11:56, 26 August, 2020
YEREVAN, AUGUST 26, ARMENPRESS. Deputy Minister of Defense Makar Ghambaryan will lead a delegation to the Russian city of Irkutsk from September 14-18 for the 15th meeting of the Armenia-Russia Inter-Governmental Commission on Military-Technical Cooperation.
Editing and Translating by Stepan Kocharyan
Roudolf Kharatian ballet Two Suns will premiere on Mezzo TV on August 23, becoming the first ever performing arts work to present Armenian art and cultural heritage on the international television channel with a worldwide community of 60 million.
Broadcasts are already scheduled on August 29, September 9 and 15.
Merging the past and the present, this unique performance represents the Armenian cultural heritage of the millennia. A piece of art created in the 21st century, it is innovative, eternal, both Armenian and universal. The ballet affirms Armenia’s relevance as an ongoing contributor to the human values.
The ballet Two Suns is based on Grigor Narekatsi’s Book of Lamentations. With libretto and choreography by Roudolf Kharatian, the musical score features 4th to 21st century compositions by Mesrop Mashtots, Grigor Narekatsi, Aram Khachaturian, Alan Hovhaness, Arno Babajanyan, Avet Terterian, and Ashot Ariyan. The sets and costumes were designed by Astghik Stepanyan.
Broadcasting in more than 80 countries, Mezzo TV has become a leader in presenting the best of the performing arts to a discerning global audience since 1996.
YEREVAN/MILAN (Thomson Reuters Foundation) – Gayane Azatyan has grown veg for 20 years – a prosperous enough venture despite the bad seed that was planted by the Soviet system and has blighted Armenia all her working life.
The 43-year-old makes a living growing broccoli, lettuce and other vegetables in the northern Armenian village of Jrashen.
Her farm covers 8.5 hectares – roughly a dozen football pitches and a sizable area by local standards.
Only the land is not contiguous, but made up of several small plots scattered across the village, some of which she owns and the rest she rents from near-neighbours.
“It is a problem,” she said by phone. “We spend a lot of time and resources to take our workers from one land plot to another. It would be very good to have one big land plot.”
Excessive land fragmentation, a legacy of switching at speed from communism to a private-property system, has long hindered agricultural development in Armenia – where about half of all arable land lies abandoned, according to the government.
So now the authorities plan to reform the setup, do away with the communist legacy, modernise the Armenian economy and shore up food security in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic.
“Fragmentation of lands makes agricultural activities unfavourable and economically unprofitable,” the country’s deputy economy minister, Arman Khojoyan, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation in a phone interview.
“The land reform will be an important step for unlocking growth in the agricultural sector.”
After Armenia became independent in 1991, state-owned farmland was split into small parcels and distributed in equal amounts – through a lottery – to an array of locals.
While the process was fair and buoyed food production at a time where the centralised system was in freefall, it also laid the groundwork for today’s problems, said Morten Hartvigsen, a land tenure officer at the United Nations food agency (FAO).
Most Armenian food comes from the 320,000 or so family farms that dot the fertile land in the southern Caucasus, according to the FAO, which is helping the government craft the reforms.
About 60% of these are less than one hectare in size and 89% are smaller than 3 hectares, it said.
By contrast, the average farm in England is 86 hectares, making for greater efficiency and higher yields.
Smallholders in Armenia are often unable to afford the sort of modern machinery and systems that would help them prosper.
In 2016, almost 40% of food produced in Armenia was eaten by the people who grew it, according to official data, killing off hopes of a vibrant free market in the former Soviet state.
This fuels a vicious circle of emigration and land abandonment, compounded by low and loosely enforced land taxes, according to the FAO.
“It doesn’t cost (owners) anything to have this land,” said Hartvigsen. “So, you get a job in Moscow for some seasonal work, for example, you move there and just leave the land, abandoned.”
The government wants to send a reform package to parliament by the end of the year, aiming to bring fallow land to life by banding small plots together and marketing them as one unit.
