Author: Baghdasarian Karlen

Assyrian International News Agency (AINA)
July 31 2014

Christian Groups to Rally for Protection in Iraq

By Susan Abram

Posted 2014-07-31 10:37 GMT

Across the ancient cities and villages of Iraq, an “N” word also is
used out of hate.

Members of the extremist group known as ISIS spray paint the letter
“N” in blazing red on the homes of those they deem different. Scrawled
in Arabic and pronounced “noon,” the N stands for Nazarene, or
follower of Christ, and to an outsider, it may look like a happy face.

But ISIS uses it as a mark of death. It warns Christian families who
live in those homes to convert to Islam, pay a hefty tax, or prepare
to die.

“There is a Christian genocide happening in Northern Iraq and no one
is doing anything about it” said Delilah George, a 31-year-old
Assyrian woman and Valley Village resident. “My people are
experiencing unspeakable horror and grief at the hands of these
radicals.”

Since the takeover in June of Mosul, Iraq’s second-largest city, the
Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant or ISIS has targeted the
Christian population, whose faith has been present for almost 2,000
years. In the last two weeks, Assyrians were forced to leave their
ancestral homeland under the threat of death. Many have been beaten,
robbed and brutalized, or killed along the way as they search for a
safe haven.

The sadness, frustration with the lack of public awareness and even
anger has prompted George and countless Assyrians to hold a rally
Saturday at the Federal Building in Los Angeles. Dubbed “Demand for
Action,” the Los Angeles event is one of nearly 40 worldwide to be
held also on Saturday across the United States, Europe, the Middle
East and Australia.

“What I am is sad and very frustrated that there is an ethnic
cleansing occurring on our homeland and no one is talking about it,”
said Nuri Kino, an investigative journalist and author from Sweden
whose work has led him to become an activist.

Kino founded Demand for Action, which has taken off on social media,
reaching Assyrians worldwide. At its heart, the Demand for Action is a
rallying call to the United Nations to ensure that the Christian
communities of Iraq are given safe haven in the Nineveh Plains, Kino
said.

That the issue hasn’t garnered much attention in the West doesn’t
surprise Amir Hussain, a professor of theology at Loyola Marymount
University. He said the West can’t seem to grasp that there are
Christians living outside of Europe and the Americas.

“We don’t pay attention to minority communities in general, and often
lump all people in the Middle East as ‘Arabs’ or as ‘Muslims,’ ”
Hussain said. “In fact, many people in the Middle East are neither
Muslim nor Arab. I remind my students that Jesus never went to Rome.
He stayed in the Middle East, mostly in Israel and Palestine.
Palestinian Christians pride themselves on coming from the same place
as “the Man from Galilee”.

Hussain said the West should care what’s happening to Christians in
the Middle East for several reasons.

“First, simply, because it is taking place,’ Hussain said. “‘Injustice
anywhere,’ as Dr. King reminded us, ‘is a threat to justice
everywhere.’ These people are fellow Christians for the majority of
people in the West. These Christians are some of the oldest Christian
communities in the world.”

At least 1,500 people are expected to attend the Los Angeles rally.
Organizers said Chaldeans, Armenians, Copts and other Middle Eastern
Christians who have seen their homeland’s churches bombed and their
religious symbols desecrated under extremism, also are participating
and people of many faiths and backgrounds have pledged their support.

“Our supporters see this as a crime against humanity,” said Sandra
Assaker, 27. “It’s not about one religion or ethnicity. That’s why we
are all coming together.”

Several organizers gathered at Assaker’s home Wednesday to prepare
signs and banners. The signs include the Arabic letter N in red.
Assaker and her friends marveled at the fact that it has been modern
social media, such as Twitter and Facebook, that has revived an
ancient people’s struggle. One of the Twitter handles that has taken
off recently is #WeAreN.

“We’re taking this symbol back,” Delilah George said. “We’re proud to
be Christians.”

The Demand For Action rally will be held at 11 a.m. Saturday at the
Federal Building, 11000 Wilshire Blvd., Los Angeles

From: Baghdasarian

U.S. sanctions against Russian banks will not affect their Armenian
subsidiaries – businessman says

YEREVAN, July 31. / ARKA /. A prominent Armenian businessman called
today on Armenia’s business community to not be bothered by new U.S.
sanctions against Russia targeting its energy, banking and defence
sectors.

Arsen Ghazaryan, the chairman of the Union of Industrialists and
Entrepreneurs, said to reporters that VTB Bank (Armenia) and
Areximbank -Gazprombank Group, two local Russian-owned banks are
under the jurisdiction of Armenia, although their main offices are in
Russia.

