Victims Of Armenian Pogroms In Sumgait Remembered In France

VICTIMS OF ARMENIAN POGROMS IN SUMGAIT REMEMBERED IN FRANCE

PanARMENIAN.Net
02.03.2010 16:59 GMT+04:00

/PanARMENIAN.Net/ At the initiative of the Embassy of Armenia
in France, Permanent Mission of the Republic of Artsakh (NKR) in
France and French-Armenian organizations a series of events have
been organized on the 22-year anniversary of the Armenian pogroms in
Sumgait. According to press service of Armenian Ministry of Foreign
Affairs, on February 28 Armenian churches of France served a requiem
for the innocent victims of the pogroms.

Coordinating Council of Armenian Organizations of France (CCOAF)
addressed a written statement to public and non-governmental bodies of
France, which says in particular that the Armenian pogroms in Sumgait
were followed by pogroms in Baku, Gandzak and Shahumian. The reports
of the French Le Monde newspaper and the text of the resolution adopted
by the European Parliament in July 1988 were attached to the letter.

In addition, on behalf of the Ambassador of Armenia in France letters
were sent to those French MEPs who supported the July resolution of
1988. They were invited to take part in scientific conference devoted
to the tragic events in Sumgait and Baku.

In his speeches the Ambassador of Armenia paid particular attention
to the crimes in Sumgait, noting that these atrocities were followed
by Azerbaijan’s aggression against the people of Artsakh (NKR).

The Sumgait pogroms (also known as the Sumgait Massacre or February
Events) was an Azeri-led pogroms of the Armenian population of
Azerbaijani Sumgait from 26 to 29 February 1988. On February 27, 1988,
large mobs made up of Azeris formed into groups that went on to attack
and killed Armenians both on the streets and in their apartments.

Sumgait pogroms lasted three days and were accompanied by widespread
violence, looting and murder. Sumgait events signaled the beginning of
another unprecedented wave of anti-Armenian persecutions and violence
in Azerbaijan, a new genocide. The victims of this of anti-Armenian
persecutions and violence were Armenians of Kirovabad, Kazakhs,
Khanlar, Dashkesan, Mingechaur, Baku and other towns and villages
of Azerbaijan. This has led to floods of refugees from Azerbaijan in
Nagorno-Karabakh and Armenia.

BAKU; Turkish Foreign Ministry Released A Statement Condemning The "

TURKISH FOREIGN MINISTRY RELEASED A STATEMENT CONDEMNING THE "GENOCIDE" BILL

news.az
March 2 2010
Azerbaijan

Turkish Foreign Ministry Turkish Foreign Ministry reacts to so called
genocide bill.

Following Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s warning that the bill
would impede the normalization of ties between Turkey and Armenia,
if approved, Turkish Foreign Ministry released a statement on Monday.

The statement said: "We regret that Foreign Affairs Committee of
the US House of Representatives will take up Resolution 252 that
recognizes the so called Armenian genocide into its agenda on March 4.

We also informed some officials from the US about our sadness.

We hope that the Committee will reject the bill that will harm the
relations between the US and Turkey and will bring a halt to the
efforts for the normalization of Turkey-Armenia relations.

We want to believe that the members of the Foreign Affairs Committee
are well aware of the fact that the approval of the draft resolution
will damage Turkey-US relations as well as peace and stability efforts
in South Caucasia and will take steps keeping Turkey’s sensitivity
regarding the issue in mind."

Meanwhile, Turkey’s Ambassador to Washington Namık Tan came together
with the leading representatives of the Jewish lobby.

Government Speaker Cemil Chichek said that Turkey is doing what she
can to avoid the bill’s ratification.

U.S. Measure On Armenia Angers Turkey

U.S. MEASURE ON ARMENIA ANGERS TURKEY

United Press International UPI
March 1 2010

ANKARA, Turkey, March 1 (UPI) — Washington should understand the
harm that a resolution on alleged genocide in Armenia would have to
relations with Turkey, officials said Monday in Ankara.

U.S. Rep. Howard Berman, D-Calif., is backing a resolution headed
Thursday to the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Foreign
Affairs that would classify atrocities committed against the Armenia
population under Ottoman rule in 1915 as genocide.

The Armenian diaspora in the United States has urged the U.S.

government to formally take a strong stance on the issue.

Burak Ozugergin, a spokesman for the Turkish foreign minister, said
in a written statement to English-language newspaper Hurriyet that
the measure was regrettable.

"We want to believe the members of the Foreign Affairs Committee
are aware of the harm that will be caused by the adoption of the
draft resolution to Turkish-U.S. relations, as well as the efforts
for peace and stability in the South Caucasus and that they will act
with a feeling of responsibility," he said.

