Author: nina hovnanian

Armenia could be impacted by new potential economic crisis? – newspaper

March 02, 2013 | 07:57

YEREVAN. – Shockwaves were recorded in international markets on Friday
morning. And these were conditioned on the possible cuts in US budget
spending, and the not-so-promising indicators recorded in Chinese
economy, Haykakan Zhamanak daily reports.

`As a result, the raw material prices began to fall sharply at stock
exchanges. This is significant for Armenia in the sense that the
international prices for oil and copper are dropping.

The fall in the price of oil could result in a reduction of the
remittances being sent from Russia [to Armenia], as it occurred in
2009. This is important because the total amount of the remittances
incoming to Armenia is comparable with Armenia’s state budget.

And the drop in the prices of copper – and of non-ferrous metals, in
general – impacts Armenia’s foreign trade balance severely, since a
significant part of the goods being exported from Armenia are
non-ferrous metal ores,’ Haykakan Zhamanak writes.

– See more at:

Mediamax News Agency, Armenia
Feb 27 2013

`The Tankian effect’

by Ara Tadevosyan, Director of Mediamax

It’s already the second day that people speak about Serj Tankian more
than about Raffi Hovhannisyan. It’s quite natural that if there were
no elections and if Raffi Hovhannisyan hadn’t gained about 40% of
votes and hadn’t claimed that he was the real winner, Serj Tankian
wouldn’t send letters to the Armenian President.

I am quite sure that many of those who were inspired by Serj Tankian’s
letters are not the fans of System of a Down, and some have heard of
him for the first time. What’s the `secret’ then? How does it happen
that almost all TVs have read out excerpts from Serj Tankian’s first
critical letter?

I think the secret of the `Tankian effect’ is that he said things we
all think about but don’t speak out due to various reasons. When
saying `we’ I mean all those people who have numerous complaints but
stay out of the active political and civil struggle.

We stay out because we are afraid. We stay out because we are busy. We
stay out because we live in a small country where almost everybody
knows everyone. We stay out because each of us has reached some
success in his work and, realizing that we can’t reach big changes we
stay aside and try to succeed each in our own field.

If we talk about journalists (I don’t mean the openly oppositional
media outlets) let’s be honest with ourselves and admit that we can
criticize everyone. However, we will think dozens of times before
criticizing the Armenian President. This is what attracts people most
of all in Serj Tankian’s letters: there appeared a person who openly
says to the Armenian President: `Let me note you didn’t clearly answer
my questions’. Have you ever heard anyone saying something like this
to the Armenian President? The thing is not about how fundamental Serj
Tankian’s words are. The thing is that he allows himself asking such
questions. He is doing what we often want but don’t do.

Of course, in conditions of the Armenian political environment, the
style of Serj Tankian’s letters may seem impolite, but it is quite
acceptable for the Western culture, and we have to bear it in mind. I
believe Serj Tankian didn’t mean to insult the President.

I think after these letters Serj Tankian should at least apply for
Armenian citizenship, otherwise all his urges and advice will
depreciate. It’s clear that Tankian won’t quit music and won’t engage
in an active political activity in Armenia, but to be able to talk
about our problems now he must have our passport. It will be really
honest.

The Atlantic
March 1 2013

How Stalin Created Russia’s Modern Ethnic Conflicts

By Robert Coalson
Mar 1 2013, 2:45 PM ET

>From bizarre border policies to the forced deportation of ethnic
groups, Stalin oversaw the policies that gave rise to today’s Central
Asian strife.

Eighty-one-year-old Nikolai Khasig was born in Sukhumi in 1932. It was
just one year after Soviet dictator Josef Stalin stripped Abkhazia of
its short-lived status as a full-fledged republic of the USSR and made
it a region of Soviet Georgia.

At the end of 1936, Lavrenty Beria — at that time the head of the
Transcaucasia region and later the sadistic head of Stalin’s secret
police — invited the popular Abkhaz leader Nestor Lakoba to dinner at
his house in Tbilisi. Lakoba died suddenly — officially, of a heart
attack, but it was widely believed that the former revolutionary
comrade of Stalin’s had been poisoned.

