Author: Badalian Vardan

ANALYST: YEREVAN’S EURASIAN PATH AND TBILISI’S EUROPEAN INTEGRATION TO AFFECT COMMON MARKET

June 17, 2014 | 17:51

YEREVAN. – The Eurasian path of Yerevan and European path of Tbilisi
will inevitably affect the state of common market, expert on Georgian
issues Johnny Melikyan said on Tuesday.

The expert noted that Armenia’s accession to Eurasian Union will
first of all jeopardize business of Georgian car dealers.

“Re-exports of cars makes a tangible share of Georgian exports, but
the car market is undergoing crisis. Tbilisi has already lost the
markets of Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan,” he said, adding that nearly
50,000 people are engaged in car dealership.

Besides, Armenia and Georgia have a free trade agreement that should be
reviewed. However, the expert is confident that although the countries
chose different paths, Armenian and Georgian authorities will work
to find new forms of cooperation, and the evidence is President Serzh
Sargsyan’s upcoming visit to Georgia.

News from Armenia – NEWS.am

AZERBAIJAN DEMANDS ARMENIA’S EXPULSION FROM NATO PA

by Marianna Lazarian

ARMINFO
Tuesday, June 17, 12:51

Azerbaijan demands Armenia’s expulsion from the NATO Parliamentary
Assembly. As APA reports, Head of the Azerbaijani Delegation to
the NATO PA Ziyafat Asgarov presented an appropriate proposal at the
ongoing 86th Rose Roth Seminar of the NATO PA entitled “South Caucasus:
Challenges and opportunities” in Baku. Asgarov substantiated the
proposal with alleged “terrorist attacks committed by Armenians in
Azerbaijan.” He claims that cooperation of such “a terrorist state
with NATO is unacceptable”.

“NATO cut off the relations with Russia and deprived Russia of
the right to vote in NATO PA for two years. And why isn’t Armenia
withdrawn from the assembly in exchange for the occupation and
terrorism? Therefore we demand from NATO PA to clarify this issue
once and for all,” he said. Head of Armenia’s Delegation to NATO PA
Koryun Nahapetyan and Secretary of Heritage opposition party faction
Tevan Poghosyan represent Armenia at NATO PA’s Rose-Roth seminar in
Baku on 16-18 June. The Armenian parliamentarians agreed to travel to
Baku only after official security guarantees by Azerbaijan. Head of
the Armenian Center for Regional Studies Richard Giragosian is also
in Baku to attend the event.

The activists picketed The Four Seasons Hotel where the Armenian
parliamentarians have arrived at. However, the police dispersed the
protest and confiscated anti-Armenian banners.

POLICE USED VIOLENCE AGAINST PRISONER TO OBTAIN INFORMATION

11:26 | June 17,2014 | Social

Based on the report of Armen G., an inmate of Nubarashen penitentiary
institution, as well as on the material of the Special Investigation
Service of Armenia, a criminal case has been instituted under Article
309 (Part 2) of the Armenian Criminal Code.

According to the prisoner, in December 2013, with the aim of obtaining
information from him police officers used violence against him at
the Police Gegharkunik Department, hitting him with feet and hands
and causing different injuries.

Investigation is in progress, reports the Press Service of the Special
Investigation Service.

PACE CO-REPORTERS TO GO TO YEREVAN

Vestnik Kavkaza, Russia
June 16 2014

16 June 2014 – 10:42am

PACE co-reporters to go to Yerevan

Co-reporters of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe
on Armenia Affairs Axel Fischer and Alan Mill will visit Yerevan on
June 16-18th, the PACE press service reports.

The schedule of the visit includes meetings of the co-reporters with
President Serge Sargsyan, speaker of the parliament Galust Saakyan,
Premier Ovik Abramyan, deputy ministers of justice and foreign affairs,
the deputy ombudsman and leaders of political parties, non-governmental
organizations and the Armenian delegation at PACE.

