16:34,
YEREVAN, DECEMBER 10, ARMENPRESS. Human Rights Defender of Armenia Arman Tatoyan visited the three repatriated civilians who were being held captive by the Azerbaijani military. Tatoyan’s office did not elaborate further.
On December 9, three civilian captives were returned to Armenia from Azerbaijan at the mediation of Russian peacekeepers in Nagorno Karabakh.
Editing and Translating by Stepan Kocharyan
Larisa Melkumyan used to be a music teacher in Shusha — or Shushi, as it’s known by Armenians — a mountaintop city in Nagorno-Karabakh. But as fighting broke out in the contested region this past fall, her family was forced to leave.
“We stayed in the basement for four days and then fled at night as the road was being bombed.”
Larisa Melkumyan, Armenian
“We stayed in the basement for four days and then fled at night as the road was being bombed.” Melkumyan pointed to her feet. “These are lucky shoes!”
Related: Armenians say goodbye to Kelbajar region given to Azeris
The battle for Shusha was one of the six-week war’s bloodiest — and pieces of missile and shreds of military uniform still litter the roadside by the turnoff to the city. Shusha was captured by Azerbaijan last month, and now, Melkumyan and other Armenians are unable to return to the city.
For now, Melkumyan’s family is being hosted for free in a modest wooden house outside of Yerevan, but they aren’t sure for how long the owner’s generosity can last. And after that, it’s hard to say where they might land.
Although thousands of displaced people have started returning to the contested region of Nagorno-Karabakh since an armistice was signed on Nov. 10, many are stuck where they — mostly in Yerevan and some parts of Armenia.
That’s because of the ongoing disruption to education, health care and other services in the region, according to Grigor Yeritsyan, president of the Armenian Progressive Youth, a nongovernmental organization that is helping provide food and supplies to displaced people now in the Armenian capital of Yerevan.
Related: Armenians mobilize to support troops in Karabakh war, as ceasefires fail
Although rebuilding has started here, for some, too much has been lost.
“We also had instances when kids are facing some psychological problems and also have some panic attacks related to constant fear, so I don’t think these families would think to go back in the near future because of all the trauma they have been exposed to.”
Grigor Yeritsyan, Armenian Progressive Youth
“We also had instances when kids are facing some psychological problems and also have some panic attacks related to constant fear, so I don’t think these families would think to go back in the near future because of all the trauma they have been exposed to,” Yeritsyan said.
Both Armenia and Azerbaijan lost more than 2,500 soldiers in just 44 days of fighting, the government says. Azerbaijan was the clear military winner but people living here will now have to rely on Russia to keep the peace for years to come.
According to the Russia-brokered peace agreement, Moscow will deploy its troops in Nagorno-Karabakh to prevent clashes between Armenia and Azerbaijan. Armenian troops were ordered to leave several regions surrounding Nagorno-Karabakh by the end of December.
Now, the enclave’s sole connection to Armenia is a long dusty road that weaves through mountains and plunging gorges.
Until a new one is built, Armenians and Azerbaijanis will have to share this road under the watchful eye of Russian peacekeepers who have set up numerous checkpoints here.
In Stepanakert, the de facto capital of Nagorno-Karabakh, there are already some signs of life starting to get back to normal.
Stepanakert was shelled on a daily basis throughout the war — electricity and gas supplies are still interrupted but most of the city is intact.
Related: Nagorno-Karabakh fighting rages as US hosts talks
On an early November morning in the city, chickens rattled their cages, a butcher laid out cows’ heads on a table, and crates of pomegranates, peppers and potatoes lined the street. During the war, a rocket attack destroyed a clothes stall here. It’s little more than a burned shell with shards of glass and wood and ripped fabric spilling out into the street.
Next door, Rima Arushanyan, 58, was doing a brisk trade in fresh eggs and homemade vodka. She says that several hundred people are returning to the city every day, and business is picking up.
