Author: nina hovnanian

TRANSPORT BOYCOTT CAMPAIGN LAUNCHED

13:20 ~U 20.07.13

By means of Facebook, the Transport Boycott action group is calling
on passengers to continue paying AMD 100 fares.

The group has launched a leaflet distribution campaign.

The civil activists Arsen Ohanyan, David Harutyunyan and Sonya Msryan
have reportedly been brought to the Mashtots police department.

The press service of the RA Police informed Tert.am that Arsen Ohanyan
was the only person summoned. Citizens complained he was fastening
leaflets to doors.

The police press service reports that Ohanyan will be informed of
the order of posting leaflets and can go home.

Armenian News – Tert.am

DES ENTREPRENEURS BIELORUSSES ET ARMENIENS SE RASSEMBLERONT A EREVAN CET AUTOMNE

ARMENIE

Erevan sera l’hôte d’un forum d’affaires armeno-bielorusse cet automne
a declare le vice-president de l’assemblee nationale Eduard Sharmazanov
lors d’une conference de presse resumant les resultats d’une session
de la Commission interparlementaire armeno-bielorusse qui s’est tenue
du 7 au 14 juillet a Minsk.

Il a dit que des representants de la Chambre de Commerce et d’Industrie
et des entrepreneurs bielorusses se rendront a Erevan en Septembre
ou Octobre pour assister a l’evenement.

Eduard Sharmazanov a dit que les legislateurs tant armeniens et
bielorusses ont souligne que les relations economiques et commerciales
entre les deux pays sont a la traîne de leur dialogue politique.

“Pour combler cette lacune, il a ete decide de creer une
sous-commission dans le cadre de la commission interparlementaire
pour developper les liens commerciaux et economiques entre les pays”,
a-t-il ajoute.

samedi 20 juillet 2013, Stephane ©armenews.com

20,000 FOOD BASKETS DELIVERED TO ALEPPO, SOCIAL AFFAIRS MINISTER SAYS

Jul 18, 2013

Damascus, (SANA)- The Higher Committee for Relief discussed Thursday
means to deliver aid to the provinces of Hasaka, Raqqa and Aleppo,
in addition to applying new mechanisms to provide help to affected
citizens.

Minister of Social Affairs, Kinda al-Shammat, stressed that the
Committee has already delivered 20,000 food baskets, in addition to
health baskets and milk for kids, to the families affected by the
terrorist groups’ acts in Aleppo.

She pointed out that certain alternatives are being studied to help
run aid convoys to Hasaka province after the armed terrorist groups
have blocked the delivery of aid to many areas in the province.

Al-Shammat added that the Committee will run aid convoys bound to
Raqqa after having inspected data on the categories in need for aid.

With the aim to make sure that the aid is delivered to worthy
beneficiaries, al-Shammat said, the Committee will apply new methods,
including a unified ‘relief card’.

This method will be soon applied in Aleppo as the relief card will
include data that would help limit the number of displaced families
and their temporary residential places.

Minister of Social Affairs said the Ministry has already completed
collecting data for 100,000 families to be provided financial
assistance, which will be done in the framework of the agreement signed
between the Ministries of Social Affairs and Local Administration
and the UN High Commission for Refugees.

Director of Planning Department at the Local Administration Ministry,
Rafah Breidi, pointed out that the current number of shelter centers
where displaced families are staying is 846 spread in different areas.

She referred to a signed agreement between the Ministry and the
High Commission for Refugees and the International Organization for
Migration to prepare 350 new temporary residential centers by the
end of 2013.

H. Said

URBAN RENEWAL TO COMPLICATE RETURN OF MINORITY PROPERTIES

Today’s Zaman, Turkey
July 19 2013

Historical Armenian houses in the Kale neighborhood of MuÅ~_ are being
demolished by the state as part of an urban renewal project. (Photo:
Ä°HA)

19 July 2013 /Ä°PEK UZUM, Ä°STANBUL

Minority communities seeking to reclaim their confiscated properties
are concerned over a recent urban renewal project, a nationwide
government scheme to reinforce buildings against earthquakes, stating
that the new project will make the process of returning the properties
of minorities more complicated.

As the government is intensifying efforts to complete a giant urban
renewal project across the country as soon as possible, minorities, who
have already experienced many bureaucratic and procedural difficulties
in their struggles to reclaim their properties that were confiscated
by the state in the early years of the Turkish Republic, fear that
urban renewal will further complicate the process.

Real Estate Law Association President Ali Guvenc Kiraz, who spoke to
Today’s Zaman, warned that thousands of title deed certificates will
be reorganized during the urban renewal process, adding that access
to registries of deeds will be much more difficult as plots of land
will be divided and their ownerships given to other parties.

