11:14, 4 June, 2021
YEREVAN, JUNE 4, ARMENPRESS. Armenian human rights advocates have published videos on social media about unidentified soldiers who may have been taken captive by the Azerbaijani side, asking to contact them if they recognize the persons or the location in the videos.
Human rights advocate Artak Zeynalyan said on Facebook that they are releasing videos which allow people to recognize the soldiers or the location captured in the videos.
“In order to protect the rights of possible captives and their families, please contact Siranush Sahakyan or me if you recognize the persons or the location in the videos.
Please present photos or videos that will confirm your conviction that the possible captured person is identical to the person you know”, Zeynalyan said.
He also informed that the identity of possible captured person will be confirmed as a result of proper procedures, including examinations.
Zeynalyan asked those who will recognize the possible captives to call at the following phone numbers – + 374 94 907002 (Siranush Sahakyan), + 374 91 193526 (Artak Zeynalyan).
Editing and Translating by Aneta Harutyunyan
On , Vice Foreign Minister Le Yucheng and Armenian Deputy Foreign Minister Avet Adonts held video consultations between Chinese and Armenian Foreign Ministries, and both sides exchanged views on bilateral relations, anti-pandemic cooperation and Belt and Road cooperation.
Le Yucheng said, China-Armenia relations are currently showing good momentum, with the two sides maintaining high-level interactions, bilateral trade growing against the headwinds of COVID-19 and the two peoples strengthening and enhancing friendship through working together to fight the pandemic. This year is of great significance for both China and Armenia, as China will celebrate the centenary of the Communist Party of China and Armenia will celebrate the 30th anniversary of its independence. The two sides should continue to consolidate political mutual trust, deepen Belt and Road cooperation and open up new prospects in the friendly cooperative partnership between China and Armenia.
Adonts thanked China for providing Armenia with COVID-19 vaccine assistance and lauded China for its important contribution to the global pandemic battle. Noting the long-time friendship between Armenia and China, he said, Armenia attaches great importance to developing its relations with China and is willing to continuously deepen cooperation with China in various fields on the basis of equality and mutual trust.
TEHRAN, May 23 (MNA) – Rejecting some baseless claims that 160 Armenian soldiers were detained by Iran during the Nagorno-Karabakh war, Iran Embassy in Armenia asserted that such rumors are false and groundless.
The Iranian Embassy in Yerevan has refuted the reports claiming some 160 Armenian soldiers are currently in Iran, Public Radio of Armenia reported.
The Embassy has said the rumors claiming that 160 Armenian soldiers are in Iran and the Iranian side has posed preconditions for their repatriation are false and groundless.
On Saturday a number of Armenian media outlets published the report claiming the soldiers had crossed to the Iranian side during the 44-day war.
This is while the Islamic Republic of Iran has good relations with its neighbors. During the recent war over the Nagorno-Karabakh region between Armenia and the Republic of Azerbaijan, Iran has always stressed the need to avoid war and resolve disputes through dialogues.
RHM/PR
May 14, 2021
The Armenia-Azerbaijan border
EU, Canada also Urge a ‘Negotiated’ Resolution to the Standoff
The United States is closely monitoring the situation on the border between Armenia and Azerbaijan, and expects Azerbaijan to immediately pull back its forces and “cease further provocation,” State Department spokeswoman Jalina Porter said on Friday during her daily briefing.
Porter was responding to a question from Laura Kelly, a correspondent for The Hill, who asked about the tense standoff on the Armenian border and questioned the State Department official about whether the Biden Administration is considering revoking the waiver of Section 907, which was announced last month by Secretary of State Antony Blinken.
While Porter said there was nothing to announce about Section 907, she said that the State Department was “closely monitoring the situation along the de-marked border between Armenia and Azerbaijan.”
“Military movements in disputed territories are irresponsible, and they’re also unnecessarily provocative,” said Porter. “And of course we’ve seen the reports of some withdrawal and would welcome that, if confirmed, but we expect that Azerbaijan to pull back all forces immediately and cease further provocation.”
“We’ve also urged both sides to approach demarcation issues through discussion as well as negotiation,” added Porter.
The European Union’s High Representative for Foreign Affairs Josep Borrel on Friday said that the EU is “following closely the worrying developments along the Armenia-Azerbaijan border.”
“On my behalf, Secretary General of the European External Action Service Stefano Sannino, spoke to Foreign Minister of Armenia Ara Aivazian on Thursday and to Foreign Minister of Azerbaijan Jeyhun Bayramov this Friday, calling on both sides to exercise the utmost restraint and de-escalate the situation. EU Special Representative Toivo Klaar has also been in contact with the OSCE Chairmanship in Office,” Borrel said.
