15:34, 6 May, 2022
YEREVAN, MAY 6, ARMENPRESS. President Vahagn Khachaturyan held a meeting with Secretary of the Security Council Armen Grigoryan.
The presidency said in a statement that “views were exchanged around issues relating to security matters.”
The developments in Armenia ate the domestic affair of the country, but Moscow is interested in the soonest settlement of the situation, Kremlin Spokesman Dmitry Peskov told TASS.
“This is entirely an internal affair of Armenia,” Peskov said, referring to opposition rallies in the country.
He stressed that Yerevan is an ally of Moscow. “Armenia is our ally, it is our partner in several very important integration formats, Armenia is our great friend,” Peskov said.
“Therefore, of course, we are interested in seeing this period end in Armenia as soon as possible and a period of stability begin again, which will allow us to gradually move towards the implementation of thե trilateral agreements on Karabakh that were finalized with the participation of the President of Russia, as well as develop our bilateral relations, in general,” the Kremlin Spokesman said.
The opposition has been holding protests in Armenia since mid-April, demanding the resignation of Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan.
Jesús Calleja of Spanish Cuatro TV and his team have traveled to Armenia for the new episode of the Plana Calleja program. Featuring world-famous Armenian violinist Ara Malikian, the episode was broadcast on April 27.
During his trip on Planeta Calleja, Ara Malikian tell how his grandparents had to flee Armenia in 1915 because of the genocide that the country suffered: “It was a time of trouble all over the world, with the First World War and all against all, where no one controlled what was happening in Armenia. All my paternal family died except my grandfather. On my mother’s side, my grandfather was a kind of hero and saved his whole family.”
Speaking about his career as violinist, Ara says “I have been playing the violin since before I was born because my father was obsessed with me playing it.”
he further explains: “In his family there was a violin that would have saved my grandfather’s life during the genocide. When he was 15 they killed his entire family and he saved because a European band of musicians left him a violin so he could pretend to be part of the band. He pretended to be a musician and was able to run away with them.”
Castellani Art Museum of Niagara University debuted their documentary series SURVIVE, THRIVE, REMEMBER about the local Armenian community in Western New York on Sunday, April 24, the Armenian Film Society informs.
The series looks at both memories and stories from its historical peak in the area in the mid-20th century through to contemporary expressions of Armenian cultural heritage. The event hosted 141 attendees.
The episodes each focus on a different tradition practiced locally: learn about carpentry from Arthur Garabedian and the story behind the design of the front church doors for St. Sarkis; hear from Sonya Gregian and Rachele Aversa as they reflect on cooking together at St. Hagop and rice pilaf; see Ophelia Adjemian’s career as a seamstress, creating a traditional dance dress for her granddaughter, and the opening of her alteration business in Niagara Falls; and more stories from other members of the local Armenian community in the Buffalo-Niagara region.
The museum plans on adding into the series over the next year with additional videos focusing on the importance of survivor narratives and genocide stories passed down within families, Armenian classical music compositions, and more.
The series is now live on the museum’s YouTube channel.
Armenian police officers detained 20 activists of the opposition Homeland Party during a peaceful protest in Yerevan on Thursday, its spokesman Sos Hakobyan said on social media.
He stated that his teammates, who started an awareness campaign from Liberty Square, were taken to police stations during a campaign of civil disobedience on Arshakunyats Avenue through the use of brute force by special police forces.
“Some 20 participants of the campaign were detained. According to preliminary data, they were taken to the Malatia and Shengavit police departments,” he wrote.
“The guys are stronger than ever. There can be no turning back,” Hakobyan said.
PanARMENIAN.Net – National Assembly speaker Alen Simonyan believes peace in the region can only be achieved through the settlement of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, which should include the determination of the Artsakh status.
Simonyan made the remarks Wednesday, April 27 at a meeting with an OSCE/ODIHR delegation headed by Eoghan Murphy, who noted that they are in Armenia for presenting the final report prepared by the organization about the 2021 snap elections in the country.
At the meeting they talked about the importance of the parliamentary diplomacy in Armenia, also discussing the ways of government-opposition partnership and interaction in the parliaments of democratic countries.
The President of the Parliament touched upon the legislative amendments on the period followed the June 20, 2021 elections and issues relating to the current state of democracy in Armenia.
