Author: Badalian Vardan

ARMENIE-DIASPORA
Le festival culturel > (Mon Arménie) débutera en juillet
prochain en Arménie

Le Festival culturel arménien > (Mon Arménie) se tiendra
une nouvelle fois en Arménie. Le gouvernement arménien vient de
valider son déroulement. Il débutera en juillet prochain avec de
nombreuses manifestations culturelles et artistiques en Arménie et au
Haut Karabagh. Des dizaines de troupes de danses traditionnelles et
folkloriques d’Arménie et de la diaspora participeront à ce festival >. Les participants ainsi que les touristes visiteront les
lieux culturels, rencontreront les représentants du gouvernement
arménien ainsi que les artistes et personnalités du monde culturel
d’Arménie. L’objectif étant l’échange culturel entre les participants
de ce festival >. En septembre, toujours dans le cadre
de ce festival seront organisées des prestations et concerts de duduk,
l’instrument de musique traditionnelle arménien.

Krikor Amirzayan

samedi 8 mars 2014,
Krikor Amirzayan (c)armenews.com
– 893

HRANT DINK TRIAL SUSPECT ERHAN TUNCEL RELEASED

Today’s Zaman, Turkey
March 7 2014

A Turkish court released Erhan Tuncel on Friday, who had previously
been acquitted of all charges related to the 2007 killing of Hrant
Dink, the late editor-in-chief of the Turkish-Armenian weekly Agos,
but was then arrested during the retrial of the murder case.

The Ä°stanbul 14th High Criminal Court began a review of the trial
late last year after the Supreme Court of Appeals overturned the
Ä°stanbul court’s ruling from Jan. 17, 2012, which had dismissed the
involvement of an organized criminal network in the murder.

Tuncel was released as part of a bill reducing the maximum period of
arrest to five years, which was signed into law by President Abdullah
Gul on Thursday night. The court ruled that Tuncel’s detention period
as a suspect had exceeded the maximum, as he had been under arrest
for five years and five months.

Tuncel, who worked as an informant for the Trabzon Police Department,
was sentenced to 10 years in prison for his role in the 2004 bombing
of a McDonald’s restaurant in the Black Sea town of Trabzon but was
acquitted of all charges relating to the Dink murder, including
prosecutors’ claims in the first trial that he was the one who
had ordered Yasin Hayal, the man who was given a life sentence for
soliciting Dink’s shooter, to murder him.

Tuncel, along with all the other defendants, were cleared of membership
of a terrorist organization in an earlier ruling of a local court.

Dink was shot and killed in broad daylight on Jan. 19, 2007, by an
ultranationalist teenager outside the offices of his newspaper in
Ä°stanbul. Evidence discovered since then has led to claims that the
murder was linked to the “deep state,” a term referring to a shadowy
group of military and civilian bureaucrats believed to have links
with organized crime.

Zirve murder suspects might be released as well

The amendment limiting the maximum period of arrest to five years is
likely to affect another prominent court case concerning the murder
of three Christian missionaries in a Malatya publishing house in 2007.

Lawyers representing two key suspects, Emre Gunaydın and Cuma Ozdemir,
submitted petitions to the Malatya 3rd High Criminal Court demanding
their clients be released pending trial. The court, which has reached
the final stage of the trial, is expected to release Gunaydın and
Ozdemir.

On April 18, 2007, Christian missionaries Necati Aydın, Ugur Yuksel
and German national Tilmann Geske were tied to their chairs, stabbed
and tortured at the Zirve Publishing House in the southeastern
Anatolian city of Malatya before their throats were slit. The
publishing house printed Bibles and Christian literature. Suspects
Abuzer Yıldırım, Ozdemir, Salih Gurler and Hamit Ceker were
apprehended at the scene and immediately taken into custody, while
the other suspect, Gunaydın, jumped from a third-storey window in
an attempt to escape from police and was taken into custody after
being treated for his injuries.