It is planned to discuss the latest political events in the republic,
constitutional reforms initiated by the authorities, problems of
alternative military service, gender equality, religious and sexual
minorities, and reforms in the sphere of policing and justice.

Co-reporters of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe
on Armenia Affairs Axel Fischer and Alan Mill will visit Yerevan on
June 16-18th, the PACE press service reports.

The schedule of the visit includes meetings of the co-reporters with
President Serge Sargsyan, speaker of the parliament Galust Saakyan,
Premier Ovik Abramyan, deputy ministers of justice and foreign affairs,
the deputy ombudsman and leaders of political parties, non-governmental
organizations and the Armenian delegation at PACE.

It is planned to discuss the latest political events in the republic,
constitutional reforms initiated by the authorities, problems of
alternative military service, gender equality, religious and sexual
minorities, and reforms in the sphere of policing and justice.

NAGORNO-KARABAKH: CRIMEA’S DOPPELGANGER

Open Democracy
June 13 2014

Thomas de Waal 13 June 2014

Crimea and Nagorno-Karabakh, two regions with similar histories,
took very different paths after the Soviet Union broke up; until now.

Parallel provinces

Crimea and Nagorno-Karabakh have shadowed each other for several
decades. In Soviet times they shared the curious status of both
being autonomous regions, which were each part of one of the 15 Union
Republics of the USSR, but shared a strong affiliation with another
Union Republic. Russian-majority Crimea, after 1954, belonged to
Ukraine while Armenian-majority Nagorno-Karabakh was situated inside
Azerbaijan.

Once the USSR began to split apart, that double allegiance was a
recipe for trouble. In 1988, the Armenians of Karabakh were the
first rebels to shake the architecture of the Soviet Union, when,
encouraged by their compatriots in Yerevan, they demanded unification
with Soviet Armenia. Then, in December 1989, the soviets of Azerbaijan
and Nagorno-Karabakh jointly declared unification. Following the
Armenian victory in that conflict, confirmed by the 1994 ceasefire,
Armenia has since carried out a de facto annexation of Karabakh,
Meanwhile, the territory sticks to a declaration of independence made
in 1991, but recognised by no one except its fellow de facto states
in the region – Abkhazia, South Ossetia and Transnistria.

In the early 1990s, there were fears that Crimea would follow the
example of Karabakh, Abkhazia or Chechnya, and seek secession,
thereby provoking yet another conflict. In Crimea, however, the
‘Karabakh precedent’ was a dog that didn’t bark. To general relief,
the peninsula proved to be a damp tinderbox. Either it was because
Russians and Ukrainians were too intermingled and too similar, or it
was that the Crimean Russian elite was too corrupt or too passive,
but Crimea avoided conflict even as other Soviet-era autonomous
regions were fought over.

Until 2014, that is. The bizarre chain of events in Ukraine, in
February and March, led to the Russian Federation annexing Crimea,
tearing up half a dozen international treaties, and creating a new
territorial dispute almost out of thin air. In this context, people
are wondering not about whether Karabakh creates a precedent for Crimea
but whether it works the other way round. The truth may be that Crimea
has placed Karabakh in a new vicious circle of destructive politics.

Russia’s role

Armenia immediately made its choice. David Babayan, adviser to the
Karabakh Armenian president, called Crimea’s vote in March a good
precedent for Nagorno-Karabakh.

‘You are now entering free Artsakh’ (Armenian for ‘Karabakh’), CC oDR

Hrant Apovian, one Armenian expert amongst many, wrote, ‘The Republic
of Nagorno-Karabakh is a full fledged democratic entity. It will
survive and will be recognized as such in time. The cases of Kosovo and
Crimea will reinforce and not hinder its march toward independence.’

Evidently under Russian pressure, Armenia was forced to abandon
its tradition of ‘complementarity,’ and was one of a very small (and
generally disreputable) group of 10 countries which supported Russia’s
capture of Crimea, at the United Nations, along with Belarus, Bolivia,
Cuba, North Korea, Nicaragua, Sudan, Syria, Venezuela and Zimbabwe.

