Wednesday,
Armenian Deputy Speaker Unfazed By Impending Ouster
• Astghik Bedevian
Armenia - Ishkhan Saghatelian (second from right) and other opposition lawmakers
lead an anti-government rally in Yerevan, May 18, 2022.
Ishkhan Saghatelian, a deputy speaker of the Armenian parliament, on Wednesday
shrugged off the ruling Civil Contract party’s decision to strip him and another
opposition leader of their parliamentary posts.
Saghatelian also made clear that the main opposition Hayastan alliance, of which
he is a senior member, have no plans yet to end a more than two-month boycott of
sessions of the National Assembly and its standing committees.
“We will go back to the parliament only with our agenda,” he told RFE/RL’s
Armenian Service.
Hayastan and the second parliamentary opposition force, Pativ Unem, began the
boycott in April in advance of their daily demonstrations demanding Prime
Minister Nikol Pashinian’s resignation. They decided to scale back the protests
earlier this month after failing to topple Pashinian.
Armenia - Opposition supporters demonstrate in France Square, Yerevan, May 3,
2022.
Leaders of the parliament’s pro-government majority have threatened to strip
lawmakers representing Hayastan and Pativ Unem of their parliament seats for
absenteeism. They announced no decisions to that effect after a meeting of Civil
Contract’s parliamentary group held on Tuesday.
The group said instead that it will oust Saghatelian and Hayastan’s Vahe
Hakobian as deputy speaker and chairman of the parliament committee on economic
issues respectively.
Artur Hovannisian, a senior Civil Contract parliamentarian, told RFE/RL’s
Armenian Service on Wednesday that the two oppositionists will be formally
relieved of their duties by September. He said they themselves stopped
performing those duties.
“We have seen either an empty chair or a silent Ishkhan Saghatelian sitting on
it,” said Hovannisian. “Such a deputy speaker hampers our work with his
inactivity.”
Armenia - Former President Robert Kocharian (center), Ishkhan Saghatelian
(right) and Vahe Hakobian at an election campaign rally in Yerevan, June 18,
2021.
“They work against the Republic of Armenia,” Saghatelian shot back. “If I have
managed to impede their work, then that’s wonderful. They must expect more
severe blows soon.”
“Civil Contract must not talk about things like professional skills, experience
or knowledge,” he went on. “They are so far from these things. Since their
lifetime aim was to grab state posts they think that they can hurt me or my
colleagues in this way. They don’t understand that it’s so secondary to us right
now.”
The opposition forces accuse Pashinian of planning to make sweeping concessions
to Azerbaijan that would place Nagorno-Karabakh under Azerbaijani control and
jeopardize the very existence of Armenia. They are scheduled to hold another
antigovernment rally in Yerevan on Friday.
Pashinian Aide Elected Armenia’s Chief Prosecutor
• Anush Mkrtchian
Armenia - Anna Vardapetian addresses parliament before being elected as
Armenia's next prosecutor-general, Yerevan, .
The National Assembly voted on Wednesday to appoint an aide to Prime Minister
Nikol Pashinian as Armenia’s next chief prosecutor.
The current prosecutor-general, Artur Davtian, will complete his six-year term
in office on September 15. He was appointed in 2016 by the country’s former
parliament dominated by then President Serzh Sarkisian’s loyalists.
Pashinian and his political allies, who control the current parliament, decided
not to appoint Davtian for a second term.
Their pick for the post, Anna Vardapetian, served as a deputy minister of
justice in 2019 and became Pashinian’s assistant on legal affairs in March 2020.
She was elected by 70 members of the 107-seat parliament. They all represent
Pashinian’s Civil Contract party.
Speaking on the parliament floor before the vote, Vardapetian, pledged to ensure
proper oversight of law-enforcement agencies combatting and investigating
crimes. She said she will tackle favoritism within those agencies as well as
what she called excessive delays in criminal investigations and a broader “lack
of justice” in the country.
“If the prosecutor is consistent about a criminal case, the citizen will not
come to the gates of the government or the National Assembly to demand a [fair]
investigation of their case,” she said.
Armenia -- Businessman Ruben Hayrapetian speaks to journalists after being
released by police, Yerevan, February 4, 2020.
Vartanian, 36, herself was accused of breaking the law last year after an
Armenian media outlet published purported evidence of her interference in a
criminal investigation into a fugitive businessman critical of Pashinian’s
government.
The online publication, 168.am, posted what it described as screenshots of an
e-mail sent by Vardapetian to a senior law-enforcement officer leading the
investigation. The letter contained instructions regarding businessman Ruben
Hayrapetian’s indictment.
