Author: Karakhanian Suren

WILL YOU UPROOT MY TONGUE?

A1+
[06:57 pm] 23 April, 2008

Today Armenian journalist Gayane Arustamian held a protest action near
the Matenadaran. She was accompanied by RA citizen Lala Aslikian. The
protesters voiced complaint against genocides and murders. Over ten
policemen watched the women’s action at the head of Ruben Melkonian.

The protesters were holding a poster with an English inscription,
"How can you prevent genocide?" At first the policemen didn’t interfere
with them as they didn’t understand the English sentence. Soon they
got indignant seeing the second poster with an Armenian inscription,
"What is the cost of the ten murdered people?" They finally flew into
a rage after the protesters raised the third poster: "April 24, 1915:
Taliat, Jemal, Enver. March 1, 2008: Robert, Serzh, Arthur."

"How dare you instill hatred? Don’t you feel ashamed of yourself,
you are my daughter’s age," said one of the policemen.

The moment the protesters were answering journalists’ questions,
the policemen grasped the posters and tore them off.

"You can tear off the posters but you cannot uproot my tongue,"
said Gayane Arustamian. She left the site in triumph.

ARMENIA TO EXPAND ACTIVITY WITHIN INTERNATIONAL ORGANIZATION OF LA FRANCOPHONIE

PanARMENIAN.Net
23.04.2008 14:26 GMT+04:00

/PanARMENIAN.Net/ Currently in Paris on a working visit, Armenia’s
Foreign Minister Edward Nalbandian met with Mr Abdou Diouf, Secretary
General of the International Organization of la Francophonie (OIF).

Mr Diouf express content with cooperation with Armenia and
appreciated the contribution of the RA Foreign Minister as a personal
representative of RA President in the OIF.

For his part, Minister Nalbandian said Armenia intents to expand
activity within International Organization of la Francophonie.

Armenia’s participation in the OIF summit due in Quebec in October
2008 and prospects of cooperation were also discussed, the RA MFA
press office reported.

PARTNERSHIP WITH MICROSOFT TO IMPROVE HAYPOST SERVICES

ARKA
April 23, 2008

YEREVAN, April 23. /ARKA/. Introducing modern technologies of Microsoft
will improve substantially the quality of services provided by HayPost
(Armenian Post), Microsoft RA Country Manager Grigor Barseghyan told
reporters after signing an agreement on cooperation between the two
companies – HayPost and Microsoft. The cooperation will allow HayPost
to introduce new services and modernize operations.

According to the document, Microsoft will conduct an exchange of
experience with the Armenian partner, introduce advanced technologies
and train Haypost personnel. The cost of the agreement is a commercial
secret. The document providing for an intensive discount policy –
up to 15% – has been signed for three years with a possibility for
further prolongation.

Grigor Barseghyan said HayPost will thus get an opportunity to apply
up-to-date information technologies which is a key factor for the
effective operation of a modern company. HayPost (Armenian Post)
is Armenia’s national postal operator which currently employs 4,000
people.

On November 30, 2006, the management of the company was placed in trust
of HayPost Trust Management, a Dutch company, for five years with
a possibility for further prolongation. The company is operating in
partnership with Post Finance International, a company specializing
in modernization and improvement of postal services in developing
countries. Microsoft Armenia Office opened in 2006.

ARMENIANS HONOUR THEIR PAINFUL PAST
Greg Mercer

Waterloo Record
e/339708
April 21 2008
Canada

It’s been 93 years since millions of Armenians were systematically
killed or dispersed by the soldiers of the Ottoman Empire.

But the descendants of survivors who gathered at the Armenian Community
Centre yesterday say they’re still waiting for justice.

They came together to mourn lives lost between 1915 and 1918, and to
talk about the politics of genocide — a term that is still contested
today, including inside some of Ontario’s school boards.

Canada officially considers what happened to the Armenians as
genocide. Turkey, the modern successor to the Ottoman Empire, does
not. It argues that many of the estimated 1.5 million Armenians
who died were killed by decidedly un-sinister causes, like disease
or starvation.

"What keeps the emotional and psychological wounds open is that the
Turkish government still denies this happened," said Harout Manougian,
a University of Waterloo engineering student. Manougian said his
great-grandfather, an evangelical pastor, was tortured and killed by
the Turks in 1915.

Cambridge MP Gary Goodyear said Turkey continues to lobby within
Canada in favour of its view of what happened to the Armenians so
many years ago. Most recently, the Toronto public school board was
pressured to drop references to the Armenian case in its course on
the history of genocide, he said.

"We cannot let our guard down on this issue," Goodyear told the crowd,
to loud applause. "There remains a tremendous amount of resistance."

