Author: Suren Karakhanian

                                        Friday, 

New Owner To Relaunch Armenian Copper Mine

        • Karine Simonian

Armenia - Open-pit mining at Teghut copper deposit, 20Dec2014.

A large copper mine located in Armenia’s northern Lori province will resume its 
operations next week after an 18-month shutdown that led to mass layoffs and a 
change of ownership.

Mining and ore-processing activities at the Teghut deposit were halted in 
January 2018 due to problems reported at its waste disposal facility. Vallex 
Group, a private operator, is understood to have lacked funds to refurbish the 
tailings dump that posed a growing threat to the environment.

Vallex had borrowed $380 million from Russia's VTB bank to build and launch the 
mine in 2014. It was no longer able to repay the debt after the shutdown. VTB 
gained ownership of Teghut as a result.

New senior executives of the Teghut company said on Friday that renewed 
production operations there will start on July 1. They said the company has 
hired 700 workers ahead of the restart.


Russia -- A sign displaying the logo of VTB Bank, covered with icicles, is seen 
above the bank office in central Moscow, February 27, 2012
​Some 1,200 people used to work at Teghut. The vast majority of them were laid 
off after the shutdown.

Residents of nearby villages are dissatisfied with the employment numbers, 
saying that the new owner must hire more locals. Earlier this week, they 
blocked a road leading to the mine in protest.

Anahit Amirjanian, a villager whose family was forced to sell its 4,500 
square-meter plot of agricultural land to Vallex a decade ago, said some of her 
family members worked at Teghut until being fired in January 2018. She 
complained that none of them has been rehired by the new mine operator.

“We are from an adjacent community and we had lost our source of a living. 
Since they had dispossessed us we should have been the first to be rehired,” 
argued Amirjanian.


Armenia - A newly constructed ore-processing plant at the Teghut copper mine, 
20Dec2014.

The Teghut company’s new director general, Vladimir Nalivayko, insisted, 
however, that it has hired more people from the local communities than worked 
at the mine before the shutdown. They make up nearly half of its 700 newly 
hired employees, he said, adding that 200 other workers are from Alaverdi, a 
nearby mining town.

“I don’t care if they are from Alaverdi, Shnogh or Teghut,” Nalivayko told 
RFE/RL’s Armenian service. “But I asked our bosses to hire locals and try to 
avoid bringing in outsiders. I have trouble doing that now because I can’t find 
mechanical engineers, software engineers or interpreters in the villages.”

Nalivayko also complained about the company’s bloated staff under the previous 
owner, saying that the revived mine will have a total of only 900 workers. 
“There were too many deputy managers, assistants and consultants here,” he 
said. “We now have a more compact and cost-effective structure.”

Mining has long been the single largest source of Armenia’s export revenue. 
Copper, other base metals and ore concentrates accounted for around 40 percent 
of Armenian exports worth $2.4 billion in 2018.




Armenia, Azerbaijan Free Captives


Armenia -- A view of the Tavush province bordering Azerbaijan, November 6, 2018.

In a prisoner swap facilitated by the International Committee of the Red Cross 
(ICRC), Armenia and Azerbaijan freed on Friday two civilian citizens of each 
other’s country.

The freed Armenian, Zaven Karapetian, crossed into Azerbaijan from Armenia’s 
northern Tavush region in unclear circumstances two years ago. The 45-year-old 
man was detained and paraded on Azerbaijani television, with the Azerbaijani 
military claiming to have captured him while thwarting an Armenian incursion.

The Armenian government strongly denied that, saying that Karapetian is a 
civilian resident of Vanadzor, a city around 130 kilometers from a section of 
the Armenian-Azerbaijani border crossed by him.

For its part, Armenia repatriated Elvin Ibrahimov, a 33-year-old villager from 
Azerbaijan’s western Gazakh district bordering Tavush. He crossed the Armenian 
border in March this year.

Armenian soldiers shot and wounded Ibrahimov before detaining him. He spent 
several weeks in Armenian hospitals.


Switzerland -- Armenian Foreign Minister Zohrab Mnatsakanian meets with 
president of the International Committee of the Red Cross, Peter Maurer, in 
Geneva, June 24, 2019.

The prisoner exchange was most probably the result of confidence-building 
understandings reached during high-level negotiations held by Armenia and 
Azerbaijan in the last several months. The foreign ministers of the two 
countries met in Washington as recently as on June 20.

At least one Armenian national remains in Azerbaijani captivity. Karen 
Ghazarian, a 34-resident of the Tavush village of Berdavan, was detained in 
Azerbaijan in July 2018. Like Karapetian, he was accused of being a member of 
an Armenian commando unit.