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said the U.S. measure
would strike a "blow to his efforts to handle ties with Armenia.

A group of Turkish officials is headed to Washington to urge lawmakers
not to pass the resolution.

Azerbaijani people `genocide’ in Khojaly is a myth

2010 » Politics
Azerbaijani people `genocide’ in Khojaly is a myth

In connection with the insinuations of official Baku, the Press
Service of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Nagorno-Karabakh
Republic considers it necessary to remind that a military operation
was organized on February 25-26, 1992 with the aim of unblocking the
only airport in the Republic situated near the settlement of Khojaly
and neutralizing the fire-points of the enemy just in Khojaly, from
where, beginning from spring 1991, the settlements of Nagorno-Karabakh
were regularly attacked by the Azerbaijani OMON-members and exposed to
artillery bombardment, including from «Grad» rocket launchers – weapon
of mass destruction (WMD) prohibited by numerous international
conventions.

Fulfilling a vital goal for the Karabakh people, the units of the NKR
self-defense forces, attacking Khojaly, provided a corridor for the
civilians’ safe leaving the military activities zone, about which the
Azerbaijani party was informed beforehand. This fact was repeatedly
confirmed by the Azerbaijani officials, in particular, the then
President Ayaz Mutalibov. But, the Azerbaijani authorities made
nothing for the peaceful population’s withdrawal from the military
activities area. Moreover, a column of civilians was shot down at the
approaches to the Aghdam region’s border, which was later confirmed by
Mutalibov, connecting this criminal act with the opposition’s attempts
to remove him from his position, making him responsible for the
events.

The territory, where pictures of numerous corpses were made, is in a
three-kilometer distance from the town of Aghdam and in 11 kilometers
from Khojaly. Up to the summer of 1993, this territory was under
permanent control of the Azerbaijani armed forces, which excluded any
access for the units of the Karabakh self-defense forces.

«The Azerbaijani official propaganda tries to blame Armenians for the
killing of the civil population of Khojaly, but even Azerbaijani
President Mutalibov admitted that `Armenians still provided a corridor
for the civilians’ leaving the place», the Russian Nezavisimaya Gazeta
from April 2, 1992 wrote. Also, Ogonyok journal (#14-15, 1992) noted
that «…the attack of Khojaly wasn’t sudden».

Some details of that military operation are still shrouded in mystery,
which is actively speculated by the Azerbaijani state propagandistic
machine, using various falsifications, forgeries, and obvious lie.
Last year, the NKR MFA drew the public attention to the false photo
placed at some Azerbaijani websites, including the one of a generator
of false ideas – The Heydar Aliyev Fund (). In fact,
the photo related immediately to the events in Kosovo and just as
such, along with numerous others, was introduced at the Serbian,
Albanian, and one of the specialized German forums, at the site of The
New York Times authoritative journal, and others. This year, new
forgeries have been added to the noted one. Thus, about 20 false
photos used by the Azerbaijani party, in particular, those of the
victims of the Kurdish pogroms in Turkey, the victims of the massacre
in Srebrennitsa, and others, were introduced during the February 24
presentation of the project in Yerevan. Besides,
outrageous falsifications were discovered in the lists of the Aghdam
tragedy victims introduced by the Azerbaijani official structures –
embassies, the presidential library, etc. Also, the site provides
video-films about the interrogations of the Turks-Meskhetians, which
testify that despite the Armenian party’s warning of the Khojaly
attack, the Azerbaijani servicemen banned the escape of the
Turks-Meskhetians’ families, which were artificially settled there by
the Azerbaijani authorities.

The Azerbaijani propaganda tries to introduce the betrayal of the
Khojaly civilians by their high-rank compatriots as the Armenians’
revenge for the bloody orgy in Sumgait.

But, the remarks and assessments of the Khojaly events by some
Azerbaijani top officials, human rights activists, and journalists
refute flatly the false thesis of official Baku. Thus, Azerbaijani
human rights activist Arif Yunusov wrote: «The town and its citizens
were deliberately made victims of the political goal – to prevent the
Azerbaijani Popular Front’s coming to power’ (Azerbaijani Zerkalo
newspaper, July 1992).

Tamerlan Karayev, in due time Chairman of the Supreme Soviet of the
Azerbaijani Republic (now AR Ambassador to India), testified: «The
tragedy was implemented by the Azerbaijani authorities», specifically
«some of the top officials» (Mukhalifat Azerbaijani newspaper, April
28, 1992).

