Author: Ophelia Vardapetian

Armenian contract serviceman Hayk Tevoyan, born in 1975, died as a result of shooting at the Armenian-Azerbaijani border, Spokesman for the Ministry of Defense Artsrun Hovhannisyan told reporters today.

“The rival actively fired all along the Tavush section of the border until midnight. The Azerbaijani side used artillery weapons of different caliber, including large-caliber machine guns and sniper rifles, 60 and 80mm mortars. Two civilians were injured,” he said.

Hovhannisyan said the frontline villages have sustained losses, but the situation is now under control, the rival has been silenced.

The Spokesman said the Azerbaijani side incurred losses as a result of the tension of the past two days.

Clashes erupted outside parliament in Kiev on Monday as lawmakers gave initial approval to consitutional changes granting more autonomy to separatists in eastern Ukraine, AFP reports.

A blast was also heard outside parliament, although the cause was not immediately known, the agency said. About a dozen people were reportedly injured.

A total of 265 lawmakers voted in favour of the reforms at a stormy session of parliament in Kiev, with protests both inside and outside the buidling.

 Photo: Reuters

The problems caused by the lack of a shared border between Armenia and the Eurasian Economic Union are of technical character and can be solved over time, Armenia’s Deputy Finance Minister Emil Torosyan has said.

Issues related to the main directions of industrial cooperation between EEU member states were discussed at the Armenian Ministry of Economy. Sergey Sidorsky, member of the Board of the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU) and Minister of Industry and Agriculture of the Eurasian Economic Commission participated in the industrial forum.

According to Emil Torosyan, Armenia has received support from all EEU member states on all issues.

The Deputy Minister said it’s still early to assess what the EEU membership can give the manufacturers. “Half a year is not enough for developing the industrial capacities,” he said. He added, however, that the formats and directions, in which Armenia can cooperate with EEU, are currently being discussed.

Sergey Sidorsky said Armenia has good construction materials and added that the branch is very promising.

“The EEU countries import construction materials from non-member states. Therefore, these should be replaced by Armenian materials,” he said.

On 20 July Artsakh Republic President Bako Sahakyan visited the Vank village in the Martakert region and met with representatives of the community.

Issues the village faced and ways of their solution were touched upon during the meeting.

President Sahakyan noted that Vank was among the most dynamically developing settlements of the republic, which became a recognized tourist center, adding that various programs would continue to be implemented in the community.

As children, they escaped ruthless state-sponsored violence. Now, these Armenian women and men visit the aching memory of what they left behind

By  Jenna Krajeski
Photos by Diana Markosian

Few places are more important to Armenian national identity than Mount Ararat, the snowcapped peak that looms over Yerevan, the capital city. A centerpiece of Armenian folklore and religious history where Noah’s Ark is said to have landed, the mountain evokes pride and a sense of place. It is featured on the Armenian coat of arms and currency. But it also looms as a reminder of the tragedy that has dominated Armenian life: Mount Ararat is visible from Armenia, but it belongs to Turkey.

A hundred years ago, as the Ottomans anxiously tried to hold together their collapsing empire, they launched a campaign of ethnic cleansing against the territory’s Armenian population, whom they feared as a threat to Turkish rule. Between 1915 and 1923, Ottoman forces killed 1.5 million Armenians and expelled half a million more in what is widely considered the first major genocide of the 20th century. Men, women and children were marched to mass graves in the Syrian desert or massacred in their homes. Ottoman soldiers destroyed Armenian churches and villages and confiscated property. Survivors fled into Armenia, then a republic that would soon be swallowed by the Soviet Union. Others scattered around the world.

The Armenian-American photographer Diana Markosian, who had a great-grandfather from eastern Turkey who survived the genocide because Turkish neighbors hid him until it was safe to flee, has undertaken to document the national memory of the event in portraits of living survivors. Raised in Moscow, Yerevan and Santa Barbara, California, Markosian says that she long felt the weight of the genocide as a burden, a “monstrous history you inherited because of your ethnicity.” It’s a history that hasn’t been fully acknowledged. To this day, Turkey disputes the extent of the killings and denies that they were planned by Ottoman officials, and the U.S. government declines to recognize the atrocities as a “genocide,” a word no sitting American president has used to describe the fate of the Armenians.

Consulting voter registries to track down Armenian citizens born in Turkey before 1915, Markosian found some survivors still alive in Armenia, now an independent nation of three million people. She photographed them in their homes and, later, after traveling to the places they had fled, she reunited the survivors with images of their lost hometowns and documented the reunions.