Russia is an official mediator in the conflict and – in contrast
to its much more direct involvement in Abkhazia, South Ossetia and
Transnistria – has interests on both sides. Its only military base in
the South Caucasus (outside Abkhazia and South Ossetia) is in Armenia.

It has strengthened its economic and security relationship with
Armenia, which is now on course to join Russia’s Customs Union.

An Azerbaijani soldier keeps watch. Both sides are often only 100
metres from each other. CC Azerbaijan-irs.com

But Moscow also continues to build up its relationship with Azerbaijan,
the largest and by far the wealthiest country in the South Caucasus. In
May, Russia made a new weapons sale to Azerbaijan, which the Armenian
defence minister, through gritted teeth, called a normal development.

Sergei Markov, Kremlin adviser (one time US employee in Moscow, and now
Washington’s biggest bete noire), told Azerbaijan that only Russia, not
the United States, could guarantee Azerbaijan’s territorial integrity.

This display of realpolitik and the on-going confrontation between
Russia and Western countries over Ukraine mean that it will be much
harder to see a concerted three-country push for a Karabakh peace
agreement, as happened in 2011.

Some Western commentators argue that Russia obstructs the resolution
of a Karabakh peace process.

Some Western commentators argue that Russia obstructs the resolution
of a Karabakh peace process. There is little evidence of this. In a
decade and a half following the conflict, I have known half a dozen
US mediators, representing the OSCE’s Minsk Group. Each of them has
said that the three co-chairs, France, Russia and the United States,
have worked in close coordination over that entire period. When
former president Dmitry Medvedev tried to forge a deal in a meeting
in Kazan in 2011, he did so with the full support of Barack Obama
and Nicholas Sarkozy.

Azerbaijani military parade. Azerbaijan’s military budget is now
exceeds Armenia’s total government budget. CC Sevda Babayeva

Yet Vladimir Putin, Medvedev’s patron, successor and predecessor,
has not continued the high-level diplomacy that ended in Kazan. The
failure there probably only confirmed the cynicism and indifference
with which he is said to regard the Karabakh peace process. This
cynicism, rather than active manipulation of the conflict, is Russia’s
main fault. But it should be said that Putin has reason to be cynical.

An enduring rivalry

Over the past two decades, both Armenia and Azerbaijan – and
particularly the latter – have grown much stronger as states. The two
presidents of each country, currently Serzh Sargsyan and Ilham Aliyev,
have grown correspondingly more powerful vis-a-vis the mediators of
the Karabakh conflict, and now it is they who conduct the negotiation
process, seek to set its exceedingly slow tempo and, especially in
the case of Azerbaijan, blame the mediators for lack of progress.

The conflict between independent Armenia and Azerbaijan is similar
to that between India and Pakistan.

Laurence Broers has argued convincingly that the conflict is better
seen as one of ‘enduring rivalry’ between independent Armenia and
Azerbaijan, similar to that between India and Pakistan, than a
post-Soviet conflict about autonomy and self-determination.

The takeover of Crimea, the crisis in Ukraine, and the black-and-white
political realities that have resulted from them have only accentuated
difficulties that had already made the Karabakh conflict even more
intractable.

Nagorno-Karabakh troops clean their weapons in their trench on the
‘line of contact’ (c) RIA Novosti/Ilya Pitalev

One is the increased militarisation of the ‘line of contact,’
the ceasefire line of 180km that runs through de jure Azerbaijani
territory. On each side are 20,000 Armenian and Azerbaijani troops,
dug into first world war-style trenches sometimes only 100 metres
apart. Snipers with long-range rifles cause casualties a long way back
from the line. Heavy weaponry has built up, with the Azerbaijanis
now spending more than £1.8 billion a year on their military budget
on items such as drones, multiple-rocket launchers and attack aircraft.