In the repressions that began in 1937, the entire Abkhaz government
was arrested and subjected to show trials. Soviet archives later
revealed that Beria had ordered them all executed before the trials
even began. Collectivization came to Abkhazia with a vengeance. Soviet
publications began arguing that the Abkhaz were actually of Georgian
origin in the first place.

“Such violence, such humiliation, such abuse, such genocide,” Khasig
recalls. “Our people never experienced such things before.”

In a sense, World War II was something of a respite, but the work
begun in the 1930s continued as soon as the war was over. By that
time, Khasig was in high school.

“In 1945, after the end of the war, Abkhaz schools were shut down and
the policy of forced assimilation was begun,” he says. “Our children
— we ourselves — studied in the Georgian language and didn’t know a
single word [of Abkhaz]. We were simply cut off.”

When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, all this old resentment and
more surged to the surface.

In 1992, war broke out in Abkhazia — with Abkhaz separatists joined
in their struggle by representatives of other aggrieved Caucasus
nations such as Chechens, Circassians, Ossetians, and Cossacks.

The Abkhaz were also actively supported by the Russian military. An
estimated 8,000 people were killed and as many as 240,000 ethnic
Georgians were displaced.

After the 2008 war between Russia and Georgia, Abkhazia’s de facto
independence was recognized by Russia and a handful of other
countries. Georgia and most of the international community says the
region is occupied by Russia. Khasig, despairingly, describes Abkhazia
as “a Russian colony.”

Bizarre Border Policies, Wholesale Deportations

The guns of war flared elsewhere as well in the former Soviet Union in
the early 1990s. And these similar ethnic conflicts, many of which
were exacerbated by Soviet polices six decades earlier, have come to
be called “Stalin’s time bombs.”

Such conflicts, spanning from Central Europe to the intricate
patchwork of exclaves that comprises the borders of Central Asia, are
in many ways direct legacies of the shifting nationalities policies
that were often brutally implemented during the nearly 30 years that
Stalin towered over the Soviet Union.

These disputed places include the disputed ethnic-Armenian region of
Azerbaijan called Nagorno-Karabakh, Russia’s North Caucasus republic
of Chechnya, its neighboring republics, and the breakaway Moldovan
region of Transdniester.

>From bizarre border policies and the wholesale deportation of ethnic
groups to the mass importation of ethnic Russians to various regions,
Stalin’s policies created or aggravated conflicts that remain central
to understanding Eurasia today.

Under Soviet founder Vladimir Lenin — and later in the early years of
Stalin’s rule — the Soviet government argued that nationalism was the
bane of the imperial system. They tried to develop policies that would
transform the multinational Eurasian space into a unified Soviet,
socialist state.

“It was only by transforming the economic and social bases — and the
cultural basis, because [Stalin] paid a lot of attention to that — of
the nationalities that they would become fully integrated into a
single socialist state,” says Stephen Blank, a professor of national
security studies at the U.S. Army War College and the author of a book
on Stalin’s time as Soviet nationalities commissar. “And the
overwhelming thrust of his policies [was] to create that centralized,
socialist system and that, he believed, would answer the nationalities
problem.”

Terry Martin, director of the Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian
Studies at Harvard University and coauthor of “A State Of Nations:
Empire And Nation-Building In The Age Of Lenin And Stalin,” agrees,
but adds that the Soviets created problems from the beginning by
trying to draw borders too precisely along ethnic lines in places
where ethnic identities were still evolving.

“If they did anything that created ethnic conflict, they created
ethnic conflict by trying to draw the borders too precisely,” he says.
“That is, they created a lot of ethnic mobilization around borders in
the 1920s as people lobbied to get one border and lobbied various
people to identify with their nationality and not with another in
areas where nationality was very fluid, like Central Asia. Most of the
modern nationalities that we have [today] hadn’t even been formed
yet.”

According to Martin, as the Stalin era wore on and the Soviet Union
embarked on a phase of intense, centralized economic modernization,
the nationalities policy shifted.

“In the mid-1930s you start to get the notion of Russians as being the
first among equals,” he says. “And you get this kind of formalized
under the slogan of the ‘friendship of the peoples.’ So, at this
point, there is a friendship in which Russians are the big brother or
the dominant player.”

