament As Authoritative Scripture in the Churches of the East
(2010).

I personally had never met Bishop Vahan prior to his arrival in
London, nor had I even heard of him. So what I witnessed personally
at the initial stages of his presence in our midst as pastor of the
Armenian Church was a man with a robustly confident faith, a dogged
determination to serve the church in its authentic definition of an
assembly of believers (rather than just of long traditions and few
buildings) and an ability to strengthen the institutions that define
the Armenian ethos within the UK & Ireland.

In fact, there was suddenly so much church activity in London,
Manchester, Birmingham, Cardiff or Dublin that I often joked with
Fr Vahan (then) as much as with my own friends or colleagues that
he is kicking up so much dust in such a short time! And for an
ancient institution such as the Armenian Church, when coupled with
its sedentary and almost self-defining approach to matters of faith
in many instances, there was certainly a lot of dust swirling about!

Almost two years into his arrival to London, and his subsequent
ordination a couple of weeks ago, I tend to believe that Bishop Vahan
should apply his abundant Christocentric energies toward further
strengthening the church as a visible manifestation of the Mystery
of the Incarnation and as a relevant living and engaging presence
in the lives of Armenians in the UK & Ireland. Moreover, and perhaps
crucially, I strongly believe that Bishop Vahan should continue the
leading and quintessential legacy of his predecessor Bishop Nathan
by reaching out to the other churches and cementing the ecumenical
role that the Armenian Church plays today in the life, presence and
witness of Christians at the WCC in Geneva and across all continents.

The Armenian Christian faith is neither insular nor torpid; it
reaches out to share the Evangelos or the Good News. But this is
done neither by compulsion nor by an archaic sense of tradition or
institutionalised inheritance that focuses on rituals and sidesteps
the real message! After all, ‘For where two or three meet in my name,
I am there among them’ (Mt 18:20).

Rather, this outreach both within (critically) and without
(essentially) should be done by applying the one and only power –
often very sorely wanting – that defines the Church of Christ. Have
you second-guessed me already? I am of course referring to the power of
love as the determining tenet of Christ’s teachings that is abundantly
clear in, say, St Luke’s Gospel and one that sits comfortably alongside
the more exalted fundamentals of faith and hope.

So Serpazan Hayr is no longer a Hayr Sourp and I wish him well … In
fact, I have often found myself in the past reflecting upon First
and Second Timothy. St Paul’s warmth as he wrote those two epistles
encourages me, just as his exhortations to his protege Timothy
challenge me, and his example of sacrificing all for the Gospel
humbles me. No wonder my mind keeps returning to St Paul’s last words,
“I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept
the faith. Now there is in store for me the crown of righteousness
…” (2 Tim 4.7-8).

To cross necessary bridges, one must at times tread on some delicate
marshlands. Besides, and to paraphrase loosely Lord Tennyson in his
Ulysses, Christians should not rust unburnished but rather shine in
use. And in terms of faith, all of that requires prayer, meditation,
reflection, discipline, perseverance, humility and … again … love
for the other.

* Diocese of the Armenian Church of Great Britain:

———-

The obiter dictum is © Harry Hagopian is an international lawyer,
ecumenist and EU political consultant. He also acts as a Middle
East and inter-faith advisor to the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of
England & Wales and as Middle East consultant to ACEP (Christians
in Politics) in Paris. He is an Ekklesia associate and regular
contributor (). Formerly
an Executive Secretary of the Jerusalem Inter-Church Committee and
Executive Director of the Middle East Council of Churches, he is now
an international fellow, Sorbonne III University, Paris, consultant
to the Campaign for Recognition of the Armenian Genocide (UK) and
author of The Armenian Church in the Holy Land. Dr Hagopian’s own
website is

ARMENIA’S POPULATION DRAIN AND THE DIASPORA: DE WAAL

epress.am
11.21.2011

It happened twenty-three years ago next month, but Armenia’s second
city Gyumri has never fully recovered from the devastating earthquake
of 1988. A full 8 percent of the population perished in the quake.

Local newspaper editor Levon Barsegyan, serving as my tour guide in
Gyumri last week, proudly pointed out the elegant black-stoned houses
for which this former imperial Russian town is famous. But he also
pointed out the old market building, which is still a ruin – in fact
Soviet buildings collapsed while older structures stayed up. And he
told me that six thousand families are still living in the makeshift
“temporary” accommodation the Soviet government provided for them
back then, writes Senior Associate at the Carnegie Endowment for
International Peace Thomas de Waal in The National Interest.

But there is a more insidious problem in Gyumri, more visible in a town
like this than in Armenia’s capital Yerevan, or for that matter any
of the metropolitan cities of the former Soviet Union. Many of these
apartment blocks are half-empty. Thousands of people have simply gone.