Hayrapetian’s lawyers seized upon the report, saying that Vardapetian committed
a crime and must be prosecuted. The Office of the Prosecutor-General cleared
Pashinian’s aide of any wrongdoing, however, saying that she advised, rather
than pressured, the investigator.
Vardapetian, who has never worked as a prosecutor before, did not comment on the
scandal when she addressed the National Assembly on Wednesday. And she again
declined to talk to reporters.
Nor did any of the pro-government lawmakers ask Vardapetian to comment on the
scandal. Their opposition colleagues did not participate in the election of the
new prosecutor-general because of a continuing opposition boycott of the
parliament’s sessions.
Armenian Official Sees Progress In Talks On Transport Links With Azerbaijan
• Naira Nalbandian
Armenia -- Deputy Prime Minister Mher Grigorian at a news conference in Yerevan,
March 30, 2020.
Armenia and Azerbaijan have narrowed their differences on planned transport
links between the two countries during ongoing negotiations mediated by Russia,
according to Deputy Prime Minister Mher Grigorian.
A Russian-Armenian-Azerbaijani commission dealing with the matter met twice in
Russia earlier this month after a six-month hiatus.
Grigorian, who co-chairs the commission along with his Azerbaijani and Russian
counterparts, described its activities as “constructive” in an interview with
Russia’s TASS news agency published late on Tuesday.
“It’s certainly difficult work but I must note that the parties manage to bring
closer their positions on many issues of border and customs control as well as
safe passage of citizens, vehicles and cargo through roads and railways in the
territory of Armenia and Azerbaijan,” he said.
Grigorian added that “expert subgroups” formed by the three governments are
continuing to work on practical modalities of the transport links envisaged by
the Russian-brokered ceasefire that stopped the 2020 war in Nagorno-Karabakh. He
did not say when Baku and Yerevan could reach a final agreement.
Grigorian’s remarks contrasted with what Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian said
during a virtual news conference on Monday. He claimed that Baku has rejected a
draft agreement on the construction of a railway that will connect Azerbaijan to
its Nakhichevan exclave through Armenia.
“The draft document was presented by the Russian co-chair of the trilateral
commission, Deputy Prime Minister Alexei Overchuk,” he said. “The Armenian side
expressed readiness to sign the document while the Azerbaijani side refused that
agreement.”
Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev has repeatedly demanded an exterritorial
“corridor” for Nakhichevan that would exempt travellers and cargo from Armenian
border controls. On June 16, Aliyev implicitly threatened to resort to military
action if the Armenian side continues to oppose such an overland link.
Armenian leaders maintain that Armenian-Azerbaijani agreements brokered by
Russia and the European Union call for only conventional transport links between
the two South Caucasus states.
Visiting Yerevan on June 9, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov insisted that
Armenia will control the planned road and railway that will connect Nakhichevan
to the rest of Azerbaijan. Lavrov said the Armenian side will only simplify
border crossing procedures. Baku, Moscow and Yerevan are now finalizing a deal
on such a border control regime, he said.
The most recent meeting of the Russian-Armenian-Azerbaijani commission took
place in Saint Petersburg on June 20.
Reprinted on ANN/Armenian News with permission from RFE/RL
Copyright (c) 2022 Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty, Inc.
1201 Connecticut Ave., N.W. Washington DC 20036.
Author: Emil Lazarian
“I should like to see any power of the world destroy this race, this small tribe of unimportant people, whose wars have all been fought and lost, whose structures have crumbled, literature is unread, music is unheard, and prayers are no more answered. Go ahead, destroy Armenia . See if you can do it. Send them into the desert without bread or water. Burn their homes and churches. Then see if they will not laugh, sing and pray again. For when two of them meet anywhere in the world, see if they will not create a New Armenia.” - WS
Armenia to go cash-free
Jun 27, 2022
Most major transactions in Armenia – buying a car or even a house – typically are conducted in cash, with buyers handing over a thick stack of bills, usually dollars.
But no more: Under a new law all big purchases will have to be made electronically, either through a mobile payment app or via a wire transfer at a bank.
And for now, at least, that will come with a steep fee: Banks charge between 1.5 and 3 percent for the transactions.
The new law, passed by parliament on June 9, affects business transactions of more than 300,000 drams (about $720) and transactions between individuals of more than 500,000 drams ($1,200). That limit for individuals will be reduced to 300,000 drams in July 2023.