He emphasized that border delimitation and demarcation must be resolved through negotiations, for the benefit of the security of the local populations. “We welcome ongoing contacts at the technical level between the two sides.” “The EU continues to support a comprehensive settlement of the conflict and encourages both countries to find peaceful solutions preserving stability in the region.,” the High Representative stated.
In a Twitter post, Canada’s Foreign Minister Marc Garneau said on Friday that his country is concerned by reports of “rising tensions between Armenia and Azerbaijan with reports of an incursion into Armenian territory.”
“We urge all parties to respect the ceasefire agreement achieved on November 10 fully and to continue to negotiate a permanent and peaceful settlement. All actions that would undermine the ceasefire and escalate tensions must be stopped,” Garneau added.
12:16, 8 May, 2021
YEREVAN, MAY 8, ARMENPRESS. Russia’s coronavirus cases rose by 8,329 to 4,871,843 in the past 24 hours, TASS reports citing the anti-coronavirus crisis center.
According to data from the crisis center, the coronavirus growth rate stands at 0.17%.
The number of coronavirus recoveries in Russia rose by 8,255 to 4,488,615 in the past day.
According to data from the crisis center, 92.1% of coronavirus patients have recovered in Russia.
Russia recorded 370 coronavirus deaths in the past 24 hours, down from 376 the day before. The total death toll has reached 112,992.
10:28, 9 May, 2021
YEREVAN, MAY 9, ARMENPRESS. Caretaker Prime Minister of Armenia Nikol Pashinyan honored the memory of the heroes who sacrificed their lives to the motherland at Yerablur Military pantheon on the occasion of May 9.
ARMENPRESS reports Pashinyan laid flowers at the monument eternalizing the memory of the fallen soldiers and the tombs of the heroes. Pashinyan also talked to the relatives of the fallen soldiers who also visited Yerablur.
WASHINGTON (JTA) — One Wednesday in October 2007, seven Jewish lawmakers on the House Foreign Affairs Committee did something extraordinary: They ignored the pleas of the Jewish establishment.
Jewish politicos were often happy to advance the the agenda of the Jewish groups because it lined up with their ideals.
On this occasion, several powerhouse lobbying groups in the Jewish community were pressing the committee not to advance a bill that would recognize as a genocide the 1915 Ottoman massacres of an estimated 1.5 million Armenians during World War I.
The bill passed out of the committee in a landmark vote but ultimately failed. It wasn’t until this weekend that President Joe Biden made history and became the first U.S. president to formally recognize the Armenian genocide. (Ronald Reagan on one occasion referred in passing to the massacres as a genocide.)
Among the many organizations welcoming Biden’s statement were at least two of the Jewish groups that had lobbied against recognition 14 years ago, the American Jewish Committee and the Anti-Defamation League.
What changed since ’07?
It’s not complicated: The Turkey-Israel alliance fell apart.
Back when the bill was under debate, Turkey was Israel’s closest regional ally and, with Jordan, one of only two Muslim majority allies. AIPAC, the ADL and AJC, along with some smaller groups, made it clear to the Foreign Affairs Committee that it would be better if the bill never got to the full U.S. House of Representatives.
The custom for Israel-related issues, then as now, was for Jewish groups to make Jewish lawmakers their first stop when lobbying: The Jewish members were the likeliest to take the lead on a favored issue in Congress. (That’s hardly unusual: Other minority lobbies take the same tack.)
The Jewish lawmakers often heeded the Jewish establishment. Except in this case.
On Oct. 10, 2007, at a committee meeting that lasted hours, seven of the eight Jewish Democrats on the committee said they could not in good conscience deny a genocide when they were so often forced to repudiate Holocaust denial.
Some of them gazed at four survivors of the Armenian genocide, three nonagenarians and a centenarian, and cast their “yes” votes. A few of them said they had only just decided to vote in the affirmative.
“With a heavy heart, I will vote for this resolution,” Rep. Eliot Engel of New York, one of the most reliable friends of the pro-Israel lobby, said in casting his vote.
Brad Sherman of California said his lifetime of Jewish advocacy left him no choice.
“Genocide denial is not just the last step of a genocide, it is the first step of the next genocide,” he said.
In the months prior to the vote, there had been a full-court press against advancing the resolution. Turkish officials flew to Washington, D.C., to make their case, often at private events hosted by Jewish groups.
So did Turkish Jewish community officials who met with influential folks on the sidelines of AIPAC’s conference that year and made clear in so many words that their comfortable existence would be less so if Congress passed the law. In the end, the committee approved the bill — a first — but it died on the House floor.
The same year, the ADL made national headlines when it fired one of its Boston officials who openly criticized the organization for not naming the Armenian genocide as such. ADL had hosted Turkish Prime Minister Recep Erdogan two years earlier in New York.
