Author: Kanayan Tamar

AGHVAN HOVSEPYAN CLOSES THE DOORS

Celebrations to mark the 95th anniversary of the Armenian Prosecutor’s
office reminded a little Aghvan Hovsepyan’s sending off to deserved
rest. In September, Hovsepyan’s term of office expires, and although
he did not reach the retirement age, he is 60, Serzh Sargsyan has
not yet decided whether or not to reappoint Hovsepyan.

Aghvan Hovsepyan, of course, is an irreplaceable figure for Serzh
Sargsyan. His ability to absorb everything like a sponge and store a
thousand bytes of information can be valuable. Besides, judging by
the last conference, Serzh Sargsyan appreciates in officials their
ability to refrain from political assessments. While, Aghvan Hovsepyan
refrains from giving not only political, but also legal assessments.

No one knows Aghvan Hovsepyan’s position on high-profile cases that
are considered by his agency. I mean both army and corruption cases.

No one knows what he plans in case RPA demands in the parliament to
restore Vartan Oskanian parliamentary immunity.

Aghvan Hovsepyan spared any opinion on the offshore scandal featuring
prime minster. He didn’t even say that he will consider the issue. He
just warned his Cypriot counterpart, who attended the celebrations,
to be ready for various questions.

True, the prosecutor general of Cyprus betrayed somehow the prime
minister, but corrected immediately his mistake sating that he does
not know the details of the case. The examination of the case may
find out that prime minister was registered in offshore by a person
authorized for another task. Such a document may appear: Aghvan
Hovsepyan will help.

At the famous meeting, Serzh Sargsyan defended Aghvan Hovsepyan
saying that no one cares for Ishkhan Zakaryan’s opinion about the
prosecution. But, probably, many would like to know Serzh Sargsyan’s
opinion about prosecution. Does he think that the prosecutor general
should be like Aghvan Hovsepyan?

General Prosecutor is a key figure in the current system. This figure
is the key to open or close the doors of shadow economy and politics.

In Armenia, these doors are kept closed. Aghvan Hovsepyan is brilliant
in this mission.

Naira Hayrumyan 13:01 02/07/2013 Story from Lragir.am News:

TRE PENNE IN ARMENIA: LA CAPITALE YEREVAN

SMTV, San Marino
LunedÌ 1 luglio 2013

Nonostante la storia dell’Armenia, con questo nome e queste istituzioni
sia poco più che maggiorenne, comune a tante realta statali sorte
dalle ceneri della disgregazione dell’Unione Sovietica datata 1991,
la conversione alla cultura e all’economia al di qua del muro,
specialmente nel centro pulsante della capitale, Yerevan, è per certi
versi straordinario.

Non poi quell’inferno che si pensava, nonostante di quello conservi
quantomeno la temperatura: il termometro impietoso recita 34, chi
qui ci vive giura non sia poi così tanto caldo. L’estate di Yerevan
si ostenta in afa e boccheggiamenti feroci; l’assalto all’ombra e al
refrigerio, declinato in bibite e fontane pare lo sport amatoriale
per eccellenza nella capitale.

In molti l’Armenia l’hanno conosciuta sui libri di storia, su una
delle pagine più sanguinolte del secolo scorso: poco dopo l’inizio
del primo conflitto bellico mondiale i Turchi avviarono quello che è
poi passato alla storia come il genocidio degli armeni. Un importante
museo, il Metz Teghern – letteralmente il Grande Male – ricorda oggi
coloro che coraggiosamente vi si opposero.

La storia vive nell’architettura della Cascade, grande scalinata che
permette di tenere Yerevan in un pugno, dall’alto della sua cima.

L’Opera, segnalato su molte guide come luogo da vedere assolutamente,
la dice lunga sull’invasione occidentale, in termini di pensiero e
inflessioni, che ha pervaso le strade capitoline, le quali trasudano
mondanita, firme, brand internazionali e offerte di ogni genere.

