Author: Kajoyan Gevork

AI REPORT

A1+
[08:30 pm] 23 May, 2007

Conscientious objectors continued to be imprisoned.

There were reports of intimidation of independent journalists. The
Ombudsperson was removed from her post in January by a presidential
decree that she alleged was unconstitutional.

Conscientious objectors Armenia did not release conscientious
objectors to military service, in defiance of its obligations and
commitments undertaken when acceding to the Council of Europe to
respect the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion,
and despite the introduction of an alternative civilian service to
military service in national legislation in July 2004.

Conscientious objectors continued to complain that in both its
legislative framework and implementation, Armenia’s alternative service
was under the supervision and control of the military and so did not
constitute a real civilian alternative to military service.

As of November there were reportedly 48 Jehovah’s Witnesses and one
Molokan (a member of a Russian religious minority) in detention for
draft evasion.

Forty-four of the Jehovahs Witnesses had been tried and sentenced to
terms ranging from 18 to 48 months’ imprisonment. The remaining four
were charged and awaiting trial.

In January an amendment to the criminal code was adopted making
conscripts who refuse to perform alternative service liable to
imprisonment. In May, 19 men, all Jehovah’s Witnesses, filed an appeal
with the European Court of Human Rights to prevent retrospective
prosecution for their abandonment of the alternative service in 2004.

Fifteen of the 19 applicants had been arrested in August 2005 and
sentenced to between two and three and a half years’ imprisonment
under existing articles of the criminal code dealing with desertion
from military service rather than refusal to perform alternative
service. Although their convictions were later overturned and all
were subsequently released, the courts refused to formally acquit the
men. The case was dropped in November when all 19 were acquitted and
all charges against them dropped.

In October a decision of the Court of Appeal granted a prosecutor’s
request for a stricter sentence to be handed down to Jehovah’s
Witness Hayk Avetisian. His sentence was increased from 24 to
30 months. Freedom of expression Human rights activists and the
Ombudsperson’s Office expressed concern over incidents of intimidation
and harassment against independent journalists, including two assaults,
death threats and the stoning of personal property.

On 6 September, Hovannes Galajian of the Iravunk newspaper was beaten
by two unidentified men outside his home. The attack followed the
publication of a number of articles criticizing prominent officials. b
In July the network of independent journalists Hetq Onlinereceived
threats of reprisals, including death threats, if its journalists
continued to publish articles concerning the illegal acquisition of
land for redevelopment.

Ombudsperson Larisa Alaverdian was removed from her post in January by
presidential decree and her duties entrusted to an interim three-member
commission.

She alleged that her removal and replacement were unconstitutional
because a presidential prerogative either to dismiss the Ombudsperson
or to replace that post by another body was not provided for in
Armenian law. She and other human rights activists alleged that her
removal had been prompted by her criticism of government policies and
practices. A new Ombudsperson was elected by the National Assembly
in February.

Human rights lawyer released on bail Lawyer Vahe Grigorian, known
for his advocacy work for families resisting forced eviction for
governmentled redevelopment programmes in central Yerevan, was released
on bail in February.

He had been held since October 2005 on charges of fraud which he
alleged were unfounded and politically motivated. The charges against
him were not dropped and the case was still pending at the end of
the year.

TRANSFER OF THE ARMENIA SCHOOL CONNECTIVITY PROGRAM FROM U.S. GOVERNMENT TO ROA GOVERNMENT

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[06:34 pm] 23 May, 2007

Yerevan – May 23, 2007 – Within the framework of the Armenia School
Connectivity Program, Project Harmony is pleased to announce the
final event devoted to an official transfer of the Armenia School
Connectivity Program from the U.S. Government to the Republic of
Armenia Government.