“They work under the laws of Armenia, get profit and pay taxes here,” he said.

Earlier the U.S. Embassy in Armenia provided more details to Armenian
government and local companies about sanctions imposed by Washington
against Russia over the Ukrainian crisis. -0-

– See more at:

From: Baghdasarian

Serzh Sargsyan: OSCE Minsk Group has suggested principles that can
serve as pivot for settling Nagorno-Karabakh conflict

by Tatevik Shahunyan

ARMINFO
Thursday, July 31, 15:07

President of Armenia Serzh Sargsyan and the newly appointed EU Special
Representative for the South Caucasus and crisis in Georgia,
Ambassador Herbert Salber discussed Armenia-EU ties during a meeting
on Wednesday.

The press service of the Armenian President reports that Sargsyan and
Salber exchanged views concerning some regional problems and
challenges as well as the Nagorno-Karabakh peace process. Sargsyan
highly appreciated the EU’s support for this process.

He reconfirmed Armenia’s commitment to resolve the conflict
peacefully. He said that only the OSCE Minsk Group should mediate the
peace talks as it has acquired substantial experience in the past 20
years.

Sargsyan believes that the principles suggested by the MG can serve as
a pivot for settling the conflict.

He expressed regret that Azerbaijan rejects the principles and any
measures to build confidence and keeps organizing provocations on the
contact line. Sargsyan believes that it is for Armenia, Azerbaijan and
Nagorno-Karabakh to find a solution while the MG is just a mediator
acting within its authority.

From: Baghdasarian

Pilots ready to go to European Court of Human Rights (video)

17:49 | July 31,2014 | Social

A group of pilots, who have not received disability pensions for seven
years, were again staging a protest outside the government building on
Thursday, calling the executive’s attention to their problem.

Seyran Sargsyan, who worked as a pilot for 40 years, says Minister of
Justice Hovhannes Manukyan has assured them that the issue is under
consideration.

“No one obeys laws nowadays. Everyone is cheating today. We do not say
that he [minister] is deceiving us; it is obvious that he is not such
a man,” Mr Sargsyan told A1+.

He says in 2006, the government deliberately led the Armenian Airlines
to bankruptcy. Over 60 pilots warn the authorities that they are going
to restore their rights at any cost. The group is even ready to appeal
to the European Court of Human Rights.

From: Baghdasarian

AZERBAIJAN SHOULD BE BROUGHT TO COURT

Thursday, 31 July 2014 11:27

The events in Ukraine continue to draw the attention of
the world mass media. The outbreak of a civil war between the
government troops and the Russian population of the south-eastern
regions of the country, which proclaimed two People’s Republics –
Donetsk and Lugansk – takes the lives of dozens of people, including
civilians, every day. Surely, like any armed conflicts, this one is
also accompanied by an information war, in which each party tries to
blame the opponent for violation of international law, including the
rules of war.

It should be noted that the fighters of Malorussia, who are called
“separatists” by official Kiev, get information support, first of all,
from Moscow via leading Russian TV channels.

However, we are not going to dwell on the nuances of the propaganda
war, which also has its own rules and prohibited methods, to talk
about who is right and who is wrong, whether the resolution of the
Russian population on proclaiming the independent Republics is legal
or not. We’ll touch upon another issue – on the Karabakh associations
in the context of the Ukrainian domestic political crisis. Though the
two events – the Azerbaijani-Karabakh conflict and the war in eastern
Ukraine – are spaced in time by more than twenty years, we cannot but
make certain parallels, notice the similarities in their
interpretation by the top leaderships of the metropolises. And as a
result, similar are, actually, their actions on suppressing, in their
interpretation, the “breakaway regions” and “restoration of the
territorial integrity of the country”. Like in the early 90s in Baku,
those in Kiev did not want to even hear about the negotiations with
the so-called “separatists” in early 2014, referring exclusively to
the military option of the issue’s solution. It led to a single result
– the conflict rapidly deepened and developed into a full-scale war.

I would like to focus on the military stage of the
Azerbaijani-Karabakh and the Ukrainian conflicts. In both cases, the
authorities of the metropolises again acted almost in the same way,
using armored vehicles, heavy weapons and aircraft during the punitive
operation. With, perhaps, the only difference that in the war against
the NKR Azerbaijan entered into a conspiracy with Gorbachev’s
leadership of the USSR and used the armed forces of the Soviet Army
against civilians. This monstrous military action went down in history
under a very symbolic and ominous name – “Ring” Operation”, during
which hundreds of civilians were killed, thousands were taken prisoner
by Azerbaijan, and dozens of Armenian villages were deported. Another
difference is in the special brutality of Azerbaijanis who spared no
one – children, women or the elderly – in the territories they
occupied during the war. The savage killing of civilians in the
Armenian villages of Maragha, Khramort and others gives all the
grounds to state the fascist nature of the Azerbaijani authorities and
their pathological hatred towards Armenians.