Less Bloody Than Previous Collapses

Historians are still arguing about many of the fateful decisions of
the Stalin era. Consider Nagorno-Karabakh, the ethnic-Armenian region
nestled in the heart of Azerbaijan. Paul Goble, who served as an
adviser on Soviet nationalities to U.S. Secretary of State James
Baker, says the region was given to Azerbaijan as a way of cementing
Moscow’s role as arbiter between Baku and Yerevan.

Martin believes the decision to give the territory to the Turkic
Azerbaijanis was made in part to mollify neighboring Turkey at a time
of Soviet geopolitical vulnerability.

And Russian ethnographer Anatoly Yamskov has argued the decision was
made so that shepherds could move between highland and lowland grazing
grounds without crossing a republican border.

Whatever the logic of its origins, Karabakh continues to be an
intermittent flashpoint in the Caucasus and has defined relations
between the South Caucasus countries (and their relations with Russia)
since the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Likewise, conflicts in the Georgian regions of Abkhazia, South
Ossetia, and Ajara have crippled Georgia’s post-Soviet development.
The same is true of Moldova’s Transdniester region and Russia’s
restive North Caucasus.

The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe has spent a
great deal of time and effort at resolving the conflicts since its
establishment as a permanent organization in 1994.

Although the conflicts stemming from Stalin’s time bombs have left
tens of thousands dead and hundreds of thousands displaced and have
drained the political and economic resources of many post-Soviet
countries, Martin points out that the collapse of the Soviet Union, so
far at least, has been less bloody and less violent than the collapse
of many other empires.

“If you compare it to the collapse of the British Empire in India,
again, the question is why were things so calm?” he asks. “If — as I
did once for a conference — you compare the collapse of the Russian
Empire in Kazakhstan to the collapse of the Soviet Union in
Kazakhstan, the question again was why did things go so calmly in
Kazakhstan.”

Such arguments are little comfort to people like Ludmila Cusariov.

In 1992, she was a teacher in the village of Cocieri. Although living
on the eastern bank of the Dniester River, Cocieri’s inhabitants
fought against the separatist forces of Transdniester. Cusariov’s
husband and uncle were killed in the fighting.

“My mother was also injured during this conflict,” she says. “They
bombed us and shot at us from two directions — from the villages of
Dubasari and Roghi. When the firing stopped from one direction, it
started from the other.”

It’s Time to Expose Azerbaijani Transgressions

Friday, March 1st, 2013

Azeri President Ilham Aliyev

BY HRANT APOVIAN

`If a single candle were lighted
for every murdered Armenian,
the light from these candles would be
brighter than that of the moon.’
Akram Aylisli

When the world starts to expose and vilify the State of Azerbaijan as
a country rife with human rights abuses, as a promoter of massacres in
its country, as an aggressor, and a warmonger, a state that imprisons
opposition members and journalists, then one can finally believe that
decency in foreign policy takes a front seat to considerations for
Azeri oil.

The latest chapter involving human rights abuses and creating popular
turmoil in Azerbaijan involves an Azeri writer who was stripped of his
honorary title as `the Peoples Writer’ awarded in 1998. He is being
harassed and vilified for writing a book where he reveals Azeri
massacres of Armenians. He had the courage to write that `This nation
– Armenia – was tired and exhausted from the violence but they never
stopped building their churches, writing their books and raising arms
to heaven appealing to their God.’

Transgressions by Azerbaijan date back to and started when Stalin
awarded Azerbaijan Nagorno Karabakh, an Armenian enclave for
centuries. During the years of occupation the people of Nagorno
Karabakh were subjected to abuses, massacres, and a policy of
extermination and depopulation to rid the enclave of its ethnic
population.

This policy culminated in a series of Armenian massacres within
Azerbaijan, notably in Sumgait, when the people of Nagorno Karabakh
opted for independence during the fall of the Soviet Union.

The massacres in Sumgait and other cities in Azerbaijan, which the
world chose to ignore were followed by a protracted war against the
people of Nagorno Karabakh and which was started by a fierce aerial
bombardment of population centers.

Four years later, after mass destruction and the infliction of 30,000
lives lost, Azerbaijan lost the war that it started. The OSCE
(Organization for the Security and Cooperation in Europe) Minsk Group
comprised of the USA, Russia, and France is trying to seek a peaceful
resolution of the conflict based on the right of self determination of
the people of Nagorno Karabakh. Azerbaijan is actively sabotaging and
blocking any peaceful resolution, becoming more and more intransigent
during the negotiations.

