PM Pashinyan participates in Rima Demirchyan’s requiem ceremony
18:51,
YEREVAN, DECEMBER 24, ARMENPRESS. Prime Minister of Armenia Nikol Pashinyan participated in the requiem service for Rima Demirchyan, the wife of the National Hero of Armenia, state and political figure Karen Demirchyan, at St. Hovhannes Church in Kond district of Yerevan, ARMENPRESS was informed from the Office of the Prime Minister.
15:22,
YEREVAN, DECEMBER 22, ARMENPRESS. A motion of no confidence is leveled against Mayor of Yerevan Hayk Marutyan from the City Council’s ruling My Step bloc.
Marutyan successfully ran for office with the My Step bloc in 2018. The alliance was led by the present-day ruling Civil Contract party of PM Nikol Pashinyan. Marutyan, who was a member of Civil Contract, left the party last year and since then distanced himself from the political team.
The My Step bloc claimed in presenting the no confidence motion that Marutyan doesn’t any longer represent them, that they have different political views and that he can no longer serve as mayor if he has distanced himself from the team, and also claimed that there are some “corruption manifestations” in the City Hall.
Marutyan, however, argued that while he indeed has political disagreements with his former teammates, he fulfilled the duties of the office of mayor duly and properly and hasn’t committed any wrongdoing.
In a speech before the vote began – which is essentially both a no confidence motion and a confirmation vote to install Marutyan’s deputy Hrachya Sargsyan as Mayor – Marutyan denied all accusations against him.
The results of the vote are expected shortly.
The next meeting of the “3+3” regional consultative platform on the South Caucasus is expected to take place in Turkey. The statement came from Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu on Sunday in Islamabad, Pakistan, following the 17th Session of the Emergency Meeting of the Council of Foreign Ministers of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, TASS reported.
“[Minister of Foreign Affairs of Azerbaijan] Mr. Jeyhun Bayramov and I discussed the meeting between [President of Azerbaijan Ilham] Aliyev and [Prime Minister of Armenia Nikol] Pashinyan in Brussels, the meeting of the ‘3+2’ platform in Moscow, which was held at the level of deputy foreign ministers. Georgia did not attend it, but we hope that it will attend the next meeting, which, as we expect, will be held in Turkey,” the latter’s FM said.
Cavusoglu’s speech was broadcast on his official Twitter account.
12:04,
YEREVAN, DECEMBER 16, ARMENPRESS. President Armen Sarkissian held a meeting today with Ambassador of the People’s Republic of China to Armenia Fan Yong, the Presidential Office reports.
The Armenian President and the Chinese Ambassador exchanged ideas about the agenda of the bilateral relations, the prospective cooperation directions and the opportunities of deepening the partnership in different fields.
Regional security and stability-related issues were also touched upon.
American-Armenian lawyer Anna Astvatsaturian Turcotte elected Westbrook City Council president
13:26,
YEREVAN, DECEMBER 16, ARMENPRESS. The Westbrook City Council made local history last week in unanimously selecting American-Armenian writer, lawyer, lecturer and human rights advocate Anna Astvatsaturian Turcotte as its president, the first refugee and by all accounts the first woman to fill that role, Portland Press Herald reports.
“As a council, we had decided we wanted a woman. We wanted someone to represent those constituents who haven’t had that representation. I look forward to being the facilitator of the discussions,” she said. “One of my major goals is to work more closely with the schools on budgets, so we aren’t surprised when we see it.”
A lawyer specializing in international law, Turcotte has long been involved in advocacy work around her birth city of Baku, Azerbaijan. Turcotte’s Armenian family fled Azerbaijan when she was a child because of attacks on Armenians there. The family spent three years in Armenia before moving to the United States.
After graduating from the University of Maine School of Law in 2003, Turcotte worked as a clerk at the International Criminal Court in the Netherlands. In 2012, she published “Nowhere, the Story of Exile,” a collection of her diary entries as a child fleeing from her homes.
Her political career in Maine began to take shape in 2013 when she successfully worked to get the Legislature to officially recognize the Artsakh Republic.
