Author: Kanayan Tamar

REPUBLIQUE DU HAUT KARABAGH
400 tirs azéris sur les positions arméniennes le 2 septembre, jour
anniversaire de l’Indépendance du Haut Karabagh

Vendredi 2 septembre, alors que la République du Haut Karabagh fêtait
le 20ème anniversaire de l’Indépendance, sur ses frontières, les
Azéris avaient décidé de perturber ce bonheur. Rien qu’en une seule
journée les positions arméniennes stationnées aux frontières ont
enregistré 400 projectiles de diverses dimensions tirés depuis les
positions azéries. De nouvelles violations du cessez le feu signé
pourtant par l’Azerbaïdjan en 1994 et régulièrement piétinées par les
soldats de Bakou. Les jours précédents les forces arméniennes ont
enregistré 350 violations du cessez le feu avec plus de 2 000
projectiles tirés par les Azéris. Les Arméniens ont, selon le
communiqué officiel « fait taire les tirs ennemis par des mesures
appropriées ».

Krikor Amirzayan

dimanche 4 septembre 2011,
Krikor [email protected]

GENOCIDE ARMENIEN
Ankara redoute la reconnaissance du génocide arménien par Washington
favorisée par la crise entre Israël et la Turquie selon « Hürriyet »

La situation de crise diplomatique entre la Turquie et Israël augmente
les chances de reconnaissance du génocide arménien par Washington
selon le journal turc « Hürriyet ». « La dégradation des relations
turco-israéliennes met Ankara dans une position difficile quant au
problème du génocide arménien notamment aux Etats Unis et dans un
certain nombre de pays de l’Union européenne. Les sources
diplomatiques au regard des prochaines élections présidentielles
américaines indiquent que le lobby juif a redoublé ses activités
anti-turques et soutiendra le lobby arménien dans la reconnaissance du
génocide arménien au Congrès américain » écrit « Hürriyet ». Le
journal turc indique que « The New York Times » dans un éditorial
récent a mis Ankara dans une position d’accusé pour l’affaire de la «
flottille de la liberté » à Gaza et prévoit une dégradation rapide des
relations turco-israéliennes.

Krikor Amirzayan

dimanche 4 septembre 2011,
Krikor [email protected]

news.am, Armenia
Sept 3 2011

Armenian expert disagrees with logic of Armenian church – newspaper

September 03, 2011 | 08:45

YEREVAN. – Georgian Church in Armenia demands to grant legal status
for five monasteries on Armenian-Georgian border. These are Akhtala,
Hnevank, Kobayr, Khujap, and Kirants, Hayots Ashkharh Armenian
newspaper reports.

Armenian Apostolic Church approves the demand to grant legal status,
but will not agree to pass them to Georgians.

According to the spokesperson of the Holy See Ter Vahram, only 600
Georgians live in the territory of Armenia. Thus, granting the
churches to them is not justified.

However, the expert for Armenian monuments Samvel Karapetyan does not
think it fair to condition the issue with the number of Georgians
living in Armenia.

`Where is the logic? What if 6000 Georgians lived instead of 600 in
Armenia? Will their demand have bases? The communities that have for
many centuries lived around the monasteries, never recorded about a
Georgian family,’ the expert said.

The Express, UK
August 19, 2011 Friday
U.K. 1st Edition

Weekend Books – A journey of love and manipulation

by VANESSA BERRIDGE

THE BLUE BOOK
Jonathan Cape, GBP 16.99

THIS is a confusing and at times impenetrable book but that is perhaps
part of the point. Kennedy always scratches well below the surface in
anything she writes, revealing the bewildering inconsistencies of
human behaviour. The location itself, a transatlantic cruise in
midwinter, helps to give the novel its sense of displacement.

As the characters brace themselves against increasingly stormy
weather, they are both literally and metaphorically at sea.

Kennedy plays games with the novel form, opening with a direct address
but it’s not clear whether she’s talking to us as readers or to a
character in the novel or indeed who is actually speaking.

She twiddles, too, with the pagination, following page 186 with page
181 and page 155 with 934. It seems random, like the numbers games
with which the sinister Arthur Lockwood teases and disconcerts his
former lover Elizabeth Barber.