Privately, officials of the Jewish groups acknowledged that they were wary of the Islamist direction that Erdogan was leading the country. Three years later, after the Mavi Marmara crisis, when Israeli commandoes raided a Turkish-flagged convoy attempting to breach Israel’s blockade of the Gaza Strip, the crisis burst into the open.
The Israeli commandos killed 10 Turkish citizens (one a dual American citizen) in the clashes aboard one of the ships. Ten Israeli soldiers were wounded. Erdogan recalled the Turkish ambassador and canceled Israel-Turkey joint military exercises.
The relationship never fully recovered, and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has successfully cultivated other Muslim majority allies in the region. Erdogan became one of the few allies of Hamas, Israel’s Palestinian enemy.
By 2016, major Jewish groups were lining up to press for recognition of the Armenian genocide, including eventually the ADL and AJC. An AJC statement in 2014 noting its prior recognition of the genocide earned the group a screed from the Turkish ambassador to Washington. Congress recognized the genocide last year with nary a peep of Jewish protest.
In fact, those two major Jewish groups that had lobbied in ’07 against genocide recognition were vocal this weekend in their support of Biden. (AIPAC did not comment.)
“This long overdue step is vital for raising awareness about the atrocities committed against the Armenian people and in efforts to address other mass atrocities occurring today,” the ADL said.
The American Jewish Committee’s executive director, David Harris, decried those who would buckle to pressure.
“Despite pledges by some, no other U.S. leader was willing to state the full truth,” Harris said on Twitter. “Instead, they buckled to pressure by Turkey. In doing so, they sacrificed truth for political expediency. President Biden didn’t.”
Wednesday,
Karabakh Leader Wants Closer Ties With Russia
• Satenik Hayrapetian
Armenia - Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian meets with Karabakh President Ara
Harutyunian, April 8, 2021
Forging closer ties with Russia is vital for Armenia and Nagorno-Karabakh given
the outcome of last year’s with Azerbaijan, Ara Harutiunian, the Karabakh
president, said on Wednesday.
“I see the future of Armenia and Artsakh within the framework of new and deeper
military-political cooperation [with Russia,]” he said at a meeting in
Stepanakert. “Together with Russia we need to confront the new situation
because, as I said, Turkey is not going to leave the region.”
Harutiunian said that Turkey “participated in the war on the enemy’s side” and
also recruited thousands of Syrian mercenaries for the Azerbaijani army. This
was the main reason for Azerbaijan’s victory, he added.
The six-week hostilities stopped on November 10 after Russia brokered an
Armenian-Azerbaijani ceasefire agreement. As part of the agreement, Moscow
deployed around 2,000 Russian peacekeeping troops along the new
Armenian-Azerbaijani “line of contact” and a land corridor connecting Karabakh
to Armenia.
Russian military presence in Armenia could also increase in the coming months.
Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian and other Armenian leaders have indicated that
they would welcome that.
“The Armenian-Russian military alliance is pivotal for ensuring the external
security of the Republic of Armenia,” Pashinian said on April 14.
Armenian opposition groups blame Pashinian for the Armenian side’s defeat. Some
of them have said that he would have reduced Armenian territorial losses had he
agreed to an earlier ceasefire deal that was proposed by Russian President
Vladimir Putin on October 19.
Harutiunian seemed to defend Pashinian against the criticism. He said that
already in early October it was clear that the Armenian side is heading for
defeat but that the war was not stopped then because of a lack of “consensus”
among Armenia’s ruling and opposition forces.
“At that point they seemed to consider stopping the war treason,” he said in an
apparent reference to the opposition.
Some opposition figures, including a representative of the former ruling
Republican Party of Armenia, responded by accusing Harutiunian of trying to help
Pashinian dodge responsibility for his handling of the war.
Ruling Bloc Criminalizes ‘Election Campaign Obstruction’
• Anush Mkrtchian
Armenia -- Deputies from the ruling My Step bloc attend a session of the
Armenian parliament, Yerevan, January 22, 2021.
One week after angry protests marred Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian’s visit to
Syunik province, the Armenian parliament voted on Wednesday to criminalize
obstruction of election campaigns.
The measure is part of a package of legal amendments which the pro-government
majority in the National Assembly says will help to prevent serious
irregularities in the run-up to and during snap parliamentary elections expected
in June.
The amendments call for heavier fines and lengthier prison sentences for vote
buying, election-related violence and disruption of the electoral process. They
also introduce criminal liability for attempts to impede pre-election activities
of political parties or their individual candidates.
This includes forcing people not to attend campaign rallies or agitate for a
particular election contender. Individuals convicted of such offenses would face
up to three years in prison.