Over the past two years, Project Harmony has worked closely with the
Government of Armenia to facilitate the transfer of the Armenia School
Connectivity Program (ASCP) from Project Harmony to the Ministry
of Education and Science. As a result of the transfer process,
the Ministry of Education and Science, which for the past two years
has acted as a financial co-sponsor of the ASCP, will adopt the ASCP
infrastructure, systems and strategies employed to deliver ICT-enhanced
educational activities. The Ministry has identified the National Center
for Educational Technologies (NCET) as its authorized representative to
assume the role of the main implementing agency after the completion
of the transfer on July 1, 2007. For more information about NCET,
please visit

Project Harmony will continue to manage and implement the ASCP until
the completion of the transfer on June 30, 2007. In this capacity,
Project Harmony will continue cooperation with ASCP partner schools,
promote the use of ICT in educational processes, support partnerships
between U.S. and Armenian schools and communities, and strengthen
schools’ capacity to maintain the resources and operations of their
Internet Computer Centers.

The above mentioned event took place on May 23, 2007, at the Yerevan
Armenia Marriott Hotel, during which the winners of the Online
Scrapbook project were announced and fifteen teachers involved in
partnership projects with schools in the U.S. were recognized for
their distinguished work.

The Online Scrapbook is a competition outlining the efficiency,
impact and successes of the Armenia School Connectivity Program
during its six years. The project aims to collect the best works
of all 330 schools of the ASCP network in the field of information,
communication, religion, culture, education and civics. The materials
reflect the role and meaning of ASCP in the lives of schools, teachers,
students, and communities.

NO PROFIT FROM GENOCIDE
By Beth Tellman

The Santa Clara, CA
May 24 2007

Genocide. Genocide. This word should shock us all, the way it seems
to shock a portion of humanity every time it occurs: the Holocaust,
Armenia, Rwanda, Cambodia. Never again, never again, never again.

The long record of genocide is one of overwhelming acquiescence, but
this time, ordinary citizens are trying to write a different ending.

By now, it is my hope and reasonable expectation that every student
at this school has heard of the genocide in Darfur.

Though a genocide of 500,000 people and displacement of over 2 million
more can seem overwhelming, Santa Clara students decided to make
a difference.

For one week in October, students slept in a refugee tent in front of
Benson, wrote letters to government officials and raised thousands
for humanitarian aid groups in Darfur. Not only were our efforts
recognized by nearly every local news media outlet, but by national
newspapers as well. The New York Times mentioned us on Jan. 16,
in Nicholas Kristoff’s article, "Car Washes and Genocide."

Other students at Santa Clara replicated a mini refugee-camp and
slept in it. They limited themselves to 1,000 calories a day because
that’s what Darfuris are limited to. Afterward, the students donated
the savings to aid groups.

Then we took it a step further. We decided to explore divestment
movement.

The divestment movement literally entails selling stocks and
investments in companies that abet genocide in Darfur. The movement
attempts to mold both company and country behavior. When companies
lose investments, they are forced to change their unethical ways in
order to continuing making economic profit. Otherwise, divestment
will run them into the ground.

Twelve states, including California, have sold all stocks in companies
such as PetroChina, Rolls Royce and Sudatel, all of which promote
and perpetuate the genocide in Darfur.

Sudatel, for example, is a company that controls cell phone service
in Darfur. Before militia attack a particular village, they notify
Sudatel which village they plan to bomb. Sudatel then shuts off phone
service so families and neighbors cannot communicate with each other.

As the militia goes from house to house, one family cannot notify
the next of the coming onslaught.

Harvard, Yale, Stanford, the entire UC system and a slew of other
universities active in stopping genocide in Darfur have already
divested.

Santa Clarans for Social Justice followed a targeted divestment model
when seeking to remove all Santa Clara-owned stocks and investments
in companies promoting the genocide in Darfur. SC4SJ focused on the
24 worst companies in their investigation. The list of offenders
included those who were resistant to change via shareholder activism,
as well as companies which did not benefit the majority of the Darfuri
population. The last thing we wanted to do was cripple the Sudanese
economy and cause massive layoffs of Darfuris.

These divested states and schools make headlines in American newspapers
analyzed by Sudanese politicians.

Additionally, divestment creates a modeling effect as university
and socially responsible mutual funds compete to stay ahead of the
ethical curve.

My fellow Broncos, I am happy to announce that Santa Clara is far ahead
of the ethical curve. We are not invested in Darfur, and we never were.

