Author: Kalantarian Kevo

Russian millionaire German Sterligov intends to sue Azerbaijan at the European Court of Human Rights, his lawyer Artur Ayrapetov has revealed to

He said the case will be taken to Strasbourg in the near future. “The matter is that German Sterligov was first named persona non grata and denied access to Baku. Then the Azeri authorities launched a criminal case against him,” Ayrapetov said.

The lawyer is confident Sterligov will win. “That’s nonsense from the point of view of international law. They first banned him from entering the country and then opened a criminal case, thus depriving him of the right to defend. Azerbaijan is a member of the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and its behavior in the given situation is unacceptable,” the lawyer said. He added that the sum of the compensation would be revealed later.

According to earlier reports, Interpol removed German Sterligov’s name from its wanted list. The Russian businessman was accused by Azerbaijan of launching illegal activity in Nagorno Karabakh.

On July 8, in accordance with an agreement reached with the authorities of the Nagorno Karabakh Republic, the OSCE Mission conducted a planned monitoring of the Line of Contact between the armed forces of Nagorno Karabakh and Azerbaijan in the Martuni direction.

From the positions of the NKR Defense Army, the monitoring was conducted by Field Assistants of the Personal Representative of the OSCE Chairman-in-Office Khristo Khristov (Bulgaria) and Jiri Aberle (Czech Republic).

From the opposite side of the Line of Contact, the monitoring was conducted by Field Assistant of the Personal Representative of the OSCE Chairman-in-Office Yevgeny Sharov (Ukraine) and staff member of the Office Peter Svedberg (Sweden).

The monitoring passed in accordance with the agreed schedule. No violation of the cease-fire regime was registered.

From the Karabakh side, the monitoring mission was accompanied by representatives of the NKR Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Ministry of Defense.

Losses of Electric Networks of Armenia, controlled by Inter RAO, are caused by the existing management system in that country, Boris Kovalchuk, chairman of the managing board of Inter RAO says.

Difficult situation in electric power complex of Armenia, where the government’s decision to raise electricity tariffs triggered mass protests, has purely economic not political reasons, Boris Kovalchuk, chairman of the managing board of Inter RAO told TASS on Tuesday.

Russia’s Inter RAO controls the Electric Networks of Armenia, which has the monopoly for electricity distribution in the country.

The Electric Networks of Armenia, which is now in a dire financial condition asked the national regulator to raise electricity tariffs by 49%. The regulator partially upheld the request and raised tariffs by 16%.

The tariff hike sparked mass protests which are still ongoing. Armenia’s President Serzh Sargsyan said the government was ready to cover costs related to higher electricity tariffs until the audit of the Electric Networks of Armenia is completed. The audit of the Electric Networks of Armenia by international audit firms is expected to take 3-6 months.

Kovalchuk said that Inter RAO welcomes the idea of the audit. He added that such an inspection would reveal the need to make serious changes in the whole industry.

The head of Inter RAO said that the losses of Electric Networks of Armenia are caused by the existing management system in that country.

“Longstanding losses of the Electric Networks of Armenia are caused by the existing system of tariff regulation and the rules of electricity market in the Republic of Armenia,” Kovalchuk said.

According to him, the existing management system provides for financing of generating companies at the expense of the Electric Networks of Armenia and also forces the company to buy more expensive electricity than it is foreseen by the country’s energy balance.

He said that insufficient tariff raising in the last 11 years, overhaul of the Metsamor power plant, as well as the decline of production by hydro power plants of Armenia led to the situation when the electricity distribution system of the country lost 37 bln AMD ($77.5 mln).

“Since the beginning of 2014 the company has been incapable of making timely payments to generating companies for supplied electricity due to insufficient funds and has been functioning on the verge of financial stability,” Kovalchuk said.

The Catholicosate of the Holy See of Cilicia has issued a statement to clarify the nature and purpose of its claim for the return of its historical Seat in Sis (present-day Kozan in Turkey), currently pending before the Turkish Constitutional Court:

The lawsuit claims the right of ownership and religious worship with regard to the Monastery and Cathedral of St. Sophia, the Seat of the Catholicosate from 1293 until at least 1921. To comply with the procedures for filing of property claims before the Turkish Constitutional Court, the application indicated a provisional estimated value for the property. The demand however is clearly and emphatically for return of the property and its restoration and use for religious worship, and this demand cannot be satisfied by the payment of monetary compensation.

The claim therefore is for restitution of the property and not for compensation.

The decision of the Catholicosate to initiate this lawsuit was motivated by the historical and religious significance of this property for the Armenian Church and Nation. There are two separate legal grounds for the claim; namely (1) the property rights of the Catholicosate; and (2) the religious rights of the Catholicosate. While the ownership rights of the Catholicosate may raise issues of compensation under Turkish laws and procedures, the rights of religious worship are a separate matter and can only be remedied by return of the property, its restoration and use for worship. This is a non-negotiable demand that will not be withdrawn under any circumstances.

