Author: Kajoyan Gevork

YEREVAN TO HOST MOSCOW CULTURE DAYS APRIL 5-7
Sona Hakobyan

“Radiolur”
04.04.2012 17:03

Yerevan will host Moscow Culture Days April 5-7. The main event will
take place at the National Opera and Ballet Theatre after Alexander
Spendiaryan on April 5. The concert will bring together representatives
of Moscow’s Bolshoi Theatre, the Turetsky Choir and famous Armenian
performers, Adviser to eth Mayor of Yerevan on Issues of Culture Aram
Sukiasyan told a press conference today.

A joint concert of Armenian and Russian jazzmen will take place at
“Mezzo” club on April 6. Roundtable discussions will be organized on
April 7, he said.

Saint Petersburg Culture Days will be held in Yerevan April 25-27. In
turn, Moscow and Saint Petersburg will hold Yerevan Culture Days in
the fall.

PASSPORTS COLLECTED AND PAWNED AT PETROL STATIONS

Panorama.am
04/04/2012

In the Armenian regions, people are forced to give their passports
allegedly for election bribes, Hraparak reports.

“Some give their passports, hoping to receive AMD 15000-20000, but
later they learn that their passports were used for buying a TV or
a fridge on an instalment plan or were pawned at petrol stations
for getting 20 litres of petrol. People want to earn some money but
they find themselves in unpleasant situations. Therefore you should
not give your passport to anyone and then think how to liquidate the
consequences,” says the newspaper.

AZERBAIJAN’S ALIYEV CALLS ARMENIANS FASCISTS AT EURONEST MEETING

News | 04.04.12 | 11:37

Azerbaijan’s President Ilham Aliyev on Wednesday called Armenians
“occupiers” and “fascists” during a speech at the Euronest Plenary
Session, angering the Armenian parliamentary delegation and shocking
European officials gathered at the meeting.

Head of the Armenian delegation and chairman of the Armenian
Revolutionary Federation parliamentary faction Vahan Hovhannisyan
told Yerkir Media that during a meeting with Aliyev Tuesday the
president of Azerbaijan was very welcoming and did not even mention
the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict.

But, in what amounted to an attack on a visiting delegation, on
Wednesday Aliyev asserted that Armenia is occupying its territory
and called the policies of its neighbor fascist.

“During the plenary session, Aliyev made shocking aggressive statements
calling us fascists, occupiers who have desecrated their graves. In
short, it was quite an awful speech,” said Hovhannisyan, as quoted by
the paper. “We are preparing documents now and we’ll distribute them
here. We are also going to address the issue in our presentations.”

“Even our European colleagues were shocked. Everyone expected that
at least the Armenian delegation would be thanked for participation,”
added Hovhannisyan.

Hovhannisyan explained that Armenia’s participation in the second
assembly of Euronest, the body responsible for implementing the
European Union’s Eastern Partnership program (Eop), was welcomed by
a cross section of representatives at the conference in Baku.

However, Wednesday’s speech by Aliyev saw many surprised and scrambling
for words. Hovhannisyan said that the European Union’s Enlargement
Commissioner Stefan Fule attempted to alleviate Aliyev’s attempt
to blame the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict on Armenia through, what has
become common Azeri anti-Armenian rhetoric and propaganda.

Hovhannisyan explained that the Armenian delegation would provide
a rapid response to this overt gesture of discrimination by the
president of Azerbaijan.

During the session of Euronest’s Political Affairs Committee on Tuesday
a heated discussion took place between Azeri Foreign Minister Elmar
Mammadyarov and Prosperous Party of Armenian parliament member Naira
Zohrabyan who corrected the Azeri minister when he spoke of so-called
“occupied territories” of Azerbaijan by Armenia.

In her remarks, Zohrabyan accused Mammadyarov of intentionally
falsifying historical events and distorting the facts.

The Euronest Parliamentary Assembly Baku is attended by a 60-member
EU delegation, and the delegations of Ukraine, Georgia, Moldova and
Armenia, consisting of ten people each.

“I CANNOT ACCEPT BEING TREATED AS FASCIST BY ANYBODY WHATEVER HIS RANK IS IN HIS COUNTRY”

hetq
13:04, April 4, 2012

Dear Colleagues,

We are going to adopt a report, which emphasizes the importance of
democratic values and democratic systems.

Armenia joint Euronest family with the confidence that Eastern
Partnership is a community where all members share equal
responsibilities, principles, values, and which is most important
respect fundamental principles of international law and fundamental
freedoms.

We entered the Euronest family with the hope that jointly we can
create a political climate where fruitful and constructive dialogue
would be held based on understanding and respect.

Unfortunately, the morning session started with statements that not
only didn´t provide the objective evaluation of the situation, but
damages the negotiation process on Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, as well
as the efforts of Euronest Parliamentary Assembly to create a political
framework for cooperation and democratization of member countries.

As a member of Dashnak party, founding member of Socialist, I cannot
accept being treated as fascist by anybody whatever his rank is in
his country, especially in a country where our socialist friends are
arrested for their political views.

