14:01,
YEREVAN, APRIL 16, ARMENPRESS. Third President of Armenia Serzh Sargsyan is currently in parliament for the hearing of an ad hoc committee investigating the circumstances of the 2016 April War.
Sargsyan was summoned to testify.
Earlier Sargsyan had told the committee he would make an appearance if his testimonies would be videotaped and provided to him – the request was granted.
Edited and translated by Stepan Kocharyan
17:39,
YEREVAN, APRIL 13, ARMENPRESS. Armenian foreign ministry spokesperson Anna Naghdalyan commented on the statement of the Turkish side according to which within the framework of the fight against COVID19, Armenia asked Turkey for assistance, and Turkey is ready to provide that assistance.
Armenpress presents the MFA spokesperson’s full comment:
Question: The Turkish side states that within the framework of the fight against COVID19, Armenia asked Turkey for assistance, and Turkey is ready to provide that assistance. At the same time, the Ambassador of China to Turkey was asked by the Foreign Ministry of Turkey to provide clarifications regarding the inscription on the aid boxes provided to Armenia. How would you comment on that?
Answer: We have already stated that Armenia undertakes consistent efforts to organize the return of its citizens facing difficult situations to their homeland, especially from countries severely hit by the COVID19 pandemic. In this context, I should note that last Friday 73 of our citizens upon their request already returned from Turkey to Armenia. For this purpose, the Foreign Ministry of Armenia through its representatives interacted with relevant authorities of Turkey and Georgia. The cooperation with the Turkish side occurred exclusively within this framework, and out of this framework Armenia has not asked for any other assistance.
It is noteworthy that the framework of possible cooperation between the two countries is significantly limited, as a result of the ongoing land blockade imposed on Armenia by Turkey and of the absence of diplomatic relations, and thus it requires genuine goodwill and trust building. Unfortunately, some statements made by the Turkish side in the context of fighting against COVID19 do not contribute toward creating a depoliticized and humanitarian environment of cooperation. It is particularly regrettable, that these statements targeted the assistance provided by the third country to Armenia by unnecessarily politicising and showing disrespect for the friendship between the peoples and their national symbols.
10:33, 6 April, 2020
YEREVAN, APRIL 6, ARMENPRESS. An active-duty serviceman of the Artsakh military was shot and wounded by Azerbaijani gunfire on April 5, the Defense Ministry of Artsakh said in a news release.
The serviceman, 20-year-old Arayik Shakhpazyan of the Defense Army of Artsakh, was hit by the adversary fire around 17:30 while on duty at a military position in the eastern direction of the border.
The wounded soldier was taken to a military hospital where doctors assessed his condition to be satisfactory. The authorities of Artsakh said they are investigating the circumstances of the incident.
“The Ministry of Defense of the Republic of Artsakh is urging the adversary to refrain from taking provocative actions and is announcing that the Azerbaijani side will bear full responsibility of consequences in case of further escalation of the situation”, reads the news release.
Edited and translated by Stepan Kocharyan
ArmInfo.Armenia is the second after Iran in the region in the share of new-type coronavirus infected (COVID-19) in the total population.
So, according to official data in Armenia on the morning of March 30, 58 new cases of infection with a new type of coronavirus were registered. Thus, the total number of infected reached 482 people, while 30 people have already been cured, 3 fatalities have been recorded. A negative result was recorded in 2216 test cases. 449 patients are in institutional care. Given the official population data of 2.959 million (data for 2019), the percentage of infected people is 0.02% of the total population of the country.
Only Iran with a population of 83.993 million (for 2019) is ahead of Armenia in these statistics, where the number of cases of coronavirus infection increased to 41495 (or 0.05% of the population), deaths - up to 2757, 13911 cases of recovery were recorded.
Turkey is on the third line. According to statistics, on an early morning on March 30, in Turkey with a population of 84.339 million (for 2019), a total of 9217 cases of coronavirus (+1815 per day) or 0.01% of the total population were recorded. Statistics of the deceased cases is 131(+23 per day), 105 people have recovered.
In neighboring Georgia, the number of people infected with coronavirus has increased to 97 people. "There are 97 confirmed cases of infection, among them 18 have recovered, 4,876 in quarantine , under the supervision of doctors in hospital -264 people," the Georgian government's special website said in a statement. This is despite the fact that according to official data, the population of Georgia is 3.799 million (for 2019), in relation to which the proportion of people infected with coronavirus is 0.003%.
In Azerbaijan, with a population of 10.383 million people, according to official data for March 29, the number of people infected with coronavirus reached 190 people, or 0.002% of the total population.