In 2011 the Justice and Development Party (AK Party) adopted
an amendment to make it possible to return property belonging to
religious minorities that had been seized by the state decades
earlier. The amendment, adopted on Aug. 27, 2011, added a temporary
Article 11 to Turkey’s Law on Foundations No. 5737, stipulating
the return of property seized from minorities. The foundations
were given a year to file applications. Despite this amendment,
minorities still have difficulties reclaiming their properties as
the amendment only encompasses the properties of minority foundations
and not those of individuals. Furthermore, the amendment places the
onus of proving ownerships on the foundations but the foundations
have been experiencing problems as their properties were defined
using vague expressions such as “the house next to Kirkor’s house”
in Ottoman-era records. The state doesn’t accept the records including
these expressions as valid.

Garo Paylan, an activist working for an Armenian civil society
organization, told Today’s Zaman that the state is demolishing
minorities’ properties and houses under the public renewal project,
pointing to the demolition of Kale neighborhood in MuÅ~_ province as
an example. Paylan said historic Armenian houses in Kale in MuÅ~_
are being demolished and replaced with modern houses built by the
Housing Development Administration of Turkey (TOKÄ°) as part of the
urban renewal project. “Because the houses were known to have belonged
to Armenians, the state’s Cultural and Natural Heritage Preservation
Board neglected to register these houses as a cultural heritage.

History is being demolished in MuÅ~_ currently,” Paylan said.

The Armenian Kale neighborhood was declared an urban renewal site in
a Cabinet decision on Oct. 21, 2012. TOKÄ° and the MuÅ~_ Municipality
signed a protocol for urban transformation projects in the neighborhood
on July 2 under which TOKÄ° will build apartments on 11 hectares of
land in the neighborhood.

Speaking to Today’s Zaman, Turkish-Armenian journalist Hayko Bagdat
harshly criticized the urban renewal project in MuÅ~_, stating:
“The state seized the properties with a racist motivation over the
past decades. Now, minorities face many difficulties try to reclaim
what used to belong to them. The state should adopt the necessary
regulations to return all the properties of minorities. The demolition
of Armenian houses in MuÅ~_ because they are not under protection is
an insult to the history of mankind. Armenians are also part of this
country. Their culture heritage should also be preserved by the state.

We should defend our cultural heritage together.”

“For instance Akdamar Church [on the island of Akdamar on Lake Van]
belongs to us [Armenians] but we have to apply for special permission
from the state to hold a religious ceremony in the church. This is
nonsensical. Adopting a regulation to resolve such problems is not
very difficult. It can be done very easily but nothing will happen
until the state’s mentality changes,” he added.

The confiscation of properties of minority foundations dates back to
the early days of the Turkish Republic. The 1936 Law on Foundations,
known as the 1936 Declaration, ordered all foundations to submit a
property declaration listing immovable and other properties owned by
each and every foundation. Following the death of the nation’s founder
Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, those property declarations were forgotten.

When the Cyprus problem escalated in the 1970s, the General
Directorate of Foundations asked non-Muslim foundations to resubmit
their regulations. Yet those foundations did not have such regulations
because of a practice during the Ottoman Empire where such foundations
could only be established by individual decrees of the sultan of the
day. After receiving a negative response from these foundations, the
General Directorate of Foundations made a ruling that the declarations
of 1936 would be considered their regulation. Unless these declarations
did not carry a special provision entitling the foundation to acquire
immovable property, the General Directorate expropriated all immovable
property acquired after 1936.These expropriation acts were in violation
of both the Lausanne agreement and property rights.

EXPERT SAYS PETITION DEMANDING RESIGNATION OF ARMENIAN DIASPORA’S LEADER WON’T SUCCEED

Vestnik Kavkaza, Russia
July 19 2013

19 July 2013 – 4:40pm

The petition demanding the resignation of the head of the Russian
Union of Armenians, Ara Abramyan, will not lead to real changes in
the body, deputy head of the Caucasus Institute Sergey Minasyan says.

The petition was launched previously on Change.org. The authors of
the petition say that under Abramyan the body has never voiced any
concern about the actual problems the Armenian diaspora is facing
in Russia, but has always interfered in Armenia’s internal affairs,
acting in Russia’s interest.

“I don’t think that this petition will have any consequences,”
Minasyan says.

“I can hardly imagine that Abramyan will abandon his post in the
organization, which is sponsored mainly by him,” the expert adds.

AZERI FM WELCOMES IRAN’S MEDIATION IN KARABAKH DISPUTE

Fars News Agency, Iran
July 19 2013

TEHRAN (FNA)- Azerbaijan’s Foreign Minister Elmar Mammadyarov
underlined that his country welcomes Iran’s proposal for the settlement
of the territorial dispute between Azerbaijan and Armenia over the
Nagorno-Karabakh region.