ARMENIAN FOREIGN MINISTER MEETS OSCE CHAIRMAN-IN-OFFICE

Vestnik Kavkaza, Russia
March 7 2014

7 March 2014 – 12:57pm

Armenian President Edwar Nalbandian has met Didier Burkhalterm Swiss
President and OSCE Chairman-in-Office, in Switzerland, APA reports.

He informed Burkhalter about the work of the OSCE Minsk Group in
Armenia and progress in the Nagorno-Karabakh peace process. The Swiss
president expressed support for the OSCE MG.

The sides discussed the upcoming visit of Burkhalter to Armenia
in June.

EARTH TO GIRL SCOUTS: MORE THAN 200 GIRLS LEARN ABOUT NATIONS OF THE WORLD

The Daily Star-Journal, Warrensburg, Mo
Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Business News
March 5, 2014 Wednesday

by Jack “Miles” Ventimiglia, The Daily Star-Journal, Warrensburg, Mo.

March 05–WARRENSBURG — World Thinking Day drew about 250 Girl Scouts,
siblings and parents to First Christian Church of Warrensburg at
Holden and Gay streets.

Girls set up tables for each other, with each table dedicated to
information about a foreign country. Girls sold food or SWAPS —
an acronym meaning Something With A Pin — to raise funds.

“These funds will be donated to the World Thinking Day Foundation and
shared among the five ‘focus countries’ of Armenia, Benin, Bangladesh,
Egypt, and St. Vincent and the Grenadines,” an event organizer,
Adrianne Naddell, reported.

To get “passports” stamped , the littlest girls ran from table to
table to jot down information about the “countries” they visited.

Older girls took more time, asking questions and taking advantage of
the learning opportunity.

Some tables served food native to the countries represented, with
grapes given out by Heather Walston at the Chilean table.

“Wine, grapes and copper are the three main things out of Chile,”
Walston said.

Amber Powers stopped with daughter Serenity Beemer, 5, a Daisy
with Troop 433, Knob Noster. While kneeling to reach eye level with
Serenity, Powers said Bangladesh is a poor country where children
seldom have a good education. The average schooling for a Bangladeshi
is 2.6 years, based on United Nations Educational Scientific and
Cultural Organization information.

Each table represented one of the world’s countries, with 23 overall
this year, an event organizer, Kristen Sullivan said. The event
started in 1926, at the fourth Girl Guide/Girl Scout International
Conference held at Girl Scouts of the USA’s Camp Edith Macy.

Sullivan’s troop set up a table about Armenia and contacted
Scouts there. She said the Armenians expressed excitement about the
contact with a troop in the United States. Troop 5305 members at the
Warrensburg event sang the ABC’s in Armenian for everyone.

“We chose (Armenia) because they were one of the five focus countries,”
Sullivan said.

World Thinking Day recognizes some places in the world lack resources
that troops in this and other countries can help provide. Girls at
the Warrensburg event raised $1,748 for five countries.

Sullivan told the girls in the crowd, “Be proud of what you do.”

RUSSIA DEPLOYS UPGRADED MIG-29 FULCRUM JETS TO ARMENIAN AIRBASE

Defenseworld.net
March 6 2014

Source : Our Bureau ~ Dated : Thursday, March 6, 2014 @ 12:35 PM

The Russian Ministry of Defence has deployed a new batch of upgraded
MiG-29 Fulcrum fourth-generation fighter jets at its airbase at the
Erebuni airport in Yerevan, Armenia, according to various reports.

Southern Military District spokesman colonel Igor Gorbul was quoted
by RIA Novosti as saying that, “a batch of fourth-generation MiG-29
multirole fighter jets has been put in service with the Russian
airbase at Eerebuni after an extensive overhaul.”

Gorbul, however, did not specify the number of aircraft.

