Goal.com, UK
Sokratis calls on Arsenal to win Europa League for absent Mkhitaryan
Fears over the Armenian’s safety in Azerbaijan prompted him to withdraw from the game, a fact that will give the Gunners extra motivation
Author: Torgomian Varazdat
Governor Hayk Chobanyan: There will be no unused land in Tavush Province within 2 years
From now on, agriculture, tourism, light industry, and education will be the priority sectors of Tavush Province of Armenia. The governor of Tavush, Hayk Chobanyan, told this to reporters today, on the 100th day of his tenure in this capacity.
According to Chobanyan, more than 61 investment projects are already being implemented in Tavush.
But as per the governor, the absence of sincerity and justice is the two biggest obstructing circumstances in governance.
“For years, people have not trusted the authorities,” Chobanyan said. “Now the time has come for sincere, fair, transparent governance. The country should be brought to its feet without dictatorship. And let’s not speak about our ancient civilization, but let’s become the most civilized nation.”
In the provincial governor’s words, they will do everything they can so that there will be no unused land in Tavush within two years. According to Chobanyan, they need to restore and value the work of the agronomists and veterinarians, and to educate the villagers with the training programs.
The governor added that Tavush shall become one of Armenia’s tourism gems, and said they will develop both health resort and rehabilitation as well cultural tourism in this province.
Also, Hayk Chobanyan stated that all programs and initiatives will be viewed from a security perspective, and the Tavush border villages shall be protected and resistant.
“We are building a developing, creative, powerful, and dignified Tavush” the governor of this province concluded.
https://a1plus.am/en/article/340263?fbclid=IwAR1N7nvjlDmdYOtCKMpUDRS6BZKrlZXW_zauHu-20DEACbojEA_CURbt1dw
Asbarez: Belgian Lawmakers Call for Artsakh’s Participation in Peace Talks
The “We are Our Mountains” monument in Artsakh
A group of Belgian lawmakers called for Artsakh’s participation in the Karabakh peace talks. In a statement issued Sunday on the 25th anniversary of the Karabakh cease fire, the group of mainly French-speaking legislators from Belgium, who are part of the Artskah Friendship Group of the Flemish parliament, also lamented at the fact that there has not been any tangible progress in the talks.
“The Agreement of May 12, 1992 put an end to the bloody war unleashed against the people of Artsakh who struggled to live free and in dignity in their ancestral homeland. The fragile peace established by the Agreement prevented further human losses and laid the foundations for peace talks aimed at finding a just and lasting solution to the conflict,” said the statement, which was distributed by the Arstsakh Foreign Ministry.
At the same time, the lawmakers expressed regret that no tangible progress has been achieved toward adopting a comprehensive agreement on establishing lasting peace over the last 25 years, “as evidenced by the resumption of the large-scale hostilities unleashed against Artsakh by Azerbaijan in April 2016.”
“We are convinced that a genuine peace process that bears fruits requires a direct dialogue with the people of Artsakh and the full-fledged participation of the Nagorno-Karabakh authorities – one of the signatories of the Ceasefire Agreement, in the negotiation process,” said the statement, in which the lawmakers stress that the conflict must be resolved peacefully.
“There is no alternative to a peaceful solution to the conflict. Curbing bellicose rhetoric, hate-speech and putting in place confidence-building, such as OSCE investigative mechanism to prevent ceasefire violations, which the Armenian side has accepted, and promoting people-to-people contacts are an essential prerequisite,” added the statement.
Armenia: LGBT People:Written question – 248579
The British Parliament, UK
May 4, 2019 Saturday
Q
Asked by Mr Jim Cunningham
(Coventry South)
[N]
Asked on: 29 April 2019
Foreign and Commonwealth Office
Armenia: LGBT People
248579
To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, what discussions he has had with his Armenian counterpart on the rights of LGBT people in Armenia.
Answered on: 02 May 2019
Her Majesty’s Government continues to pay close attention to the issue of LGBT rights. I raised the importance of diversity and inclusion in a speech to the National Assembly of Armenia in September 2017, referring to the record number of LBGT and female MPs in the House of Commons.
The British Embassy Yerevan has been active in supporting the LGBT community in Armenia. The British Ambassador and her team are in close contact with Armenian LGBT community representatives, have regularly hosted events for LGBT civil society organisations and spoken at conferences on LGBT issues to reiterate UK support for the universality of human rights. The British Embassy in Yerevan, along with other Embassies, has expressed grave concern over the upward trend in cases in Armenia where hate speech, including death threats, have been made against minorities and human rights defenders, particularly those promoting LGBT rights.
The UK, alongside partners, has called for hate speech to be condemned and for law enforcement agencies to take urgent steps to guarantee the physical safety of Armenian citizens and to investigate allegations against those suspected of perpetrating hate crimes.