“Currently (investors) have to deal with too many small land holders and most of them have some paperwork issue,” said Khojoyan, the deputy minister.
Armenia’s land agency would act as an intermediary, seeking out the owners of abandoned parcels and encouraging them to put the plots on a database of available land that the agency would then combine and lease to farmers, he said.
Owners who want to take part would receive a small rent as incentive, he said, while government plans to raise taxes on abandoned lots have been shelved.
The agency might also buy parcels and lease them out, and run an exchange system so owners can swap plots, Khojoyan added.
COVID-19 AND WATER
The target is to get 25% of the abandoned land working within five years, boosting a sector that makes up a quarter of the country’s economic output, said the deputy minister.
“Coronavirus has doubtlessly stressed the need for reform,” he said, noting how the pandemic had revealed the true extent of food insecurity and unemployment in his landlocked country.
Border closures due to COVID-19 grounded the tens of thousands of Armenians who usually travel abroad for seasonal jobs, and the reform could help them find work at home, he said.
“Land reforms can be a stimulus to engage in agriculture and land cultivation,” he said.
To succeed, though, Armenia badly needs better roads and irrigation networks, according to the Agricultural Alliance of Armenia, an umbrella group of farming organisations.
“The main reason for not cultivating the land is the absence of irrigation water,” the group said in a statement, noting that about 75% of abandoned agricultural land had no irrigation.
Farmers agreed.
“Before implementing these changes, the government should think about solving the irrigation problem. If it is solved, no inch of plot will remain unused,” said Aram Kirakosyan, a 60-year-old who grows apricot and grapes in the Ararat region.
Others, like Azatyan, worry she might be charged more to farm the land post-reform.
“I’m afraid the price for the rent will increase,” she said, explaining she only paid a symbolic price to fellow villagers.
Khojoyan said irrigation projects would run in parallel with the reform.
Market forces would determine rents, he said, though government may initially set lower rates as an incentive to Armenians to weed out the old Soviet legacy.
“The government doesn’t want to make money,” he said.
Armenia and Artsakh send planeloads of humanitarian aid to Lebanon
23:36, 9 August, 2020
YEREVAN, AUGUST 9, ARMENPRESS. The Republic of Artsakh has sent a planeload of assistance to Lebanon to help in eliminating the aftermath of the devastating August 4 Beirut explosion, President of Artsakh Arayik Harutyunyan said on social media.
The cargo “From the People of Artsakh to Lebanon” has already arrived in Beirut.
“The assistance is in the form of food,” President Harutyunyan said. “And this isn’t all, because I am going to convene a meeting on this issue tomorrow and I will inform on our decisions. Artsakh stands by Lebanon in overcoming this difficult challenge,” the President of Artsakh said.
In turn, the Prime Minister of Armenia Nikol Pashinyan tweeted: “From
The first Armenian planeload comprising medicine and medical equipment was sent to Beirut on August 8.
Editing and writing by Stepan Kocharyan
Tuesday, August 11, 2020
Lawmaker Edmon Marukyan from the opposition Bright Armenia Party has reflected on Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan’s “awkward” answer to a question about Artsakh (Nagorno-Karabakh) during an interview on the popular BBC program HARDtalk on Friday.
“The Armenian forces have never committed a war crime in any operation,” Marukyan stressed.
“The awkward response of the Armenian prime minister to famous presenter Stephen Sackur is incomprehensible, as the latter overtly accused Armenians of committing gross human rights violations and war crimes in Artsakh in 1980s and 1990s, proposing the PM to apologize for them,” he said.
According to the lawmaker, the premier should not only have offered a clear response and publically ruled out such actions by the Armenian forces, but also should have recalled the atrocities committed by the Azerbaijani forces both during the Artsakh Liberation War and the 2016 April War, including beheadings of Armenian soldiers and the murder and mutilation of civilians in their homes, the brutal murder of Armenian officer Gurgen Margaryan in 2004 and the glorification of axe-murderer Ramil Safarov by the Azerbaijani authorities.