Some military analysts say that this has created a deterrent effect,
but we can be certain that a new conflict, however small, would be
vastly more destructive than that of the 1990s.

There are 20,000 Armenian and Azerbaijani troops, dug into first
world war-style trenches sometimes only 100 metres apart.

Even if none of those new weapons are fired, the militarisation has
been accompanied by even more bellicose rhetoric from the losing
side, Azerbaijan. The rhetoric is, of course, a symptom of 20 years
of frustration, but it also erodes hopes of forging a relationship at
the negotiating table, which might produce a peace deal. In his recent
Independence Day speech President Aliyev declared: ‘Therefore, if the
Armenian people want to live in peace with neighbours they must first
of all get rid of their criminal, blood-thirsty and illegal regime
and send it to the annals of history.’ It was not a speech likely to
persuade President Sargsyan to engage in meaningful negotiations on
the surrender of captured territory.

A burned out APC on the road to Kelbajar in 2014. Twenty years since
the ceasefire, reminders of the conflict abound. CC oDR.

At the same time, in the last few months, the Azerbaijani Government
has cracked down even more severely on civil society organisations and
those few activists engaged in Track II dialogue with Armenians. In
April, Azerbaijani journalist Rauf Mirkadirov was arrested for alleged
espionage on behalf of Armenia, his crime being collaboration with
Armenian non-governmental colleagues. Last month, the country’s two
most prominent activists for human rights and dialogue with Armenians,
Arif and Leyla Yunus, were prevented from leaving the country, had
their passports confiscated, and are under similar threats.

Conflict management

In parallel, the international mediation efforts of the Minsk Group
have stayed at the same level. Although they do not say so out
loud, French, Russian and US diplomats send the signal that they
do not believe there is a chance of a peaceful breakthrough in the
negotiations, but that they will continue to manage the negotiations
and the ceasefire monitoring mission, while hoping for better times.

It is not so much conflict resolution as conflict management.

It is not so much conflict resolution as conflict management.

In his speech last month in Washington marking the 20th anniversary
of the ceasefire, US Minsk Group ambassador James Warlick, again set
out the fundamental rationale for a peaceful agreement. He more or
less hinted that if – and only if – the parties to the conflict are
serious about it, the United States government is prepared to commit
more resources to the peace process. ‘It is the presidents who must
take the bold steps needed to make peace,’ he reminded his audience.

Unfortunately, in the world that has been re-drawn following the
take-over of Crimea, the leaders of Azerbaijan and Armenia see even
fewer incentives to take those bold steps than before.

GEORGIA: NASA ENLISTED IN EFFORT TO STAKE CLAIM TO “CRADLE OF WINE” TITLE

EurasiaNet.org
June 13 2014

June 12, 2014 – 11:22pm

In its effort to stake claim to the title of being the “birthplace”
of wine, Georgia a few years back petitioned the European Union,
successfully earning the right to sell its wine in Europe using the
tagline “The Cradle of Wine.”

Considering there are others — namely next door Armenia — that
are also claiming to be the place where wine was born, it appears
that Georgian authorities are taking extra steps to solidify their
claim on the title. As the Georgian wine news site Hvino.com reports,
Levan Davitashvili, director of Georgia’s National Wine Agency, has
said his organization has provided numerous labs — including one
run by the American space agency NASA — with archeological material
that will prove “Georgia’s status as the motherland of wine.” From
Hvino’s report:

According to Levan Davitashvili, the research project can’t be
accomplished in a short period of time, but the Georgian side expects
that a lot of material will prove that grape vine domestication and
wine production started in Georgia.

Director of the National Wine Agency notes that in April new
excavations were carried out in the region of Kartli, and the unearthed
artifacts will supposedly prove that Georgia is the homeland of
wine. “We have a fragmentary material. However, it is not recognized
by leading scientists.

We are convinced that we are a wine country, but it must be proved
scientifically,” said Levan Davitashvli.