Hay Dat Office in Europe criticized the House of Representatives of Belgium…
Arminfo, Armenia
Marianna Mkrtchyan
ArmInfo.Hay Dat Office in Europe criticized the House of Representatives of Belgium for deciding to exclude the Armenian Genocide from the resolution criminalizing the denial of genocides.
“At its plenary meetings on April 24-25, 2019, the House of Representatives of Belgium discussed and adopted a law that, among other issues, also provides for punishment for denying genocides such as the genocide in Rwanda and the massacres in Srebrenica. Despite the efforts of the Armenian community of Belgium and several members The adopted text does not provide for punishment for denying the Armenian Genocide.
The decision of the Belgian Parliament to expel the Armenian Genocide from the law is unacceptable and deeply disappointed “Europe’s Caspar Karampetyan stressed, while expressing regret that the Belgian legislature ignored public opinion, numerous articles published in leading Belgian media on the demands of human rights activists and amendments made by parliamentarians.Karampetyan stressed that tolerance for denial inspires authoritarian regimes similar to the Erdogan regime and, unfortunately, gives the green light to xenophobic anti-Armenian statements.He also pointed out the fact that Belgium officially recognized the Armenian Genocide at three levels: the House of Representatives, the Senate and the government, through an official statement by Prime Minister Charles Michel.
Armenian foreign minister sees no chance for normalization with Turkey now
Interfax
April 24 2019
Armenian foreign minister sees no chance for normalization with Turkey now
YEREVAN. April 24
YEREVAN. April 24
Armenian Foreign Minister Zohrab Mnatsakanyan is pessimistic about the likelihood that Armenia could normalize relations with Turkey anytime soon.
“Unfortunately, the news coming from Ankara is uninspiring,” Mnatsakanyan told journalists on Wednesday, when asked about the possibility of normalization in Armenian-Turkish relations.
“We have never made the recognition of the Armenian Genocide by Turkey a precondition,” he said.
Armenia commemorates the victims of the Armenian Genocide in the Ottoman Empire on April 24.
Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan said while visiting Iran at end-February 2019 that the position assumed by the Turkish leadership left no room for a substantive conversation on normalizing Armenian-Turkish relations.
“Turkey is continuing to tie bilateral relations to the Karabakh-Armenian-Azerbaijan relations. As long as the situation is such, we cannot have any reasons for optimism, even though we say that we are willing to discuss these relations without preconditions. But Turkey has been setting a precondition related to Karabakh,” Pashinyan said at a meeting with members of the Armenian community in Tehran.
“So, this position leaves no room for a serious conversation about Armenian-Turkish relations,” he said.
The recognition of the Armenian Genocide in the Ottoman Empire in 2015 is “extremely important” for Armenia, but it is not making this a precondition, he said.
“Can this be interpreted as a precondition when we talk about the recognition of the genocide? The fight against genocide is an item of the global security agenda. We will continue our efforts toward the recognition of the Armenian Genocide,” he said.
A1+: Armenian PM gives advice to Ukrainian President-elect on how to interact with Russia’s Putin
Prime Minister of Armenia Nikol Pashinyan has advised President-elect of Ukraine Vladimir Zelensky to be maximally sincere with Russian President Vladimir Putin for interacting with him without obstacles.
“I don’t think he will have difficulties in interaction (with Putin-edit). There is a condition – if you are straight, sincere, with no conspiracies in mind, there will be no difficulties. It’s just necessary to be straight and sincere”, Pashinyan said.
According to him, this is not only about interactions with the Russian President. “I think everybody will appreciate it if he sees that his interlocutor is not trying to deceive him”, PM Pashinyan said, adding that maybe this approach is not so common in international relations and diplomacy, but he always does so.
Earlier Pashinyan congratulated Vladimir Zelensky on being elected President of Ukraine, expressing confidence that the new President will make all efforts to raise Armenian-Ukrainian friendly relations to a new level.
The government should conduct a policy of high salaries. prime minister
- 22.04.2019
- Armenia:
- arm
- rus
75
The government should conduct a policy of high wages, one of the most important tools of which is the establishment of a flat income tax in the Tax Code, with the precondition that the income tax will be reduced to 20 percent in the coming years. RA Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan announced this at a meeting with students and teaching staff of YSU Faculty of Economics and Management.
According to him, thus the government encourages not only high salary policy, but also education, highly qualified specialists. And by saying a highly qualified specialist, the prime minister does not mean only the technological sector, but also hopes that the stock exchange system will develop significantly in Armenia in the near future. And in that direction, he assured, the government is working.