Heydar Aliyev admitted himself that «the former leadership of
Azerbaijan is also guilty’ of the Khojaly events. According to
Bilik-Dunyasi Agency, still in April 1992 he expressed a cynically
monstrous idea: `The bloodshed will do good to us. We shouldn’t
interfere in the course of the events». Did the «father» of Azerbaijan
bear the responsibility for these words?

Czech journalist Yana Mazalova who, by the Azerbaijanis’ oversight,
found herself in both groups of the mass media representatives, which
were shown the «corpses defiled by Armenians», noted a sufficient
difference in the latters’ condition. Visiting the field immediately
after the events, Mazalova didn’t see any traces of barbarity on the
corpses. And two days later, the journalists were shown the disfigured
bodies already «prepared» for filming.

The Russian Megalopolis-Express newspaper wrote: «We cannot but admit
that if the Azerbaijani Popular Front had really far-reaching goals,
so it has achieved them. Mutalibov is compromised and dismissed, the
international community is shocked, the Azerbaijanis and the friendly
Turks believed in the so-called «genocide of the Azerbaijani
population in Khojaly».

As it is known, still on February 26, 47 Armenian hostages were kept
in Khojaly, which is deliberately concealed by the Azerbaijani mass
media. After liberating Khojaly, there were only 13 of them (among
them 6 women and a child), while the rest 34 were taken away in an
unknown direction by the Azerbaijanis. So far, there is no information
about there further fate. We only know that they were taken away from
the village in the operation night, but they didn’t enter Aghdam.

It is evident that those who wanted to make a semblance of the
corpses’ defilement by Armenians disfigured, first of all, the bodies
of the Armenian hostages in order that they couldn’t be identified.
Just for this purpose, the majority of the corpses were undressed, and
just for this purpose, the victims’ bodies were exposed to outrages,
which changed them out of all recognition.

Proceeding from the abovementioned facts, we can confidently state
that the Azerbaijani party is guilty of the death of the civilians of
Khojaly and the Armenian hostages kept there, and that the Azerbaijani
party committed a monstrous crime against its own people for the sake
of its political intrigues and struggle for power.

It is already obvious for everybody that the «genocide» of
Azerbaijanis in Khojaly is a myth created still by Heydar Aliyev and
taken up by his throne-successor Aliyev-the-junior in order to draw
the international community’s attention away from the massacre of
Armenians in Sumgait, Baku, Kirovabad, and many other
populated-by-Armenians settlements, as well as to conceal the
political, humanitarian, military, economic, and other penal offences
of the Azerbaijani leadership against Armenian civilians and against
its own people.

Source: Panorama.am

www.azerbaijan.az
www.xocali.net

Protest action against Sumgait tragedy in Athens

news.am, Armenia
Feb 27 2010

Protest action against Sumgait tragedy in Athens

15:50 / 02/27/2010Today, Feb. 27, at 11 a.m. on Vasilis Sophias avenue
in Athens a protest action near Azerbaijani embassy was held. The
demonstrators were chanting and making bold statements.

Youth Armenians of Greece headed to Azerbaijani embassy ` carrying
Armenian and Karabakhi flags, as well as banners condemning the
massacres of Armenians in Sumgait, perpetrated 22 years ago and
demanding justice and forfeit.

The action aimed at joining Armenians worldwide, that also initiates
protest actions raising voice against inhuman and shocking, but 22
years lasting crime never condemned and punished by international
community.

According to the demonstrators, the impunity was the reason of
innocent casualties as a result of massacres that heads and committers
for crime did the same in Baku, Ghazakh, Khanlar, Dashkestan and
Mingechaour and other cities of Azerbaijan.

The initiators of demonstration wanted to show solidarity to those who
remembers as well as remind of Sumgait tragedy.

S.T.

Iran Has Never Challenged Azerbaijan’s Territorial Integrity

IRAN HAS NEVER CHALLENGED AZERBAIJAN’S TERRITORIAL INTEGRITY

news.az
Feb 25 2010
Azerbaijan

Iran is interested in the resolution of the Karabakh conflict, said
export of the Noravank center Sevak Sarukhanyan.

Speaking about the Iranian-Azerbaijani relations, the specialist
noted that the relations between the countries have been developing
with the changing success in the past 20 years. In particular, there
have been religious conflicts between Iran and Azerbaijan which is
caused by the growing number of Islamic Shiites in Azerbaijan.

As for the recent statements of some Iranian officials regarding
the Karabakh issue, Sarukhanyan has commented as follows: "Iran has
never challenged the territorial integrity of Azerbaijan but it has
never taken steps against the Armenian side, as well". He said Iran is
interested in the resolution of the Karabakh conflict as the regional
conflict threatens the security of Iran’s northern borders.