At the same time, 4 cases of deaths were recorded, 15 people have recovered. It should be noted that of the above countries, the most reluctant to provide information about the sick is precisely the Azerbaijani authorities. There are fears that authorities deliberately hide the real picture of the spread of a pandemic in the country. Thus, in the region, in terms of the percentage of infected people in the total population, Iran leads (0.05%), followed by Armenia (0.02%), Turkey (0.01%), Georgia (0.003%), Azerbaijan (0.002%) )
To note, according to official figures, Turkey ranked the 13th in the entire world in the number of cases of coronavirus. According to Worldometers, coronavirus has spread to 199 countries and territories. In total, 721.956 cases of coronavirus were recorded. 33.966 people died, 151? 312 recovered. The largest number of deaths from coronavirus is in Italy (10,779), Spain (6803) and China (3300).
Analysts warn that Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan’s government, which came to power on a huge wave of optimism for change, may be stumbling as it faces its first major crisis in the form of the coronavirus pandemic.
Armenia’s first case of Covid-19 was reported on March 1, when a 29-year-old citizen tested positive after returning from Iran. For ten days he was the only coronavirus patient in the country.
There was no real sense of panic until March 11, when three new cases were detected in the city Echmiadzin, 20 kilometres from Yerevan.
In a Facebook post on March 14, Pashinyan alleged that the 45-year-old who caused the outbreak had returned from Italy and “hid her illness”.
“Now we are facing the situation where three family members are infected with coronavirus – a woman from Echmiadzin, her husband and a nephew,” he wrote.
The following day, a quarantine was announced in Echmiadzin, followed on March 16 by a general state of emergency throughout the country.
All schools, universities, restaurants and shopping centres were closed with gatherings of more than 20 people banned and restrictions applied to the country’s border crossings.
The measures, which will stay in place until April 14, were announced at a cabinet meeting which was broadcast live to emphasise that the government was acting with full transparency.
Championing accountability has been at the core of Pashinyan’s political success. He came to power in May 2018 after protests brought down then-President Serzh Sargsyan and his Republican party.
His major election pledge in the subsequent December 2018 elections was to fight corruption and deal with the consequences of decades of endemic graft.
Although his popularity has remained high, analysts say that his administration has been slow to institute decisive reforms, and his response to this major crisis has also been deemed patchy.
The state of emergency in the country also postponed the much-anticipated constitutional referendum, which would remove seven of the nine current judges, and was set to take place on April 5.
(See Armenia’s Constitutional Reform Delayed Indefinitely).
Pashinyan’s commitment to his signature policy of judicial reform had been so strong that he had earlier announced he would take leave from his prime ministerial duties to campaign on the referendum, although he reversed this decision on March 12.
Political strategist Armen Badalyan said that not only had the government been slow to act but that the prime minister himself had appeared to prioritise the upcoming referendum over public safety.
“I think the steps taken by the Prime Minister in this situation were wrong, because in the beginning there was a very frivolous attitude to the epidemic,” Badalyan said. “Let's remember he said, ‘our nation has immunity, we will disinfect this virus with homemade vodka’. The prime minister was fully involved in the April 5 referendum to ensure good results… so he started fighting the epidemic late and didn't take it seriously because the referendum was more important to him.”
Badalyan warned that Pashinyan handling of the situation had left him politically vulnerable.
“We see that the number of infected people in our country is increasing, in contrast to Georgia and Azerbaijan,” he contninued. “If the opposition conducts a decent campaign in the future using this fact, Pashinyan’s rating will fall significantly. If not, it will decrease, but not significantly. I think everything will depend more on the steps of the opposition, how well they can act professionally.”
Political scientist Abraham Gasparyan said that although the 2018 parliamentary elections had provided the authorities with a high level of legitimacy, trust in them had subsequently begun to fall. People’s expectations had not been met, and predicted increases in salaries and pensions had only been small.
He agreed that the response to the crisis had been less than decisive.
“The biggest criticism of Pashinyan was caused by the fact that he continued his own PR campaign,” Gasparyan said. “Then after the first incident in Etchmiadzin, serious steps had to be taken immediately. It was necessary to urgently convene a meeting of the national security council, because this is a question of national security. But the council did not act. In the meantime, they called a government meeting which was limited to speeches.
“The citizens of our country need to learn not only the daily news, but also to understand that the state… has a strategy and packages designed for such situations. They should have taken action sooner, when the virus was first detected,” Gasparyan said.
Public perceptions had been further damaged by the 57.5 million dollars of bonuses awarded to ministries and departments in 2019, he continued.
“All this affects the reputation of the prime minister,” Gasparyan said. “People today understand that with this money it would be possible to purchase more serious medical equipment, solve the problem of food security, evacuation or isolation. He has to take serious steps, otherwise I think that the 70 per cent legitimacy [the government] had two years ago will reach to a low of 50-55 per cent,” Gasparyan concluded.
Despite such criticism, others argued that Pasjinyan had shown resilience and flexibility in managing the situation.