THE BRAVE WOMEN OF EGYPT: A HISTORY IN PICTURES

Ahram Online, Egypt
March 6 2014

On the occasion of International Women’s Day, Ahram Online recounts
how our grandmas broke the mould to pave the way for the modern lives
of Egyptian women today

by Ola R. Seif, Thursday 6 Mar 2014

As social norms were in constant metamorphosis in the first half of
the 20th century, Egyptian women seeking to ride the modernity wave
became subject to problems of identity, particularly in appearance.

Long-established dress codes, after all, inevitably had to change to
reflect newly acquired lifestyles.

In order to comprehend the social developments of the times,
two sources of information have proven invaluable: private family
albums – where snapshots of ordinary women document their lives –
and media records, which actively updated the public with the news
and photographs of leading women activists and feminists.

As the evolution in photography technology around the 1920s yielded
portable cameras, images taken in diverse outdoor locations captured
an ever widening range of social and political changes in Egyptian
society.

A case in point is the 1919 uprising. In an unprecedented development,
Egyptian women took to the streets to join their male compatriots in
demanding the political rights of the nation. In so doing, Egypt’s
women also paved the way towards a new life for themselves, becoming
vigorously more active in the public domain.

##

In the mean time, street photographers were stealthily capturing
paradoxical images of veiled women riding the traditional horse-drawn
hantour while chanting slogans and holding aloft Egypt’s green Khedival
flag. Some even boldly posed to be photographed in a challenging
declaration of opposition and rebellion.

The full spontaneity of the women’s revolutionary street manifestations
starkly contrasted with the studio photographs which had hitherto seen
them portrayed in limited stereotypes. They were either part of staged
family photos and school group pictures, or the “orientalist” subjects
of late 19th-century French photographers: belly-dancers, harem girls,
street vendors or menial workers known to carry out “petits metiers”.

Interestingly, or perhaps intentionally, none of the famous
professional studio photographers – who were all either European or
Armenian – were present to record this memorable revolutionary moment.

Their absence only made the photos of the avant-garde role played by
women in the 1919 demonstrations – where an unveiled lady was near
impossible to find – all the more rare.

In the images that captured the 1919 uprising, women were uniformly
dressed in black knee-level gowns and strictly covered their faces
with either a white or black burqa’, as was the prevailing tradition
then. Unlike men, whose socio-economic class could be detected from
their clothing and head covers, the homogeneous appearance of Egyptian
women who partook of the 1919 Revolution hindered any such deduction.

##

With the gradual emancipation of Egyptian women, which started to
bear fruit in the aftermath of the 1919 Revolution, new trends also
emerged in photographs of women, documenting the earliest careers
that had become accessible to middle class women in the 20s and 30s.

Photographs of women particularly in the nursing and teaching
professions are commonly available as they were annually photographed
in front of their respective work institutions. While women teachers
usually taught girls’ classes, nurses posed more liberally for group
photos where male physicians were also present.

##

By the late 20s and mid-30s, Egyptian women belonging to society’s
higher echelons began to enroll in sporting clubs and practice
various sports. While swimming was gaining popularity in Egypt’s big
town sporting clubs, women wearing bathing suits were more commonly
photographed on the beaches of Alexandria and other coastal cities
than around club pools. Private swimming pools were still unheard of.

Swimming was not the only sport that attracted higher class Egyptian
women, however, as can be seen in the society sections of feminist
magazines like Bint Al-Nil, published by activist Doria Shafik. Some
recently found family albums in private collections reveal photos of
Egyptian women who practiced even aggressive sports such as boxing,
fencing and shooting.

By the 1940s, 50s and 60s such sports had become commonplace
among Egyptian girls, especially those enrolled at Egypt’s leading
university, Fouad I, currently Cairo University.