Referring to the security problems of the region, Simonyan said he highly appreciated the role of the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly as an important platform for strengthening the trust in the OSCE region, drawing the attention of the OSCE representative to the aggressive announcements by the representatives of Azerbaijan in the OSCE PA. He documented that it could be possible to reach peace in the region only through the settlement of the Nagorno Karabakh conflict, which should include the specification of the Artsakh status on the basis of the execution of the right to its self-determination by the people of Artsakh.
The sides also spoke about the international standards of the electoral systems, in this context observing the achievements recorded by the nationwide elections in Armenia.
Sunday marks the 107th anniversary of the Armenian Genocide, and the Los Angeles-based Armenian Genocide Committee is commemorating the day with music, talks and scholars.
Mihran Toumajan, the committee’s chair, said he hopes the virtual event will generate a deeper understanding of Armenian culture and history.
Watch the program on the committee’s Facebook page
“It’ll include interviews with activists who are working on the frontlines to raise awareness about the continued destruction and erasure of Armenian cultural heritage that’s happening right now in a part of the homeland known as Artsakh,” he said.
Southern California has the largest population of Armenians outside Armenia and the community here has been instrumental in raising awareness of the tragedy in recent years.
On Friday, Governor Gavin Newsom issued a proclamation declaring as “A Day of Remembrance of the Armenian Genocide” in the California.
“On April 24, 1915, the Ottoman Empire began its systematic genocide of Armenian people, a minority group that had long been treated as second-class citizens,” Newsom wrote. “Today and every day, let us recommit ourselves to making certain that we never forget the Armenian Genocide, and that we always speak out against hatred and atrocities anywhere they occur.”
On a national level, a bill introduced to the U.S. House of Representatives last week would fund education about the Armenian Genocide through the Library of Congress.
And a year ago, President Biden formally recognized the Ottoman Empire’s killing of an estimated 1.5 million Armenians as genocide. That recognition had long been sought by the Armenian community.
ArmInfo.The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Artsakh made statement on the occasion of holding the “5th Congress of the Azerbaijanis Worldwide” in Shoushi.
As the press service of the Artsakh MFA reports, the statement reads, in part:
“The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Artsakh considers extremely destructive the initiative to hold the “5th Congress of the Azerbaijanis Worldwide” in the Armenian town of Shoushi occupied by Azerbaijan, which includes obvious elements of Armenophobia and expansionism. Such an “initiative” is also an attempt to escalate tensions in the region. The Foreign Ministry of Artsakh strongly condemns the nationalist and aggressive policy of official Baku, which aims to torpedo and disrupt the peaceful settlement process of the Azerbaijani-Karabagh conflict.”
It should be noted that today the “5th Congress of Azerbaijanis Worldwide” opened in the Karabakh city of Shoushi. 400 representatives of diaspora organizations of Azerbaijan from 65 countries will participate in the congress. The first such congress was held in Baku in 2001.
There will be discussions on two main topics in the Congress: “Challenges facing the Azerbaijani diaspora in the post-war period” and “Contribution of the Azerbaijani diaspora to the restoration and reconstruction of Karabakh”.
Official Baku decided this time to hold a Congress in the occupied Karabakh region of Shoushi as a “symbol of a historic victory”. Some observers believe that by doing so, the Azerbaijani regime is more concerned with self-promotion than with the problems of the world’s Azerbaijanis.
Political analyst Hrant Melik-Shahnazaryan has commented on Tuesday’s meeting of Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan and Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow and their joint statement following it.
“During the long-prepared and now loudly-trumpeted meeting, Nikol Pashinyan managed to solve only one problem: Nagorno-Karabakh was referred to only once in the 30-clause statement,” he wrote on Facebook on Wednesday.
Whereas, Pashinyan said before the meeting that the talks would focus on the Artsakh issue, the analyst underscored.
“Have you read the joint statement of the two leaders? If so, it should have been clear to you that the Russian Federation no longer has any plans concerning Nikol. This resource for the Russians is already used up.
“Nikol is leaving. That’s the good news. The bad news is that Armenian society did not manage to save anything. Nikol handed over everything he was planning to surrender. They took exactly what they wanted from us,” he said.