As for Iran’s position in the Armenian-Turkish process, Sarukhanyan
noted that Tehran is completely neutral in this issue and does not
make any official statements.

CHF Imlemented The Renovation Of The Pre-School Class

CHF IMLEMENTED THE RENOVATION OF THE PRE-SCHOOL CLASS

6945.html
15:50:41 – 24/02/2010

The Small Scale Infrastructure Program, implemented by Cooperative
Housing Foundation (CHF) International and funded by USAID, has
completed the renovation of the pre-school class in Nor Edessia
village, Aragatsotn marz. The official opening of the preschool
class took place on February 24 at Nor Edessia school and was
attended by USAID/Armenia Mission Director Jatinder Cheema, Head of
Education Department of the RA Ministry of Education and Science
Narine Hovannisyan, Deputy Marzpet of Aragatsotn Manas Arakelyan,
Nor Edessia village mayor Vahan Abgaryan, representatives of USAID,
CHF, Shen NGO, and community members.

Until now, Nor Edessia did not have a kindergarten. The USAID SSIP
financed the complete renovation and furnishing of two rooms on
the second floor of the existing school building. The Ministry of
Education provided pedagogical training to the teachers of these new
pre-school classes. The project was also made possible through the
combined efforts of the Aragatsotn regional administration, village
community and Nor Edessia school.

Beginning in March 2010, twenty-two children, aged 5-6 years, will
be able to attend pre-school classes in Nor Edessia. Children will
gain basic knowledge and social skills that will help them prepare
for and transit to elementary school.

"The project that we celebrate today represents the first of nearly 50
infrastructure facilities that USAID will renovate with our partners
CHF and Shen this year. I am happy to announce that in Aragatsotn, we
are also currently building new gas distribution systems in Shenavan
and Tsakhkashen," said Ambassador Yovanovitch at the ceremony. She
expressed appreciation for the cooperation received from the Ministry
of Education and applauded its current reforms that will help increase
the number of Armenian children in kindergartens countrywide.

http://www.lragir.am/engsrc/society-lrahos1

Tsarukyan Has Been Invited

TSARUKYAN HAS BEEN INVITED

os16940.html
13:19:39 – 24/02/2010

February 25, the delegation headed by the Chairman of the Bargavach
Hayastan party Gagik Tsarukyan will take part in the ceremony
of inauguration of the newly-elected president of Ukraine Victor
Yanukovich. The BHK press service reports.

Note BHK and the Party of Regions of Yanukovich cooperate besides,
Tsarukyan and Yanukovich are friends.

http://www.lragir.am/engsrc/politics-lrah

RA Defense MInsitry Hosted USA And GB Experts

RA DEFENSE MINSITRY HOSTED USA AND GB EXPERTS

24/experts
04:12 pm | February 24, 2010

Official

RA Minister of Defense Seyran Ohanian received the USA and GB experts
who visited Armenia within the framework of the Defense Strategic
Review Process.

Greeting the guests Mr. Ohanian stated that great advisory work has
been done by the experts especially in order to make the international
experience in the spheres of long-term military planning and cost
accounting available for the senior officer staff of the Armed Forces
of the Republic of Armenia.

Touching upon the Defense Strategic Review Process the Minister stated
that the order to regulate the work regarding the military element
of this process has been approved, which will contribute to the
realization of the 3rd and 4th stages of the Defense Strategic Review.

At the end of the meeting the experts showed the outcomes of the
discussions and meetings in Armenia. They also came up with their
suggestions and evaluations about the Review Process, Information
and Public Relations Department of the Ministry of Defense reports.

http://www.a1plus.am/en/official/2010/02/

Gas Prices Can Be Determined By 96,000 AMD, Says Bagratian

GAS PRICES CAN BE DETERMINED BY 96,000 AMD, SAYS BAGRATIAN

Aysor
Feb 24 2010
Armenia

When asked by Aysor’s correspondent about the actual gas prices,
former Prime Minister, member of oppositional National Congress Hrant
Bagratian said that the gas prices can be determined by 96,000 AMD
per cubic meter.

He pointed that in order to give more precise calculation, it’s
necessary to use counters. In this connection he said is expected
the prices for electricity may decrease.

"Gas prices may slightly rise. The large growth is expected for
cement producing factories, which have caused great damage to the
country’s economy. Armenian economy’s 22% decline is more linked to
these factories," said Hrant Bagratian, adding that gas prices growth
will become one of the topical items of the opposition rally to be
held on March 1.