However, I hope that the report prepared by the co-rapporteurs will
enhance the future democratization of the partner countries and bring
all partners to the new stage of cooperation.

Lilit Galstyan, Euronest Parliamentary Assembly Session, Baku

ARMENIA TO BRING ALIYEV’S STATEMENT TO EURONEST LEADERSHIP ATTENTION

PanARMENIAN.Net
April 5, 2012 – 15:03 AMT

PanARMENIAN.Net – Vahan Hovhannisyan, head of the Armenian delegation
to Euronest Parliamentary Assembly said that Armenia is going to
raise the issue of Azerbaijani president Ilham Aliyev’s notorious
statement at the Assembly’s plenary session.

“We will address a letter [to Euronest management] comprising a general
estimate of the incident, as well as our speech at the session,”
he told a PanARMENIAN.Net reporter.

According to the Armenian delegation head, in particular, they will
propose not organize such events in Azerbaijan in order to prevent
similar incidents in future.

Armenian delegate Naira Zohrabyan told journalists that neither
a Euronest leader nor a member of a European delegation openly
criticized Aliyev.

However, many PA representatives and even Azerbaijani MPs, unnamed for
known reasons, approached the Armenian delegation after Azerbaijani
president’s statement to voice their disagreement with Aliyev’s words
and support the Armenians, Armenian representatives said.

On April 3, President of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev called Armenians
“fascists” during a plenary sitting of Euronest Parliamentary Assembly
in Baku. The statement sparked resentment of the Armenian delegation
which dubbed it improper and beyond diplomatic norms. Representative
of Euronest delegation and other countries also expressed discontent
with Aliyev’s conduct.

Euronest inter-parliamentary union includes Armenia, Azerbaijan,
Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine.

CHURCH IN KAJARAN VILLAGE BEING RESTORED

ARMENPRESS
APRIL 5, 2012
Kapan

KAPAN, APRIL 5, ARMENPRESS. Kajaran village church St. Hakob dated
back to 12th century is being restored. For this purpose the villagers
have initiated fundraising since 2009; philanthropists, businessmen
assist the project. The single church of the village is being restored
by the project approved by Ministry of Culture.

Church designing work value is calculated for 37 million AMD, 20
million of which was provided by “Zangezour Copper and Molybdenum
Plant” LTD. Already 12 million AMD work has been conducted.

“The restoration of the church was initiated by villagers. The
fundraising started long before the construction. The construction
procedure is currently in process, and we hope that the church
inauguration will be comme il faut scheduled by the end of the year”
Village head Rafik Atayan told Armenpress reporter.

YEREVAN RESIDENTS LEFT WITHOUT A HOME FOR 4 YEARS TO RALLY ON ELECTION DAY (VIDEO)

04.05.2012 14:46 epress.am

Residents of the Yerevan neighborhood of Kond protesting outside the
Armenian government building today told reporters that they have hope
their problems will be solved. In Dec. 2007, the protesting residents
say, 215 families signed a contract with the municipality and a
Lebanese businessman that stipulated they would receive apartments
in the new building constructed in place of their demolished homes.

According to the plan, the buildings were to be ready 30 months
after they signed the contract, but 4 years have passed and only
the first floor of the building has been constructed and abandoned,
since the Lebanese businessman, whose name the residents don’t know,
has authorized a company called Downtown for land development; however,
the company has since dissolved.

The protesting Kond residents say they are preparing to boycott the
May 6 parliamentary election and next year’s presidential election.

“We’ll have a rally on Election Day. We won’t let them enter our
school and hold elections. Everyone is deceiving us! For four years,
220 families, nearly 1,000 people, have been homeless,” one of the
residents informed Epress.am.

Recall, at the residents’ last rally, RA Human Rights Defender
Karen Andreasyan listened to protestors, but said the issue is very
complicated and the residents should take the matter to court.

“The state stepped in as the third party, and we, believing it,
signed a contract with the company. Let the state take Downtown to
court. Why isn’t it? It hides behind the skirt of the people and says
you go and take [the company] to court because I [i.e. the state]
don’t want to be a bad guy, I got just as much out of it as him
[i.e. the company],” said one middle-aged female Kond resident.

ALMA TO HOST BOOK EVENT BY AKCAM

Armenian Weekly
April 3, 2012

WATERTOWN, Mass.-On Sun., April 15, Taner Akcam , the Kaloosdian and
Mugar Professor of Armenian Genocide Studies at Clark University, will
discuss new perspectives on the Armenian Genocide based on his latest
book at a program at the Armenian Library and Museum of America (ALMA).

The cover of Taner Akcam’s new book The book, The Young Turks’
Crime Against Humanity: the Armenian Genocide and Ethnic Cleansing
in the Ottoman Empire, has just been released by Princeton University
Press. In it, Akcam introduces new evidence from more than 600 secret
Ottoman documents that demonstrate in unprecedented detail that
the Armenian Genocide resulted from an official effort to engage in
demographic engineering and assimilation in order to rid the Ottoman
Empire of its Christian subjects.