The law also prohibits local and central government bodies from making or taking any payments in cash. Some institutions like hospitals, universities, and notaries will go completely cashless. Pensions and salaries will have to be paid via banks – even pawnshop loans, as well. And transactions made illicitly in cash can be annulled.
“Let no one think that we want to complicate people’s lives, on the contrary, we want to simplify people’s lives,” Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan said in a June 2 cabinet meeting where the bill was discussed. “There are also fiscal and anti-corruption effects here.”
Under Pashinyan, the government began a campaign to reduce the off-the-books shadow economy starting in 2019. It now requires small businesses to issue receipts and to officially register all employees, and starting in 2024 all Armenians will have to declare their income to the government.
“The restrictions on cash transactions can help reduce the level of the shadow economy, since transfers can’t be made in foreign currencies, which is a common practice,” Vilen Khachatryan, head of the Department of Management at the Armenian Academy of Public Administration told local news website Panorama.am.
But many anticipate logistical challenges, as there are questions about whether the banking system can handle what will be a large increase in electronic transactions, whether trust can be maintained without cash, or how people will try to circumvent the rules.
One man who buys and sells used cars for a living, Tigran Hovannisyan, told RFE/RL: “We are going to have disputes with buyers. A buyer is going to say, ‘I won’t transfer the money until you register the car in my name,’ and I’m going to answer: ‘I won’t register it in your name until you transfer the money.’”
People may come up with creative ways to evade the regulation, the director of the real estate agency Kentron, Vahe Danielyan, told RFE/RL. “Buyers and sellers may formalize their deals as ‘donations’ and do them in cash to avoid taxes,” he said.
“The banking system, because of the increased number of transactions, needs to be able to provide fast service and improve in quality,” Khachatryan said.
Bank fees on these transactions currently amount to between 1.5 and 3 percent, representing a significant cost for consumers and a windfall for banks. But the Central Bank of Armenia was “negotiating” with banks to reduce the fees, Hovhannes Khachatryan, the bank’s deputy chair, told reporters on June 16.
Khachatryan also promised to make sure that businesses that don’t currently have payment terminals can get them, saying the central bank is working with private banks to ensure access.
Sports: Ball Hockey: Bermuda Defeat Armenia 6-1
Bermuda –
Bermuda claimed a resounding 6-1 victory over Armenia today [June 26] in the 2022 ISBHF International Street & Ball Hockey World Championships in Quebec.
This marks their fifth win of the tournament, as they have already defeated the Cayman Islands, Hong Kong, France and Pakistan, with their sole loss thus far a 4-3 defeat by Lebanon.
Bermuda got two goals from Jean-Michael Tremblay and Jonathan Talbot, while Jeremy Estey and Andrew Bonner both scored a goal each as the team racked up six goals while only conceding one.
This result means that Bermuda advances to the Pool B Gold Medal Game in the tournament and will be back in action tomorrow.
Moscow Stock Exchange starts trading with Armenian dram
Moscow Stock Exchange starts trading with Armenian dram
27.06.2022 14:31
YEREVAN, June 27, /ARKA/. The Moscow Stock Exchange (MOEX) started today trading with the Uzbek sum, Armenian dram and South African Rand, Russian news agency TASS reported.
MOEX expects the move to expand the opportunities for professional market participants, including foreign partners.
Spouse of ex-Ukrainian ambassador publicly insults Armenian fallen soldier’s father
Panorama
Armenia –
The spouse of former Ukrainian Ambassador to Armenia Alexander Bozhko publically insulted Armenian opposition MP Gegham Nazaryan, who lost his son Abgar in the 2020 war in Artsakh.
Raisa Karagyozyan made a rude comment on Nazaryan’s Facebook post on Sunday.
“Our country is lacking two things. There is a great lack and need for two things. By saying the country, I mean the average citizen of Armenia,” the lawmaker wrote.
In her comment on the post, the Ukrainian diplomat’s wife questioned the Armenian nationality of the deputy.
“What kind of Armenian are you? You must be of Tatar-Mongolian descent. You are Chingizids, that’s why, having become a slave of Putin the Chingizid, you support Muscovites. Like Muscovites, you are also a descendant of Genghis Khan, I can see it from the photo,” she said.
Incidentally, the profile picture of Gegham Nazaryan’s Facebook page is not of him, but of his fallen son. Karagyozyan’s comments angered many users.
Armenian exporters and farmers may go bankrupt amid Larsi road closure, economist warns
Panorama
Armenia –
Economist Suren Parsyan on Monday reacted to the closure of the Stepantsminda-Larsi highway, which connects Armenia and Russia via Georgia, due to damage caused by heavy rains.