“If anyone tries to impede an election campaign they will be subjected to
criminal prosecution,” said Vahagn Hovakimian, a senior deputy from Pashinian’s
My Step bloc and the main author of the bill which pro-government lawmakers
urgently passed in the first and second readings.
The bill calls for a longer jail term (up to five years) for anyone who would
pay voters to attend or boycott a pre-election rally.
Ani Samsonian, a deputy representing the opposition Bright Armenia Party (LHK),
criticized the bill, saying that it could be used to penalize the opposition.
“The opposition has no levers to coerce people to make donations to its campaign
fund,” argued Samsonian. By contrast, she said, My Step is in a position to
pressure businesspeople to finance its election campaign.
The ruling political force pushed the bill through the parliament one week after
Pashinian visited Syunik and faced protests by local residents blaming him for
Armenia’s defeat in last year’s Nagorno-Karabakh which has directly affected
their communities.
Dozens of angry men swore at the prime minister and branded him a “capitulator”
as he walked through the provincial towns of Agarak and Meghri on April 21.
Pashinian’s motorcade was pelted with eggs as it drove through another Syunik
community, Goris, later that day.
Pashinian condemned the incidents as a “violation of the law” before
law-enforcement authorities rounded up more than two dozen people and charged
them with hooliganism and/or violent resistance to police. Armenia’s
Investigative Committee said the “hooligan acts” were organized by
opposition-linked local government officials the purpose of hampering
Pashinian’s “movements and meetings with the population.”
Some critics of the Armenian government claim that Pashinian himself broke the
law by trying to hold pre-election rallies before the official start of
campaigning for the snap polls. They similarly accused Pashinian of illegal
campaigning after he visited villages in two other regions and held rallies
there late last month. The premier’s political allies deny any connection
between those visits and the upcoming vote.
It remains to be seen whether President Armen Sarkissian will sign the latest
bill into law. In recent weeks Sarkissian has challenged the legality of
government-backed legislation that would tighten government control of state
universities, give more powers to a state body overseeing the Armenian judiciary
and triple maximum fines for defamation.
Armenia To Import More COVID-19 Vaccines
• Narine Ghalechian
UKRAINE -- A medical worker shows a vial with the Chinese-developed CoronaVac
vaccine against the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) at a clinic in Kyiv, April
15, 2021
Armenia will receive soon fresh batches of coronavirus vaccines even though most
of its residents are still in no rush to take them, a senior government official
said on Wednesday.
Gayane Sahakian, the deputy director of the Armenian Center for Disease Control
and Prevention, said they will be delivered by COVAX Facility, a global
vaccine-sharing scheme supported by the World Health Organization.
Sahakian did not specify the volume of the upcoming deliveries. She said only
that the Armenian government will import different types of vaccines, including
the CoronaVac jab manufactured by the Chinese company Sinovac.
COVAX already airlifted 24,000 doses of AstraZeneca’s COVID-19 vaccine to
Yerevan on March 28. Armenia also received 43,000 doses of the Russian Sputnik V
vaccine in the following weeks.
The Armenian Ministry of Health launched its vaccination campaign on April 13,
initially targeting only frontline workers, seniors and people suffering from
chronic diseases.
Armenia - Gayane Sahakian, the deputy director of the Armenian Center for
Disease Control and Prevention, at a news conference in Yerevan,
Sahakian said just over 2,000 Armenians making up less than 0.1 percent of the
country’s population have been vaccinated so far. She seemed to downplay the
slow pace of the vaccination, saying that the daily number of people getting
AstraZeneca or Sputnik V shots is growing by around 5 percent.
“No serious health problems have been registered among vaccinated people,” the
official told a news conference.
In an apparent effort to speed up the vaccination campaign, Health Minister
Anahit Avanesian allowed medical workers late last week to administer
AstraZeneca shots to all people willing to take them. Avanesian said earlier
that the use-by date of the first batch of the vaccine supplied by COVAX is May
31.
The lack of public interest in the vaccination contrasts with a continuing high
rate of coronavirus infections in the South Caucasus nation.
The Ministry of Health said on Wednesday morning that 808 people have tested
positive for COVID-19 in the past day. It also reported 13 new deaths caused by
the disease.
Reprinted on ANN/Armenian News with permission from RFE/RL
Copyright (c) 2021 Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty, Inc.
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US State Dept says announcement Saturday on ‘Armenian genocide’
The US State Department said to expect an announcement Saturday on the mass killings of Armenians in 1915 amid expectations President Joe Biden will defy Turkey to label the massacres a genocide.
“When it comes to the Armenian genocide, you can expect an announcement tomorrow,” State Department deputy spokeswoman Jalina Porter told reporters Friday, while declining to reveal details. sct/ft