“We are trying to find state-owned companies in Armenia, whose securities can be put on the market, as well as try to encourage private companies with certain regulations so that they go that way. The banking system in Armenia is well established, a certain system of services is also established, where we can also say that there is a potential to attract highly qualified specialists,” the Prime Minister noted.
At the same time, Pashinyan said that they are well aware that a certain stratification is inevitable, but it is in terms of serving the problems brought by that stratification that the government, as a priority, has defined the agricultural sector, which it considers to be related to technologies. The tourism sector was not neglected either.
‘I keep silent and put up with it’: Surviving domestic violence in Armenia
Global Voices
A progressive new law has remained an abstract concept
“We got married at the end of 2017. The wedding was not luxurious, but our love was strong,” Sona (not her real name) says.
Just a week after the small wedding feast, Sona’s husband attacked her for the first time, demanding that she tell him about her “dark past.”
“I don’t know how the idea came into his head that I had had boyfriends in the past, that I had been in an intimate relationship, but he had no substantiated evidence of that. He was the first man in my life, but the doubt gnawed at his soul.”
“He beat me very harshly. He said he would kill me if I didn’t tell him who I was in an intimate relationship with, but I had nothing to say.”
Sona eventually left her husband.
“I went to my parents, but my husband immediately came after me. He apologised, begged me to go back, promising never to drink even a sip of alcohol…But I didn’t go.”
“A few weeks later, it turned out I was pregnant. This changed my life. I told him about the pregnancy, and again he asked me to go back to him, and I decided not to leave my child fatherless.”
Shortly after returning to him, Sona and her husband moved to Russia. He wanted them to move so that he could forget about her “dark past” in Armenia.
“Of course, I didn’t understand what past he wanted to forget about, but I went with him anyway. I wish I hadn’t gone… In Armenia, my parents-in-law protected me, but in Russia, I was completely alone. There was not a single day he didn’t drink. He would throw me against the walls like a ball.”
“During one beating, my hand was broken. They put a cast on it; I was eight months pregnant. He sent me to Armenia to give birth. After giving birth, I had surgery on my hand, but because my cast was put on incorrectly, there were some problems.”
Sona stayed in Armenia after giving birth, while her husband continued to live in Russia. Though the baby is already two years old, she has not found the will to divorce her husband.
“Everyday of my life is a subsequent denial of my own principles. I know my rights very well, but I don’t protect them. I keep silent and put up with the situation. I don’t want my child to grow up fatherless. He is a bastard as a husband but he is a good father,” Sona says.
In December 2017, Armenia adopted a new law meant to tackle domestic violence, which entered into force in July 2018.
The law enshrined a legal and institutional basis for preventing domestic violence and protecting victims. It was to provide the necessary psychological, legal, social support to those subjected to violence, as well as, where appropriate, temporary financial support.
After the adoption of the law, many were convinced that it would provide protection for persecuted women.
But Marina Yeghiazaryan, a clinical psychologist at Armenia’s Women’s Rights Centre, says that she has not seen a decline in the number of women subjected to domestic violence.
“We continue to receive thousands of calls. The violence continues,” Yeghiazaryan says.
“Even today, many women are not informed; they cannot protect their rights. Many people also avoid resorting to going to a human rights centre, preferring instead to keep silent and not talk about their problems,” she says.
Gayane says that problems in her family began after the birth of their child.
“He was agitated about everything: while I walked, the sound of my footsteps; while I did the dishes, the sound from the water tap; while I did my hair, the sound of the hairdryer. He was the most infuriated when our newborn baby was crying. He was always saying: “Shut her up, I need to rest,” ’ Gayane says.
She says that while in normal families, the birth of a child warms couples, brings them closer, in her case, the opposite happened, and that her husband turned from a quiet man into a beast.
“It was a mystery to me what happened to him. When he slapped me for the first time, I was shocked, not from the pain, but from his attitude. He had never hit me before.”
“Once, when the baby was crying at night again, he threatened to kill both of us if I did not silence the baby very quickly. Later, the instances did not end with threats. He was attacking my baby.”
“I would cover my baby with my body so that the kicking could not reach her. He beat us like this for a month. One day, when he was at work, I took our clothes and ran away.”
The Women’s Support Centre runs the only shelter in Armenia for victims of domestic violence. The centre also offers psychological and legal support.
“In our shelter, we can accept a total of seven women and their children. The location of the house is confidential. It has all the conditions to make a person feel safe; she is provided with all necessary living conditions,” says the centre’s director, Hasmik Gevorgyan.
At present, five women are living in the shelter. Residents can stay for up to three months, though the period of their stay can be extended on a case by case basis.
According to Hovhannisyan, there are not enough resources to serve the number of women facing domestic violence.