A special issue is the artillery shelling from long-range weapons and
the air strikes not only on military targets, but also on residential
areas of cities and villages, the use of Grad multiple rocket
launchers by both the Ukrainian and Azerbaijani authorities. If we put
aside the purely propagandistic reports by Russian reporters and pay
attention only to their videos, we can see extremely familiar pictures
– frightened people in dimly lit basements, killed and wounded and
terrible ruins of residential buildings. However, we cannot put aside
the estimates that sound in the comments of the Russian party on the
use of Grad mortar systems by the Ukrainian Army. The assessments are
definite – the use of Grad systems against civilians is prohibited by
international conventions, which means that it is a crime. As a
summary, it is offered to submit corresponding materials to the UN
International Court of Justice in The Hague. And this is fair, since
no political goals can justify the mass killing of innocent civilians.

The appeal to The Hague Court of Justice for a lawsuit against
Azerbaijan has not lost its urgency even today, 20 years after the
ceasefire establishment. The crimes committed by its political and
military leadership against the peaceful Armenian population have no
statute of limitation. The NKR authorities have a sufficient evidence
basis irrefutably proving the genocidal actions of Azerbaijan. It is
known that in the war against the NKR Azerbaijan initially used the
Grad system against the peaceful settlements, the first time – in the
Shahumyan region. Then, from January 1992, these systems, with the
range of hitting the target amounting to 30 kilometers, were almost
daily used for massive shelling of Stepanakert and the nearby Armenian
villages from Shushi. After the liberation of the town of Shushi by
the Karabakh forces, the Azerbaijani commandership intensified the
airstrikes on the settlements, using again ball-, needle-, and
half-ton bombs prohibited by international law, which led to
large-scale civil casualties. Unlike the Ukrainian war that has been
going on for four months, the Azerbaijani-Karabakh war lasted four
years.

Over twenty years have passed since the war, but the criminal nature
of the Azerbaijani authorities has not changed. The top leadership of
Azerbaijan does not even hide its intention to resume the hostilities
if the negotiations held within the OSCE Minsk Group do not satisfy
its annexationist claims for Artsakh. Azerbaijan should be brought to
the international court – that is the imperative of the time.

Leonid MARTIROSSIAN
Editor-in-Chief of Azat Artsakh newspaper

From: Baghdasarian

Deadly act of sabotage on Karabakh-Azerbaijan Contact Line

12:45 * 31.07.14

Azerbaijan’s armed forces on Wednesday launched a deadly act of
sabotage in the directiono of a northern military unit on the Line of
Contact.

Meeting a strong resistance by the Armenian defense guards, the
adversary was later repelled to the starting positions, suffering huge
losses, the Nagorno-Karabakh Defense Army says in a press release.

Two Armenian servicemen were killed in the violent shoot-out. A probe
has been launched into further details.

From: Baghdasarian

ARMENIE
L’Arménie déterminée à renforcer ses relations avec l’UE

Hayots Achkhar, Hayastani Hanrapetoutioun et Haykakan Jamanak rendent
compte de la participation du Ministre des AE, Edward Nalbandian, à la
réunion des Ministres des AE de l’UE et du Partenariat oriental, où il
a réaffirmé le souhait de l’Arménie de développer son partenariat avec
l’UE sur la base de ce qui a été réalisé lors des dernières années et
en tenant compte des >. Dans son discours, il a
notamment déclaré : >.
Le chef de la diplomatie arménienne a également noté que l’aide et le
soutien continu de l’UE jouent un rôle important dans la mise en oeuvre
du processus de réformes en Arménie et dans le renforcement de la
démocratie dans le pays. Le Ministre a en outre indiqué que le
renforcement de la mobilité entre les sociétés étant un objectif,
l’Arménie souhaitait entamer un dialogue sur l’abolition du régime des
visas, sur la base de la facilitation des visas et des accords de
réadmission. Evoquant la coopération régionale, le Ministre a souligné
qu’>, a-t-il conclu.

Extrait de la revue de presse de l’Ambassade de France en Arménie en
date du 24 juillet 2014

jeudi 31 juillet 2014,
Stéphane (c)armenews.com

From: Baghdasarian

ARMENIE
Les Azéris tirent sur un convoi de la Croix-Rouge dans le village de Chinari

Un convoi transportant des représentants arméniens du Comité
international de la Croix-Rouge a été la cible de snipers azéris.
Aucun rapport sur les dommages n’a été fait.