This is evidently a ploy by Azerbaijan to buy time, in the mistaken
belief that with time, it will gain legitimacy in the quest to
reconquer Nagorno Karabakh.

This is based on an Azerbaijani government sanctioned grand design to:

First: Rearm, spending a large portion of its oil revenue building a
better military machine. Azerbaijan is buying billions worth of
armaments from Russia, The USA, Belarus, Ukraine, Turkey, and Israel,
outspending Armenia five to one.

Second: Instilling hatred towards Armenians worldwide in its people.
Extraditing Sapharov, an Azeri officer who had murdered an Armenian
officer in cold blood during a NATO (North Atlantic Treaty
Organization) training event, and welcoming him as a national hero.

Third: Mounting a massive diplomatic campaign against Armenia,
accusing it of occupying Azeri lands, massacring Azeris in Khochalu,
where its inhabitants were granted safe passage out by Armenian forces
before attacking it. Azerbaijani propaganda is depicting the conflict
as a Muslim – Christian strife. This resulted last month, in an
anti-Armenian declaration by the Islamic Conference in Cairo, Egypt.

Fourth: Constantly violating the cease fire agreement across the
Azerbaijan – Nagorno Karabakh front, as well as the Azerbaijan –
Armenia front and refusing to remove snipers and initiating border
incursions that have so far killed many Armenian defense soldiers and
civilians.

Fifth: Targeting the Republic of Nagorno Karabakh as well as the
Armenian Diaspora worldwide, by vilifying our nation as the aggressor
and occupier with a systematic misinformation campaign. This includes
promoting anti Armenian sentiments and presenting the conflict as an
infringement on Azerbaijan’s territorial integrity. An anti-Armenian
White House petition was linked to the Heydar Aliyev Foundation, a
project headed by Azerbaijan President Ilham Aliev’s multibillionaire
wife, Mehriban Aliyeva.

Sixth: Conditioning a thaw in Armenia – Turkey relations and lifting
of an embargo on Armenia by Turkey on a favorable resolution for
Azerbaijan on the Nagorno Karabakh conflict. This is one major reason
Turkey reneged on its commitment on the ill fated Armenia – Turkey
Protocol agreement.

Seventh: Threatening to down civilian passenger aircraft if the
airport in Nagorno Karabakh is put into operation, to forcibly halt
planned commercial flights to Nagorno Karabakh.

Eighth: Trying to organize the Azeri Diaspora and spending millions
with public relation firms to legitimize and propagate an official
misinformation campaign worldwide orchestrated and funded by the
government of Azerbaijan.

Unfortunately, the threat of war is having an effect on the civilian
population of Nagorno Karabakh, which is trying to rebuild a war
ravaged country and has established a viable democratic government.
Belligerent declarations threatening war by both Azeri civilian and
military officials are constant. However, the West is reluctant to
chastise the government of Azerbaijan, and is exercising a policy of
appeasement. This emboldens the Azeri government to be more
intransigent and to test the will and physical resilience of Nagorno
Karabakh defense forces.

Furthermore, the world does not realize and the governing clique in
Azerbaijan cannot conceive, that this is a very dangerous course that
it is following. If Azeri forces were to attack, the push-back by
Nagorno Karabakh and Armenian forces would result in enormous loss of
life, destruction of the oil industry, turmoil in the Caucasus, and
can conceivably result in more territorial losses for Azerbaijan.

Armenia and Nagorno Karabakh have to take Azeri threats very
seriously. To rely on the West to restrain Azerbaijan is futile. If
Azerbaijan continues in its present course of action, blocking a
peaceful resolution of the conflict by grossly miscalculating the
success of the military option, Armenia and Nagorno Karabakh should
seriously consider pulling out of the negotiations and more actively
pursue the recognition of Nagorno Karabakh as an independent nation.

After all, time may be on the side of Azerbaijan. Its massive military
buildup is becoming seriously ominous to a dangerous extent. The
millions spent on its propaganda machine are beginning to have an
effect, by distorting historical precedent. This should remind us that
the West will not always side with the righteous and can at any time
abandon the people of Nagorno Karabakh to their fate.