“Various reports suggest that the road maintenance work may take 1-2 weeks,” he wrote on Facebook.
“Now is the most active period of agricultural exports, so even a few days of downtime will cause great damage to exporters and farmers.
“Amid the closure of the Upper Lars checkpoint, the devaluation of the dollar and the rise in fuel prices, exporters have already suffered great losses and will simply not sustain another blow; they will go bankrupt, also leading thousands of farms to bankruptcy,” the economist said.
He urged the Armenian government to immediately start talks with other regional countries to use an alternative temporary road.
Sports: EC: Homeros Arakelyan loses in semifinals [in Greek-Roman wrestling]
NEWS.am
Armenia –
Armenian representative Homeros Arakelyan (55 kg) lost in the semifinals of the European Youth Championship in Greek-Roman wrestling (under 20 years), which takes place in Rome, the press service of the Wrestling Federation of Armenia reported.
His opponent was Denis Florin Mihai (Romania).
On path of their ancestors…"Neo-Ottomans" pursue Armenian families
This was evident after the Turkish state occupied Syrian territory, pointing its mercenaries at the head of the local and administrative councils that controlled the necks of the components of the region, and the remaining residents of the Syrian regions.
The Armenian people, like other peoples, suffered from the Ottoman Empire since ancient times from massacres and displacement with the aim of robbing them of their land and melting them in the crucible of the Ottoman Empire, applying the Turkification, and blowing up their civilization and culture, which led to the displacement of hundreds of thousands of families to escape from this hell to neighboring lands such as Syria, Iraq and European countries Neighboring.
These families, fleeing from the furnace of the Ottoman Holocaust, merged with the peoples they had migrated to while preserving their customs and traditions, and among these areas was the province of Girê Spi and its countryside, where they had in the province an entire neighborhood called “The Armenian Quarter”, in which they found a place of stability in the framework of coexistence.
After Turkey occupied Girê Spî canton after an aggression it launched against the northern and eastern regions of Syria on October 9, 2019, it displaced more than 100,000 residents of the canton, including Armenian families.
Armenian families, like others, were not spared the looting and seizure of property, the latest of which was documented by our agency about the seizure of the land of the Armenian diaspora “Akoub”, which is estimated at 170 dunams, near the town of Al-Ali Baglia of the occupied Girê Spî district, on which a religious complex is currently being built with Kuwaiti funds under the supervision of the so-called Tel Abyad local council of the Turkish occupation.
What the co-chairman of Girê Spî canton Hamid Al-Abed commented on this violation by saying: Turkey and its mercenaries, since their occupation of Girê Spî canton, have not spared people or stone, and committed the most heinous violations against those who remain of our people in that area, including “killing, kidnapping, looting of property.”
During his speech, he condemned what the Turkish occupier and its mercenaries had committed by seizing the land of the Armenian diaspora “Akoub” to make it an endowment for building associations “of an extremist religious nature, aimed at reviving terrorism by feeding extremist ideology, and making it tools for spawning terrorist elements and threatening global peace and security.”
At the end of his speech, he called on the international community to intervene and pressure Turkey to stop its violations against the peoples of the occupied Syrian regions, including the Armenian people, who previously suffered from the persecution of their Ottoman ancestors who ruled with iron and fire.
Analyst urges Armenian authorities to invite Minsk Group co-chairs to Yerevan
Panorama
Armenia –
Political analyst Suren Sargsyan urges the Armenian authorities to invite the OSCE Minsk Group mediators to Yerevan.
“France and the U.S. on the one hand and Russia on the other hand trade blames for the “demise” of the Minsk Group. Armenia, unlike Azerbaijan, insists that the Minsk Group is needed,’ he wrote on Facebook.
“Now the question is: Why doesn’t Armenia invite the Minsk Group co-chairs to Yerevan? Incidentally, this will be the only channel of communication between the West and Russia. Let them visit the region and let Aliyev not receive them. Many things will become clear to everyone,” the analyst said.
His comments came after the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of European and Eurasian Affairs said the U.S. Minsk Group co-chair spoke with her counterparts today to discuss the future of Nagorno-Karabakh. Also, the Bureau said the Russian co-chair did not accept Washington’s invitation to joint it.
Earlier on Friday, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov claimed that the Minsk Group “has wound down its activities” on the initiative of the United States and France.
Turkey’s ban on the Armenian genocide being taught is a slap at history and truth. South Dakotans should take note.
