Author: Jalatian Sonya

President Serzh Sargsyan is taking part at the session of the Supreme Eurasian Economic Council held in Saint Petersburg.

Among the leaders of other EAEU member states at the session, which is taking place at the B. Yeltsin Presidential Library, there are the President of the Republic of Kazakhstan Nursultan Nazarbaev, the President of the Republic Kyrgyzstan Almazbek Atambaev, and the President of the Russian Federation Vladimir Putin. Present at the session was also the Chairman of the Board of the Eurasian Economic Commission Tigran Sarkissian.

The President of the host country Vladimir Putin before taking up the agenda items welcomed the participants in the northern capital of Russia, spoke briefly about the works carried out in the framework of the Union on a number of directions, most significant decisions, as well as about the prospective programs of development. The President of the Russian Federation expressed hope that the results of today’s meeting will enhance the economic cooperation of the member states in the framework of the Eurasian Economic Union.

At the beginning of the session, the leaders of the states expressed condolences to the President of the Russian Federation on the crash of the Tu-154 aircraft, which took yesterday in Sochi, and a large number of victims.

In accordance with the Charter, the session is chaired by the leader of the country which is currently presiding at the Organization – the President of Kazakhstan Nursultan Nazarbaev. In the framework of the agenda items, the leaders of the member states will discuss the draft of the EAEU Tax Code, issues related to the main areas of integration in the framework of the EAEU, and common market of services of the Union. At the meeting, the parties will also discuss issues related to the development of cooperation in the framework of the EAEU with Iran, India, Egypt, and Singapore, as well as issues related to the international activities of the Union in 2017.

President Serzh Sargsyan made a statement at the session of the Supreme Eurasian Economic Council.

Photo: AP    

Two men have been arrested in Germany on suspicion of planning an attack on a shopping centre in Oberhausen near the Dutch border, police say, the BBC reports.

The brothers, aged 31 and 28 and born in Kosovo, were detained early on Friday in Duisburg.

Germany is on high alert after Monday’s attack in Berlin, which left 12 dead.

A Europe-wide manhunt continues for Anis Amri, the Tunisian man suspected of driving a lorry into the Breitscheidplatz Christmas market.

Police said the Oberhausen attack had been intended to target the CentrO shopping centre.

On November 16, the U.S. Embassy in Yerevan, in partnership with the Ministry of Economic Development and Investments, the Ministry of Energy and Natural Resources, and HSBC Bank, organized a one-day sustainable mining business conference.

The goal was to connect Armenian mine operators with well-known U.S. companies that offer products and services that ensure greater mine productivity, employee safety, and nature protection.  Representatives from seven leading U.S. companies and 35 Armenian mining companies attended the event.

The conference was designed to strengthen the growing commercial ties between the United States and Armenia by introducing leading American businesses to Armenian mining sector operators, and by giving the American companies the opportunity to showcase the latest technological advances in the field.

“Mining, done responsibly and transparently in line with the highest international environmental and social standards, can be a successful investment and be of benefit to the Armenian people,” said Ambassador Richard M. Mills, Jr. in his opening remarks. “Sustainable mining, using the latest technology and equipment, can be safe for mining workers and can protect Armenia’s environment.”

The day-long event helped the U.S. companies gain a greater understanding of the objectives and priorities of Armenia’s government leaders and businesses, as well as the perspectives of multilateral financing institutions and other key business actors.

“Today we’re focusing on the mining sector, because as you know, it is one of the leading sectors in the Armenian economy and a major contributor to the GDP and the country’s exports. Mining represents real opportunities for Armenia,” said Ambassador Mills. “And these opportunities are not just ideas on paper; there are successful mining enterprises that are already in operation and looking to expand. We want to see them grow, and at the same time preserve the country’s natural beauty, invest in the communities where they operate, and protect their workforce.”

Seven U.S. corporations – Modular Mining Systems, General Electric, Caterpillar/Zeppelin, IBM, Honeywell, Terra Source Global and Dow – sent representatives to Yerevan to present their products and services and to learn about business opportunities in Armenia. The one-day program also featured presentations by EBRD Armenia, HSBC Bank, Lydian International, and Armenian government officials.

President Serzh Sargsyan had a phone conversation with his Ukrainian counterpart Peter Poroshenko at the initiative of the Ukrainian side.

The Presidents referred to issue on the agenda of Armenian-Ukrainian cooperation, particularly intensification of the political dialogue, implementation of mutually beneficial projects in the economic, scientific-technical and humanitarian fields.

The parties discussed the cooperation within the framework of international organizations, and attached importance to the intensification of periodic consultations on a number of sensitive issues.