“This government is in direct, permanent communication with the public working openly and transparently,” Edgar Vardanyan, the editor of Detector.am, told IWPR. “They do make mistakes, but what we see is that they also learn the lessons and correct the mistakes, they understand and are responsive to the public pressure and criticism.”
Indeed, the government quickly backtracked over a decision to curtail media freedom, having announced shortly after the state of emergency was introduced that journalists covering the virus could report only official, government-sanctioned information or face large fines.
Ashot Melikyan, chairman of the Committee for the Protection of Freedom of Speech told IWPR that the decision “seriously limits the functioning of the media. It is now the police who decide which message may cause panic and which does not”.
However, after 11 media and human rights organisations issued a letter of protest, Pashinyan rescinded much of these restrictions at a March 26 cabinet meeting, allowing journalists to cover virus-related issues freely as long as they included official comment.
The next challenge for the government will be how to weather the significant economic ramifications of the crisis, not least the country’s close ties with Russia. Not only do many Armenians work in the fields of construction, trade and services there, but Russia is also their largest trade partner and market for agricultural products and raw materials.
“The deterioration of the economy in Russia will lead to the emergence of many economic and social problems: the reduction of purchase of goods, including goods exported from Armenia, which are mainly in demand on the Russian market,” Asatryan told IWPR.
Armenians due to leave the country for seasonal work in the early spring will be unable to travel due to closed borders, with domestic and foreign tourism also badly hit.
Former Central Bank chairman Bagrat Asatryan said the knock-on effect would be considerable.
“The decline in tourism will have a large and significant impact on the country's economy, resulting in shrinking services and trade, which are currently a significant area of employment in Armenia,” Bagrat Asatryan told IWPR.
To alleviate some pressure, 11 out of Armenia’s 17 banks announced that they would suspend loans, which means that both individuals and individual entrepreneurs will be exempt from paying installments until May 15.
“Armenia 3.0. Understanding 20th Century Armenia”: this is the title of a book that is based on nine video lectures delivered by the Director of Eurasia Partnership Foundation (EPF), writer Gevorg Ter-Gabrielyan between December 2016 and March 2017. The book’s main idea is the introduction of the “post-Soviet” variable into the calculations about Armenia’s reform and development. The April Revolution of 2018 can be explained as a huge step away from and a rebellion against that variable. One can say that, with this Revolution, Armenia made a significant step towards ceasing to be a post-Soviet society. However, these “post-Soviet” diseases may come back. The virus may lay dormant for a while and then spring back to strike again. We have seen this pattern before in our society. Therefore, these chapters remain relevant, and we hope they will be worthwhile the attention of our readers.
From Chapter 2. Uprooting and Rooting
We start from the Genocide. A certain version of recent Armenian history starts at this point; it marks a ‘rebirth.’ What is important in the context of our topic is that many people escaped from Western Armenia, from the places where they were subjected to Genocide, and came to Eastern Armenia. There are various figures so it’s difficult for me to give an exact number, but one of the largest figures I have heard is 700,000 people, with 300,000 orphans among them.
Other important events also took place during this period. First, Armenia achieved statehood in 1918 and then was Sovietized in 1920. One can’t label these events as purely ‘good’ or purely ‘bad,’ but the Genocide and the First Republic show two different dynamics, which were taking place simultaneously at this moment of survival.
The film Myasnikyan is a very interesting film, though very much within the Soviet discourse. It was made in 1976. It demonstrates what I am trying to say. The main feature, sociologically speaking, at the beginning of the Soviet period was an atomized society: orphans, people who have suffered huge psychological stress, ‘post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).’ This feature can also be characterized as uprooting.
People who had been uprooted came to Armenia. They started their lives anew. But when you are talking about Sovietization, of course, the characteristic term is the opposite: it is rooting (коренизация). Among other things, whether or not we are grateful to the Russian or Bolshevik power, Sovietization also meant building the society, the community, the ‘pseudo-state,’ the republic from whatever we could. We are now continuing the work started by the Second Republic. The Bolshevik leaders committed some horrid acts against their Dashnak counterparts, who relinquished power. Later, they wrote donoses, rooting the culture of purges. But they were also building, building, and building. If this post-Genocide stream of refugees is the uprooted people who arrived here, the Soviet power and construction that followed was a tendency to root people, both those who were here beforehand and those who arrived anew, to this territory.
Quite soon after that, in the mid-1920s, we witnessed the arrival of Stalinism. This is a very unclear term because we don’t know when Stalinism actually arrived. It arrived gradually. But the Bolshevik power was not, of course, ‘nice’ even before Stalinism. Violence and the expectation of disastrous rule were present since 1917, when the October Revolution took place, and even earlier, during war, displacement, uprooting, and Genocide. This power was always bad, whether Tzarist, ‘Temporary Government,’ or Bolshevik, but its horror somehow crystallized during the Stalinist times. From 1925-26, it started to become a very inhumane system.