– See more at:

UC Irvine ASA, AYF and ANCA Counter Azeri Propaganda

Friday, March 1st, 2013

Azeris had hired armed security guards during a college campus event

BY HASMIK PILIPOSYAN

On the night of February 25, the Azerbaijani Student Association
(AzSA) of UC Irvine, which formed in 2012, organized a film viewing by
Thomas Goltz, a war correspondent and professor at Montana State
University, which attempted to depict the events of Khojaly as ethnic
cleansing committed by Armenian soldiers against Azeri citizens. Many
Azeris as well as many Armenians showed up including the Orange
Country ARF, AYF, ANCA, and UC Irvine ASA in support of preventing
false statements and accusations from contaminating the true reality
of the conflict.

Before the audience was to view the film, one of the Azeri students
stood at the podium and shared her story of how she became a refugee
of Nagorno-Karabakh due to destruction of her town and home, which was
quite disheartening considering the hundreds of thousands of Armenian
and Azerbaijani refugees affected by the conflict. After, AzSA
president Jadiv Huseynov provided some statistics and history of the
Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, stressing the historical and cultural
significance of the region mainly to Azerbaijan, failing to mention
the presence of Armenians in the region for thousands of years that
lived in the ancient historical Kingdom of Artsakh. Today, much of
historical Artsakh extends into the region of Nagorno-Karabakh and is
controlled by the republic.

Huseynov went on to speak about the events of Khojaly, directly
announcing it as `ethnic cleansing’ perpetrated by the Armenian
soldiers and the Russian 366th Motor Rifle Regiment on the night of
February 25-26, 1992. He claimed that `613 civilians including 106
women, 63 children, and 70 elders were tortured to death’ and how the
Human Rights Watch called it the `largest atrocity of the conflict’.
Furthermore, with the increased tension quickly building in the room,
he alluded to Markar Melkonian’s book about his brother, Monte
Melkonian’s, life with an incorrect analysis of a statement Monte
wrote in his personal diary stating that by the morning of February
26th, 1992 the `refugees had made it to the eastern cusp of
Mountainous Karabakh…toward safety in the Azeri city of Agdam, about
six miles away’ and how an Azeri refugee woman testified how the
Armenian soldiers `just shot and shot’. However, Azerbaijani president
at the time, Ayaz Mutalibov told Czech reporter Dana Mazalova `the
Armenians had, in any case, provided a corridor to let the civilians
escape. Why then would they shoot?’ Huseynov unacknowledged the fact
that the Armenian soldiers had sent out warning via radio of the siege
of the city and how they had opened a corridor for Azeri civilians to
escape safely, but with the command of the Azeri mayor of Khojaly,
Elman Mammadov, the civilians were to not leave. The AzSA president
also declined in recognizing the pogroms against Armenians in Baku,
Sumgait, and Kirovabad perpetrated by Azeri soldiers and leaders, who
were later given higher ranks in government and parliament by
president Aliyev.

The night proceeded to the documentary by Thomas Goltz titled
`Azerbaijan Through Foreign Eyes’. The film was very poorly made and
failed to depict any factual and eye-witness evidence of the events of
Khojaly as Goltz himself was not witness to the events and merely
served as a sympathy show. Following the film was a question and
answer session that completely undermined Goltz’ credibility.

One of the Armenian students questioned Goltz about Akram Aylisli’s
treatment and book burning in Azerbaijan and the case of Ramil Safarov
as contradictory to Goltz’ claim of `tolerance is embedded in Azeri
culture’. Goltz answered the student with merely a poem that was
absolutely irrelevant to the topic and then he sat down, while the
student remained dumbstruck by the `intellectual’s’ absurd and foolish
response. Another student asked about President Ilham Aliyev’s
anti-Armenian campaign enforced throughout Azerbaijan and his
Organized Crime and Corruption Person of the Year award bestowed by
the OCCRP, in which the professor simply replied `I say he should
change his act’. During the Q&A session, Huseynov, would constantly
stand and answer the students’ questions himself while Goltz simply
sat and listened. Many of the Azeris sitting in the audience rarely
made comments.

Perhaps the Azeris were not prepared enough to enforce their
propaganda and create an atmosphere of sympathy. They usually work
quite well in attempting to alter history but seem to always fail as
facts and the truth triumphs all.

– See more at:

Answering a Dad’s ARF Call

by Tom Vartabedian

March 1, 2013

Mgo Kassabian came of age.