Elizabeth (or Beth) has boarded the US-bound ship expecting her barely
satisfactory partner Derek to propose. Instead, as Derek suffers with
seasickness, Beth wanders about the ship in the company of a benign
couple from Dorset: and with Arthur.

He is a fake medium who preys on the rich and vulnerable, including a
survivor of the Rwandan genocide and an elderly woman who lost family
in the Armenian massacre. By making them relive the horrors they’ve
experienced he conjures up their loved ones: “Give them the truth of a
world, ” he says cynically, “then they’ll beg you to defend them and
believe every unseen monster you create.”

Elizabeth was for a while involved in Arthur’s work but her horror at
his amoral manipulation has driven them apart and sent her on the
journey to America with the less charismatic Derek. How both
characters come to terms with their past is the book’s love story.

“Any word can work a spell if you know how to use it, ” Beth thinks.
That’s certainly true of Kennedy’s writing which captures the reader’s
imagination from the beginning with an eloquent description of an
unhappy child. There is humour, too, in her evocation of ship-board
life with its round of time-filling classes and second-class
entertainment.

It’s a complex, challenging novel which is not for the faint-hearted,
there’s strong language throughout. At times the tone is chill and
distancing but it edges gradually towards a final satisfying sense of
empathy and resolution.

ABC Online , Australia
Sept 3 2011

Darchinyan wins in Armenia

Updated September 04, 2011 10:48:36

Australia’s IBO bantamweight boxing world champion Vic Darchinyan made
a triumphant return to the country of his birth with a dominant
unanimous points win over South African Evans Mbamba in the Armenian
capital of Yerevan.

Darchinyan, who had not fought in Armenia for over a decade since his
amateur days, knocked the challenger down in the opening round.

He won 120-107 on two cards and 119-107 on the third.

The Armenian president was among a capacity crowd of almost 8,000 who
attended the first professional promotion in the country’s history.

Darchinyan dictated terms for the rest of the fight against his fellow
southpaw after scoring the early knockdown.

He improved his professional record to 37-3-1 (27 KOs), while Mbamba’s
dropped to 18-2 (9 KOs).

The Sydney-based Darchinyan carried both the Australian and Armenian
flags into the ring.

His next fight is expected to be in the United States in December.

AAP

Sunday’s Zaman, Turkey
Sept 4 2011

Non-Muslims praise law to return properties, await its implementation

04 September 2011, Sunday / YONCA POYRAZ DOÄ?AN, Ä°STANBUL

Non-Muslim groups in Turkey have praised highly the government’s
recent move to return properties confiscated from religious minorities
since 1936, and look forward to the announcement of regulations as to
how the law will be implemented.

According to a decree published in the Official Gazette last weekend,
property seized from Christian and Jewish religious foundations will
be returned to them, and in cases where property belonging to such
organizations has been sold by the state to third parties, the
religious foundation will be paid the market value of the property by
the Ministry of Finance.

The decision was announced before an iftar (fast-breaking dinner) on
Aug. 28, attended by Prime Minister Recep Tayyip ErdoÄ?an and
representatives of non-Muslim communities in Ä°stanbul. Turkey’s
non-Muslim citizens applaud the move and say the step was expected,
since the government has been working on the issue for some time.

`This is a very positive move,’ said Rober KoptaÅ?, editor-in-chief of
the Turkish-Armenian weekly Agos. `However, we have to see how the law
will be implemented.’

KoptaÅ? is concerned about how the new regulations will affect some
properties belonging to non-Muslims. One of those properties is the
Tuzla Armenian Children’s Camp, which was built by Hrant Dink, an
Armenian-Turkish journalist murdered in 2007. The camp is not among
the properties to be returned, as indicated by officials, because
under the new regulations the government will not return or reimburse
for properties no longer directly held by the state, or from the sale
of which the state received no income. The Tuzla camp was bought by
the GedikpaÅ?a Armenian Foundation in 1962, but subsequent to a Supreme
Court of Appeals ruling in 1974, acquisitions made after the 1936
declaration had no legal validity, and therefore had to be returned to
their former owners. As a result, the Tuzla camp was returned to its
first owner,’ he said, adding that in that case the state did not
receive any money from the sale but the transfer was still `unjust,’
because the ruling was based on ethnic “discrimination.”