While NASA’s scientists work their way through Georgia’s artifacts,
they might want to take a look at the research of Swiss botanist Jose
Vouillamoz, who studies the DNA of grape varieties. His findings? That
many of the most famous grape varieties used to make wine in Europe
trace their roots back to not Georgia but to yet another “cradle”
of wine, Turkey.

RECOGNISING GENOCIDE: PART THREE

Neos Kosmos, Hellenic Perspective, Australia
June 13 2014

13 Jun 2014

“It is believed that in Turkey between 1913 and 1922, under the
successive regimes of the Young Turks and of Mustafa Kemal (Ataturk),
more than 3.5 million Armenian, Assyrian and Greek Christians were
massacred in a state-organised and state-sponsored campaign of
destruction and genocide, aiming at wiping out from the emerging
Turkish Republic its native Christian populations. This Christian
Holocaust is viewed as the precursor to the Jewish Holocaust in WWII.

To this day, the Turkish government ostensibly denies having committed
this genocide.”

Dr Israel Charney

At the close of the First World War, Greece was a nation being torn
apart at the seams. Sundered politically and socially through the
‘National Schism’ between the Royalists, who wanted to stay out
of the war and were only forced to enter the war after the Allies
blockaded Piraeus, and the Venizelists, who, with a view to territorial
expansion, set up their own rival government in Thessaloniki, from
there to prosecute the war, across the Aegean, terrible stories were
being told of a mass genocide of Greeks in the Ottoman Empire. Unlike
the West, which was largely innocent of the holocaust while it was
being carried out, Greece was well aware of the crime being perpetrated
against her own people. King Constantine himself accused the German
Kaiser, his brother-in-law, of Germany’s complicity in the genocide,
a claim the Kaiser denied, though enough evidence now exists to
suggest that the organised removal of Greeks from coastal regions
such as Gallipoli and the forced death marches of the population were
suggested to the Ottomans by German military advisers. Nonetheless,
as Manus Midlarsky states in his book: The Killing Trap: Genocide in
the Twentieth Century, the Greek genocide was nuanced and calculated
to take place without attracting too much western opprobrium: “Given
these political and cultural ties, wholesale attacks on the Ottoman
Greeks would have profoundly angered not only the Entente Powers, but
Germany and Austria-Hungary as well, the allies upon whom the Ottomans
were deeply dependent. Under these conditions, genocide of the Ottoman
Greeks simply was not a viable option. (…) Massacres most likely did
take place at Amisos and other villages in the Pontus. Yet given the
large numbers of surviving Greeks, especially relative to the small
number of Armenian survivors, the massacres were apparently restricted
to the Pontus, Smyrna, and selected other ‘sensitive’ regions.”

Thus, in 1919, a politically fragmented Greece that was fraught with
domestic strife, exhausted by continuous war since 1912 and almost
bankrupt, had lost an extremely large portion of its eastern population
to genocide, was granted occupation of most of Eastern Thrace, to a
point forty kilometres from Constantinople. Prime Minister Venizelos,
in the face of serious Allied (and Greek military) misgivings,
asserted Greece’s capacity to occupy and police a zone around the
city of Smyrna. Owing to the support of British Prime Minister David
Lloyd George, Greek troops finally landed in Smyrna in 1919, to the
consternation of the Turks.

The occupation and administration of Smyrna, which was supposed to be
of five years’ duration, after which time, its inhabitants would hold
a plebiscite to determine which country they would like to belong to,
marks the departure point between the constituents of the Christian
genocides. Unlike the Armenians and the Assyrians, who did not have
a state at the time the Christian genocide was committed, the Greeks
not only had such a state but also found themselves embroiled in a
war against forces the like of which they had never before encountered.

While the vanquished Sultan in Entente-occupied Constantinople was
cajoled into accepting the Greek occupation and the cession of Eastern
Thrace, culminating in the Treaty of Sevres that formalised Greece’s
gains at the expense of the Ottoman Empire, the occupation of parts
of Turkey by erstwhile Ottoman subjects was something that could
not be countenanced by nationalist Turkish forces. Coalescing around
Kemal Ataturk, the hero of the defence of Gallipoli, they landed in
Samsounta on 19 May 1919 and commenced a campaign to remove the last
vestiges of the Greek presence in Anatolia.