Mgo Kassabian (second from right) joins his new Ungers in the Lowell
`Aharonian’ Gomideh while adhering to his father’s wishes, the late
Rev. Vartan Kassabian.
He joined a Gomideh while adhering to his father’s wishes, the late
Rev. Vartan Kassabian, who filtered through the ranks himself before
becoming ordained.

All along, it’s what he wanted for his son, to be a good Armenian
Christian and serve his heritage dutifully.

It wasn’t enough to join the AYF or become a stole-bearer in the
Apostolic Church. It wasn’t enough to wear his dad’s vestments when
appearing on the altar of God. That was all well and good for the
22-year-old activist.

`When you join the Gomideh, you become a man,’ he often told his son.

A year ago, Mgo approached the Lowell Gomideh and asked to become a
member. He was little prepared for the rigors of orientation that
followed. Eight stringent classes followed to familiarize himself with
every aspect of the Gomidehoutiun.

It involved everything from history to politics to protocol to current
issues. It involved sessions with other veterans, sometimes at the ARS
Community Center, other times in the privacy of someone’s home.

He had picked a good one with Lowell, the first established Gomideh in
America organized in 1895.

Six months of orientation finally came to a head with an all-day
conference for novitiates in Providence, joined with seven newcomers
from that committee.

Mgo was in the best of hands. So what when through his mind the day of
his oath? Trepidation. A little anxiety. And a heap of relief. His
father’s image was present in the room.

So were seven members of the Providence community who drove over an
hour to witness the occasion and offer words of comfort and wisdom – all
friends of Der Vartan in much the same age category.

Several, including myself, were old enough to be Mgo’s grandfather.

It reminded me of my golden moment 47 years ago when I was sworn into
membership in the Haverhill Gomideh. As I took my oath, I looked at
the faces of my fellow Ungers and nearly keeled over with
intimidation. Most were in their 60s, 70s, and 80s.

While I was a tenderfoot, they were eagles. I looked upon myself more
as a mascot for the team, the new kid on the block. Now, here I was,
sponsoring Mgo’s membership into the ranks.

It’s been that way since 1890 when this organization was launched.
People come. People go. They blaze trails and pave new inroads. They
serve with commitment. I would expect nothing less from today’s
generation.

`Your role will be a significant one,’ I told him quietly one evening.
`It’s up to you to encourage the youth of this community and bolster
our membership. You will be setting an example for others to follow.’

After seeing my own Haverhill Gomideh reduced through attrition, it
became obvious at the end that I would become the sole survivor and
transfer to a more energized community like Lowell. It wasn’t exactly
a strange call. I had grown up with most of these fellows in the AYF.

The years I spent with those veterans were steeped in experience and
education. When they spoke, you listened. You heard their Armenian
spoken and knew they were carrying on a sacred tradition.

Because of their ages, we met on Saturday mornings on the top floor of
a business building that featured a stout staircase. I often look at
the photo we took that day. All have since departed. But not before
they each made a mark upon my character.

In Der Vartan’s case, the cleric was a visionary and a man of his own
principles. He supported Hai Tahd and the ARF, ARS, and AYF. He
supported his church in every facet and even took command of the
Merrimack Valley Knights of Vartan as their sbarabed.

We knew him in his younger days as Markar and he gained his tutelage
from some of the Providence supremes like Arthur Giragosian and Sarkis
Atamian. To them go the seeds of fertility in our ranks.

The oath was given and Mgo held his place as congratulations were
rendered. A twinkle could be seen in his eye.

`Your father would have been very proud of you today,’ they said.

`I will try to live up to his expectations,’ came the reply.

And, so, Mgo Kassabian took his seat as an official Gomideh member,
getting involved in the flow and giving an update of AYF affairs
throughout New England.

The future appears in good hands.