The images are surreal meetings at the crossroads of place and memory. Farmland has overtaken villages; ancient mountaintop churches stand in ruins. Some of the survivors wept when they saw her photos of their former homes, which beckoned like Ararat in the distance, enduring but out of reach. “I wanted to help the survivors reclaim a part of their own history,” Markosian says. “But how do you show something that’s not there?”

Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe has mocked America’s decision to legalise gay marriage across all 50 states by vowing to travel to the White House and proposing to Barack Obama, reports. 

During his weekly interview with the national radio station, the Zimbabwean president joked that he planned to travel to Washington DC ‘get down on one knee and ask his hand’.

Mugabe, who is known for his brutal crusades against homosexuality, was responding in bizarre fashion to the Supreme Court’s landmark ruling that the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution guarantees gays and lesbians the same right to marry as heterosexuals.

Speaking on Saturday, Mugabe said: ‘I’ve just concluded – since President Obama endorses the same-sex marriage, advocates homosexual people and enjoys an attractive countenance – thus if it becomes necessary, I shall travel to Washington, DC, get down on my knee and ask his hand.’

Striking a more serious tone, he added: ‘I can’t understand how this people dare to defy Christ’s explicit orders as our Lord prohibited mankind from sodomy’, going on to accuse the U.S. government of being run by ‘perverted Satan-worshipers who insult the great American nation.’

His comments came only hours after the Supreme Court’s landmark decision to legalise gay marriage in all 50 states – prompting thousands of same-sex couples to immediately tie the knot.

Around the world, people have been asking: “April 24^th has come and gone. What’s next for the remembrance of the Armenian Genocide?”

Armenia Tree Project has initiated a new campaign called the Living Century Initiative, which enables Armenians to plant trees in remembrance of the Genocide.

“Through the Living Century Initiative, we are establishing 10 forests in northern Armenia that are aligned with the major Western Armenian communities that were devastated by the Genocide,” explains Executive Director Jeanmarie Papelian. “We are inviting Armenians from around the world to sponsor trees in living memory and in honor of their relatives and ancestral communities. LCI provides an opportunity to plant the new Adana, Kharpert or Marash forest, or wherever your family roots may have been.”

ATP has planted more than 4.7 million trees in over 1,000 locations throughout Armenia and Artsakh. These locations include Nor Kharpert, Musa Ler, and Zeytoun–transplanted names from communities in historic Armenia. “We have an ambitious goal to plant 300,000 trees by year’s end, including 250,000 forestry seedlings as part of the Living Century Initiative,” notes Papelian.

The 10 Living Century forest sites correspond to regions in historic Armenia and will be planted in the Shirak, Lori and Kotayk regions of modern Armenia. They focus on areas where ATP has been planting forests since 2004. “Our team has met with the local community leaders, and they are excited to work with us to establish these new forests as links to our ancestral homeland,” she adds.

Jeanmarie visited one of the new planting sites in May with outgoing director Tom Garabedian. Tom’s grandparents came to America from Kharpert, and the Living Century Initiative was inaugurated by planting a trees in the new Kharpert memorial forest in Arevashogh. This site in the Lori region is dedicated to families whose ancestors hailed from Kharpert before the Genocide.

“We hope you will join us in this celebration of life and perseverance through the planting of new forests throughout Armenia,” concludes Papelian.

ATP has launched a dedicated to the Living Century Initiative where supporters can read more about the campaign learn about the historic Armenian communities and make a gift to help populate these new forests. On the website you can select your ancestral city, town or village, or make a general donation to any of these new planting sites.

Protests renewed in Yerevan today after the Police used water cannons to disperse the sit-in on Baghramyan Avenue early in the morning.

The Police issued a statement, urging the protesters to refrain from any violation of law, and warned it will resort to actions reserved by law in case of any violation of public order.

The Police also reminded the organizers of the rally that they carry personal responsibility for the protection of rights and security of the participants.

“Let’s remember that we are the citizens of the same country and are responsible not only for the security and future of each other, but also the country, as a whole,” the statement reads.

The protests were sparked by the decision of the Public Services Regulatory Commission to increase power tarriffs from August 1, 2015.

A Turkish prosecutor who had carried out a number of investigations into terrorist activities related to Syria has claimed that Turkish officials, including those from the spy agency, have been involved in the supply of explosives and ammunition to radical Syrian Islamist groups, particularly Ahrar ash-Sham, informs, quoting a report by Arzu Yıldız on the news website grihat.com.tr.

Prosecutor Özcan Şişman, who was jailed for intercepting trucks carrying arms into Syria, said in his defense that he spotted a number of times that Turkish officials aided and faciliated the flow of jihadists into Syria, a string of bombings within Turkey and on the Syrian border as well as the transfer of arms into territory held by radical Islamist groups.