According to Igor Diakonov in The Paths of History, in the context
of the nationalist campaign, which was considered a battle for the
survival of Turkey, “Kemal attempted to continue the genocide of
Armenians in Transcaucasia, and of Greeks on the coast of the Aegean.

Especially heartrending and horribly bloody was the genocide of the
Greeks in Smyrna (Turkish Izmir) where they had lived since the tenth
century BC”.

As a result of the Kemalist campaign, the Treaty of Sevres was never
ratified. As Kay Holloway wrote, the failure of the signatories to
bring the treaty into force “resulted in the abandonment of thousands
of defenceless peoples – Armenians and Greeks – to the fury of their
persecutors by engendering subsequent holocausts in which the few
survivors of the 1915 Armenian massacres perished”.

Given the refusal of Turkish Nationalists to abide by the Treaty,
and the constant harassing of the Greek forces by Turkish guerrillas,
irregulars and nationalist forces, the already beleaguered Greek
army had no choice but to cross over from the Smyrna zone into Turkey
proper, in order to neutralise the aggression. While this is widely
considered, especially by Turkish forces, to have been tantamount
to an invasion, the strategic objective of these operations was to
defeat the Turkish Nationalists and force Kemal Ataturk into peace
negotiations. The advancing Greeks, still holding superiority in
numbers and modern equipment at this point, had hoped for an early
battle in which they were confident of breaking up ill-equipped Turkish
forces. Yet they met with little resistance, as the Turks managed to
retreat in an orderly fashion and avoid encirclement.

Winston Churchill, who was sympathetic to Greek aspirations but
was sceptical about their ability to fulfil these, said: “The Greek
columns trailed along the country roads passing safely through many
ugly defiles, and at their approach the Turks, under strong and
sagacious leadership, vanished into the recesses of Anatolia”.

As the war continued, Turkish forces lured the Greek army further and
further way from its supply lines, the Greek army advanced as far
as the Sangarios River, near Ankara. Along the way, and during its
retreat, the Greek army committed several instances of brutalities
against the civilian Muslim population. These incidents are often
referred to by Turks when the issue of recognising the genocide of
the Assyrians, Greeks and Armenians in Anatolia is broached with
them, and in fact there exist in Turkey various museums dedicated
to exposing Greek army atrocities. As these atrocities are raised
as a counterpoint to the genocide, or by way of excusing Turkey’s
liability for it, they are certainly worth examining, no less because
they feature hardly in the Greek discourse about the period. Not only
do they provide a context for Turkey’s continued genocide denial,
but also suggest that frameworks other than the political and the
historical could be employed, in order to render the process by which
Turkey and Turkish society can accept the historicity of the genocide,
with the minimum of trauma and difficulty. Next week those facts will
be examined in detail.

* Dean Kalimniou is a Melbourne solicitor and freelance journalist.

Part 1:
Part 2:
Part 3:

SERZH SARGSYAN CONGRATULATES RUSSIAN DIPLOMATS ON DAY OF RUSSIA

Vestnik Kavkaza, Russia
June 13 2014

13 June 2014 – 4:08pm

Serzh Sargsyan congratulates Russian diplomats on Day of Russia
Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan has paid a visit to the Russian
Embassy in Yerevan on the occasion of the the Day of Russia, the
press service of the president reports.

He congratulated Ambassador Ivan Volynkin and the embassy staff on
this holiday and wished them success in their diplomatic mission
for the benefit of the friendship between the two peoples and the
strengthening of the Armenian-Russian relations, News-Armenia reports.

Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan has paid a visit to the Russian
Embassy in Yerevan on the occasion of the the Day of Russia, the
press service of the president reports.