In February, an Azerbaijani court sentenced Ghazarian to 20 years in prison on 
charges of plotting “terrorist attacks” and “sabotage” in Azerbaijan. His trial 
was reportedly held in closed session.

Yerevan condemned the ruling and demanded Ghazarian’s immediate release. It 
said he has a history of mental disease and never served in the Armenian army 
because of that.

Three residents of other Tavush villages strayed into Azerbaijan in 2014. Two 
of them were branded Armenian “saboteurs” by Baku and died shortly afterwards.




Law Against ‘Criminal Environment’ Planned In Armenia

        • Artak Khulian

Armenia -- Justice Minister Rustam Babasian, June 19, 2019.

The Armenian Justice Ministry has drafted a bill calling for lengthy prison 
sentences for anyone who would create, lead or join a “criminal environment” in 
the country.

The bill submitted to the government on Thursday was recently posted on a 
government website but removed shortly afterwards. The Justice Ministry said on 
Friday that it will undergo some changes before being made public again.

The original version of the bill would criminalize associations of individuals 
defying “general rules of coexistence” and favoring other, illicit forms of 
social behavior. It says the purpose of such groups is to bully people, 
propagate violence and sponsor crimes.

Creation of the “criminal environment” would be punishable by between 4 and 15 
years in jail. Reputed crime figures involved in them would risk between 10 and 
15 years’ imprisonment.

Artur Sakunts, a human rights campaigner, welcomed the proposed measure. “The 
passage of such a law is more than necessary because we need to free the 
political system from the criminal underworld,” he said. “The underworld must 
also not have any involvement in the economy, politics, and [government] 
decision making.”

But Arshak Gasparian, a criminal law expert, was skeptical about the bill, 
saying that it does not set clear criteria for the authorities to identify 
people involved in a “criminal environment.” “Usually people at the top of 
criminal hierarchies are less personally involved in concrete crimes,” argued 
Gasparian.

Gasparian believes that the state should instead put the emphasis on preventive 
measures and start from schools. “Until we know what why in, say, 300 of 
Armenia’s 1,900 schools things are more conducive to crime we won’t be able to 
say how to prevent the emergence of crime figures,” he said.




Press Review


Armenia -- Newspapers for press review illustration, Yerevan, 12Jul2016

“Haykakan Zhamanak” says that radical opponents of the Armenian government 
increasingly cite Azerbaijani media and pro-Azerbaijani Russian circles in 
their anti-government discourse. “Azerbaijani media write, for instance, that 
the ‘war criminal’ Robert Kocharian is again in jail and our so-called 
oppositionists enthusiastically disseminate that, forgetting to mention that 
Kocharian is under arrest for totally different reasons,” writes the 
pro-government paper. “This creates the impression that the Armenian 
authorities also consider Kocharian a war criminal and are therefore against 
the results of the Karabakh war and isolate war heroes in order to make 
territorial concessions [to Azerbaijan.]”

“Hraparak” says that even the harshest criticism is useful for the government 
because “we have witnessed many cases where even the most modest official 
changes and becomes an arrogant and self-righteous monster in a matter of 
months.” “But there is a boundary which [critics of the government] must not 
transcend,” writes the paper. It says that they must under no circumstances 
cooperate with foreign forces “at the expense of our sovereignty and dignity.” 
“No matter how unacceptable Nikol Pashinian and his government are to you, no 
matter how much you crave their departure … never do that at the expense of a 
loss of our country’s international authority,” it says. “And do not rejoice at 
sanctions taken against us or new dangers hanging over our country.”

“Zhoghovurd” reports that the Armenian government decided on Thursday to raise 
the minimum wage by 23 percent and make healthcare free for all citizens under 
the age of 18. The paper cautions that the fist measure will not affect many 
people because the vast majority of workers in Armenia earn more than the 
minimum wage. “But even consider this the initiative is welcome because 
employers paying the minimum wage will not be able to abuse citizens’ rights,” 
it says. The other government decision, it says, will cover more people. “The 
1.75 billion drams ($3.7 million) allocated from the state budget [for free 
healthcare] is definitely worth it,” the paper goes on. “It’s just that 
children’s hospital must be able to confront this challenge. Why? Because 
whenever there is a slight outbreak of infectious diseases hospitals fail to 
cope with that burden … and refuse to take in child patients on the grounds 
that there are no free beds.”

(Lilit Harutiunian)


Reprinted on ANN/Armenian News with permission from RFE/RL
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