John Tsitrian
As an Armenian on my dad’s side, I’ve listened to some of the most horrible stories you can imagine about the treatment our family and friends got at the hands of the Ottoman Turkish government a century ago. The Ottomans tried to obliterate anyone having anything to do with Christianity, and that included us Armenians.
We accepted Christianity as our national religion in 301 A.D. For centuries we lived on the Anatolian Peninsula, home of the modern Turkish state, and co-existed with our neighbors in a generally peaceful way, including during the centuries that the region came under the control of the Ottoman Empire (1453-1922), an Islamic state.
For political and economic reasons too numerous to recount here, the Ottomans started unraveling somewhere around the beginning of the 19th century, and, as a last gasp of trying to contain the many forces of its demise, they started blaming the Christians living within their territory for many of the empire’s troubles, all of it culminating in a mass slaughter that took place during the first couple of decades of the twentieth century.
It wasn’t just Armenians who took the subsequent genocidal hit, though we got the worst of it. Estimates vary, but the numbers involved were huge. In addition to the 500,000 Christian Assyrians and Greeks who were eliminated, 1.5 million Armenians were also killed. My grandfather and namesake John the Baptist was one of them.
A week ago I visited my family’s home community in Adapazari, Turkey, a tidy little town, quite pleasant, actually, but found no mention of the Armenian quarter that was once a thriving and peaceful part of the region. The picture above is of the 1908 graduating class of the town’s Armenian Girls High School, taken when my grandparents were part of the community. I might well have had a family member in the photo, which reflects a significant Armenian presence in the area.
But as far as the town is now concerned, its Armenian heritage is non-existent.
Otherwise rich in detail about its archeological remains and anthropological history, there is no mention of the Armenian community ever having even lived in Adapazari in the local museum.
This is an affront to history and intellectual honesty, and it doesn’t occur casually. I have no doubt the same scenario exists in all the towns of Turkey in which there was a significant Armenian population.
Why the absence of any history of the Armenians?
It is a result of a long-standing policy in Turkey that continues to deny the genocide and endeavors to scrub it out of official existence.
One major means of doing so is through its schools. Much has been written about how Turkey has banned teaching of its genocide, which comes as no surprise, considering that this is a country that has even banned mention of the Armenian genocide in its parliament. The government has institutionalized a whitewash of its own history.
And that gets me to South Dakota.
Native Americans in our state are understandably concerned over Gov. Kristi Noem’s executive order to ban the teaching of “critical race theory” (CRT) in South Dakota’s schools. Signed last April, Noem said “Our children will not be taught that they are racists or that they are victims, and they will not be compelled to feel responsible for the mistakes of their ancestors.” That’s a nice sentiment but ignores the reality that historical mistreatment is a fact and that current generations of students need to understand our history as they grapple with difficult relationships in our schools and communities.
Knowing what happened to my forebears at, say, Adana, Turkey, in 1909, means knowing that they lost everything, including their lives. This is something that Armenians will resent forever. Having grown up among the generation whose social and economic circumstances were affected by the genocide, I know that the hatred and bitterness can’t be mandated away by ignoring or whitewashing the events in schools.
People know their history.
This is why Noem’s edict is destined for futility. I don’t know what she means by teaching history in a way that will avoid making children feel responsible for or victimized by the ugliness that occurred during this country’s westward expansion, but she is pipe-dreaming if she thinks Native American kids won’t feel the reverberations that stemmed from incidents like Wounded Knee or the Sand Creek massacre. Those occurrences can’t be taught without exposing the fact that they were systemic applications of the hatred directed at their forebears. I’d like to see the study guide developed by Noem’s initiative that teaches those bloody incidents in a way that will keep kids from figuring out who the good guys and the bad guys were. These things need to be presented in their full awfulness, which is the only base from which reconciliation can begin. There’s a Bible verse that covers it: “The truth shall set you free.”
Noem says she doesn’t want students to feel like victims. So how will she teach history in a way that the kids studying it won’t feel victimized? Can’t be done. Why? Because the reality is that many of these children are victims of circumstances created by the history of westward expansion, whether we want to acknowledge it or not.
Take it from the son of an Armenian family that lost everything, including its patriarch, during the Turkish holocaust. The only way to settle the issue is by getting all the facts on the table, not by presenting events in a way that’s designed to avoid hard feelings.
John Tsitrian is a businessman and writer from the Black Hills. He was a weekly columnist for the Rapid City Journal for twenty years. His articles and commentary have also appeared in The Los Angeles Times, The Denver Post and The Omaha World-Herald. Tsitrian served in the Marines for three years (1966-69), including a 13-month tour of duty as a radioman in Vietnam.