He congratulated Ambassador Ivan Volynkin and the embassy staff on
this holiday and wished them success in their diplomatic mission
for the benefit of the friendship between the two peoples and the
strengthening of the Armenian-Russian relations, News-Armenia reports.

AS LIST GROWS, AZERI LEADERS SAY “WHAT POLITICAL PRISONERS?”

Institute for War and Peace Reporting, UK
IWPR Caucasus Reporting #740
June 13 2014

Government currently presiding over human-right-friendly Council of
Europe’s cabinet.

By Afgan Mukhtarli – Caucasus

As it took over the chair of the Council of Europe’s decision-making
body last month, Azerbaijan committed itself to upholding the core
values of a grouping that calls itself “the continent’s leading human
rights organisation”.

Human rights defenders in the country say the government falls so
far short of meeting these commitments that it should never have been
allowed to take up the six-month rotating chairmanship of the CoE’s
Committee of Ministers on May 14.

Addressing a CoE meeting in Vienna on May 6, Azerbaijan foreign
minister Eldar Mammadyarov pledged that his country would pay
particular attention to the grouping’s “three key pillars – human
rights, rule of law and democracy”.

The day Azerbaijan officially took over the chairmanship, police
arrested rights activist Emil Mammadov. A Baku court ordered him held
for three months while charges of blackmail were investigated.

The same day, May 14, the Supreme Court in Baku rejected an appeal
by Rashad Ramazanov, a blogger critical of the government who was
arrested on drugs charges and given nine years in prison.

A day later, Parviz Hashimli, a journalist with the Bizim Yol
newspaper, was jailed for eight years. He has been held since September
last year and accused of a firearms offence.

Amnesty International has declared both Ramazanov and Hashimli
prisoners of conscience.

On May 26, a court sentenced jailed Anar Mammadli, head of the Election
Monitoring and Democracy Study Centre to five-and-a-half years’
jail. His colleague Bashir Suleymanli got a three-and-a-half-year
term. (This trial was covered in Five Years’ Jail for Finding Fault
With Azerbaijan Election.)

Prosecutors are currently investigating journalist Rauf Mirqadirov,
who was arrested on April 19 on charges of spying for Armenia.

(Azerbaijani Journalist Accused of Spying for Armenia.) In the same
case, they have also questioned leading rights activists like Leyla
Yunus, head of the Institute for Peace and Democracy, and Matanat
Azizova, head of the Women’s Crisis Centre.

On June 10, Azerbaijan’s court of appeal postponed the hearings
of Tofiq Yaqublu, deputy head of the opposition Musavat party,
Ilgar Mammadov, head of the REAL movement, and Yadigar Sadiqov ,
an adviser to the head of Musavat. Sadiqov was convicted of assault,
while Mammadov and Yaqublu were jailed in relation to riots in the
town of Ismayili.

The European Union has deemed all three to be political prisoners
and demanded their release.

Elman Fattah, head of a committee set up to defend Sadiqov, said
the timing of the postponement looked like a matter of political
convenience.

“On June 21, we expect [President] Ilham Aliyev to speak at the
Council of Europe,” Fattah said. “The president is certain to face
tough questioning, and it’s now very likely that he’ll reply to
questions about political prisoners by saying that this case hasn’t
finished yet.”

Aliyev ignored appeals from international organisations to use a May
28 amnesty to free some at least some of these individuals, and Fattah
said the president was hoping to avoid embarrassing questions.

“We are expecting a fresh round of amnesties on June 19,” he
explained. “By postponing the dates for the appeals of Mammadov,
Sadiqov and Yaqublu, the government can now explain why they won’t
feature on the list.”

Meanwhile, members of the youth opposition group NIDA who were given
long sentences last month said they had come under pressure to ask for
pardons. (See Condemnation After Youth Activists Jailed in Azerbaijan
on the case.)

On June 2, the justice ministry published a statement from one of
the eight, Bakhtiyar Guliyev, renouncing NIDA and asking not to be
considered a political prisoner. The next day the ministry published
a letter from Guliyev to the president requesting a pardon.