The lawsuit has been submitted to the Turkish Constitutional Court to satisfy the requirement of the exhaustion of domestic remedies as a precondition for any appeal to the European Court of Human Rights. If the Turkish court ruling is not favourable, or if the Turkish Government does not otherwise return the property, the Catholicosate will appeal the decision to the European Court of Human Rights, and seek to enforce its rights under international law.

The lawsuit is a matter of great complexity and sensitivity and the legal process will unfold over the coming months and years. It is unfortunately not possible to reveal all details and aspects of the case while it is still pending before the courts, as this will prejudice the claim of the Catholicosate. During this period, uninformed comments and speculation in the media will not contribute to the success of this historical initiative against the many obstacles it will invariably encounter.

The Catholicosate will pursue every possible means within the law to assert its property and religious rights, to reclaim its historical Seat, and to reclaim the historical heritage of Armenian Church and Nation.

An international conference on “NATO-Armenia relations in the context of new challenges” initiated by the Analytical Center for Globalization and Regional Cooperation (ACGRC) was held in Yerevan today.

According to ACGRC Head Stepan Grigoryan, Armenia’s cooperation with NATO is rather constructive, but it cannot go too deep because we are part of a different security system.

“There is no doubt that the cooperation with NATO comes to supplement our security. I think NATO has chosen the right way of cooperation with Armenia to the extent the latter wants, without any noise and ambitions,” Grigoryan said.

The cooperation with NATO has risen to a certain level in the field of peacekeeping operations, which has led to the improvement of Armenia’s international standing, Stepan Grigoryan said. He added that the “humanitarian and scientific programs are also on a high level.”

Gerlinde Niehus, Head of Communications at NATO’s Public Diplomacy Division, said Armenia is a very important country for NATO. She hailed the cooperation in international peacekeeping and voiced hope that the collaboration would further succeed.

German Ambassador to Armenia Rayner Morel voiced his appreciation for the level of Armenia’s relations with NATO.

Amb. Morel noted that Armenia is a good member of the CSTO and added that there are other opportunities the country should use.

As for statements from Azerbaijan suggesting that the OSCE Minsk Group co-chairmanship should be extended to include Germany, the Ambassador said “Germany supports the OSCE Minsk Group, but has no wish to join it.”

Speaking about the Armenian Genocide Resolution pending at the Bundestag, Rayner Morel said he can make no predictions, but voiced confidence that discussions will take place. He reminded that the German President made it clear that the what happened in 1915 was genocide.

Participants of the 9th Bologna Process Ministerial Conference and the Fourth Bologna Policy Forum in Yerevan unanimously adopted the Yerevan Communiqué and the Statement of the Statement of the Fourth Bologna Policy Forum. The final sitting was chaired by Armenian Minister of Education and Science Armen Ashotyanand was attended by Prime Minister Hovik Abrahamyan.

The Ministers responsible for Higher Education and Heads of Delegation to the Fourth Bologna Policy Forum reaffirmed their cooperation in developing higher education.

“Political instability in many of the countries, a high level of unemployment and migration arising from economic and social crisis and lack of access to higher education are among the challenges that we are facing. At the same time national awakening in the countries is arising hopes of the people for more democratic and tolerant societies, providing opportunities for personal development, as well as development of quality higher education. Reforms of higher education should further the development of democratic culture and equip our societies with the knowledge, understanding and skills to help address the challenges we face. Protect staff and students in answering the academic freedom, integrity and autonomy of higher education institutions is a key to achieving this,” the Ministers said.

“Mobility of students and staff facilitates exchange and creation of new knowledge and helps to build mutual trust and understanding. The rapid technological developments will impact on higher education and the way in which it will be reformed,” the document reads.

The next Bologna Policy Forum will be organized in 2018 in France in conjunction with the Ministerial conference.

Dear compatriots,

I cordially congratulate you on the occasion of Victory and Peace Day.

Today is a special jubilee day. It marks the 70th anniversary of the historic victory in the Great Patriotic War. It was the crushing blow of the multinational Soviet army that decided the outcome of the war in Europe in May 1945.

From fighting on the frontline and in guerilla detachments to getting involved in underground and resistance activities, Armenians brought their contributions towards the total defeat of Nazi forces. We struggled in the trench of justice, freedom and humanism against an anti-humanistic ideology, violence and vandalism. By fighting heroically on various fronts and working in the rear day and night, we thus defended our homeland, Armenia, as well.

This victory afforded the Armenian people who had survived the genocide real and broad opportunities for peaceful work and reconstruction and for their total revival.