“Thank God nobody was here at the time when the missile hit. The owner is still on the front line, and now his business is gone but at least nobody died. Everything that is destroyed can be rebuilt.”
Rima Arushanyan, market vendor, Stepanakert, Nagorno-Karabakh
“Thank God nobody was here at the time when the missile hit. The owner is still on the front line, and now his business is gone but at least nobody died,” Arushanyan explained. “Everything that is destroyed can be rebuilt.”
But in frontline towns like Martuni, it’s a different story.
Levitan Danielyan, 68, plucked some juicy persimmons from the trees in his garden and washed them under the tap. They still have a layer of dust from when a missile exploded outside the pensioner’s house — the same night the peace agreement was signed.
“They hit us with everything they had,” Danielyan said. “All night long, they shelled the whole neighborhood but thankfully everyone on this street is OK.”
It wasn’t always this way. Under the Soviet Union, Armenians and Azerbaijanis lived right alongside each other but Danielyan says it wasn’t perfect, even then.
“The Soviet government didn’t let anyone do anything nationalistic,” he said. “Thanks to that, we lived together. But not really as friends, more like dogs and cats.”
Azerbaijan shelled his house in the ’90s.
“When the war ended in 1994, I asked the Armenian government for some assistance. Years later, they finally decided to give me some building supplies and they arrived on Sept. 26, the day before the second war.”
The region has a lot of healing to do — but Melkumyan, the music teacher who fled Shusha, says she’s determined not to dwell on painful memories.
“But the past is for forgetting and we should live in the future,” she said. “We miss our Shushi, but we can’t get it back.”
Israel Urges Citizens To Avoid Georgia, Azerbaijan, Citing Iran Threat
December 03, 2020 20:41 GMT
• By RFE/RL
A memorial service for Iranian nuclear scientist, Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, who was
killed on November 27.
Israel's government is warning that Israeli targets abroad could come under
attack by Iran, citing threats issued by Tehran following the killing of a
prominent Iranian nuclear scientist last week.
"In light of threats recently coming from Iranian officials and in light of the
involvement in the past of Iranian agents in terror attacks in various
countries, there is a concern that Iran will try to act in such a way against
Israeli targets,” according to a December 3 statement issued by the prime
minister’s National Security Council.
It advised against travel to nearby countries such as Georgia, Azerbaijan,
Turkey, the United Arab Emirates (U.A.E.), and Bahrain, as well as the Kurdish
area of Iraq and Africa.
Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, who was at the heart of the country's past covert nuclear
program, was killed on the outskirts of Tehran on November 27.
No one has claimed responsibility, but Iranian officials have blamed the killing
on Israel, an exile opposition group, and Saudi Arabia.
A top adviser to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has said that Iran will
give a “calculated and decisive” response.
Israeli officials have declined to comment on the killing, while the Iranian
opposition group and Saudi Arabia have denied any involvement.
Elliott Abrams, the top U.S. envoy on Iran, said on December 3 that Iran is
unlikely to retaliate over the assassination before the inauguration of Joe
Biden as U.S. president on January 20, 2021, in case it jeopardizes any future
sanctions relief from the United States.
"If they want sanctions relief, they know that they're going to need to enter
some kind of negotiation after January 20, and it's got to be in their minds
that they don't want to...undertake any activities between now and January 20
that make sanctions relief harder to get," Abrams told Reuters.
Iran and its proxies have targeted Israeli tourists and Jewish communities in
the past.
Israel in recent months has signed U.S.-brokered agreements establishing
diplomatic relations with the U.A.E. and Bahrain.
With reporting by AP and Reuters
13:50,
YEREVAN, NOVEMBER 30, ARMENPRESS. Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan chaired a meeting of the Military Industry Committee on November 30.
“After the adoption of the Law on Military Industrial Complex in 2015, the military industry became one of the most discussed topics in our country,” Pashinyan said in opening remarks according to a news release provided by his office.