After a three-month-long process of obtaining company information
from the Sudan Divestment Task Force and a series of e-mails and
meetings with the university’s Chief Financial Officer John Kerrigan,
SC4SJ recently received the news that Santa Clara’s investing policy
is socially responsible and in no way abets genocide in Darfur.

Though we did not have to run a formal divestment-campaign, the
inquiry process forced our group to educate ourselves on the issue
and find a place where business meets social justice face to face.

I am blessed to attend a small university where CFOs meet with students
challenging and questioning investment policies. I am honored to work
with intelligent, passionate students who choose to spend their free
time putting an end to genocide.

However, the fight is far from over. Genocide is still happening. The
international community has allowed this genocide to continue for
four years; you are a member of this international community. What
have you done to stop genocide today? How will you make sure that
"Never again" is not another shallow cry?

Beth Tellman is an individual studies major with an emphasis in
sustainable globalization.

PRESS RELEASE
Catholicosate of Cilicia
Communication and Information Department
Contact: V.Rev.Fr.Krikor Chiftjian, Communications Officer
Tel: (04) 410001, 410003
Fax: (04) 419724
E- mail: [email protected]
Web:

PO Box 70 317
Antelias-Lebanon

Armenian version:

HIS HOLINESS CONSIDERED COLLECTIVE, ORGANISED AND
HARMONIOUS LIFE TO BE THE BASIS OF ARMENIAN COMMUNITIES

"The Armenian nation is a collective, not a group of individuals. A
collective life means organized life. Organised life assumes harmonious life
and cooperation. It is with this understanding that our communities should
operate. Huge efforts were exerted to organize the Armenian communities
after the Armenian Genocide. If today we have an organized Diaspora with a
well-spread communal life and work, we should acknowledge that organizing it
was not easy. Our church and political organizations played an important
role in this task. Circumstances have now changed. Globalization has brought
down all the walls and subjected national identities to danger. We feel its
consequences and the resulting challenges every day," said His Holiness Aram
I speaking during a luncheon in his honor on May 20 in Aleppo.

Based on this new reality, the Pontiff stressed the importance of
collective, organized and harmonious life in the communities, talking in
detail about each.

The Catholicos also expressed his satisfaction at the level of
organization of the Syrian Armenian community. "Every time I visit here, I
see the community has taken a step forward. During this visit there was an
inauguration of a new school and a new church. In another area, the
establishment of new sections in schools, the inauguration of new libraries.
Our national life with all its fields is active," he said.

His Holiness also greeted the very warm welcome he has received embodied
in the large crowd of believers involved in all his visits and praised the
Primate of the Diocese and community leaders. He also commended the spirit
of unity, expressed once again during his visit, when all the organizations
and unions of the Syrian Armenian community and their members attended the
events organized during his visit, testifying to the wholeness of the
Armenian nation and its goals; a phenomenon that finds its expression in the
Dioceses of the Catholicosate of Cilicia.

Primate Bishop Shahan Sarkissian highlighted the historical importance of
the Pontiff’s visit. He also emphasized His Holiness’ international links
and reputation, which he puts in the service of the Armenian Church, nation,
fatherland, the Armenian struggle and the just resolution of the Nagorno
Karabagh conflict.

About 300 guests from the community’s various organizations and unions
attended the luncheon, providing another proof of the Armenian nation’s
unity.

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View the photo here: m

TEAM FORMED BY RESULTS OF MANY-DAY HIGHWAY CYCLE RACE TOURNAMENT OF ARMENIA TO LEAVE FOR MOLDOVA IN JUNE

Noyan Tapan
May 21 2007

YEREVAN, MAY 21, NOYAN TAPAN. The many-day highway cycle race
tournament of Armenia finished on May 20. 38 cyclists from Yerevan,
Armavir, Vanadzor, Abovian and Masis overcame at 5 stages 400 km
distance. Artur Grigorian, Davit Mkrtchian (both from Yerevan) and
Edgar Gevorgian (Abovian) successively won the places in the first
three. In the struggle of experienced ones 16-year old Suren Petrosian
(Yerevan) took the honorary 4th place.