Le porte-parole du bureau de la Croix-Rouge Arménie Zara Amatouni a
déclaré à RFE / RL que les travailleurs humanitaires de l’organisation
étaient dans le village de Chinari dans la région du Tavush en Arménie
à la demande des villageois qui avaient demandé la présence de la
Croix-Rouge pendant la saison des récoltes d’été .

La Croix-Rouge a utilisé son mandat pour parvenir à un accord avec les
deux côtés pour ne pas violer le cessez-le feu au cours de la récolte
d’été. Néanmoins, selon l’administrateur du village de Chinari, Samvel
Saghoyan, trois minutes avant 19 heures des coups ont été tirés en
provenance des positions azéries.

Les villageois avaient emprunté du matériel agricole au village Movses
limitrophe pour faciliter la récolte d’été avec des responsables de la
Croix-Rouge sur place.

Saghoyan a dit Aysor.am que le véhicule de la Croix-Rouge a été touché.

jeudi 31 juillet 2014,
Stéphane (c)armenews.com

From: Baghdasarian

ARMENIE
Le Président arménien contre l’armement des civils dans les régions frontalières

Le président arménien Serge Sarkissian s’est exprimé l’armement des
habitants qui vivent dans des villages près de la frontière avec
l’Azerbaïdjan.

La question a été débattue activement lors d’une réunion avec les
membres du Conseil public. Les membres du Conseil ont proposé
l’initiative comme une mesure visant à renforcer la sécurité dans les
régions frontalières.

Le président Sarkissian a souligné que les forces armées arméniennes
sont capables d’assurer la défense des régions. Dans le même temps, il
a dit que les civils qui savent utiliser des armes peuvent signer un
contrat avec l’Armée.

La réunion a également abordé d’autres sujets de préoccupation, comme
la migration, l’intégration eurasienne de l’Arménie et ses impacts
possibles, le développement de l’exploitation minière, etc..

Le Conseil a également discuté de son futur plan d’actions avec le président.

jeudi 31 juillet 2014,
Stéphane (c)armenews.com

From: Baghdasarian

Sécurité
L’Azerbaïdjan en passe de signer un nouvel accord avec la Russie

L’Azerbaijan serait en passe de acheter des avions militaires de
pointe à la Russie en plus des milliards de dollars d’armes de
fabrication russe acquises ces dernières années.

L’agence de presse azerbaïdjanaise APA a rapporté mardi que Moscou a
accepté de fournir un nombre indéterminé de Yak-130 et de jets
d’attaque légers à Bakou. “Nous pensons que l’Azerbaïdjan, dans un
proche avenir, sera parmi les pays qui utiliseront les avions
Yak-130”, a déclaré un porte-parole de leur fabricant d’Etat, Irkut.

Selon APA, les pilotes militaires azerbaïdjanais ont commencé à
apprendre à voler à bord de Yak-130 et se familiarisent avec leurs
caractéristiques depuis l’année dernière.

Le Yak-130 a été conçu au début des années 1990 et est entré en
service dans l’armée de l’air russe en 2009. Principalement conçu
comme un avion d’entraînement avancé, il est équipé de canon, missiles
et bombes permettant de mener à bien des missions de reconnaissance et
d’attaque.

La vente déclarée des Yak-130 fait suite à une série de contrats de
défense à grande échelle signés entre la Russie et l’Azerbaïdjan. Les
responsables russes et azerbaïdjanaises ont estimé le volume total de
ces contrats signés depuis 2010 à près de 4 milliards de dollars.

Le gouvernement arménien, fortement tributaire de l’aide militaire
russe, a jusqu’à présent pris soin de ne pas critiquer ouvertement les
livraisons d’armes russes à Bakou. Pourtant, le président Serge
Sarkissian a exprimé son inquiétude plus tôt ce mois-ci. “C’est un
sujet très douloureux et notre peuple est inquiet “, a-t-il déclaré.

Le ministère arménien de la Défense a refusé hier de commenter cette
livraison prévue.

Pour sa part, Davit Babayan, porte-parole du président Bako Sahakian,
a fait valoir que ces ventes n’étaient pas importantes.

Babayan a également rejeté les préoccupations croissantes d’Erevan sur
la coopération militaire qui se développe entre la Russie et
l’Azerbaïdjan.

jeudi 31 juillet 2014,
Claire (c)armenews.com

From: Baghdasarian