Georgian Ombudsman: problem of Armenian churches to be settled

March 1, 2013 – 21:14 AMT

PanARMENIAN.Net – Armenian ambassador to Georgia Hovhannes Manoukian
met Feb 28 with newly-appointed Georgian Public Defender (Ombudsman)
Ucha Nanuashvili.
Issues related to Georgia’s Armenian community and cooperation between
the two countries’ offices of ombudsman were in the focus of the
discussion.
The two men further discussed preservation and restoration of Armenian
churches in Georgia, with Georgian Ombudsman voicing optimism about
speedy solution the problem.
Nanuashvili also expressed government’s readiness to offer appropriate
solution to the issue.
The need to take relevant steps aimed at facilitating Armenian
community’s effective integration into Georgian society was mutually
stressed.
Upon competition of the meeting, Ambassador Manoukian conveyed to Mr
Nanuashvili Ombudsman Karen Andreasyan’s invitation to visit Armenia,
MFA press servie reported.

– See more at:

ARFD: Besides negotiations, Armenia must also use other means for
attaining international recognition of Nagorno-Karabakh

ARMINFO
Friday, March 1, 15:04

Besides negotiations, Armenia must also use other means for attaining
the international recognition of Nagorno- Karabakh, the head of the
parliamentary group of the ARFD Armen Rustamyan told ArmInfo on
Friday.

He said that the Lithuanian MPs’ decision to form a parliamentary
friendship group with Nagorno-Karabakh is a big step towards this end.
“It is high time for us to tell our colleagues from other countries
the truth about the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict,” Rustamyan said.

A group of Lithuanian parliamentarians adopted a resolution on setting
up of a parliamentary friendship group with Nagorno-Karabakh. The
resolution in particular runs that since Lithuania and
Nagorno-Karabakh have always been led by the international law and
democratic values in their fight for liberation, taking into account
the fact that the right to self-determination is the only guarantee to
physical security and people’s development, underlining
Nagorno-Karabakh’s efforts to create a free and democratic nation, the
Lithuanian parliamentarians propose to set up a parliamentary
friendship group with Nagorno-Karabakh. The original document was
handed over to the NKR Foreign Minister, Karen Mirzoyan. Nine members
of Seymas, representing various factions, have joined the initiative.

Raffi Hovannisian speaks of his family’s citizenship

tert.am
16:11 – 01.03.13

At a press conference in Yerevan’s Freedom Square, Heritage party
Chairman Raffi Hovannisian, who acquired Armenia’s citizenship in
2002, had to answer journalists’ questions about the citizenship of
his family members.

With respect to his sons’ not being Armenia’s citizens `to avoid
military service,’ Mr Hovannisian said:

`My sons and my family have been serving all their life, and I am
happy that our youngest son Armen-Richard acquired Armenia’s
citizenship on his own will when he turned sixteen. That was not his
father’s order, but each family member’s free will. I am proud and
sure that this citizenship will be granted to everyone. Yes, my
family, who embarked on the way of great return, are waiting for
acquiring Armenia’s citizenship,’ Mr Hovannisian said.

According to him, Armenia’s citizenship is not in documents. Numerous
Armenian citizens that have necessary documents are committing
offenses and betraying Armenia’s national interests.

On acquiring Armenia’s citizenship in 2002, Mr Hovannisian applied to
the military registration office. But his age prevented him from
serving in Armenia’s army.

With respect to his movement’s future, he said that the people must be
ready for a long and consistent struggle in conformity with law.

`I always prefer classes to a student strike, but no one has the right
to punish them or raise hands against them,’ Mr Hovannisian said.

>From `Stone Dreams’ to nightmare: The disgraced author sympathetic to
Armenians intends to leave Azerbaijan

FEATURES | 01.03.13 | 15:35

Photo: theworld.org

By JULIA HAKOBYAN
ArmeniaNow Deputy Editor

The scandalous novel by the Azerbaijani writer Akram Aylisli on
Armenian-Azerbaijani relations will likely cost the 75 -year -old
writer not only deprivation of the presidential awards and pension,
but will cause him to leave his motherland. Azeri mass media reported
on Thursday on the writer’s intention to leave the country for Turkey,
urged out of fear for his life and safety of his family.

`My works are not published, plays are not performed. My future life
here is impossible. I made the decision to leave the homeland and move
to brotherly Turkey,’ Azerbaijani media quoted Aylisli’s interview to
the Turkish newspaper.

Aylisli’s `Stone Dreams”, novel tells the story of two Azerbaijani men
who try to protect their Armenian neighbors during the Sumgait and
Baku pogroms in the closing years of the Soviet Union. (The novel also
includes a description of violence by ethnic Azeris against Armenians
during the 1920s.)