“But essentially we can note that the results which we have today aren’t satisfactory at all, because unfortunately we weren’t able to achieve the formation of the kind of systems that would allow us to say that the military-industrial complex has been accomplished in Armenia. We, also due to the new situation, should perhaps start summing up what was done in the previous period of time, the shortcomings, and understand what kind of realistic projects we can have in the military-industry sector, so that first of all that complex will be able to become the moving force of our economy and industry, and on the other hand to ensure our security demands in line with modern challenges.”
The Minister of High-Tech Industry Hakob Arshakyan then delivered a report on the military-industrial committee’s previously implemented actions and the current situation.
Then a discussion took place on the directions for developments and future actions in conditions of the realities that have formed after the war. Issues of the military-industrial complex’s technological development, supplementation with professional experts, encouragement of technological education and the creation of a functioning science-economy-military industry link were discussed.
Reforms in the education system and the work for supplementing the military-industrial complex with relevant specialists were prioritized.
The 2020-2021 list of special scientific-analytical prototype works were presented.
Editing and Translating by Stepan Kocharyan
Former U.S. President Ronald Reagan signed Executive Order 12333 on Dec. 4, 1981, for one and only one purpose: to stop the U.S.’ assassination practice of foreign individuals. Before that executive order, U.S. intelligence agencies and other federal authorities could kill foreign leaders and their family members as they deemed fit.
Moreover, as if it were an honorable thing to do, the CIA had published a report on those assassinations, and it was available online until the recent murder of the Iranian major general Qassem Soleimani on Jan. 3, 2020.
For some reason, when you click on the link to that report, the U.S. congressional website reports that “a potential security risk was detected in your submitted request. The Webmaster has been alerted.”
You cannot get the list of those foreign leaders and other operatives killed by the U.S. agencies anymore from official sources but the internet still has many sites providing the list and the methods employed in those killings.
Wikileaks had published leaked documents about those methods ranging from lacing teapots with hard-to-detect chemicals to hacking into car control systems.
But thanks to incumbent President Donald Trump’s keenness and quickness in understanding and dealing with business situations which usually lead him to a good outcome – except the last elections – the U.S. seems to have resumed the assassination practice.
This time it employs much more direct methods than those that involved teapots, poisonous material and staging car accidents.
In fact, Trump ordered the U.S. Army to send armed drones to blow up the target’s car on a highway. That was how Soleimani was killed.
Last week, Iran’s top nuclear scientist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh was killed in Tehran when gunmen ambushed his car. His car exploded and the gunmen also shot dead three of Fakhrizadeh’s bodyguards and several family members traveling with him. He was taken to a hospital where he later died. (There are unconfirmed reports that one of the attackers was killed by a bodyguard.)
Reagan had stopped a dishonorable and cowardly tradition of the U.S. security and intelligence agencies. Executive Order 12333 had made all agencies cooperate fully with the CIA so that U.S intelligence activities would be conducted with available information. The order clearly and directly prohibited U.S. agencies from sponsoring or carrying out an assassination.
“No person employed by or acting on behalf of the United States government shall engage in, or conspire to engage in, assassination,” it said.
Previously, former U.S. President Gerald Ford had banned political assassinations and another former President Jimmy Carter had further banned indirect U.S. involvement in assassinations, but events proved that the U.S. agencies would commission Latin American armies and police to do the dirty jobs. Reagan’s ban was therefore more comprehensive: not only pulling the trigger but asking others to pull it was also banned.
According to the Times of Israel, the U.S. determined in 2007 that Fakhrizadeh’s job as a university professor was a cover for his role spearheading Tehran’s nuclear weapons development.
Following the deal with the Barack Obama administration, Iranian officials had stopped their nuclear arms program. But the Israeli and U.S. officials believed Fakhrizadeh had kept the program alive.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, in a 2018 video clip, available on YouTube, argued that Fakhrizadeh was running an organization within Iran’s defense ministry known as S.P.N.D., and was working on a what he calls “Project Amad.”