KoptaÅ? also pointed out the need for a more comprehensive solution.
`We need arrangements to deal with expropriated property, since those
actions may not have been based on fair evaluations in many cases.’
KoptaÅ? was referring to a series of discriminatory practices of the
republic targeting non-Muslims. A new law on foundations in 1936,
aimed at controlling Muslim and non-Muslim foundations, placed them
under the guardianship of the Directorate General for Foundations
(VGM), in violation of the Lausanne Treaty between Turkey and Western
powers in 1923, which guaranteed non-Muslim communities the right `to
retain special education and property rights.’ This law also demanded
that the foundations, which receive most of their income from rents,
declare their sources of income and how it was spent: These are the
`1936 Declarations.’

Under the high court’s 1974 ruling — described as `massacring the
law’ by many human rights lawyers — non-Muslim foundations lost
thousands of properties. The laws on foundations have been altered a
couple of times, with new amendments following each other; new laws
granted some rights, which were then rescinded by other regulations.

`Brave step despite ultranationalist tendencies’
Mihail Vasiliadis, editor-in-chief of Apoyevmatini, a Greek weekly
newspaper serving the small remainder of the once-sizeable Greek
community in Ä°stanbul, says the government’s move is especially
pleasing for Turkey’s Armenian and Jewish populations, but the Greeks
have a more striking problem.

`The government has taken a very brave step. The prime minister did
this despite strong ultranationalist tendencies in the country, but we
have cancer and an aspirin will not heal it,’ Vasiliadis said. `Let’s
say we receive the properties back. Who is going to benefit from
that?’

Even though the Greek population in Turkey was no less than 100,000 in
the 1930s, tension between Turkey and Greece has greatly affected
their survival in Turkey. Following the Ä°stanbul Riots of Sept. 6-7,
1955, and the 1964 deportation of roughly 12,000 ethnic Greeks without
Turkish citizenship, the Greek population has been in constant
decline. Vasiliadis says that by 1966, the Greek population in
Ä°stanbul was reduced to less than 30,000, and it has been diminishing
ever since, so much so that it is now close to the point of
extinction.

`We now have more deaths than births. Our religious ceremonies are
attended by a few people, and we are elated if there are five or six
students in our schools,’ he added. Vasiliadis suggests that the
Turkish government, `in memory of the deported ethnic Greeks,’ give
work and residence permits to Greek citizens who live abroad and who
are willing to come to Turkey and be integrated into the country’s
small Greek Orthodox community.

`Syriacs and Turkish Protestants excluded’
In addition, there is the issue of the Greek Orthodox seminary on
Heybeliada, which remains closed despite international calls for its
reopening. The European Court of Human Rights last year ordered the
Turkish government to re-register a historic Orthodox orphanage to the
Ä°stanbul-based Fener Greek Orthodox Ecumenical Patriarchate, and also
told Ankara to pay 26,000 euros to the patriarchate for both
non-pecuniary damages and costs and expenses.

Turkey’s population of nearly 70 million, mostly Muslim, includes
about 65,000 Armenian Orthodox Christians, 23,000 Jews and about 2,500
Greek Orthodox Christians. While Armenian groups have 52 and Jewish
groups have 17 foundations, Greeks have 75. Some of the properties
seized from those foundations include hospitals, schools and
cemeteries.

Meanwhile, 15,000 Syriac Orthodox Christians also live in Turkey,
along with several other smaller religious minorities. Although the
1923 treaty allowed `non-Muslims’ to retain special education and
property rights, within Turkey’s arbitrary definition of the concept
of a `minority,’ Syriacs and Turkish Protestants have been excluded
from the legal arena.

Researcher and writer Nail Güleryüz, a Turkish citizen of Jewish
background, said the government’s decision to return properties
belonging to non-Muslims is a positive one. Implementation of the law
is key for him, too. `It is likely that some groups will be critical
of the decision, but political will is key to implementing the law. I
have no doubt that the implementation will be in line with the spirit
of the law,’ he said.

Laki Vingas, a council member at the General Directorate of Non-Muslim
Minority Foundations and a Turkish citizen of Greek origin, recalled
that in 2008 about 100 properties belonging to non-Muslims were given
back, and legal problems related to about 50 properties were solved.
There were applications for the return of about 1,400 properties in
2008. Recently, the VGM said about 200 more properties are likely to
be returned.