The College of Arts & Sciences of the Boston University (BU) launches new minor in Holocaust and Genocide Studies.

The faculty hopes that BU students won’t just learn history, but learn from history. Students will study how the 20th century’s most horrific state-sponsored mass murders, from the Nazi Holocaust to Pol Pot’s wholesale slaughter in Cambodia to Rwanda’s deadly rampage against its Tutsis, evolved.

As well, the new minor will offer historical context and teach humane vigilance, says Nancy Harrowitz, a CAS associate professor of Italian, who is teaching the minor’s required course, History of the Holocaust. The minor is being offered through the Elie Wiesel Center for Jewish Studies.

Through study of world genocide in the 20th and current centuries, “we are protecting memory,” says Harrowitz. “How do you sustain these memories in the face of deniers?” she asks. “My argument has been: if we are not able to prevent future genocides per se, in the long term we can begin to illuminate the emotional aspects of hate through education.”

Hate is a learned emotion, says Simon Payaslian, the Charles K. and Elizabeth M. Kenosian Professor of Armenian History and Literature. “We’re not born with it. It can be unlearned. Genocide can happen anywhere.”

Payaslian, who teaches courses in genocide prevention, notes in his course descriptions that the subject of genocide warrants rigorous study because genocidal acts and atrocities persist despite the 1948 United Nations adoption of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. The convention, criminalizing genocide in the realm of international law, was institutionalized in 1951, and yet it has failed to prevent the string of genocides that has occurred since then.

“Societies are always changing,” says Payaslian. “The question that’s absolutely essential is, what kind of leaders do you have? One of my classes covers the internment of Japanese Americans in the wake of Pearl Harbor. You can imagine how one more executive order could have put the Japanese against a wall and shot them.”

According to its description on the Elie Wiesel Center for Jewish Studies website, the minor in Holocaust and genocide studies offers students “an opportunity to acquire basic academic tools of description and analysis of the various factors that contribute to the emergence of ultranationalist regimes and their genocidal policies.” The minor is also designed to help students “develop an awareness of the value of pluralism and an acceptance of diversity, as well as to explore the dangers of remaining silent, apathetic, and indifferent to the vilification and oppression of others.”

Although genocides large and small have been perpetrated throughout human history, the courses will focus on historical events since 1900. These include the Armenian genocide of 1915, when the Turkish-led Ottoman Empire had rounded up and deported or executed 1.5 million Armenians living there, most of them Ottoman citizens, by 1922; the Nazi Holocaust, from 1933 until the Allied liberation of the death camps in 1945, which claimed the lives of six million Jews and five million Slavs, Roma, disabled people, Jehovah’s Witnesses, homosexuals, and political and religious dissidents from the European countries occupied by Germany; the Cambodian genocide, from 1975 to 1979, when the Maoist Khmer Rouge led by Pol Pot slaughtered an estimated three million; the Serbs’ “ethnic cleansing” of Bosnians in the wake of the 1992 collapse of the former Yugoslavia, killing 100,000; the 1994 Hutu-led killing rampage in Rwanda, which targeted Tutsis and moderate Hutus and slaughtered more than 800,000 over 100 days; and most recently, this century’s Sudan state-sanctioned murder of at least 300,000 Darfurian civilians in what is now South Sudan.

Suleyman Karaman has long been caretaker of an ornate Armenian Orthodox Church built more than 100 years ago in Istanbul’s Yali quarter – an area now under threat from the city’s relentless expansion.

The softly-spoken custodian, who lives with his wife in a cottage on the grounds of the Surp Tateos Partogomeos church, is among hundreds of Yali residents watching with mixed feelings as their historic district transforms before their eyes, reports.

Once home to Armenians and Greeks who bequeathed the elegant buildings, the area fell into disarray after its original inhabitants abandoned the city amid anti-minority policies.

By the time most of the Armenians had left – to be replaced by Kurds from the southeastern province of Mardin – Suleyman Karaman had also headed west from the province of Batman and become caretaker of the Surp Tateos Partogomeos church.

Apart from Karaman and his wife, today there are just 10 Armenians living in the neighborhood.

“Usually, around 10 or 15 people show up [to church], but if there are those coming from Bakırköy [a district with a large Armenian population] there are as many as 50,” Karaman said, lighting a rolled cigarette from a small tin box emblazoned with a photo of Istanbul’s iconic Galata Tower

Another local, Mehmet, 51, rents out a building he owns in Yali and lives elsewhere, but he still prefers to spend his days in the quarter where he lived for decades and where he once restored the former home of the priest at the Armenian church.

He is unhappy at what he says is the suffocation of the neighborhood by the urban projects going on around it.