The New York Times reported that not one but three other U.S. intelligence officials had said Israel was behind the attack on the scientist. Further, the newspaper claimed that the U.S. agencies may have known about the operation in advance since the two nations are “the closest of allies and have long shared intelligence regarding Iran.”
This is an age of proxies: Russian mercenaries fighting in Libya; the U.S. is using PKK terrorists to fight against Iranian proxies in Syria; France is benefiting from the services of Armenian militias in Nagorno Karabakh, and Germany is using Greek admirals on its ships to stop Turkish commercial vessels.
Under the terms of Executive Order 12333, Trump can say “I didn’t do it. Netanyahu did!” and he can get away with the murder because nobody is going to able to prove that he was “conspiring to engage in assassination.”
Central Asian Turkish republics celebrated the liberation of Azerbaijan’s Nagorno-Karabakh region after almost 30 years of Armenian occupation. As Daily Sabah reports, an Uzbek political expert, Abduvali Saybnazarov, told Anadolu Agency (AA) that Azerbaijan’s 44-day-long military operation resulted in victory and that Shusha, which he said had been the cradle of Azerbaijani civilization, was liberated. He said 1 million Azerbaijani citizens could now return to their ancestral homes from which they were displaced between 1988 and 1994.
Underlining the significance of Turkey’s support in Azerbaijan’s victory, Saybnazarov said the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) Minsk Group “only negotiated to fulfill its duties and did not fulfill the demands of Baku.”
The Minsk Group, co-chaired by France, Russia and the U.S., 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.
Saybnazarov underlined that Azerbaijan is a brotherly country to Uzbekistan and that Tashkent wanted the conflict to be resolved with respect to Baku’s territorial integrity and sovereignty since the beginning.
He also added that Turkish and Russian peacekeeping forces will serve to hinder bloodshed and provocations in the region.
Fresh clashes erupted on Sept. 27 and continued for 44 days, throughout which Baku liberated several cities and nearly 300 of its settlements and villages from the Armenian occupation.
On Nov. 10, the two countries signed a Russia-brokered deal to end fighting and work toward a comprehensive solution.
The Turkish Parliament last week approved the deployment of troops to Azerbaijan for a peacekeeping mission to monitor the cease-fire deal that aims to end the conflict.
The mandate will allow Turkish troops to be stationed at a peacekeeping center for one year as part of an accord between Ankara and Moscow to monitor the implementation of the cease-fire, which locked in territorial gains by Azerbaijan.
Kazakhstan also welcomed the liberation of the Nagorno-Karabakh region, Kazakh media representatives told AA. Serik Malayev, the chief editor of a Kazakh news website, stated that Azerbaijan’s only option for a solution was the use of military means after the failure of the Minsk Group for years.
“We must not forget that we are brothers. The people of Kazakhstan have supported Azerbaijan in its rightful case,” Malayev said.
Abai.kz news portal chief editor Nurgeldi Abdiganiuli also voiced support for the country, saying that several correspondents were sent to the region to provide better coverage of the conflict.
Saying that Nagorno-Karabakh is reflected in the names of places and historical and cultural structures, Abdiganiuli added that Azerbaijan has taken back its own lands.
Deputy Chairperson of the Free Kyrgyzstan Party Aydar Halikov also hailed Azerbaijan’s victory, saying that Bishkek enjoys brotherly relations with Baku. He added that the view of Central Asian leaders on cooperation and brotherhood between countries has changed for the better as well.
On Oct 23, 2020, the number of confirmed cases was 70 836 and the number of new daily diagnosed cases reached 2484. As a result, Armenia is now the second country in the world with the highest number of new daily diagnosed cases per person (778 cases per million per day), overtaking only the Czech Republic (1321 cases per million per day).
,
Ballistic missiles, drones, and other heavy artillery have been used, resulting in multiple civilian deaths and injuries. Hospitals, churches, kindergartens, and schools were hit during the bombardment and missile attacks, which included the use of internationally banned cluster bombs.