L’Armenia è anche questo: un po’ d’Europa e Occidente trapiantato a
latitudini in cui ti aspetti tutt’altro. La stessa liberta con cui
le ragazze, le donne di Yerevan camminano in strada, è tutt’altro
che scontata in un paese che può vantare burberi vicini quali la
Siria, l’Iran o l’Iraq. Le due facce della stessa medaglia convivono
in Yerevan, desolante agglomerato periferico, simile a confuse
baraccopoli, e lo sfarzo di un centro nevralgico che vuole ostentare
opulenza e capacita di stare al passo coi tempi.

Luca Pelliccioni lunedì 1 luglio 2013

IF YOU’RE A PRISONER, YOU’RE NOT A MAN

Yesterday, Gnuni Vardanyan, a life-term prisoner in Nubarashen
penitentiary, sewed his mouth in the sign of protest because the prison
administration didn’t allow him to call the human rights defender’s
hotline. The prisoner, of course, wanted to tell the ombudsman
something, but meeting obstacles, he resorted to this extreme step.

It seems that the prisoner’s step is absurd, but phone calls are a
serious issue for life-term prisoners and not only. There are many
notices about bad attitude towards life-term prisoners. Considering
regular deaths, including in suspicious conditions, the tension and
the psychological side of it becomes evident.

Life-term prisoners are allowed to call only once or twice a month. If
the prisoners calls and is unable to talk to his relative, he should
wait for a long time to be able to call again. They can call also
from mobiles but it is too expensive for life-term prisoners.

The limit of phone calls was introduced by the minister of justice
Hrayr Tovmasyan. In general, there is much dissatisfaction from the
minister, especially due to the increasing deaths in prisons. Yet
the minister has not given any clarification and does not react to
the press reports.

As to mouth-sewing by prisoners, we know what Hrayr Tovmasyan thinks
about it. Once he said it is like when girls wear earrings.

Minister’s opinion recalls soviet times: if you are a prisoner,
you are not a man.

Zhanna Alexanyan, 14:09 02/07/2013 Story from Lragir.am
News:

Premier Football News
June 30 2013

Liverpool agree £25.7 million deal for top transfer target
· June 30, 2013 Last updated at 0:49

Liverpool have finally reached an agreement to sign Henrikh Mkhitaryan
from Shakhtar Donetsk, according to Russian newspaper Sport Express.

Armenian television programme `Extra Time’ announced on Friday evening
that Mkhitaryan had agreed terms with a foreign club over a transfer,
and it would now appear that Liverpool have won the race to sign
Ukraine’s top goalscorer this summer.

Mkhitaryan scored 25 goals for Shakhtar Donetsk last season from an
attacking midfield position, and providing he can adapt well to the
Barclays Premier League, he could be an immense signing for Brendan
Rodgers’ team.

Sport Express state that the 24 year-old will fly to Merseyside in the
coming days for a medical and to complete the necessary paperwork in
order to finalise the deal.

With a reported fee of 30 million (approximately £25.7m), Mkhitaryan
would be the second most expensive signing in Liverpool history, after
the £35 million Andy Carroll cost when he signed from Newcastle United
in January 2011.

With Carroll having moved to West Ham United this summer for a
significant loss having failing to impress for the Reds, Liverpool
will hope that their next big move in the transfer market is a more
successful gambit.

Head Of Russian Railways Held Property Via Offshore

22:59, June 26, 2013

The president of Russian Railways may run a state-owned company but he
enjoys a posh dacha in suburban Moscow owned by companies set up in
Cyprus and Panama by people with connections to him.

By Roman Anin

A few lines posted earlier this month on a popular Russian online
forum saying the president of the Russian Railways owns a chunk of
land with a luxurious dacha on it, in a posh suburban area of Moscow
ignited a heated discussion in the Russian blogosphere.

The post prompted Russian blogger Alexei Navalny to follow up, and he
published a document identifying rail president Vladimir Yakunin as
the former owner of the same plot where the dacha is situated. The
document, retrieved from the Federal Service for State Registration,
Cadastral Records and Cartography, showed that Yakunin owned the land
from 2007 to 2011. Beginning in February 2011, a nested structure of
offshore Cyprus and Panamanian replaced him as the landowner.