Away from the capital but sharing the Nile River stream, Nubian women
featured in the photographs of 19th-century European photographers
as icons of shining beauty and pride. They were neither influenced by
the recurring waves of emancipation and political changes, nor by the
previous harem-like depictions of their counterparts in upper Egyptian
and medieval urban settings. The privilege of heading out to work
daily, even if in their own land, had been embedded in their culture
for centuries. Nubian women had long contributed to the construction
of the family home, its annual painting and refurbishing, as well as
to the age-old tradition of carrying water in earthenware.

Photos of Nubian girls in the first half of the 20th century reveal
them exposing their braided hair while performing daily outdoor
activities. The documented everyday life of Nubian girls evidently
shows that the advent of modernity was not to intercept their
traditional dress codes – adornment, jewellery and uncovered heads
proudly held as high as ever.

FOR KIN OR COUNTRY: WHY THE CRIMEA CRISIS IS NOT ABOUT A GREATER RUSSIA PROJECT

Washington Post Blog
March 6 2014

By R. William Ayres and Stephen Saideman

R. William Ayres is associate dean of the Graduate School at Wright
State University. Stephen M. Saideman is the Paterson chair in
international affairs at Carleton University. They co-authored “For
Kin or Country: Xenophobia, Nationalism and War” (Columbia University
Press, 2008). Saideman’s most recent book (with David Auerswald) is
“NATO in Afghanistan: Fighting Together, Fighting Alone” (Princeton
University Press, 2014).

News out of Crimea raises the possibility of irredentism. Irredentism
is the effort to reunify a “lost” territory inhabited by ethnic kin
with either a mother country or with other territories also inhabited
by ethnic kin (think of Kurds in multiple countries creating a Greater
Kurdistan). So, if Crimea is detached from Ukraine and becomes part
of Russia, it would be a successful case of irredentism. We have not
seen one of these since Armenia gained hunks of Azerbaijan as the
Soviet Union fell apart, and, yes, Russia helped the Armenians.

As the Soviet Union disintegrated, there was much concern about the
approximately 25 million Russians left outside of Russia, including
those in Ukraine. Yet, for the most part, Russia did far less than
what observers feared. In our book “For Kin or Country: Xenophobia,
Nationalism and War,” we considered Russia to be in the category of
East European/Former Soviet cases that could have but did not engage
in irredentism — the silent dog s– which also included Hungary and
Romania. Our actively irredentist cases were Serbia, Croatia and
Armenia. Our book came out in 2008 just before the Russia/Georgia
conflict that could be seen as irredentism. So, our narcissistic
question would be: were we wrong? The less self-centered and far
more important question is: do the events of recent days suggest that
Putin’s Russia is likely to engage in further acts of irredentism?

Our answer to that is: probably not. Why? Because some of the key
dynamics in irredentist efforts which we identified more than six
years ago are still relevant.

First, the plight of the kin is over-rated. We found that the relative
danger facing the kin in the “lost” territory mattered less than
people thought. So, while Ukrainian assurances to the ethnic Russians
in Crimea and elsewhere are a good idea, the mother country (Russia
in this case) may move aggressively even if the kin are safe, or they
may not act even if the kin are in danger. While Putin has played up
reports of ethnic Russians being harmed, most credible observers do
not think this is the case. There certainly is no history in recent
years of Russian-speakers in Crimea being mistreated by the Ukrainian
government. Moreover, it is not yet clear if the Crimean parliament
was acting in coordination with Moscow — it could be that they are
asking for something that they will not get, as irredentism requires
the mother country to accept the territory.

Second, we argued in the book that Russian irredentism was not so
likely because Russia has an identity crisis: who counts as Russian?

Putin asserted his responsibility to protect all Russian speakers
(his statement was very similar to Hungary’s Jozeff Antall saying
he was the leader of fifteen million Hungarians when the population
of Hungary was about ten million in 1990), but not all those living
in Russia agree that Russian nationalism includes Russophones as
members of the Russian nation. Indeed, the existing survey evidence
suggests that this crisis is not very popular back in Russia. Those
in Russia, especially those who vote in the next elections, may not
want yet another basket-case to drain the country’s coffers (Crimean
supporters of annexation are unlikely to be future net contributors).