Ontario became home to many survivors of the genocide. Georgetown
was the site of a school for 109 orphaned Armenian boys, who in the
1920s were trained as farm labourers.

Many of the few hundred Armenian-Canadian families who live in Waterloo
Region can trace their roots to victims of the genocide.

Yesterday, those descendants were adamant their history will never
be forgotten.

They crowded into the hall to sing the Armenian national anthem,
read poems and watch a documentary about the life of Turkey’s "hidden
Armenians." Those Armenians practise their Christianity in secret,
fearing reprisals from the Muslim majority.

On stage, the crowd laid flowers around a foam replica of a monument
to the genocide that stands in Armenia.

Outside, a choir stood beside a granite "mountain" marking the symbolic
stand made by a group of Armenians against the Turks, and sang requiems
for their "martyrs."

"We will never stop talking about the genocide," said Saro Sarmazian,
president of the local youth wing of Armenian national committee.

"We will simply never forget."

And they will fight efforts at every turn to rewrite historical texts,
they said.

"Let us remind the Turks that we will not sit idly by in Canada as they
try to manipulate history," said local business person Greg Buzbuzian,
master of ceremonies for the event.

He said his grandmother was left an orphan by Turkish soldiers, who
"annihilated" her family.

History professor Isabel Kaprielian-Churchill, the guest speaker,
told the crowd she grew up without grandparents, aunts or uncles. They
were all killed in the genocide, she said.

"The truth shall prevail," she said.

The walls of the hall were decorated with photocopies of Canadian
newspapers from the 1915, with stories reporting the Armenian
massacres.

But many here were wondering why it took so many years for the
severity of those killings to be officially recognized, as Canada’s
Senate did in 2002 and House of Commons did in 2004.

MARTUN CHOLAKHIAN PASSED AWAY

A1+
21 April, 2008

Armenia’s best basketball coach of all times Martun Cholakhian deceased
at the age of 71 in the result of a grave illness. The Armenian
basketball team has had great achievements due to Cholakhian’s talent
and hard work.

At the head of Martun Cholakhian Abovian’s "Hatis" twice won the USSR
Cup and participated in the European Cup meetings ranking among the
best eight teams.

The Armenian Basketball Federation coveys condolences to Cholakhian’s
family over the irreparable loss.

AMBASSADOR OF TURKMENISTAN CONVEYS COPY OF HIS CREDENTIALS TO RA MINISTER OF FOREIGN AFFAIRS

Noyan Tapan
April 18, 2008

YEREVAN, APRIL 18, NOYAN TAPAN. Receiving Shohrat Jumaev, the
newly-appointed Ambassador of Turkmenistan, on the occasion of
conveying the copy of his credentials, Edvard Nalbandian, the RA
Minister of Foreign Affairs, mentioned that warm relations have
been established between Armenia and Tukmenistan from the very
beginning. The MInister expressed hope that the Armenian-Turkmenian
relations will develop and strengthen still more in future.

In his turn the Ambassador expressed his willingness for contributing
to the deepening of the relations between Armenia and Turkmenistan
in all the spheres.

According to the information provided to Noyan Tapan by the Press
and Information Department of the RA Ministry of Foreign Affairs,
the interlocutors touched upon the regional issues, the current state
of the Armenian-Turkmenian trade-economic relations and the prospects
of their further development during the meeting.

Certificate: Shohrat Jumaev was born in 1975 in the city of
Ashkhabad. He graduated from the State University of Romania after
Babesh-Boyol receiving a lawyer’s specialization. Between February
2000 and November 2001 he worked as attache, third secretary in the
Embassy of Turkmenistan in the Republic of Moldova (city Kishnev),
then worked in the Department of the European countries of the
Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Turkmenistan until 2007 as a third,
then second secretary. In 2007-2008 he was the first Secretary in
the Embassy of Turkmenistan in the Republic of Armenia and performed
duties of Charge d’Affaires of Turkmenistan in RA. He was appointed
Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of Turkmenistan to
the Republic of Armenia on March 20, 2008. He masters the Russian,
Romanian and English languages.

He is married and has two children.

TURKEY DEBATES FREE SPEECH

PR-Inside.com (Pressemitteilung)
April 18 2008
Austria

ISTANBUL, Turkey (AP) – "Happy is he who says: ‘I am a Turk.

The nationalist motto was coined by Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the
founder of modern Turkey. Its display in schools, hospitals and
military barracks helps explain why Turkey is struggling to meet a
key demand for membership in the European Union: overhaul of a law
that bars insults to Turkish identity.

On Friday, Parliament’s justice panel began debating a government
proposal to soften Article 301 of Turkey’s penal code, which
has been used to prosecute Nobel laureate Orhan Pamuk and other
intellectuals. Europe says the law should be abolished because it
restricts freedom of speech; many Turks resent what they view as
interference in their affairs.