15:00, 9 December, 2021
YEREVAN, DECEMBER 9, ARMENPRESS. On the occasion of the International Day of Commemoration of and Dignity of the Victims of the Crime of Genocide, Deputy Foreign Minister of Armenia Armen Ghevondyan, ministry’s secretary general Boris Sahakyan and other representatives visited today the Tsitsernakaberd Memorial to pay tribute to the memory of the innocent victims of the Armenian Genocide, the Holocaust and the Assyrian, Yazidi genocides, the ministry reports.
9 December 2021 marks the International Day of Commemoration and Dignity of the Victims of the Crime of Genocide and of the Prevention of this Crime, as well as the 73rd anniversary of the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (the “Genocide Convention”), the first human rights treaty adopted by the General Assembly. The Convention signifies the international community’s commitment to “never again” and provides the first international legal definition of “genocide,” widely adopted at national and international levels. It also establishes a duty for State Parties to prevent and punish the crime of genocide.
Editing by Aneta Harutyunyan
Arsen Babayan, a member of the opposition Homeland Party Board, reflected on the Pegasus spyware attacks targeting Armenia’s opposition.
“There has been much talk recently about the well-known Pegasus software. The authorities, as you know, have spent millions of dollars to use a super-powerful and most inhumane cyber-weapon against opposition figures,” he wrote on Facebook on Saturday.
“The authorities infect the phones of the victims using the Pegasus software through:
1. An ordinary phone call. Even if you don’t answer that call, using the operator, the Pegasus software is installed on the phone. It cannot be uninstalled even if the phone is completely formatted.
2. An ordinary test message. No matter whether you click on the message or just delete it, as soon as you get the SMS, that’s it, the phone is infected.
3. The same actions outlined in the first and second points are performed through WhatsApp,” Babayan said, adding all the information is available on the international media and on Google.
“Incidentally, there is no real antivirus or any other program to fight against this. But it is 99% possible to protect yourself,” he said, promising to further elaborate on the matter in the future.
10:19, 16 November, 2021
YEREVAN, NOVEMBER 16, ARMENPRESS. The opposition Hayastan and Pativ Unem blocs of the Armenian parliament are boycotting today’s session in protest of the majority’s refusal to convene an emergency sitting to discuss the situation at the country’s borders earlier on November 15.
The session’s agenda includes the 2022 government budget.
Editing and Translating by Stepan Kocharyan
A member of a survey team from Halo Trust looks on at a damaged ammunition store near Aygestan, in outskirts of Khankendi, Nagorno-Karabakh, Nov. 23, 2020. (AP File Photo)
Azerbaijan’s Foreign Minister Jeyhun Bayramov discussed the Nagorno-Karabakh with his French and Armenian counterparts in Paris on Wednesday.
According to a statement from France’s Foreign Ministry, Jean-Yves Le Drian held separate meetings with Bayramov and Ararat Mirzoyan, the Armenian Foreign Minister. They then had a trilateral meeting as part of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) Minsk Group.
France seeks to strengthen the dialogue between the parties and establish lasting peace in the South Caucasus, said the statement.
It was also noted that Le Drian wishes to continue the dialogue with Azerbaijan and Armenia.
France has faced criticism for abandoning its neutrality and supporting Armenia in the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict as one of the co-chair countries of the Minsk Group, which was set up by the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE).
The Minsk Group, co-chaired by France, Russia and the United States, was formed in 1992 to find a peaceful solution to the conflict between Baku and Yerevan over the occupied Nagorno-Karabakh region. However, for years it has been unable to provide a solution.
Previously, Azerbaijan’s parliament called for France to be stripped of its mediation role in the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict to punish the French Senate for adopting a resolution backing the region’s independence.
Relations between the former Soviet republics of Armenia and Azerbaijan have been tense since 1991, when the Armenian military occupied Nagorno-Karabakh, a territory internationally recognized as part of Azerbaijan, and seven adjacent regions.
New clashes erupted on Sept. 27, 2020, with the Armenian army attacking civilians and Azerbaijani forces and violating humanitarian cease-fire agreements.
The fighting ended with a Russia-brokered agreement on Nov. 10, 2020.
During the 44-day conflict, Azerbaijan liberated several cities and 300 settlements and villages that were under the Armenian occupation for almost 30 years.