Indeed, a core part of our argument is that there will be nationalist
forces that are against some irredentist efforts because success means
including more “others” in one’s country. Annexing Crimea means not
just more ethnic Russians in Russia but more Ukrainians and more
Tatars. Taking on further territories, like the Donetsk region,
raise even more problems of mixed populations. So, those who focus
more on intolerance in their nationalist identities may not want more
foreigners in the country.

Third, it is not clear that Putin is doing any of this for domestic
political purposes. That is, he is currently not seriously facing
strong competition from someone who claims to be a better Russian
nationalist, and he has a variety of tools at his disposal to deal with
domestic opposition, including arresting journalists and repressing
dissent. Oh, and corruption to buy off potential opponents. There
may be a domestic political payoff, in that the minority of Russians
who support annexing Crimea may care more than the majority who are
opposed, but there’s no obvious reason why Putin needs that extra
margin of support.

Fourth, even if Russia does try to annex Crimea, it is still likely
to be the exception and not the rule. It will not be the start of
endless irredentism campaigns targeting the Russians in the rest of
the “near abroad.” In our book, Crimea did stand out, as it combined
both national interests (the Black Sea fleet) with a group of kin
that was more interested than others in the Greater Russia project.

So, this crisis is not about a Greater Russia project, even if Crimea
ends up in either a semi-status a la Nagorno-Karabakh or annexed
in reality, as the policies focused here are unlikely to play out
in other places where ethnic Russians reside, such as the Baltic
Republics or even other parts of eastern Ukraine. As other writers at
the Monkey Cage have argued, this is really a second-best (if that)
effort by Putin to have influence in Ukraine after his preferred
non-irredentist one, keeping President Yanukovych in power, failed.

While countries containing some of the 25 million lost Russians
are concerned, they should not panic as Putin is not Hitler (almost
the original irredentist), and he is not even Milosevic of Greater
Serbia fame.

PUTIN’S UKRAINE GAMBIT HURTS ECONOMY AS ALLIES LOSE BILLIONS

Today’s Zaman, Turkey
March 6 2014

6 March 2014 /AGNES LOVASZ, BLOOMBERG NEWS

LONDON — President Vladimir Putin’s brinkmanship in Ukraine has
already cost some of his closest comrades billions of dollars. The
other 144 million Russians may also pay a price.

Putin’s troop buildup in Crimea triggered the biggest stock selloff
in five years on March 3. It also pulled the ruble to a record low,
prompting the central bank to raise interest rates the most since 1998,
when a cash-strapped government stumbled toward default.

Longtime Putin ally Gennady Timchenko and his partner Leonid Mikhelson
lost a combined $3.2 billion of their wealth after their gas producer
OAO Novatek tumbled 18 percent.

“Russia will be the big loser of the crisis in Ukraine,” said Timothy
Ash, chief emerging-market economist at Standard Bank Group in London.

“There’ll be a big hit to domestic and foreign confidence, less
investment and likely increased outflows, likely losses for Russian
banks with exposure in Ukraine, a weaker ruble and weaker growth
and recovery.”

The tensest standoff with the West since the end of the Cold War
is exposing the weakness of an economy rebuilt on the back of the
energy industry. With oil and gas accounting for more than half of
all exports and energy prices stagnant, the growth potential is all
but exhausted, prompting officials in Moscow to sound the recession
alarm even as the country’s main trading partners recover.

Russia needs a new, more diversified economic model to secure future
expansion, Antonio Spilimbergo, the International Monetary Fund’s
mission chief in Moscow, said in a report last month. The $2 trillion
economy decelerated for a fourth year in 2013 as consumer spending
weakened and investment sagged along with demand for energy. Growth
slowed to 1.3 percent last year, the least since a 2009 recession,
from 3.4 percent in 2012.