The novel, describing the cruelty of Azerbaijanis against Armenians
provoked public anger and numerous threats in Azerbaijan, soon after
it was published in `People’s Friendship’ magazine last December.
Protest actions were held in several Azerbaijani cities demanding
Aylisli’s exile from the country; writer’s books were burned, while
the pro-government “Yeni Musavat’ party has announced a reward of
$12,000 to anyone who `cuts off the writer’s ear’. Aylisli’s wife and
son were fired from their jobs; in addition, by the presidential
degree the writer was stripped of all government awards, including
`People’s Writer’ title and his monthly presidential pension of
$1,270.

Armenian and Turkish intellectuals, as well as U.S. State Department,
OSCE office in Baku and other organizations have issued statements,
condemning harassment toward writer and urging Baku authorities to
stop the persecution campaign. Human Right Watch, in particular, said
that the government of Azerbaijan is making a mockery of its
international obligations on freedom of expression. `This is shocking,
particularly after Azerbaijani officials flocked to Strasbourg last
month to tout the government’s human rights record at the Council of
Europe.”

Aylisli, meanwhile, accused Azerbaijani intellectuals of cowardice and
indifference to the public debate about his novel.

“They have always supported my position. However, they cannot openly
express their opinions because they get salary from the state. The
free thinking part of the society is openly on my side. Even a group
of writers from Turkey supported me. But not one politician in
Azerbaijan has called me, `Aylisli said to haqqin.az.

The writer said that that the purpose of the novel was to send a
message to Armenians, in particular, to the Armenians living in
Nagorno Karabakh, that Azerbaijani people see their mistakes and see
what they did not want to do, but had to do .

“Time has not yet completely separated us, let us look together at our
living together,” says the writer, adding that now it is the turn of
Armenian writers for an objective recognition of mistakes that led to
a major war, which brought misery and suffering to both peoples.

“I now call on the Armenian writers to tell the truth about the
Khojaly genocide and other mass murders. Do not blame the people for
the wars. Those are guilty who use wars to enrich themselves,’ Aylisli
said.
Armenian expert on geopolitics of the South Caucasus, Anjela
Elibegova, believes that the purposeful hatred toward the author is
partly conditioned by the Azeri’s “wag the dog” policy, as the
“Armenian thematic is a zero risk action for the government of
Azerbaijan to divert attention from the really serious problems in the
country.’

“The novel was published in December’s issue of the magazine but it
caused wide public resonance in Azerbaijan, just soon after the
situation in the country exacerbated because of the unrest in the
Ismailli. (An Azeri district, where in January, there were clashes
between protesting residents and police during which the protestors
burned one of the outbuildings in the yard of the chief executive of
the district and his car).

Elibegova said that today in Azerbaijan they don’t speak about the
Ismailli ongoing unrest, or on `Gyulyargeyt”, (the scandalous video on
how MP Gyular Akhmetova asks a $ 1 million from the dean of the
University for being elected an MP), non combat deaths in army, or on
other acute problems that only couple of weeks ago concerned the
public.

Elibegova says the novel also provoked fury and criticism because it
presented the “National leader” Heydar Aliyev (the father of the
acting president Ilham Aliev) in unflattering light and contained
accusation of organizing the Armenian massacres.

`The fact that the ruling clan never forgave this impertinence is
openly discussed in Azerbaijani mass media. Nakhijevan clan
representatives of the ruling elite resented most of all, as Agulis (
Nakhichevan) massacre of 1919, is a problem first of all for them.’

Thomas de Waal of the Carnegie Endowment, said publication of the
novel is a brave act by Aylisli but unfortunately, instead of
encouraging Aylisli as a brave citizen, Azerbaijani government
subjected him to pressures, burnt his books, which is regrettable.

`The Azerbaijani government likes to talk about peace, he even recalls
how peacefully thousands of Armenians lived in Baku. Unfortunately,
the pressure on the writer who bravely comments on the conflict,
brings another impression of delivering a diverse message,’ said de
Waal, the Karabakh conflict researcher in an interview with the
Azerbaijani service of Radio Liberty. `This speaks about the fact that
the Azerbaijani society is not ready to analyze history and problems.
And the most important thing is that it is a characteristic phenomenon
for two sides of the conflict both the Azerbaijani and the Armenian
society. ”