“We must constantly speak about all this on all platforms, never miss an opportunity or be embarrassed when we are accused of committing a violation,” the lawmaker stressed.
“Otherwise, when the perpetrator of a war crime is made a victim during a program watched all over the world, it seems that they are trying to clear is from the consequences of responsibility by placing it on those who are fighting for their homeland.
“We must take a clear stance and give clear answers, equating the incumbent authorities of Azerbaijan with those of a state waging wars in the style of a terrorist organization,” Marukyan wrote.
Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan
To mark the 100th anniversary of the Treaty of Sèvres, Armenia’s National Academy of Sciences hosted a conference on Monday entitled “The Treaty of Sèvres and the Armenian Question.”
Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan sent remarks to the conference, which were presented by Vice-President of the academy, Yury Shukryan.
In his statement, Pashinyan drew a direct parallel with some of the issues that Armenia and Artsakh are contending with, saying that at the core of the Sèvres Treaty lies the principle of self-determination and equality of nations.
“The Treaty of Sèvres has a significant place in the modern history of the Armenian people,” said Pashinyan. “It is not a coincidence that it remains the subject to academic studies and research. I consider it extremely important that our scholars’ unbiased analysis of the document signed a century ago and the events that preceded it become available to our people and to the wider international community, as well. Today’s conference serves that very purpose,” said Pashinyan.
Speaking about the importance of the treaty, Pashinyan said that that “it was signaling the end of cursed years. Like the Treaty of Versailles in Europe, the Treaty of Sèvres was forming a new system of inter-state relations in the region. [The treaty] was introducing new principles and values, it was establishing not only peace but also justice in [Asia Minor].”
Pashinyan said at the core of the treaty lies the principle of self-determination and equality of nations. The treaty was ending the centuries-old subjugation of people imposed by empires and was giving independence and freedom to peoples of the region.
“Moreover, by providing the right to establish national states in historic territories, it was creating favorable conditions for the peaceful coexistence of Muslim and Christian people in the region, the preservation of civilized diversity of the region and their further development,” said Pashinyan.
“The Treaty of Sèvres is the international document that recognized and affirmed Armenia’s independence. The Republic of Armenia was acting as a legally equal party to this treaty. Centuries after losing independence, the Armenian government was for the first time signing an international treaty with the Great Powers. The Republic of Armenia was being recognized in the defined borders of the treaty as a full member of the international community and a legally equal subject to international law,” added Pashinyan.
The prime minister emphasized that by being a signatory to the treaty, Armenia’s and the Armenian people’s contribution to the allied victory in World War I and the establishment of peace was also being recognized. The treaty was emphasizing and duly appreciating the Armenian people’s role in international relations and the post-war governing of the world.
“Article 89 of the Treaty of Sèvres was stating and affirming the Armenian people’s historic and undisputed relation with the Armenian Highlands, where the Armenian people were born, lived and shaped their statehood and culture for millennia,” said Pashinyan.
“The Treaty of Sèvres was signed in the wake of the Armenian Genocide as the Ottoman Empire was trying to resolve the ‘Armenian Question’ by exterminating the Armenians. Our people were subjected to the most brutal and inhuman suffering. Enormous losses were inflicted on our nation. Meanwhile, the Treaty of Sèvres paved the way for overcoming the consequences of the Genocide. The establishment of the independent Armenian statehood in its ancestral homeland was the fair solution of the “Armenian Question.” Historical justice was being restored. Favorable conditions were created for reinstating our people’s economic and demographic potential and ensuring its natural development,” explained Pashinyan.
“Although the Treaty of Sèvres was never implemented, it continues to be a historical fact, which reflects our long journey to restore our independent statehood. We are bound by duty to remember it, realize its importance and follow its message,” concluded Pashinyan.