Putin is seeking to regain influence over Ukraine after the overthrow
of Kremlin-backed President Viktor Yanukovych, who was deposed by
lawmakers on Feb. 22 after clashes with protesters in Kiev left at
least 95 people dead. Ignoring warnings from the United States and the
European Union, Putin has since sent thousands of troops to augment
the 15,000 already in Crimea, where Russia has stationed the Black
Sea Fleet since its founding by Catherine the Great in 1783.

The crisis has helped fuel the ruble’s 9 percent slide this year
against the dollar, the most among 24 emerging-market currencies
tracked by Bloomberg after Argentina’s peso. The Russian currency
weakened 1.8 percent against the dollar March 3 even after the central
bank unexpectedly raised its key interest rate by 150 basis points
and spent as much as $12 billion defending the currency, according
to ING Groep. The Micex Index sank as much as 13 percent.

Putin’s gambit is already threatening to derail $8 billion of
international loans sought by at least 10 Russian companies including
billionaire Mikhail Fridman’s VimpelCom Ltd., according to data
compiled by Bloomberg. Secretary of State John Kerry threatened to
kick Russia out of the Group of Eight and impose asset freezes and
travel bans on Kremlin officials. That may force bankers to re-evaluate
potential deals, according to UralSib Capital in Moscow.

The Micex Index fell 0.4 percent Wednesday, with Novatek sliding
0.3 percent. The benchmark surged 5.3 percent Tuesday after Putin
said he doesn’t have plans to annex Crimea. The ruble was unchanged
at 9:46 p.m. in Moscow after a rebound Tuesday. Even so, the damage
inflicted on investor sentiment will be felt for months if not longer,
said Lilit Gevorgyan, senior economist at IHS Global Insight in London.

The capital flight echoes the aftermath of Putin’s last military foray
into a fellow former Soviet republic, Georgia, in August 2008 and
the collapse of Lehman Brothers the following month. In the aftermath
of those events through Feruary 2009, investors pulled at least $290
billion out of the country, according to BNP Paribas estimates. That
war, over two Russia-backed breakaway regions, also helped wipe $230
billion off the combined wealth of Russia’s 25 richest men over a
five-month period, according to Bloomberg calculations.

Even before the protests in Kiev turned deadly last month, Deputy
Economy Minister Andrei Klepach said capital outflows were increasing
and may reach $35 billion in the first quarter, more than half of
the $63 billion for all of 2013.

The military threat in Crimea can be added to the list of reasons
behind the capital exodus, which includes corruption, red tape and a
feeble legal system, Ash of Standard Bank said. Russia is the world’s
most corrupt major economy, ranking alongside Pakistan and Nicaragua
at 127th of 176 nations in the annual Corruption Perceptions Index
compiled by Transparency International, a Berlin-based watchdog.

“The loss of face that’s been suffered in the past week or so is
arguably the biggest humiliation that Putin has faced and Russia is
not used to losing these battles on its doorstep,” Neil Shearing,
chief emerging-markets economist at Capital Economics Ltd., said by
phone from London. “Even though the events in Ukraine are shaped
by politics rather than economics, there’s potential for economic
fallout for Russia.”

In November, when Putin scuttled Ukraine’s planned free trade deal with
the EU by offering Yanukovych $15 billion of aid and cheaper gas, he
said Russian banks had $28 billion of loans and assets in the country.

Souring loans may “materially affect the solvency” of Russian banks
with “significant” assets in Ukraine, Fitch Ratings said Feb. 25,
adding that state-owned lenders can count on government funding if
needed. The banks with the biggest exposure are Vnesheconombank,
the development bank known as VEB, with 74 percent of its capital,
Gazprombank with about 40 percent and VTB Group with 14 percent,
according to Fitch.