It was a symbolic coincidence that on the same day in May 1992 the ancient Armenian fortress town of Sushi was liberated. Following the example of their fathers and grandfathers, our modern-day heroes repeated their ancestors’ feat, fighting in the same trench of justice, freedom and humanism against Armenophobia, violence and vandalism.

I once again congratulate all of us on this great holiday. Peace to the world and peace to our country!

“Gradual Radicalization: The Decision ­Making Process for the Armenian Genocide” will be the topic of a lecture by Prof. Taner Akçam on Wednesday, May 6 at UC Davis. Taner Akçam is professor of history and the Robert Aram, Marianne Kaloosdian and Stephen and Marian Mugar Chair in Armenian genocide studies at Clark University, reports.

A closer look at the Armenian genocide in 1915 is the focus of the free program, presented by the UC Davis history department, UCD Middle East/South Asia Studies Program and the Turkey Studies Research Cluster of the UCD Humanities Institute, will take place at the Odd Fellows Hall, 415 Second St. in downtown Davis.

Debates around mass murders boil down to two central questions: What happened? Why and how did it happen?

In the Armenian genocide research, the “what happened” question got answered at least in broad terms, Akçam says. Although historians still do not have all the details of what was experienced at the local level, they do have a general picture of how the genocide was launched and how it was developed as a state policy.

However, this is not true for the “why” and “how” questions, Akcam says, which are mostly explained with the answers of either “premeditated continuum” or “wartime radicalization.”

“The debate in question is really an offshoot of several peripheral questions regarding the intentions, motives, ideologies and motivating anxieties of the decision­makers,” a news release said.

“If in fact there was a final formal decision for the genocide, we have to answer a list of questions: What stages did it pass through before it reached its final conclusion? When and how did the decision take the shape of a plan?”

Akçam argues that we are still very far from such a level of sophistication, given that much of the debate is driven by speculation rather than documentation. In this talk, he aims to reconstruct the decision­making process based on Ottoman documents.

The fact of the Armenian Genocide by the Ottoman government has been documented, recognized, and affirmed in the form of media and eyewitness reports, laws, resolutions, and statements by many states and international organizations. The complete catalogue of all documents categorizing the 1915 wholesale massacre of the Armenian population in Ottoman Empire as a premeditated and thoroughly executed act of genocide, is extensive. Uruguay was the first country to officially recognize the Armenian Genocide in 1965. The massacres of the Armenian people were officially condemned and recognized as genocide in accordance with the international law by France, Germany, Italy, Belgium, Netherlands, Switzerland, Sweden, Russia, Poland, Lithuania, Greece, Slovakia, Cyprus, Lebanon, Uruguay, Argentina, Venezuela, Chile, Canada, Vatican, Australia and Bolivia.

MARIE-CHRISTINE ARNAUTU FAIT PART DE SON SOUTIEN A TOUS LES ARMENIENS DE FRANCE

FRANCE

Communique de Marie-Christine Arnautu, Depute francais au Parlement
europeen, Vice-presidente du Front National, Conseiller municipal et
metropolitain de Nice

Le 24 avril, nous commemorerons le centenaire du debut du genocide des
Armeniens et de tous les chretiens, Syriaques, Assyro-chaldeens ou
Grecs pontiques, en Turquie. En deux ans, plus d’un million et demi
d’Armeniens seront extermines, soit les deux tiers de la population
armenienne de l’Empire ottoman, avec des villages entiers rayes de la
carte et des exactions abominables. Plus de 80.000 survivants armeniens
ont alors trouve refuge en France, et notamment a Nice dans la cite de
La Madeleine. Ils sont aujourd’hui environ 5.000 a Nice. Le refus de
la Turquie de reconnaître ce genocide est une agression supplementaire
contre les peuples qui en ont ete victimes come si le massacre de
leurs ancetres n’avait jamais existe. Le Front National a vote au
Parlement europeen en faveur d’une resolution demandant a la Turquie
de reconnaître enfin ses crimes et approuve toute initiative allant
dans ce sens. Marie-Christine Arnautu fait part de son soutien a tous
les Armeniens de France et notamment de Nice, mais aussi a toutes les
communautes chretiennes victimes de la barbarie turque entre 1915 et
1917, Syriaques, Assyro-chaldeens et Grecs pontiques.

vendredi 24 avril 2015, Stephane (c)armenews.com

ARMENIA AND POLITICS OF THE WORD ‘GENOCIDE’

Voice of America
April 22 2015

Sharon Behn

Last updated on: April 23, 2015 10:44 PM

Most historians agree that the massacre, deportation and death of
more than 1 million Armenians in the Turkish Ottoman Empire that
began 100 years ago this month was a genocide. But mention the word
“genocide” in Washington, in the context of Armenia, and the level
of discomfort is palpable.

Administration officials decline to comment, pro-Armenia politicians
rush to the podium, scholars refer to books, Armenians tell
heartbreaking stories of trauma, and the Turkish government rejects
the issue altogether.