“Baku wants the process of settling the dispute to begin with
withdrawal of Armenian forces from the occupied territory,” the Azeri
foreign minister said on Thursday.

He noted that the efforts by the so-called Minsk Group have so far
been in vain.

Last week, Iranian Ambassador to Baku Mohsen Pakayeen blasted the OSCE
(Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe) Minsk group
which allegedly spearheads efforts in settling the territorial dispute
between Azerbaijan and Armenia over the Nagorno-Karabakh region for
its inaction in resolving the issue.

“The members of the Minsk Group which are a number of trans-regional
states are not interested in settling the dispute and they see no
interests in solving it,” Pakayeen said.

“The Minsk Group has not yet made any move and has only held some
meetings whose results were clear even before holding them,” he added.

Pakayeen underlined that the settlement of the dispute is merely
possible through the participation of the regional states.

Armenia and Azerbaijan remain officially at war over Karabakh and
the dispute is a major source of tension in the South Caucasus region
wedged between Iran, Russia and Turkey.

No country – not even Armenia – officially recognizes Karabakh as an
independent state.

The rebel region has been controlled by ethnic Armenians since it
broke free of Baku’s control after a fierce war in the early 1990s
that killed 30,000 people.

In November 2010, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad voiced Tehran’s
readiness to help resolve the territorial dispute between Azerbaijan
and Armenia over the Nagorno-Karabakh region.

“We believe that the Karabakh issue will be resolved through dialogue
and the commitment of both sides to justice, and Tehran is ready to
negotiate with them within this framework,” Ahmadinejad said in a
joint press conference with his Azeri counterpart at the time.

ARMENIA SUSPENDS TRAFFIC ON SECTION OF YEREVAN-TBILISI HIGHWAY AFTER SHOOTING FROM AZERI SIDE – OFFICIAL

Interfax, Russia
July 18, 2013 Thursday 10:03 AM MSK

YEREVAN. July 18

The Armenian Defense Ministry reports that shots were fired from
the Azerbaijani side in the direction of the Yerevan-Tbilisi highway
which had to be closed down temporarily.

“The Azerbaijani side violated the ceasefire by opening fire in
the direction of Armenian positions. Single shots were made in the
direction the highway. Now the situation is calm,” Armenian Defense
Ministry press secretary Artsrun Ovannisian said to reporters.

The Armenian media report that fire was opened on Tuesday evening and
on Wednesday on the section near the village of Baganis in northeast
Armenia.

“Given the developments a section of the Yerevan-Tbilisi highway was
temporarily closed and traffic organized along an alternative route.

By now traffic has been restored,” head of the Baganis village
administration Narek Saakian said to journalists.

NAGORNO-KARABAKH READY TO OPPOSE ANY ATTACK BY AZERBAIJAN – PRESIDENT

Interfax, Russia
July 18, 2013 Thursday

YEREVAN. July 18

Azerbaijan will be unable to take Nagorno-Karabakh by surprise
if it decides to attack it, Bako Saakian, the president of the
self-proclaimed Nagorno-Karabakh republic, said in an interview
published in the Armenian newspaper Azg.

“Naturally, the Nagorno-Karabakh defense army is ready to confront any
incursions by the enemy, including the neutralization of a blitzkrieg
attempt,” Saakian said.

“Nevertheless, I should point out that this scenario is simply
impossible for a number of reasons. We have a powerful defense system
capable of curbing any assault,” he said.

If Azerbaijan attacks Nagorno-Karabakh, the war “will turn into a
patriotic one,” Saakian said. “The entire Nagorno-Karabakh population
and all Armenians will take part in it. A blitzkrieg in this case is
simply impossible,” he said.

va cm

———-

Nagorno-Karabakh ready to oppose any attack by Azerbaijan – president
(Part 2)

Yerevan

Azerbaijan will be unable to take Nagorno-Karabakh by surprise
if it decides to attack it, Bako Saakian, the president of the
self-proclaimed Nagorno-Karabakh republic, said in an interview
published in the Armenian newspaper Azg.

“Naturally, the Nagorno-Karabakh defense army is ready to confront any
incursions by the enemy, including the neutralization of a blitzkrieg
attempt,” Saakian said.

“Nevertheless, I should point out that this scenario is simply
impossible for a number of reasons. We have a powerful defense system
capable of curbing any assault,” he said.

If Azerbaijan attacks Nagorno-Karabakh, the war “will turn into a
patriotic one,” Saakian said. “The entire Nagorno-Karabakh population
and all Armenians will take part in it. A blitzkrieg in this case is
simply impossible,” he said.