Russian companies also have investments in Ukraine’s energy, defense
and agricultural industries. The country is Russia’s fifth-largest
trading partner, with turnover of $39.6 billion last year, according
to data from the Federal Customs Service in Moscow. Exports to Ukraine
were $23.8 billion, while imports totaled $15.8 billion.

More vital to Putin is Ukraine’s network of pipelines, through which
state-run OAO Gazprom sends more than half of its exports to Europe,
where it has a quarter of the market.

Even so, Putin is prepared to do whatever it takes to stop Ukraine
from aligning with the West, said Michael Ganske, head of emerging
markets at Rogge Global Partners Plc in London.

Putin considers Ukraine and its 45 million people key to his goal
of building a trading bloc to rival the EU, according to Ganske. His
customs union, which Yanukovych planned closer ties with, is currently
comprised of Russia, Belarus and Kazakhstan, though Armenia has also
agreed to join.

“Putin cares for the economy, but he cares more for the greatness of
Russia and regional influence,” Ganske said. “As a former spy, Putin
has this grand-Russia idea in his head and he just doesn’t accept that
Russia’s importance in the geopolitical context has decreased. Putin
doesn’t like the idea of Ukraine moving further away from Russia and
becoming part of the EU at some stage, let alone NATO.”

With assistance from Olga Tanas, Anna Andrianova, Vladimir Kuznetsov
and Scott Rose in Moscow and Stephen Morris in London.

ISLAMIC SCHOLARS CONDEMN JIHADIST TAX ON SYRIAN CHRISTIANS

Legal Monitor Worldwide
March 5, 2014 Wednesday

Syrians of all sects and Islamic scholars are decrying new rules
imposed by the “Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant” (ISIL) in al-Raqa
which call for Christians to pay “jizya” tax and hold religious rituals
behind closed doors in return for their safety. Last week, ISIL posted
a list of 12 rules on jihadist forums and social networking sites,
saying they apply to Christians in al-Raqa, which is under the control
of the al-Qaeda-inspired group.

Al-Raqa resident Mahmoud Leila, a Muslim, said he is now ashamed to
face his Christian neighbour.

“How will I be able to interact with him as before?” he asked. “I
feel true shame and disgrace from the actions of these groups.”

“This matter is condemned by the people of al-Raqa, and by Muslims
before Christians because it is offensive to the beautiful history
among the people, to Islam and Muslims, as well as the Syrian
revolution,” he told Al-Shorfa.

Leila, who previously owned a building supplies store but is now out of
work, said some prominent figures and elders tried to negotiate with
ISIL to stop the tax, but were told unequivocally that “any al-Raqa
resident who opposes the imposition of sharia will be considered an
apostate and God’s sharia will be applied to him”.

The rules obligate every wealthy Christian man to pay 17 grams of
gold, a middle-income Christian man to pay half that amount and every
lower-income Christian man to pay a quarter of that.

They also prohibit the construction of churches and convents, the
display of Christian symbols such as crosses outside churches, the
ringing of church bells and public prayer.

The rules ban Christians from consuming alcohol in public, selling
alcohol or pork to Muslims, from “carrying out hostile actions against
ISIL” and from deviating from the sharia dress code. “I never imagined
that I would one day be subjected to what they call the provisions
of Islamic sharia in this manner, which is more like imprisonment,
suppression of personal freedoms and prohibition of the expression
of religious beliefs,” said Semaan al-Mallouhi, a retired Christian
resident of al-Raqa.

The relationship between Christians and Muslims in al-Raqa and its
environs is based on mutual respect, he told Al-Shorfa.

“No Muslim had once complained about the sound of church bells nor
had a Christian complained about the call to prayer via loudspeakers,
but rather the sounds often rose together when a city resident passed
away, be he Muslim or Christian,” he added.

Al-Mallouhi said the restrictions on Christians in al-Raqa began last
year with the arrival of extremist Islamist groups, including ISIL
and Jabhat al-Nusra (JAN), in the city.