“We can’t breathe,” he said. “But we’ve been here 50 years. Where else will we go?”

President Serzh Sargsyan visited the Armenian Saint Garabed Church in Maastricht is morning, where he had a short meeting with representatives of the “Ani” Armenian community.  During the meeting reference was made to the community issues, programs, opportunities of reinforcement of cooperation with the Motherland.

The “Ani” community is actively participating in Armenia-related events organized by the Dutch authorities.

According to the decision of the Catholic Church of Limburg, the Church of the Ascension of Christ was donated to the Armenian community and was anointed as Saint Garabed in 2013 in memory of the old Armenian Church of Amsterdam.

Archbishop Raphael Minassian hopes that the Papal visit to Azerbaijan and Georgia will promote peace in the region. The small Catholic community in Georgia, which Pope Francis is visiting on Friday and Saturday, is made up of Latin, Chaldean and Armenian rites.

The Armenian presence in Tbilisi and the region on the border with the republic of Armenia dates back to the 4th century. Today the community is under the care of the Ordinary for Armenians in Eastern Europe, Archbishop Raphael Minassian.

Ahead of the Pope’s trip to Georgia, the Archbishop talked to Philippa Hitchen of about the relationship of the Armenian community between Azerbaijan and Georgia.

Archbishop Raphael Minassian discusses the history of Armenians in Georgia: “The relationship with this country is very old and very constant because Tbilisi was the culture and the city of the Armenians for centuries. It is very normal to see the presence of the Armenians in this country.” He says that the presence in Georgia, “of Armenians is over 200,000 and Armenian Catholics are over 150,000.”

The Archbishop says that the Armenian community in Georgia can act as a bridge for peaceful relations. “In the relationship between the Orthodox and the Catholic Churches, the friendship remains as a base of all kinds of relations.” He also mentions that the Georgian government has been assisting the Catholic Churches, the Chaldean, Latin, and Armenian Catholics, for two years.

Although the Armenian community and the Georgian government are able to maintain a positive relationship, the Archbishop admits that they do experience problems. He says that “Both of them are working strongly for the propaganda of faith and the consolation that we have to encourage and accept it. Even if we are not working together we should work for the same case.” He also says that they are proud to be Christians in this country.

Archbishop Minassian says that Pope Francis has a hard situation on his shoulders: “He is obliged to work with a society where they preach liberty and they are in the situation of domination. They speak about rights and they are the people that strip the rights of human society and at the end if I were to say the word peace, they are the war makers. I am talking about presidents, kings, societies, governments, and all of these, the Holy Father has to pass by and say the reality, defend the rights, defend the liberty, and give peace to everybody. We lost the meaning of these three words and have to rebuild again.”

The Archbishop discusses his thoughts on the Pope’s appeal for peace between Armenia and Azerbaijan: “You know, in a way they used the religion for political issues and the possibility to have peace is very easy. The most important point is between the two nations or the two presidents who have to forget the people because they are the minority of the minorities that are leading the country. I think that if you take out all of the governments all of the people would live in peace.”

Although the governments are taking steps towards peace, the Archbishop hopes that more can be done. “There is work going on for peace, but I hope that also in the visit of his Holiness to Azerbaijan would encourage them also accept the realities because all of us in this world are passengers. No one owns anything in this Earth. So it is not useful to have these wars between people that can live peacefully and very happily.”

In a tweet to her 3,000,000+ followers, Cher (Cherilyn Sarkisian) welcomes  “The Promise” – this epic human drama, a compelling, must-see film, set against the Armenian Genocide, and starring Christian Bale and Oscar Isaac.

She graciously thanks the late/great Kirk Kerkorian for making this movie possible.

Been long time coming(Lonsman)Eric.I’m Proud, Kirk would be Proud..You will Finally Give Armenians Around The?Their Voice??

— Cher (@cher)

Photo: Mikhail Metzel/TASS

 

Uzbek President Islam Karimov has suffered brain hemorrhage and is in an intensive care in a stable condition, his daughter Lola Karimova-Tillyaeva wrote on her Instagram page on Monday, TASS reports.

“My father was hospitalised after suffering a cerebral haemorrhage on Saturday morning, and is now receiving treatment in an intensive care unit,” Karimova-Tillyaeva said. “His condition is considered stable. At the moment it is too early to make any predictions about his future health.”

“I will be very thankful to everyone who wishes to and supports my father by their prayers,” she added.

Uzbekistan’s mass media reports said earlier that Karimov, 78, had been hospitalized, giving no details about the diagnosis. Karimov has been the president of Uzbekistan since 1991.