Azeri military expert Uzeir Jafarov suggested that Armenia is
concerned about Azerbaijan’s growing military power. “Armenia perfectly
understands that the powerful force that Azerbaijan possesses now will
lead to a resolution of the Nagorno-Karabakh problem with lightning
speed,” Jafarov told Interfax in commenting on Saakian’s remarks.

“The fact that they regularly make such statements shows that they are
sure that Armenia’s losses will be quite impressive. No fortifications
and no enemy personnel can withstand the hardware Azerbaijan possesses
today,” he said.

“They lack troops in the trenches today,” Jafarov said. “Draft soldiers
and servicemen from Armenia are being transferred to Nagorno-Karabakh
occupied by Armenia today so that at least they could be deployed at
the outposts,” he said.

“The end of 2013 or beginning of 2014 is likely to be remembered as
the restoration of Azerbaijan’s territorial integrity,” he said.

va mk

IF IT’S BROKE, DON’T FIX IT

Friday, July 19th, 2013

The confluence: clean water, dirty water

BY GAREN YEGPARIAN

Of course the old saw actually goes “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”

But in the topsy-turvy world that seems to be the Republic of Armenia
(RoA), the way I have this article titled seems to be the way things
are done. How else would you explain what one sees on YouTube in
this video?

The situation is this. There’s a mining operation run by Ler-Ex near
a watercourse, the Geghee stream. Naturally, there’s a tailings pile
(“tailings” is the term for the waste, non-metal-bearing earth that is
left over from a mining operation). This pile of waste seems to have
been accumulated in what used to be the Geghee’s streambed. Wisely,
the miners seem to have shunted the stream aside through a pipe to
have its water circumvent the often toxic pile of tailings (though
whether this was done legally, with government authorization is
unknown at this point). So far, so good.

The Geghee’s course is such that it and the Voghjee stream join. At
this confluence, we’re treated to a disturbing sight. Voghjee’s waters
look normal colored, perhaps a bit turbid because the turbulent water
is churning up silt (see picture). In contrast, Geghee’s waters look
opaque and are a disgusting-looking milky brown-yellow? How could
that be? These streams are draining adjoining canyons.

One of the pipes breaks

It turns out there’s been an accident of some sort around the mine.

The pipe shunting Geghee’s water is broken in at least four places that
activists were able to document in the video above (see pictures). Of
course, no one seems to be addressing the problem, leaving any observer
to wonder if this wasn’t intended to be a cover-up. What’s happening
is that part of Geghee’s water is now finding its way back to its
original course, right into the tailings dump (see picture)! This
water then percolates into that waste. But it also has to escape
somewhere, right? Well, guess what, there’s a pipe sticking out the
lower end of the tailings pile. Out of that pipe is flowing the now
filthy water that has an awful stench. This pipe appears to be made
of steel. “So what, of course it is!” you’re probably thinking. And
you’re right. Except… The pipe shunting the stream is some flimsy,
light blue colored plastic construct! No wonder it broke! This is
not the thick PVC pipe you may have seen being put in the ground in
a new housing development in the U.S.

The soaked tailings pile

This is what “mining” seems to look like in the RoA. This kind of
rapacious, reckless, “who-cares” approach to what might otherwise be
an important component of the economy is unacceptable in any country.

It will ultimately lead to a severe backlash as people start to
feel the adverse impacts on their health, ability to earn a living,
and environment.

>From the Diaspora, we must help tame this monster. The first step is,
of course, building awareness of this problem. Then we must support
the activists on the streets, the lawyers in the courtrooms, and
the legislators in the RoA parliament who are striving to remedy
this self-inflicted wound. Please follow the news to keep up with
developments about, and participate in a walkathon, scheduled for
September 22, that aims to raise awareness and funds. It is being
organized by Green Armenia, a group of concerned Armenians.

HRACHIA HARUTYUNIAN KEPT IN PSYCHIATRIC UNIT OF BUTYRKA PRISON

Friday,July 19

Hrachia Harutyunian, Armenian driver charged in the car crash at
Podolsk, is currentlly in the psychiatric unit of Butyrka prison,
Aysor.am was informed by Harutyunian’s lawyer Alexander Maltsev.

In his words, Harutyunian will remain there for 21 days, during
which all the required tests will be done. There is a TV set, proper
conditions, sufficient food.

“He is grateful to everyone for assistance,” Maltsev said.

According to the lawyer, Harutyunian was transferred to the psychiatric
unit because earlier he spoke about committing suicide.

“Such ideas occurred to him the day after the road crash. He has no
such thoughts now,”Maltsev noted. He added that Harutyunian will be
questioned for the third time on Monday.