The governing party of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan is
expected to approve the amendment of Article 301 when Parliament
votes as early as Tuesday. But critics say the government plan is a
halfhearted gesture, an attempt to placate staunch opponents of the
law without alienating its supporters.

Cengiz Aktar, an EU expert at Bahcesehir University in Istanbul, said
he believed the expected amendment would have a "minimal" impact on
Turkey’s bid to join the European club. He also noted there were at
least 20 other articles in Turkey’s penal code that have "the same
mentality of killing freedom of speech.

Under Article 301, the maximum sentence for denigrating Turkish
identity or insulting the country’s institutions is three years in
prison. The government proposal would reduce the time to two years,
triggering a suspension for first-time offenders.

Under the plan, the president would have to approve prosecutions under
Article 301. Also, the article would refer to the crime of denigrating
the "Turkish nation," a term viewed as more narrow than the vague
"Turkishness.

In a statement, New York-based Human Rights Watch said the law should
be repealed.

"The government’s proposal merely tinkers with the wording of the law,
while maintaining its most problematic features," the group said. It
cited other legal restrictions on freedom of speech, including Turkey’s
anti-terror law and laws on crimes against the national founder.

Ataturk designed his nationalist motto in an effort to build a strong
Turkey from the ashes of the Ottoman Empire, a network of territories
in Europe, Africa and the Middle East that had been unified by force
or in the name of Islam. He largely succeeded, amid war, slaughter
and pressure from Western powers.

Today, many Turks believe their nationhood faces the same threats that
it did nearly a century ago. The military has etched Ataturk’s slogan
on hillsides in southeast Turkey, where it is fighting an insurgency
by Kurdish separatists.

Many students must intone the Turkish-language version _ "Ne mutlu
Turkum diyene" _ before class. The slogan is inscribed below statues
of Ataturk at universities, football stadiums and roadsides.

The opposition Nationalist Action Party has launched a television ad
campaign against any changes to Article 301 that includes the refrain:
"Wake up Turkey! It is time for unity.

Faruk Bal, deputy chairman of the Party, said the weakening of the
law would allow Kurdish rebels to generate propaganda against the
Turkish state with impunity.

Supporters of Article 301 also say some European countries, including
Germany, Italy and the Netherlands, have similar laws. Opponents,
however, point out that Turkey enforces its version far more
rigorously.

Hrant Dink, an ethnic Armenian journalist who was gunned down in 2007,
was prosecuted under Article 301 for referring to the mass killings
of Armenians by Turks in the early 20th century as "genocide.

Dink’s alleged killer was a teenager influenced by extreme
nationalists, and mourners attributed his death to the atmosphere
of animosity surrounding the journalist’s legal problems. Dink had
received numerous death threats.

Erdogan’s government has been criticized for slow progress on EU-backed
reforms, and at home his Islamic-oriented party is distracted by
a prosecutor’s efforts to ban it for allegedly violating secular
principles crafted by Ataturk.

Murat Belge, a leftist writer who has been prosecuted under Article
301, suggested the Turkish state should absorb insults or criticism
without resorting to law retaliation.

"Somebody who overturns the basic principles of decency punishes
himself," he said in an interview with Associated Press Television
News. "Why take him seriously.

OUTSOURCING GIVES PRIVILEGES TO THE IT SECTOR OF ARMENIA

arminfo
2008-04-16 12:40:00

ArmInfo. Outsourcing gives privileges to the IT sector of Armenia,
the leader of the project Competitive Private Sector in Armenia
[CAPS] Hayli Aleksander told ArmInfo correspondent. He also added
that production of information technologies based on outsourcing
(implementation of order from abroad) is one of the best decisions
for a country with transitional economy.

He also added that the world leaders in the sphere of information
technologies are interested in a certain level in making orders
to the companies of the "third world". He also recalled that for
this reason in February and March the CAPS held the competition of
marketing programmes of Armenian IT companies for their trip to
Silicon Valley Road Show in June of the current year. Over their
visit Armenian producers will have an opportunity to present their
programmes to their American counterparts, as well as potential
customers and investors. "The competent marketing policy may make
outsourcing beneficial and our activity in the IT sector of Armenia
is directed to it’, – the head of CAPS emphasized.