OCCRP partner Novaya Gazeta took up the story from there to find out
who the new owners are. The paper found a series of connections
between Yakunin’s family and the offshore companies that took over the
property.

The 70,000-square-meter plot the country house stands on is located in
one of the most popular areas of the Moscow suburbs, in the village of
Akulinino. According to similar listings from real estate agencies
that work in the area, the price of 100 square meters of land near
Akulinino starts at $3,000, putting the current value of the plot at
more than $2 million. Based on information from persons familiar with
construction expenses, it could cost tens of millions of dollars to
build such a structure given the size of the dacha, the infrastructure
and the expensive decorative work.

According to land records, the current land owner is the Cyprus-based
company Mirolo Investments Ltd. The company obtained the rights to the
plot Feb. 25, 2011, the same day Yakunin officially ceased to be its
owner.

According to documents from the Cyprus registry of companies, Mirolo
Investments is owned by the Panama-based Skiron Holdings S.A.. The
trail goes cold in Panama as Skiron Holdings is owned by proxies —
designated shareholders who serve to obscure the real ownership of a
company. However, multiple searches through the Russian registrar of
commercial enterprises revealed that the Mirolo Investments is
connected to the Yakunin family.

Read More

Le Temps, Suisse
Samedi 29 Juin 2013

Génocide, le déni se fissure

Deux journalistes ont enquêté en Turquie autour des survivants et de
la mémoire des massacres des Arméniens

S. A.
CULTURE/LIVRES

Le génocide des Arméniens a permis l’émergence d’une conscience
nationale nouvelle, dont les chrétiens, qui constituaient 30% des
habitants de l’Empire ottoman finissant, sont pratiquement absents –
une identité qui ne peut être maintenue que par le déni, comme le
souligne l’historien Taner Akçam*. Pourtant, ici ou là, le mur du
silence s’érode. Correspondants, la première pour Le Figaro et le
second pour Le Monde, Laure Marchand et Guillaume Perrier ont enquêté
dans ses fissures.

Sur le paysage contrasté et émouvant qu’ils y ont trouvé, on rencontre
un voyagiste spécialisé dans les tournées mémorielles d’Arméniens
venus des Etats-Unis et de France visiter les ruines de leurs maisons
familiales dans des villages pas toujours mécontents de cette nouvelle
forme de tourisme. Des petits-enfants de femmes arméniennes mariées de
force dans des familles turques ou kurdes et des descendants de
convertis, aux prises avec une identité longtemps niée qu’il leur est
désormais possible, grce à une timide libération de la parole,
d’explorer. Des militants qui luttent pour redonner vie à des édifices
religieux abandonnés, transformés en granges ou à moitié détruits. De
rares municipalités qui, comme celle de Diyarbakir, en pays kurde,
restaurent des églises, voire ressuscitent des noms de rues effacés
avec la mémoire des chrétiens qui les habitaient. Des opposants de la
gauche dure qui ont presque tous, – bizarrement, des ascendances
arméniennes et des activistes alévis qui sont peut-être, pour certains
au moins, dans le même cas.

Car, et c’est une réalité gênante aussi bien pour une diaspora qui se
voit comme unique héritière d’un peuple disparu que pour un Etat qui
nie toujours le génocide, les survivants et leurs descendants vivent
toujours en Turquie, le plus souvent enfermés dans le silence, la
crainte, voire le déni. Leur permettre de retrouver une visibilité
démocratique est un moyen de recréer les bases d’un avenir commun.
Telle était la conviction du poète et journaliste Hrant Dink dont
l’aura exceptionnelle a beaucoup fait pour libérer leur parole. Après
son assassinat en 2007, des milliers de Stambouliotes sont descendus
dans la rue au cri de «Nous sommes tous des Arméniens».