Even as the world marked the birth of its seven billionth person last
month, a few countries are confronting the problem of insufficient
population. A majority of them are post-communist countries. In some,
like Russia, Ukraine and Belarus, the problem is low birth rates
that aren’t replenishing demographic stocks. In others, the problem
is emigration, a drain on population.

This problem has hit Central Asia, Georgia and Azerbaijan, where
young men in particular and rural youth in general head off, mainly
to Russia, to find work. But two countries are particularly hard-hit:
Moldova and Armenia.

Migration from Armenia in absolute numbers is probably no worse than
from its two South Caucasian neighbors, Azerbaijan and Georgia. But the
country’s smaller size makes it a much more critical issue. The last
Soviet census put the population at 3.3 million, two-thirds urban and
one-third rural. Half of that rural population may now have emigrated
in search of work, plus considerable numbers of urban dwellers too.

The last official census in 2001 put Armenia’s population at just over
three million. Most people believe it is a lot worse than that. The
drop in numbers came despite the fact that as many as 400,000 people
entered Armenia in 1989-92, either refugees from the Nagorno Karabakh
conflict with Azerbaijan or emigres from the Middle East. But it
seems few of those people stayed. Around a million people may have
left the country since the end of the Soviet period.

A 2009 Gallup poll conducted among twelve post-Soviet countries
presents gloomy data for both Moldova and Armenia. Moldova came first
and Armenia second in the number of people saying they would like to
move abroad for temporary work (53 and 44 percent respectively).

Armenia won dubious first place ahead of Moldova in the number
saying they would like to move abroad permanently (39 and 36 percent
respectively).

Armenia is a small, landlocked country, still suffering the economic
impact of its unresolved conflict with Azerbaijan. But the problem
is compounded by the fact that twice as many Armenians live in the
worldwide diaspora as inside, and they draw their relatives abroad.

And Armenians are traditionally mobile: it is likely that the emigres’
grandparents fled massacres in Anatolia in 1915 or emigrated from
the Middle East to Soviet Armenia.

Now the issue is causing problems with Armenia’s main ally, Russia.

Prime Minister Tigran Sargsyan publicly expressed worry over the
Russian government’s scheme, entitled Compatriots, to give thousands
of Armenians the promise of citizenship and work if they move to
depopulated parts of Siberia. In effect, one ally is resolving its
demographic problems at the expense of another.

Opposition supporters I spoke to in Armenia argue that the government
has no interest in stemming emigration. It acts as a pressure valve
against the kind of disgruntled masses who can undermine governmental
authority, they say, and allows authorities to produce inflated
electoral rolls so they can falsify election outcomes more easily.

Moreover, remittances help keep the country afloat. World Bank
estimates from 2010 said that 9 percent of Armenia’s GDP came from
remittances.

But it’s difficult to see the country developing while it is sapped by
emigration. The rural economy is a subsistence one. It is a constant
strain to maintain an 80,000-strong army to confront Azerbaijan when
the stock of 18-year-old men, born in the early 1990s, is so low.

Perhaps the only silver lining is that if Armenia does begin to solve
its manifold economic and political problems, there is a huge diaspora
out there that has used these fallow years to get better education
and training than they could have received in Armenia. If and when
Armenia does turn a corner in its national development, these people
– re-emigrants, let’s call them – will be in the vanguard of that
new story.

RUSSIA SOLVING ITS DEMOGRAPHIC PROBLEM AT ARMENIA’S EXPENSE – THOMAS DE WALL

Tert.am
21.11.11

Russia is solving its demographic problem at the expense of Armenia’s
population, Thomas de Waal, a senior associate for the Caucasus with
the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace writes in an article.

In the article, titled “Outflow of Armenia’s Population,” de Waal
describes Armenia as a tiny country that does not have entry to the
sea and which continues to suffer from the economic relations due to
the conflict with Azerbaijan over Nagorno Karabakh.

Referring to migration as a serious problem for Armenia against the
backdrop of a recent migration scheme initiated by Russia and called
“Compatriots”, the author writes that Armenia has already publicly
expressed concerns about it.

“Now that issue causes problems even with Armenia’s main ally Russia:
[Armenian] Prime Minsiter Tigran Sargsyan publicly expressed concern
of the Russian governments program called ‘Compatriots’ that promises
citizenship and jobs to thousands of Armenians, if they go an settle
in Siberian inhabited territories,” writes de Waal.

“In fact, the ally is solving its demographic problem at the expense
of the other,” writes Thomas de Waal, adding that Armenia will hardly
grow, given it is being weakened by migration.