The team was formed with the results of the championship which will
participate in the tournament of the Moldova President’s prizes to
start in Kishinev on June 16.

PUTIN’S REUNITED RUSSIAN CHURCH
By Yuri Zarakhovich/Moscow Article

TIME
May 18 2007

The Russian Orthodox Church was torn in two by revolution and regicide,
by the enmity between communism and capitalism, nearly a century
of fulmination and hatred. That all formally ended on Thursday in
Moscow. Thousands of the Russian Orthodox faithful – including several
hundred who flew in from New York – lined up under heavy rain to get
into the Moscow’s Cathedral of Christ the Savior.

There, they witnessed the restoration of the "Canonical Communion
and Reunification" of the Moscow-based Russian Orthodox Church (ROC),
which claims more than 70 million adherents, and the U.S.-based Russian
Orthodox Church Abroad (ROCOR), which is believed to be 1.5 million
strong. Many among the clergy and laity wept at the end of the 86
year-old schism brought about by the 1917 Bolshevik revolution, and
the ensuing murder of the dethroned Tsar and the forced emigration of
hundred thousands Russians defeated in Civil war. While the sumptuous
ritual was clearly an emotional and pious event, the reunification
has political resonance as well because the Russian Orthodox Church
is increasingly a symbol and projection of Russian nationalism.

Indeed, rather than first give thanks to God in his speech, the head
of the ROC, Patriarch Alexy, paid homage to Russian President Vladimir
Putin. The Patriarch emphasized that the reunification could happen
only because the ROCOR saw in Putin "a genuine Russian Orthodox human
being." Putin responded in his speech that the reunification was a
major event for the entire nation.

Nationalism, based on the Orthodox faith, has been emerging as the
Putin regime’s major ideological resource. Thursday’s rite sealed the
four-year long effort by Putin, beginning in September 2003, to have
the Moscow Patriarchate take over its rival American-based cousin and
launch a new globalized Church as his state’s main ideological arm
and a vital foreign policy instrument. In February press conference,
Putin equated Russia’s "traditional confessions" to its nuclear shield,
both, he said, being "components that strengthen Russian statehood
and create necessary preconditions for internal and external security
of the country." Professor Sergei Filatov, a top authority on Russian
religious affairs notes that "traditional confessions" is the state’s
shorthand for the Russian Orthodox Church.

The Church’s assertiveness and presence is growing – with little
separation from the State. The Moscow City Court and the Prosecutor
General’s Office maintain Orthodox chapels on their premises. Only
the Orthodox clergy are entitled to give ecclesiastic guidance to the
military. Some provinces have included Russian Orthodox Culture classes
in school curricula with students doing church chores. When Orthodox
fundamentalists vandalized an art exhibition at the Moscow Andrei
Sakharov Center as "an insult to the main religion of our country,"
the Moscow Court found the Center managers guilty of insulting the
faith, and fined them $3,500 each. The ROC had an opera, based on a
famous fairy tale by the poet Alexander Pushkin, censored to the point
of cutting out the priest, who is the tale’s main protagonist. "Of
course, we have a separation of State and Church," Putin said during
a visit to a Russian Orthodox monastery in January 2004. "But in the
people’s soul they’re together." The resurgence of a Church in open
disdain of the secular Constitution is only likely to exacerbate
divisions in a multi-ethnic and multi-religious Russia.

The ROCOR’s American clergy insist that they retain administrative
independence over their churches even as they recognize the Moscow
Patriarch as their Head. Filatov says that the ROCOR has "about as
much [independence] as Eastern Europe’s ‘people’s democracies’ had
in the Soviet bloc." One of the first tests of the new union will be
in the Holy Land, where the ROCOR maintains religious properties –
and has had run-ins with representatives of the Moscow patriarchate
in the past. In 1997, for example, Yasser Arafat forcibly turned over
the only Christian church in Hebron, run by the ROCOR, to the ROC.

(That church includes the site where the Bible says Abraham met three
angels.) The American-based Church still controls St. Mary Magdalene,
with its seven gilded onion domes and Muscovite facade, one of the
most prominent churches in Jerusalem because of its commanding spot
on the slopes of the Mount of Olives above the garden of Gethsemane.