Impensable quelques années plus tôt, cette émotion populaire ne met
pas fin au déni. Mais elle témoigne du refus d’une partie, encore
minoritaire, de la société turque de se laisser prendre en otage par
le récit nationaliste. Ce qui peut conduire à se trouver de nouveaux
héros: car, comme le relèvent en conclusion les deux journalistes, il
y eut aussi des justes turcs.

* Historien, auteur de la préface et de The Young Turks’ Crime Against
Humanity, Princeton University Press, 2012.

Hurriyet Daily News, Turkey
June 30 2013

Taksim stages exuberant gay pride march joined by Gezi protesters

ISTANBUL

A participant holds a rainbow flag during a gay pride parade in
central Istanbul June 30. REUTERS photo
After a month of protests, Istanbul’s Taksim Square braced today for
the 11th gay pride march as thousands of gay rights activists as well
as demonstrators who participated in Gezi Park gatherings marched on
the iconic Ä°stiklal Avenue.

Rainbow flags and banners supporting peace in Turkish, Kurdish,
Armenian and Arabic were displayed.

Some of the banners criticized the comparison of homosexuality with a
disease, as described by former Family Minister Aliye Kavaf. Another
banner read, “I asked Zeki Müren, who told me to resist,” in memory of
the legendary and flamboyant Turkish singer who became famous during
the `50s and, although he never admitted to being homosexual, changed
perceptions across Turkey by openly wearing women’s clothing and
make-up.

The protesters who have held forums in small neighborhood parks across
Istanbul also joined en mass in the pride march.

Deputies from the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP),
including Binnaz Toprak, who was the architect of an inquiry proposal
on the discrimination faced by the LGBT community at the Turkish
Parliament, Å?afak Pavey, Melda Onur and Hüseyin Aygün participated in
the event.

The demonstrators also chanted the name of Medeni Yıldırım, who was
killed in Diyarbakır’s Lice district after being shot by soldiers
during a protest denouncing the construction of a gendarmerie outpost.

German Greens co-chair Claudia Roth was also among the participants,
according to daily Hürriyet.

LGBT rights groups have been very active during the protests against
the demolition of Istanbul’s Gezi Park that have spread across the
country.

Hurriyet Daily News, Turkey
June 30 2013

General Staff sends all documents on 1938 Dersim massacre to Parliament

The General Staff has sent all the documents that it has concerning
the violent massacre against Alevi rebels in the eastern province of
Tunceli, formerly known as Dersim, to a parliamentary commission, the
head of the commission said.

Head of Parliament’s Petition Commission Mehmet DaniÅ?, also Çanakkale
deputy of the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP), told Anadolu
Agency on June 30 that the commission most recently received 5,000
pages of documents from the General Staff, which increased the total
number of pages of documents about the issue handed over by the
General Staff to 46,000.

Including the ones from the General Staff, the commission has so far
received almost 10,000 pages of documents concerning the Dersim
rebellion that occurred between 1936 and 1939 and resulted in the
death of 13,800 people.

The documents from the General Staff include maps, private letters,
official dispatches, intelligence reports, assessments, daily reports,
troop transfers, lists of fugitives, arms collected in Dersim,
propaganda activities, public order incidents in the related region,
security precautions and separatism and espionage activities.

Information about the capture of Seyit Rıza, the leader of the
uprising in Dersim and chief of an Alevi-Zaza tribe in the region, as
well as visits of then-prime minister Ä°smet Ä°nönü and then-chief of
general staff Fevzi Çakmak to the region are also cases within the
documents.

Documents which were handed over by the General Staff to the
Parliament in 2012 revealed that the Turkish army launched a black
propaganda campaign against Seyit Rıza. Among other things, the
campaign claimed that he was uncircumcised, and also tried to dissuade
support from the rebel leader by convincing the public that he was
originally Armenian.