Defence lawyer Elton Guliyev said other members of the group had also
been asked to write to the president, but had refused.

Omar Mammadov, a blogger on trial for alleged drugs offence, told
RFE/RL radio on June 6 that he too had turned down a suggestion
that he seek a presidential pardon. Mammadov, who was studying at a
university in Northern Cyprus before his arrest in January, was well
known for blog posts harshly critical of the government.

Rasul Jafarov, head of the Human Rights Club, said the government was
showing total disrespect for the CoE by persisting with repressive
policies while taking up a senior position on the council’s governing
body.

“There have been new arrests, courts have jailed journalists and
bloggers for long periods on the basis of false evidence, and the
amnesty list signed on Republic Day [May 28] did not include political
prisoners,” he said.

“You should not believe the government’s promises to defend human
rights and democracy. We must steadily increase our criticism, our
pressure and our demands.”

Leyla Yunus told reporters on June 9 that she was establishing a
Centre for Opposing Repression to find new strategies for pressing
the government to change its ways.

“Our tactics have not worked, and that’s why there are now 130
political prisoners in Azerbaijan,” she said. “We must demand ever
more loudly that Ilham Aliyev free the political prisoners.”

Asked about the interrogation of Yunus at a joint news conference
with French president Francois Hollande on May 12, President Aliyev
told reporters there were no political prisoners in Azerbaijan.

“The human rights situation in Azerbaijan is positive. No one is
investigated for their political views,” he said. He then added,
“No other country can influence the steps we take in our domestic
and foreign policies.”

Arif Hajili, head of the Musavat party’s secretariat, said foreign
states including CoE members must demand that Azerbaijan live up to
its obligations.

“When Azerbaijan entered the Council of Europe, it assumed obligations
not to hold political prisoners and not to restrict people’s rights,”
he said. “The world community and the Council of Europe must demand
that the Azerbaijani government of Azerbaijan release political
prisoners and ensure freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom
of assembly, and all fundamental freedoms.”

Afgan Mukhtarli is a journalist with

TEACHING RELIGION IN SCHOOL IN ARMENIA JUSTIFIED USING ISRAEL’S EXAMPLE

06.13.2014 18:29 epress.am

The school subject “History of the Armenian Church” is secular;
it simply aims to round out the national portrait of Armenian
spirituality, said National Institute of Education representative
Hasmik Margaryan during a discussion titled “Christian intercession
classes in [public] schools” at the Media Center today.

Note, the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child has advised the
Government of Armenia to review its curriculum and remove the subject
on the history of religion, respecting the religious freedom of all
children. RA Minister of Education and Science Armen Ashotyan said
he intends to make no such change.

“We’ve received no written complaints from any parent. On the contrary,
we’ve received words of praise. After all, we are teaching a system
of values. How is it that [children] in a state like Israel for 50
years have taken the subject ‘Self-Identity,’ which aims to identify
religious and national identity? And we see with what great strides
Israel moves forward,” argued Margaryan.

The other speaker at today’s press conference, Armine Davtyan, who
researched the issue, didn’t agree that the textbooks are secular.

According to her, they impose the teachings of the Armenian Apostolic
Church. It even says in the textbook explanation that its purpose
is to keep children away from sectarian organizations and the threat
they pose.

“None of the religious organizations had a goal to enter general
[public] education. Their activity is open, but they don’t impose
anything,” said Davtyan.

Margaryan, however, objected, saying that religious organizations
operate on account of grants and even encourage evading military
service.

Facilitating the discussion, Artak Hambartsumyan asked whether
Margaryan also considers the UN an organization that lives off
of grants.

“Why doesn’t the UN oblige Spain and France to remove religious history
[from the school curriculum]? We want the Armenian nation to continue
[to exist]. What has our society come to? Today they get married;
tomorrow, they don’t like each other and get divorced,” said Margaryan,
indignant.