When Gayane left her husband, she had almost no relatives in Armenia; all of them were abroad. Fortunately, the family of a close friend provided her with a place to stay.
“A victim of domestic violence should appeal to the police station, but at this point, problems can arise, if suddenly the victim needs a refuge from their abuser. The state has adopted the law, but it hasn’t created shelters for victims,” she says.
“My friend and her husband saved our lives. A couple of times, my husband tried to enter the house, and we threatened to call the police. Only his brother somehow managed to calm him, and he asked me not to leave my husband.”
“I couldn’t forgive him and I wasn’t sure that one day, during my absence, he wouldn’t harm our baby.”
“Half a year has passed since those hellish days,” says Gayane, reflecting on her ordeal. “Now I’m thinking more soberly and I regret not leaving him sooner.”
Prelate’s Easter Message
Western Prelate Archbishop Moushegh Mardirossian
The triumphant message of the glorious Resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ once again emboldens our lives, illuminates our hearts and spirits with His light, and bolsters our faith with the hope of eternal life. Today we rejoice, for “Christ was resurrected and His enemies scattered.” Life triumphed over the bonds of death, goodness over evil, light over darkness, truth over lies, and justice over injustice.
The Son of God came to this earth with a message of love, peace, hope, forgiveness, and reconciliation, preaching redemption and salvation for all mankind. Many received Him, took up their cross and followed Him, while others felt threatened and sought to defeat Him. His opponents, the supposed teachers and defenders of the law, had so much hatred and deception in their hearts that they could not tolerate His fair and just condemnation and subsequently plotted to have Him killed with the help of the chief priests. To the distraught apostles and disciples who witnessed firsthand the slanderous accusations against their beloved teacher, His condemnation, arrest, crucifixion, and ultimately His death and burial, it appeared as though evil had triumphed. But it was only the beginning, for “on the third day He rose again, and ascended into heaven with the same body and sat at the right hand of the Father” (Nicene Creed).
The haze of doubt and cloud of despair was dispelled as the Resurrected Christ appeared to His disciples. Armed with kindled faith and restored hope by the triumph of the Resurrection, they began a new life as bold witnesses to the glory of God, witnesses to truth and justice, while the forces of darkness, that is, the chief priests and the Pharisees, suffered defeat.
The light, truth, power, and promise of the Resurrection reached and illuminated the Armenian nation through the apostles. The Armenian people, too, became fearless witnesses and remained so during the countless sufferings, persecutions, death and destruction that we endured throughout the centuries, armed with the conviction that in the end, truth and justice will always prevail, and heartened by the words of our Lord Himself, “For whoever desires to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake will find it” (Matthew 16:25).
Dear faithful,
Each year, Easter comes to remind us that the Lord came that we may have life, and that we may have it more abundantly (John 10:10). There will always be evil in the world; there will be hate, envy, deception, persecution, and more. There will be moments when our faith is tested and our hope is weakened, but we must not despair. “In the world you will have tribulation; but be of good cheer, I have overcome the world” (John 16:33). Yes, Jesus overcame all, and “everyone born of God overcomes the world” (1 John 5:4).
We live in a challenging time with no shortage of negative influences that can threaten the integrity of our individual, family, community, and spiritual life. Thus, it is vital that we remain vigilant. We must plant and cultivate seeds of love, peace, truth, and justice first within our own hearts and then in the hearts of those around us, so that we may collectively choose the path of light and goodness in our spiritual lives, in our service, duties, and in our mission.
Come, before all else, let us invite the Resurrected Lord to dwell in our hearts and to breathe the power of the Resurrection in us as He breathed the Holy Spirit on the apostles (John 20:22). Only then will we be able to “put on the whole armor of God” and “stand against the wiles of the devil” (Ephesians 6:11) to become intrepid witnesses to the truth and justice of our Lord.
Encouraged by these reflections, renewed and revitalized in body, mind, and spirit through the spiritual journey of Great Lent, and, above all, fortified in faith, hope, and joy by the power and promise of the Resurrection, we convey our heartfelt wishes for a happy and blessed Easter to our clergy, councils, parishes, schools, community organizations, and faithful.
We pray for the light of the triumphant Resurrection to radiate throughout the world and throughout Armenia, Artsakh and the Diaspora especially, inspiring and guiding the sacred mission of our government, religious, and national leaders.
May the breath of the Resurrection reinvigorate our lives and may the glory of Easter transform us in our daily walk so that we may live and serve as “children of light” and guardians of truth and justice.
CHRIST IS RISEN FROM THE DEAD
BLESSED IS THE RESURRECTION OF CHRIST
HAPPY AND BLESSED EASTER TO ALL
Prayerfully,
Archbishop Moushegh Mardirossian
Prelate, Western United States
Easter 2019