`Gov’t decisive on religious freedom’
`The government, especially Prime Minister ErdoÄ?an, is decisive on the
issue,’ he said. `We are going forward with each decision, each step.
We, the non-Muslims, feel more like citizens of this country.’

Recent developments in the area of religious freedoms in Turkey, such
as last year’s historic service at the Sümela Monastery in the Black
Sea coastal province of Trabzon, and another historic day of worship
at an Armenian church in eastern Turkey, have raised expectations for
a more democratic future in the country despite their shortcomings.

`If you consider Turkey’s deep-rooted minority policies, this decree
from the government can be seen as a kind of revolution,’ said human
rights lawyer Orhan Kemal Cengiz. Highly critical of the government in
the past for not having taken `permanent steps’ to address minority
issues, Cengiz said returning non-Muslims’ property is an irreversible
step and marks a turning point in Turkey. He also noted that not only
the property but also the management of the `seized foundations’ were
taken over by the VGM, even though Turkey has been in the process of
seeking accession to the EU.

The European Commission quickly welcomed the most recent government
decree, and stated that the commission welcomes Turkey’s new
legislation for the return of properties to religious foundations.
`The commission will monitor closely the implementation of the new
legislation, in contact with both the Turkish authorities and the
non-Muslim religious communities,’ a statement released by EU
Enlargement Commissioner Stefan Füle said on Aug. 29.

Trend, Azerbaijan
Sept 3 2011

Azerbaijani PM: Armenia’s unconstructive position once again
demonstrated at CIS summit
[03.09.2011 14:35]
Azerbaijan, Baku, Sept.3 / Trend /

Armenia, which is the CIS member, commits aggression against
Azerbaijan , holding under occupation 20 percent of the territories,
Azerbaijani Prime Minister Artur Rasizade said at the CIS summit on
Saturday . He was commenting on the Armenian President Serzh
Sargsyan’s statement, RIA Novosti reports.

” The CIS member has committed aggression against the other country,
occupied 20 percent of the territories, which resulted in one million
refugees and displaced persons,” Rasizade said. “I did not want to
darken today’s anniversary session, but the Armenian President’s
statement on the situation in Nagorno-Karabakh forces me to do it .”

He said Armenia’s unconstructive position in the settlement of the
difficult and protracted conflict was once again demonstrated at the
CIS summit.

Rasizade added that Azerbaijan will further continue to actively
participate in the OSCE Minsk Group and support other initiatives in
the hope of “peaceful and just resolution of this issue within the
framework of international law”.

At the same time, Rasizade thanked the OSCE Minsk Group, as well as
the Russian President Dmitry Medvedev for efforts taken to resolve the
conflict. He expressed the hope that these steps “will be crowned with
success.”

The conflict between the two South Caucasus countries began in 1988
when Armenia made territorial claims against Azerbaijan. Armenian
armed forces have occupied 20 percent of Azerbaijan since 1992,
including the Nagorno-Karabakh region and 7 surrounding districts.
Azerbaijan and Armenia signed a ceasefire agreement in 1994. The
co-chairs of the OSCE Minsk Group – Russia, France, and the U.S. – are
currently holding the peace negotiations.
Armenia has not yet implemented the U.N. Security Council’s four
resolutions on the liberation of the Nagorno-Karabakh and the
surrounding regions.

Business Recorder
August 18, 2011 Thursday

Twenty years on, nostalgia in Russia for the Soviet empire

by ULF MAUDER

Twenty years after the collapse of the Soviet Union – a process
encapsulated in a failed hard-line communist coup on August 19, 1991 –
many Russians long for the return of the “Empire.” The nostalgia has
risen as the 20th anniversary approaches, according to Moscow-based
pollsters Wziom.

A fifth of those surveyed would like to return to the superpower
status of the Soviet era, Wziom found. A decade ago, the figure was
just 16 percent. It appears that memories of life under the
totalitarian communist regime are fading. In August 1991, the world
was captivated by images of events in Moscow. The old Soviet
apparatchiks mounted a coup, arresting Soviet president Mikhail
Gorbachev while he was holidaying on the Crimean Peninsula. A state of
emergency prevailed in the capital, where enraged Russians confronted
tanks. It took days for the mood to turn. The military refused to obey
the coup leaders, who fled.