`Prisoners who were sent to western provinces will be executed and the
uncircumcised boys will be given Armenian names and banished to
Christian countries. Unmarried girls of Tunceli will be married to
Turkish men and Turkish girls will be married to the men of Tunceli.
People of Tunceli will be replaced in the following spring month. The
fact that hanged Seyit Rıza was uncircumcised would look unpleasant in
the eyes of the public and that has become an inspiration and
propaganda material for opportunists…’ read one of the documents
issued on Dec. 30, 1937.

Another document issued on Sep 11, 1937, said Rıza had surrendered
with his two abettors to the military officials. The document said
Rıza was exhausted the day he surrendered and demanded to testify the
following day.
June/30/2013

Here is the City
June 30 2013

England or Germany? – Conflicting reports on Liverpool target
Mkhitaryan’s future

There have been conflicting reports on the future of Shakhtar Donetsk
attacking midfielder Henrikh Mkhitaryan this weekend.

For the past week liverpool-fc/”>Liverpool FC have been strongly
linked with snapping up Armenian international Henrikh Mkhitaryan and
at many points the deal has looked done.

You can understand why they are after the man dubbed `the Armenian
Zidane’. The attacking midfielder has had a stunning season in
Ukraine; bagging 25 goals in 29 matches from his position behind the
striker and his excellent campaign culminated in a one-man demolition
of Denmark as Armenia thrashed the Danes on home soil.

But Liverpool are not the only team obviously attracted by this
wonderful 24-year-old magician. Anzhi Makhachkala and Tottenham
Hotspur were also recently linked with the player but Borussia
Dortmund are considered to be The Reds main rival for his services.

One thing for sure is that Mkhitaryan wants an exit. He has failed to
turn up for the Ukrainian champions summer training camp and is
reportedly still in Yerevan deciding on his future.

Which, according to who you believe, has two differing confirmed destinations.

Reports in Russia would lead you to believe that a fee of £25 million
has been confirmed for the player with Liverpool. It was suggested
yesterday that he will fly out of Armenia for Liverpool within the
next 72 hours in order to sign on the dotted line and complete a
medical; becoming a Liverpool player in the process.

However if you think that is the end of it you have another thing
coming; because over here in the UK we feel slightly different about
his next location.

According to The Independent the playmaker has actually decided that
his future lies with Borussia Dortmund as the permanent replacement
for Mario Gotze of Bayern Munich.

A fee of around £20 million will take the talent to the Bundesliga
leaving Liverpool dumbfounded in what looked a simple pursuit.

This story comes courtesy of Sam Wallace, the papers Chief Football
Correspondent, and he usually gets his information right so perhaps
you are more inclined to believe him rather than the report of an
obscure Russian site you may never have heard of.

And if you do then unfortunately you are resigning yourself to the
thought of not having Mkhitaryan in your team next season.

But the writer of the report is Artur Petrosyan who is the
Editor-In-Chief at the site and specialises in Liverpool FC.

And according to his Twitter Liverpool fans should remain optimistic….

But if his move to Borussia Dortmund is the real destination you can
be sure one man will be thoroughly pleased.

Paul Merson; imagine him trying to spit that one out on Gillette
Soccer Saturday?

Press TV, Iran
June 30 2013

Yerevan film festival to present Iranian documentary

Iranian director Salem Salavati’s documentary The Last Winter has been
selected to contend for award at the 2013 Golden Apricot Yerevan Film
Festival.

The 77-minute film is an allegory in which the depicted family
represents those ones who are unable to change their resigned way of
life.

Salavati’s documentary is an expanded version of his previous short
Snowy Dreams with the same picturesque winter scenery, calm, realistic
life style and culture of Iranian Kurdistan.

The Last Winter is also programmed to be screened at the Focus on
Kurdish Film Section in the 2013 Karlovy Vary International Film
Festival in Czech Republic.

Established in 2004, Golden Apricot Yerevan Film Festival is annually
held and dedicated to the theme of Crossroads of Cultures and
Civilizations.

Academy Award winning Iranian director Asghar Farhadi’s A Separation
was the festival’s top winner in 2011.

The 2013 Golden Apricot Yerevan Film Festival is to take place from
July 7 to 14, 2013.