We also had some seemingly good news, which also eventually acquired a tragic edge in some cases: repatriation. We have had several waves of repatriation. Very early in the 1920s, people like Tamanyan, Avetik Isahakyan, Martiros Saryan and Spendiarov arrived. It started immediately after independence, still during the Dashnaktsutyun rule. The Soviet power continued this policy. They called for intelligentsia and specialists to come to the newly established Soviet Armenian Republic.
Afterwards, we had the next large wave of repatriation. In 1944, with the Second World War still raging, preparation for repatriation and its propaganda had already started among the Armenian communities. This wave continued until at least 1949. A significant portion of people who came during that time were then exiled to Siberia. Tigran Paskevichyan created a series of films and a website on the destiny of these repatriates.
Stalin wanted to start a war in Turkey because he was winning World War II against Nazi Germany, and he assumed that he would be able to reabsorb the old Armenian territories in Turkey, Kars, Ardahan, Artvin, and the ‘six vilayets,’ and perhaps more, and then he would need to repopulate these territories. That’s why they started to prepare the repatriation of Armenians. Of course, propagandizing the Soviet Union in the countries where Armenian communities resided was another reason for conducting this campaign. It was important to demonstrate that the Soviet Union is a place where people want to come and live.
Stalin’s plan didn’t materialize because the Allied leaders, Roosevelt and Churchill, probably told him ‘No, you are not going to do that.’ Eventually Stalin didn’t attack Turkey.
However, since preparations had already been made, the repatriates started to arrive. They had a very mythologized understanding of where they were coming to. During the next stage, many of them were soon sent to Siberia.
They were bringing a different culture with them that deviated from the Stalinist culture, which had been established in Soviet Armenia. They were freer, they had relatives abroad, and they would complain in letters to the relatives, as well as loudly in public, that the propaganda which brought them to the USSR was a lie.
Deportations to Siberia in the 1940s continued the trend of the purges that happened in the 1920-30s, the extra-judicial killings which took away such big names as Yeghishe Charents, Aksel Bakunts, Vahan Totovents, and others. An immense number of Armenians took part in the Second World War and were killed or maimed. Despite all this, the repatriation waves still represented a part of the rooting process. Armenians from all over the world were coming here, starting to participate in life here and trying to rebuild a societal fabric in their own homeland.
Of course, Stalinism and the Gulag are inseparable, and those of you who haven’t read The Gulag Archipelago by Alexander Solzhenitsyn, that’s the first thing, probably, to read about the Soviet Union. Because then you will understand that this rhizome, or ‘archipelago,’ as a slavery economy, as a ‘second economy’ or ‘black economy,’ was the reason for the existence of the Soviet Union.
The real Soviet Union, behind the façade, was based on the work of slaves who were persecuted and were working in the camps—not only in Siberia but all over the Soviet Union. If you go to this or that prison here in Armenia, if it was constructed by the Soviets, you can be certain that it used to be a part of the Gulag system. The camps are dismantled but the prisons are not, obviously. In them, the Gulag and blatnoy culture are still alive and well.
So first, we had an ‘archipelago,’ and now we have a ‘rhizome’ and we want to instead establish a ‘network.’
The Gulag was a very important element in Soviet Armenian history. The good news, however, was what we call in Armenian kaghakashinutyun: the process of city and town building, the process of construction. All over Armenia, roads, bridges, towns, cities, buildings, and factories were built. Despite all these negative and tragic influences, a lot was constructed, of varying quality. It’s also a matter of taste. People who are inclined to nostalgia for the Soviet Union refer to this construction only in positive terms. Indeed, a lot was constructed: Tamanyan’s Yerevan, Mark Grigoryan’s Yerevan as its next stage. Some of the buildings of the 1970s are considered great developments and get prizes in architectural contests for their design. Many of these buildings are very often in a dilapidated condition now in Armenia, many others have been destroyed after independence. But let me come back to where I was. The ’square culture,’ construction started, kaghakashinutyun started, city construction started. Tamanyan brought in the square culture, the culture of open spaces for (supposedly) free citizens of the Socialist republic: the Opera Square, which is Freedom Square today; Lenin Square, which is today’s Republic Square, the main square in Yerevan. Many cities were designed with public squares. What is a square? It is public. It is publicly rooted. It is a forum and a tribune. It provides opportunities to gather there and discuss things. In recent years, among the people who are working on these issues, among sociologists and architects, several very interesting small-scale broadcasts or studies have been made on the role of public spaces (including parks) for constituting the new independent Armenian nation. Society discusses their removal, the struggle to keep them, how they have changed, and their modern-day functions.