In the ensuing months, the Soviet Union fell apart. Two decades later,
longing is deep-seated for the old days of global might. Thus, Prime
Minister Vladimir Putin once called the demise of the Soviet Union
“the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the (20th) century.”

Putin has spoken clearly of a possible reunification with Belarus, and
recently pushed through a customs union between Russia, Belarus and
Kazakhstan. Talk is ongoing of other former Soviet republics joining
forces. But a return to the old empire status remains unlikely, either
in the form of the defunct Soviet Union, led by Moscow, or as a
counterpart to the European Union.

Democratic structures would be necessary for the latter, Moscow
historian Irina Shcherbakova of human rights organisation Memorial
told the German Press Agency dpa. Almost all former Soviet states are
far from that. The Soviet Union’s main successor, the Commonwealth of
Independent States (CIS), is not a genuine political power. And 20
years on, old conflicts continue to plague the former Communist bloc.

Georgia, which aims for Nato and EU membership, withdrew from the CIS
after a war with Russia in 2008. The five-day conflict saw Russia
recognising the breakaway Georgian regions of Abkhazia and South
Ossetia as independent states. In the Republic of Moldova, the
breakaway region of Transnistria has been under effective Russian
control for years in a kind of post-Soviet limbo. Presidential
elections are due there next month.

In the mountainous region of Nagorno-Karabakh, which is part of
Azerbaijan under international law, Armenia is in control following a
lengthy war that ended in 1994, as its protector Russia lurks in the
background. Talks on a resolution of the conflict have run into the
sand, despite numerous attempts to mediate by Russian President
Dimitry Medvedev.

The Central Asian republics of Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and
Turkmenistan face constant criticism for their human rights records,
their allegedly paternalistic policies and repression harking back to
Soviet days. The authoritarian rulers in these largely Muslim
countries increasingly seem to fear the kind of changes that have
swept the Arab world.

Gorbachev, who rose to power through the old Soviet system but is seen
by many of his compatriots as the “gravedigger of the Soviet Empire,”
recently criticised what he saw as authoritarian tendencies in his own
country. In March, on the occasion of his 80th birthday, the former
Soviet president rebuked Putin and Medvedev for creating a power
monopoly that did not leave room for other political forces.

“Gorbi,” who is honoured in the West for his role in the Soviet
break-up, is calling for a revival of his policies of Glasnost and
Perestroika (Openness and Reconstruction) that augured the final years
of the Soviet Union in the 1980s. Those ideas took hold in Moscow’s
eastern European vassals, which gradually deposed their governments,
introduced democratic change, tore down their frontiers and joined
Nato and the EU, ending almost half a century of Cold War.

Shcherbakova believes Russia needs a new “democratic breakthrough”
like those under Gorbachev and Russia’s first president Boris Yeltsin.
When Yeltsin stood on a tank by the parliamentary buildings in August
1991, he not only put paid to the hardline communists, but also gave
hope to Russians, tired of Gorbachev’s inability to take decisions.

“Poverty had become unendurable in August 1991, with people queuing to
buy bread,” Shcherbakova said. “Many still have the food vouchers at
home that they were unable to exchange for anything of value. It was a
wartime situation. The country was finished.” Gorbachev secured the
confidence of the West. He pushed through disarmament and freedom of
the press. And he withdrew the Soviet troops from Afghanistan after a
long and pointless war.

“But he failed when it came to a new political system in the country,”
Shcherbakova said. He neglected to unite the reform-driven forces
within the party, for example by instituting social democracy, she
said. Historians have long accused Gorbachev of holding back economic
renewal in Russia by sticking to a socialist planned economy. Market
reforms were only introduced in 1992 under Yegor Gaidar, who was
acting prime minister for just six months. Today, there are new calls
for a wave of reforms among the ranks of the country’s political
leadership. But, as analysts point out, there are no true modernises
in sight.

Armenia, Tajikistan presidents discuss bilateral ties

September 3, 2011 – 15:08 AMT

PanARMENIAN.Net – Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan met with his Tajik
counterpart Emomali Rahmon to discuss bilateral cooperation in CIS
framework.