As a result of the intensive bombardment of Nagorno-Karabakh by the Azerbaijani armed forces, by October 8, it was reported by the Guardian that half of the entire Karabakh population, mainly women, children, and the elderly, have already been displaced to Armenia, further exacerbating the humanitarian catastrophe in this region.
Several coauthors and signatories of this Comment have witnessed the bombardment of the capital, Stepanakert, when delivering medical care for those in need. Several of our colleagues were killed during this commitment.
Nagorno-Karabakh, with a population of 150 000, had been able to control the pandemic situation before the war with a total number of 300 cases; however, at present, because of widespread destruction and displacement of people, it is virtually impossible to track the COVID-19 situation on the ground. Furthermore, regular bombardments forced residents in the major cities within Karabakh to seek refuge in large groups in basements and bunkers within confined spaces, thus increasing the chance of further spread of the virus.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/S2214-109X(20)30510-6
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Armenia’s Human Rights Defender Arman Tatoyan has called upon the international community, and in particular the international organizations on human rights to focus on the issue of Azerbaijani authorities artificially protracting the process of exchange of bodies and captives, which has been the case during the military activities, and continues now after the completion of military actions.
“With the objective of delaying the aforementioned process, the Azerbaijani authorities state that the exchange of the captives will take place after completing the process of bodies’ exchange, at the same time unreasonably protracting the process of exchange of bodies. By all these delays Azerbaijan grossly violates the fundamental requirements guaranteed by the Geneva Conventions,” the Ombudsman said.
It is obvious, he said, that Azerbaijan aims at creating an atmosphere of uncertainty and tension in the Armenian society, disrupt the mental immunity, cause psychological/mental suffering to the family members of the deceased soldiers and prisoners of war.
Studies of the Human Rights Defender of Armenia prove that such treatment is a result of the organized and disseminated hatred, as an inseparable systematically applied policy of torture and inhuman treatment.
In particular, the Human Rights Defender has repeatedly stated that starting from September 27, 2020, the military attacks by the Azerbaijani military forces against Armenia and Artsakh have been accompanied by torture and inhuman treatment, massive destruction of the civilian settlements, and other gross violations of human rights, which took place also with the help of the jihadist mercenaries and terrorists along with the dissemination of hatred.
“Throughout the military actions, as well as after the cessation of hostilities, the mass media, particularly the Azerbaijani social media sources ceaselessly publish videos and phots, which depict the degrading treatment by Azeri military forces of the Armenian soldiers’ bodies, torture and degrading treatment of the captives, both civilians and military,” Arman Tatoyan said.
The aforementioned is being accompanied by delightful comments and glorification from Azeris (the evidence to this is recorded). This has been an inseparable part of the methods applied by Azerbaijan during September-November 2020 war.
According to the Human Rights Defender, throughout the war activities it has been obvious that the Azerbaijani authorities endorse/promote these cruelties and degrading treatment, having an objective of instigating hatred and hostility in Azerbaijan against ethnic Armenians, glorifying those who commit these atrocities.
The results of the investigations of the Human Rights Defender affirm that these vicious events, which are beyond any human imagination and against all international requirements, have systematic and well-spread nature, starting from Azerbaijani political authorities and ending with cultural and sport figures. The Human Rights Defender possesses all necessary evidence, which attest to these facts.
After completion of the military activities the torture and inhuman treatment of the Armenian prisoners of war/captives by Azeri military forces have taken a new spin: the number and volume, as well as the level of cruelty have significantly increased. It is obvious that those who commit the torture and cruelties, as well as those who take videos are the representatives of the Azerbaijani military forces, whose activities are endorsed by their leadership.
The Ombudsman stressed that In current circumstances the liberation/release of the captives, their safe return, the exchange of bodies have become an urgent matter, requiring immediate resolution.
“Therefore, I call upon the international community, in particular the organizations, which have a mandate to protect human rights: It is an urgent necessity to resolve this issue with all the means possible and by real actions to release the people from the most atrocious war crimes and cruel captivity,” Tatoyan said.