In September, ISIL fighters entered the Greek Catholic Church of
Our Lady of the Annunciation and torched its religious furnishings,
AFP reported.

They did the same at the Armenian Catholic Church of the Martyrs,
also in al-Raqa, and destroyed a cross atop its clock tower, the news
agency said.

Al-Raqa was once home to more than 300 Christian families, but “now
that number has dropped dramatically to no more than 50 families”,
al-Mallouhi said.

In past months al-Raqa received many Syrian Christians fleeing areas
such as Deir Ezzor, al-Qamishli, al-Hasakeh and Ras al-Ain and seeking
safety in the city, he said.

ISIL has exploited their circumstances by offering them protection for
money under the cover of “jizya”, al-Mallouhi said. The imposition
of “jizya” on Christians in Syria is nothing but “a new fad, one of
many launched by terrorist groups stemming from al-Qaeda, which have
no legal authority to issue such edicts and rulings”, said Sheikh
Abdul Zahir Shehata, a lecturer at Egypt’s Al-Azhar faculty of sharia
and law.

This imposition is “a form of theft that uses religion as a cover”,
Shehata told Al-Shorfa.

“Jizya” is not a pillar of Islamic law, he said: It emerged during
the Islamic expansion era and was paid by non-Muslims who were capable
of fighting in return for protection, while zakat was collected from
Muslims, with proceeds going to the Muslim treasury where public
funds were held.

“ISIL contradicts itself,” Shehata said. “On the one hand they say
they are implementing the provisions of Islamic sharia, including the
‘jizya’, however the Islamic state must be a full-fledged state and
recognised by its citizens and subjects, which is not the case in
the areas where ISIL is imposing its control by force and bloodshed.”

“Jizya” runs contrary to the modern civil state, which takes all
people under its wing and whose principles are based on justice and
equality amongst all regardless of race or religion, he said.

“The imposition of ‘jizya’ under these circumstances and conditions is
unacceptable by sharia, and whoever does it is merely forcing people
to pay money in a manner that is more like the protection rackets
gangsters impose on people in the areas under their control,” he said.

The Rev. Francois Habib, a priest from al-Mansoura in al-Raqa province
who is residing in Amman, Jordan, said al-Raqa is not the only region
in which “jizya” has been imposed on Christians.

It also was imposed in al-Hasakeh where ISIL seized control in
November, he said.

“Unfortunately, armed takfiri groups launched assaults on Christians,
especially in al-Qamishli, Damascus, Tartous, Yabrud, Homs, Aleppo,
al-Raqa and Maaloula,” he told Al-Shorfa.

“It is unfortunate these things are happening in Syria, for Christians
make up 10% of the total population and are spread throughout Syria
and integrated into the fabric of Syrian society, to such an extent
that the Christian is indistinguishable from the Muslim,” he said.

PUTIN: TO START DRAWING UP AGREEMENT ON ARMENIA AND EURASIAN ECONOMIC UNION

Interfax, Russia
March 5 2014

NOVO-OGARYOVO Moscow region. March 5

Russian President Vladimir Putin believes it is time to start drawing
up an agreement on Armenia’s accession to the Eurasian Economic Union,
which should be formed in 2015.

“The Eurasian integration project is appealing to our CIS partners.

The negotiations on engaging Armenia and Kyrgyzstan are at the most
advanced stage now,” Putin said in opening a summit of the Supreme
Eurasian Economic Council on Wednesday.

Armenia has already adopted and is successfully implementing an action
plan to adapt the country’s law to the Customs Union and the Unified
Economic Area standards, he said.

“Therefore, I believe we can switch to drawing up an agreement on
Armenia’s accession to the future Eurasian Economic Union,” Putin said.

The Russian leader invited all participants in the project to weigh
its possible advantages and disadvantages. He also pointed out that
it is important to continue Kyrgyzstan’s accession to the Eurasian
Economic Union.

va mk