The presidents further participated in Dushanbe-hosted CIS leaders
summit focusing on cooperation in security, culture and
migration-related issues; the summit participants were also briefed on
an analytical report dedicated to CIS 20th anniversary.

Discussion of international issues was also on agenda, presidential
press service reported.

Four Russian `minigarchs’ cheered gang-rape of student ‘like footballers
celebrating a goal’, says judge who jailed them for 36 years

Oleg Ivanov, Gregory Melnikov, Norayr Davtyan and Armen Simonyan were
unanimously convicted of rape
Gang had only been in Britain for two weeks when attack occurred
Also filmed themselves boasting about their planned rape the day before
The sick rapists took cigarette breaks as the attack went on

By Martin Robinson

Last updated on 24th August 2011

Four wealthy Russians cheered a gang rape like ‘professional footballers
celebrating the scoring of a goal’ a judge said yesterday as he jailed them
for a total of 36 years.

Oleg Ivanov and Gregory Andreev Melnikov, both 23, Norayr Davtyan, 22, and
Armen Simonyan, 19, filmed the sickening attack on an 18-year-old Malaysian
fellow student at their £30,000 a year boarding school using an iPhone.

Jurors unanimously convicted the ‘minigarchs’ of rape after viewing the
video, during which one of them labelled the victim a ‘machine for ****ing’,
while another had to ask her name.

Ringleader Davtyan, who maintained that the 18-year-old Malaysian teen was a
‘slut’ in the witness box, was jailed for 10 years, Melnikov for nine years
and Ivanov and Simonyan for eight years apiece at Woolwich Crown Court this
afternoon.

In the course of the ‘disgusting’ attack they egged each other on by saying:
‘You’re not going to marry her.’

They later showed the iPhone footage of their victim’s ordeal to friends at
their exclusive college in south London

Judge Peter Murphy said: ‘The iPhone footage shows what can only be
described as a callous disregard for the victim as a human being and indeed
as anything other than an object of their own pleasure.

‘Although there was no pre-existing plan, once the sequence of events
started, they were encouraging each other to do more and more and were
clearly seen on the iPhone celebrating their triumph almost in the manner of
professional footballers celebrating the scoring of a goal.

‘They also boasted that they would show the footage to anyone in Moscow.

‘(The victim) in my judgment certainly is heard to utter the word ‘no’ on a
number of occasions. Whatever the case of her condition, it is clear as I
think it must have been to the defendants that she was in no position to
decide whether to consent or not to consent, or to resist what was going on.

‘No-one who has seen that footage can leave this trial without feeling
complete disgust towards it.’

On the night of January 21 this year, the college put on a disco for its
students, while Davtyan also held an impromptu party in his room.

The group of Russians filmed the whole attack on a mobile phone

The victim went to the room between 7pm and 8pm and downed a shot of whiskey
before going back to the main building.

She thought her drink had been spiked and felt dizzy.

CCTV cameras captured her stumbling though the main entrance before later
filming her in an outdoor smoking area talking to Ivanov and Melnikov.

She was later seen walking away from the smoking area with Melnikov when she
was taken to the party in Davtyan’s room.

Once there she was seen to vomit and lie down on the floor, and as the party
wound down she was eventually left alone with the four men.

Video footage recovered from Davtyan’s iPhone taken between 12.38am and
3.10am then showed all four men raping the girl.

‘At one point Mr Ivanov said he felt pity for her, but this was only after
he and the others had sex with her,’ prosecutor Peter Clement said.

‘He was talked out of that attitude by Mr Davtyan who described [the girl]
as just a whore and a machine for f******’.’

The footage also showed that the rapists took regular breaks to go outside
for cigarettes.

Ivanov, Melnikov, Davtyan, Simonyan, all of Deptford, South-East London, all
denied two counts of rape.

In their evidence, they tried to claim that the sex had been consensual.

The jury of seven men and four women unanimously convicted Davtyan of two
counts of rape.

They convicted Melnikov of one count of rape but found him not guilty of the
other, instead finding him guilty of an alternative charge of attempted
rape.

Ivanov and Simonyan were both convicted of one rape count and acquitted of
the second.

Published by Associated Newspapers Ltd
Part of the Daily Mail, The Mail on Sunday & Metro Media Group

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