POLITICIANS NOT TO BE ARMED WITH IRON STICKS
Gevorg Haroutyunyan

Hayots Ashkhar Daily
Published on April 16, 2008
Armenia

Interview with HAMLET HAROUTYUNYAN, Head of "Artsakh" Compatriots’
Union and member of the RPA parliamentary faction

"Mr. Haroutyunyan, in the interview published in the Russian
‘Novoe Izvestia’ periodical, LTP, who acts as the leader of the
Armenian political opposition, considers that his principal task is
to form a certain public opinion so as ‘these authorities will not
be recognized’. How do you estimate such an attitude by the Armenian
citizen?"

"The allegation that L. Ter-Petrosyan is the leader of the opposition,
is an insult to our internal political domain. There are dozens of
parties operating on the pro-opposition front, and their addresses are
quite different. Viewing the opposition from the point of view of one
single leader, one single idea and one single goal is a fundamental
mistake. Such mentality eventually results in totalitarianism.

In the internal political domain of our country, it’s not only the
representatives of radical opposition that deny everything because
they haven’t assumed the leadership of the state. The opposition
also consists of parties which are not extremist and which criticize
the activity of the authorities objectively, parties which are
constructive in their manifestations and are guided by the interests
of the state and the people versus complying with the instructions
of some international organizations.

Those who form a public opinion for preventing the authorities from
being recognized again rely on external intervention and demand new
parliamentary elections. I don’t think the decision to dissolve
or maintain the National Assembly should be made arbitrarily. If
there’s someone who has just woken up and is late for the March 12
elections or, has changed his mood, it doesn’t mean the Parliament
should be dissolved.

This, actually, is the regular attempt of destabilizing the internal
political situation rather than a desire of being represented in
the National Assembly. The most recent parliamentary elections were
held just eleven months ago. If they were ready for representing
the opposition, they should have participated in the whole process
instead of quitting the political arena at some stage of the electoral
struggle. Leading our country and people to instability from time to
time and keeping them in tension is the desire of our enemies.

In his interviews, L. Ter-Petrosyan hints that 150 people among his
proponents have been arrested, and they are political prisoners. Only
the court may decide whether the given act constitutes a criminal
offence or a political activity. A person who has committed a criminal
offence cannot be considered a victim of political persecutions.

The March 1 events are not related to politics and have nothing in
common with it. What happened is an attempt of staging a coup d’état
which was supposed to change Armenia’s attitude towards Artsakh. The
coup was organized by people who thought about Armenia from the point
of view of the Azeris, Turks and Americans. A political struggle
presupposes political methods. The one who struggles against his own
state with Mausers and iron sticks cannot be a politician. This is
why, L. Ter-Petrosyan says no single word about the March 1 events
in the interview to ‘Novoe Ivvestia’ periodical. Instead, he tries
to create an opinion that the detainees are peaceful protesters and
not people who provoked clashes with and launched an armed attack
against the law enforcers or committed plunders. Such demonstrations
and marches could not have been spontaneous; they were very properly
organized. There are no foremen, centurions and high captains, no arms
and ammunitions in demonstrations organized spontaneously. Neither
are there acoustic or musical tools of influence used there.

When L. Ter-Petrosyan says he wants to form a certain public
opinion with the purpose of preventing the Armenian authorities
from being recognized, it’s the same as the non-recognition of the
NKR and its authorities, the right of the NKR people to national
self-determination; it’s the same as the non-recognition of Artsakh
as an inseparable part of Armenia."

"What do you think the United States initiative of authorizing Congress
hearings on the internal political situation of Armenia could mean?"

"The discussion of any country’s problem by the legislative body of
another country is considered as a gross intervention in the domestic
affairs of that country. The only trouble of all the international
structures and the states ‘interested’ in the internal situation
of our country consists in seeking ways towards the solution of the
Artsakh issue to the detriment of the Armenians.

Unfortunately, not only separate politicians but also parties yield
to such efforts. And lying behind all these superficial hearings is
the Artsakh issue which is no longer concealed; it is being openly
discussed. The hearings to be organized by the Congress pursue the
same goal"

I call on everybody to be sober because in case of losing Artsakh
we’ll completely lose Armenia. In the course of our history, we,
Armenians, have always lost our statehood in such circumstances."

–Boundary_(ID_2P3hl18Q604av VGP5rgrxw)–

REPRESENTATIVES OF ARMENIA COMPETE UNSUCCESSFULLY AT BEGINNING OF WOMEN’S EUROPEAN WEIGHT-LIFTING CHAMPIONSHIP

Noyan Tapan
April 16, 2008

LIGNANO, APRIL 16, NOYAN TAPAN. Female weight-lifters in the weight
categories of 53 and 58 kg competed at the European Weight-Lifting
Championship in Lignano (Italy) on April 15. In the 53 kg category,
Liana Manukian took 7th place, Tehmine Karapetian – 9th place. In
the 59 kg category, Anna Govelian was 7th, while Heghine Yepremian
took 9th place.