These previously inaccessible documents, from deep inside the
bureaucratic machinery of Ottoman Turkey, along with the author’s
expert context and analysis, show how a dying empire embraced genocide
and ethnic cleansing.

The book follows another major study by Akcam released last fall,
Judgment at Istanbul, co-authored with genocide scholar Vahakn
Dadrian, in which the indictments and verdicts of the Turkish Military
Tribunals held at the end of World War I were published in English
for the first time. These tribunals court-marshaled wartime cabinet
ministers, Young Turk Party leaders, and a number of others for crimes
committed against the Armenians.

One of the first scholars of Turkish origin to publicly acknowledge
the Armenian Genocide, Akcam has published a serious of groundbreaking
books and articles on the subject, including A Shameful Act: The
Armenian Genocide and the Question of Turkish Responsibility. He also
lectures and participates in conferences throughout the United States
and abroad.

Born in of a small town in northeastern Turkey, Akcam graduated from
the Middle East Technical University in Ankara. Active in the Turkish
student democracy movement, he was arrested and sentenced to 10 years
of imprisonment. After one year he managed to escape to Germany, where
he earned his doctorate from Hanover University, writing a thesis
on Turkish nationalism and the Armenian Genocide. He was associate
professor of history at the University of Minnesota before joining
the faculty at Clark in 2008.

The ALMA program will begin at 2 p.m. on the third floor gallery,
65 Main St., in Watertown, and is free and open to the public. A
reception and book-signing will follow the program.

For more information, contact ALMA by calling (617) 926-0171 or
e-mailing [email protected].

REGIONAL COUNTRIES ANTI-SYRIA POLICIES TO ISRAEL BENEFIT: VAHIDI

press tv
Tue Apr 3, 2012 12:25PM GMT

Iran’s Defense Minister Brigadier General Ahmad Vahidi

Supporting reforms that the Syrian government has begun is the best
way to help Syria’s people.”

Iran’s Defense Minister Brigadier General Ahmad Vahidi Iran’s Defense
Minister Brigadier General Ahmad Vahidi has warned regional countries
over their policies against Syria which serve Israel’s interests.

Speaking at the first international demining conference in Tehran
on Tuesday, Vahidi said some of the regional nations’ policies are
to the detriment of Syria and benefit of Israel, “Therefore these
countries must pay more attention to the sensitivity of the region
and the adverse effects of such decisions.”

“Why do some countries promote civil war in Syria and support terrorist
groups? If they want to help Syria why do not they support the trend
of reforms and referendum which has begun in the country?”

Vahidi said adding, “Supporting reforms that the Syrian government
has begun is the best way to help the Syrian people.”

The Iranian defense minister said the Western countries want the region
to be in a crisis every day, cautioning the regional countries not
to fall in the trap of the West’s policies to avert a disaster from
happening in the Middle East.

Syria has been the scene of unrest since mid-March 2011, with
demonstrations being held both against and in support of President
Bashar Assad’s government.

The West and the Syrian opposition blame Damascus for the year-long
turmoil, but the government says the “terrorists” are responsible
for the unrest, which it says is being orchestrated from abroad.

On February 20, the Syrian President revealed that “some foreign
countries” are fueling the turmoil in Syria by supporting and funding
“armed terrorist groups fighting against the government.”

FORCIBLE EVICTION IN DOWNTOWN BAKU DESPITE THE COURT INJUNCTION

TURAN
April 2, 2012
BAKU

BAKU. April 2, 2012: Today the local authorities in Baku completed
the forcible eviction of the inhabitants of the residential house in
20 Shamsi Badalbeyli street. Two elderly women, Nushaba Fatullayeva
and Afaq Ismailova, were still living there. They refused to move,
because they did not agree with the proposed compensation amounts. In
addition, on the face of the existing law, the authorities did not have
the right to carry out the forcible eviction since Nushaba Fatullayeva
and Afaq Ismailova had a pending trial case on their residence at 20
Shamsi Badalbayli and the court had ordered a preliminary injunction
to stay all the forcible eviction measures until the resolution of
the legal dispute. However, as it usually happens, the employees and
the Mayor of Baku and Nasimi executive power and a group of young
men with unknown status, threw out the two women, then the excavator
began to destroy their home.

Both women were hospitalized due to physical injuries and nervous
breakdown. One woman’s leg was broken, and other woman’s head of
injured. The journalists and some activist of the opposition political
parties tried to prevent the illegal actions of the authorities.

However, they could not prevent demolishing of the house, and could
only record the forcible eviction with their cameras.

Commenting on the incident, a lawyer Fuad Agayev, said Turan, that
the authorities deliberately violate laws, wishing to demonstrate
that they will ignore legal rights and needs of the local residents.

During the morning hours two journalists who were filming the actions
of the local authorites were attacked by the representatives of the
executive power.

Demolition of houses in this street, and in the nearby Fizuli and
Mirza Aga Aliyev streets has been ongoing for about two years.

Ownership rights of thousands of families have been violated in the
process. About 300 people have filed claims to the European Court of
Human Rights in Strasbourg (Turan).