The ROCOR also has a convent on the summit of the Mount of Olives,
a monastery in the Judaean desert founded by a hermit in the third
century, and one chapel in Jericho and another on the Jordan river.

The Reunification deal says that the administration of these properties
will not change. But some observers remain skeptical.

With a reunited Russian Orthodox Church, Putin is pushing Russia’s
dominance in the global Orthodox movement, the traditional Orthodox
leadership is vested in the Patriarch of Constantinople, in a first
among equals style rather than the dominant Papal regime of the Roman
Catholic Church. The Orthodox communion includes churches in Greece,
Cyprus, Ukraine, Belarus and various Balkan states as well as Georgia,
Armenia and Moldova. Historically, the Russian Orthodox Church has
always pressed its pre-eminence among these nations and is likely to
do so again. Putin’s new unified Church will also further expand in
the U.S. and Western Europe as it tries to use the ROCOR’s network
and congregation to become as much an arm of Russian nationalist
politics as well as Russian piety. With Reporting by Andrew Lee
Butters/Jerusalem

rld/article/0,8599,1622544,00.html

Panorama.am

16:01 19/05/2007

10 MUSEUMS OPEN FREE OF CHARGE LATE TODAY

Project `Museum Night’ will launch today in 10 museums
throughout Armenia exhibiting rare sample to the
visitors. The museums will be open free of charge from
19:00 until 1:00.

Armenian ministry of culture and youth affairs press
services told Panorama.am Museum after Yeghishe
Charents, Martiros Saryan, Avetik Isahakyan, Museum of
National Art, Museums of Yervand Kochar and Hovanes
Tumanyan, Zvartnots historical-cultural museum and
Erebuni history museum, as well as Museum of Russian
Art and Armenian National Gallery will be open for
visitors today.

Source: Panorama.am

Property right to enterprises may be reconsidered

19-05-2007 12:06:17 – KarabakhOpen

We have learned from the press service of the government that in the
recent meeting of the cabinet the report on privatization of state
property in 2004-2006 was discussed. Prime Minister said privatization
helped involve investments, create jobs, but not all the new owners
fulfill their commitments. Not everyone makes investments, creates
jobs and pays salary. The prime minister instructed to make the list
of owners who default on their commitments. He did not rule out that
the property right to these enterprises may be reconsidered.

2ND TRAIN WITH MILITARY HARDWARE LEAVES RUSSIAN BASE IN GEORGIA

RIA Novosti, Russia
May 17 2007

TBILISI, May 17 (RIA Novosti) – Another train with Russian military
hardware from a Soviet-era military base in Georgia left the former
Soviet republic early Thursday, the Georgian Defense Ministry said.

The ministry said the train had departed from Russia’s 62nd military
base in Akhalkalaki carrying combat support vehicles and trucks. It
is the second train with military equipment to leave Georgia this
year under an agreement Russia and Georgia signed March 31, 2006.

Russian troops and hardware are to completely withdraw from Georgia’s
two Soviet-era bases in Akhalkalaki and Batumi by 2008. The pullout
from Akhalkalaki, about 30 kilometers (19 miles) from the border with
NATO member Turkey, is to be completed by December 2006.

The withdrawal is being monitored by a joint Georgian-Russian
commission set up under the March agreement. The next train is
scheduled to leave Georgia on May 24.

The bulk of Russia’s weapons will return to Russia and the rest of
it will be delivered to a Russian base in Armenia.

THE ARMENIAN GENOCIDE RECOGNITION RESOLUTIONS DO NOT OBLIGE TURKEY
By Hakob Chakrian

AZG Armenian Daily
16/05/2007

On May 12, in a conference on "The Armenian issue" organized in
Antalya, head of Turkish History Company professor Yusuf Halachoghlun
made a speech. He warned the participants that the recognitions of
the Armenian Genocide at present, also in past, were directed to the
splitting of the Turkish State and its land. Then, characterizing
the recognitions of the Armenian Genocide as political, he added:
"These resolutions can not be obliging for Turkey".