Hope Harrison, a history professor at George Washington University,
said Washington has avoided using the word “genocide” in order to
keep its strategic relations with Turkey as smooth as possible.

It is, Harrison said, “one of many debates in the U.S. government of
principles and beliefs versus realpolitik and security.”

>From 1915 to 1923, Armenians of the Ottoman empire – from which
rose today’s Turkey – were deported or massacred in the hundreds of
thousands, and their culture was almost erased from the land where
they had lived for thousands of years. It was a trauma that many
Armenians have never forgotten.

‘Part of their identity’

“It’s something that’s absolutely part of their nature and part
of their identity,” explained Ronald Suny, professor of social and
political history at the University of Michigan, referring to the
Armenian diaspora. “I think it’s unavoidable.”

But Thomas de Waal, senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for
International Peace, said 100 years later, all those involved in the
debate have become hostage to the word “genocide” itself.

“As a result of that, people have lost sight of the bigger issue,
which is: what justice is owed to the Armenians in 1915? How do we
promote normalization between Armenia and Turkey? How do we persuade
Turkey to open up to its past and look at these issues?” de Waal asked.

The word genocide was invented in 1944, almost 30 years after the
massacres happened. In 1948, the United Nations passed the Convention
on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, and the
word entered the world’s political vocabulary.

Armenians believe it defined the experience of their people.

The U.S. government has recognized that more than 1 million Armenians
died, but State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf this April again
stopped short of using the word “genocide.”

“The president and other senior administration officials have
repeatedly acknowledged as historical fact and mourned the fact that
1.5 million Armenians were massacred or marched to their deaths in
the final days of the Ottoman Empire,” Harf said.

President Barack Obama called the centennial “a solemn moment,”
in a statement released by the White House late Wednesday.

“It calls on us to reflect on the importance of historical remembrance,
and the difficult but necessary work of reckoning with the past. I
have consistently stated my own view of what occurred in 1915,
and my view has not changed,” Obama said. “A full, frank, and just
acknowledgement of the facts is in all our interests. Peoples and
nations grow stronger, and build a foundation for a more just and
tolerant future, by acknowledging and reckoning with painful elements
of the past.

“We welcome the expression of views by Pope Francis, Turkish and
Armenian historians, and the many others who have sought to shed
light on this dark chapter of history,” his statement continued.

Diplomatic spat

In contrast, Pope Francis this year became the first leader of
the Roman Catholic Church to publicly declare what happened as a
“genocide,” sparking a diplomatic spat with Turkey.

As de Waal points out, the word itself has become so problematic
and so politicized, it has aggravated Armenian-Turkish relations and
other nations’ relations with both.

The United States at one time did use the word genocide in reference to
the Armenian experience. That changed under President Ronald Reagan,
when a Turkish consul to the United States was killed by an Armenian
terrorist in Reagan’s home state of California in 1982.

>From then on, de Waal said, as far as Reagan was concerned, the
Turks were on America’s side on the three issues that he cared about:
terrorism, the Soviet Union and Israel.

“Ronald Reagan, therefore, embraced the Turks on those issues and
pushed away the idea of an Armenian genocide, and that I think has set
U.S. policy ever since,” he said. “Even though many, many people call
it a genocide, that line was drawn back in 1982, and the United States
has found it very difficult to reset the policy ever since then.”

For Armenians in the diaspora, the 1915 experience is a key issue
and an essential political question. For Armenians in the newly
independent Republic of Armenia, the perception is different.

‘Bit of a rift’

“I think that what we may see already is a bit of a rift, or at least a
distinction between what the government of the country of Armenia would
like to see on the one hand, and what the Armenia diaspora would like
to see on the other hand, because there is some significant impulse
in the region to normalize relations between the country of Turkey
and the country of Armenia,” said David Pollock of The Washington
Institute of Near East Policy.

Turkey recently has become much more open to admitting that a terrible
thing happened to the Armenians.

And compromise is emerging in Washington, too: While Republican
Representative Robert Dold has called for a full recognition of the
Armenian masacres as genocide, his colleague, Representative Curt
Clawson, has reached out to fellow lawmakers to support a resolution
that would promote “peace and understanding” between the nations.

De Waal, who has written extensively on Armenia, said the focus should
be less on how the United States describes the historical facts,
and more on restoring relations between Turkey and Armenia.

“The focus should really be on facilitating that, and if you want
to do that, I don’t think you start with the word genocide. You
start by discussing the histories, the massacres, maybe you come
round eventually to the word genocide, but at the moment, the word
genocide is so toxic that it shuts down the conversation. You can’t
really start a conversation with the word genocide,” he said.

More than 20 nations around the world have recognized the mass killings
as genocide.

Vivian Chakarian contributed to this report.