Category: 2020

Will government let guardians of children with limited abilities enter Armenian schools?

Emil Lazarian
News.am, Armenia
Aug 21 2020

18:32, 21.08.2020
                  

Armenian analyst: Ankara-Athens military operations will begin if Turkish ships approach Crete

Antranik Varosian
News.am, Armenia
Aug 21 2020

16:55, 21.08.2020
                  

The victorious battles in July evidenced that there is no military solution to the Karabakh issue – Pashinyan

Kalantarian Kevo
Panorama, Armenia
Aug 21 2020
A regular session of the Security Council is being held in Yerevan, chaired by Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan. As the press department at the government reported, the Prime Minister addressed the meeting with opening remarks,
 
In his words, Armenia adopted a new national security strategy at the previous session and It is noteworthy that shortly after that landmark decision we witnessed the expediency and viability of that document. “It was recorded that in general, we had accurately assessed the security threats facing our country: the strategic assessment of our security environment was of high quality,” said the PM, adding: “The well-known events – the victorious battles of Tavush – took place in the wake of the previous Security Council session. The following is to be stated in this connection: All the way throughout the previous period, Azerbaijan had adopted a stance which implied that their failure to launch an offensive and resolve the Karabakh conflict by force should be perceived as a concession to both Armenia and the international community. During all this time, we had been urging the Azerbaijani leadership to refrain from speaking to Armenia from the position of strength and to give up their bellicose rhetoric.
 
In fact, the victorious battles in July came to demonstrate that there is no military solution to the Karabakh issue. I think the time has come for the Azerbaijani leadership to acknowledge this fact, since as I have mentioned on several occasions, if the Karabakh issue were to have a military solution, then the people of Artsakh might state that they had resolved it long ago.”
 
Pashinyan noted that Armenia continues with its constructive stance on the Karabakh issue and its position is that the conflict should be settled through peaceful talks.
 
The PM next pointed to the next factor specified in the National Security Strategy which is Turkey’s non-constructive policy in the region and in the world, in general. “I think that Turkey’s destabilizing and destructive approaches are causing serious concerns to our partners in the Middle East, the Eurasian region and the European region. This is an agenda that has already been formed, and our future action should be the subject of substantive discussions in the Security Council, the Government, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and today’s session will address this issue among other agenda items,” said Pashinyan
 
Summing up his speech, Pashinyan stressed that the most important record is that the Republic of Armenia is in a position to meet the emerging security challenges and set the task of improving the country’s security environment every week, every month and every year.

Constitutional Reforms Concept to include creation of Supreme Court

Jalatian Sonya
ArmenPress, Armenia
Aug 22 2020

YEREVAN, AUGUST 22, ARMENPRESS. The Specialized Commission for Constitutional Reforms has discussed the option of merging the highest judicial instances, namely the two concepts on creating a Supreme Court.

The concepts were developed by jurists at the Justice Ministry and the commission.

The meeting was chaired by commission chairman Yeghishe Kirakosyan on August 22, the justice ministry said in a news release.

Minister of Justice Rustam Badasyan and jurists Armen Mazmanyan and Levon Gevorgyan presented the provisions of the concepts.

After debating the options, a voting took place to determine which version will be included in the preliminary version of the Constitutional Reforms Concept.

The first version, which failed to pass with only 7 of the 15 members voting in favor, envisaged the development of the constitutional justice system within the framework of the active model.

The commission chose the other option – decentralizing the constitutional supervision, uniting the highest judicial instances with 8 members voting in favor.

The concept on creating a Supreme Court will be included in the Constitutional Reforms Concept which is expected to be introduced for public debates soon.

Editing and Translating by Stepan Kocharyan


Russia hopes for soonest resumption of peace talks on Nagorno Karabakh – Lavrov

Karapet Navasardian
Public Radio of Armenia
Aug 21 2020

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Russia hopes for soonest resumption of negotiations on Nagorno Karabakh settlement, Russian Foreign minister Sergey Lavrov said in an interview with Trud.

He added that Russia is working in that direction with other OSCE Minsk Group partners.

“After April 2016, the border clashes of July 12-16 were the second largest violation of the 1994 ceasefire agreement prepared with our mediation. For the first time in the last 26 years, high-intensity clashes using field artillery, mortars and attack drones took place not on the contact line in Karabakh, but directly on the section of the state border between Armenia and Azerbaijan,” he said.

Lavrov noted that “to stabilize the situation the Russian Foreign Ministry called on the parties to immediately cease the hostilities.

“I held telephone conversations with colleagues from Armenia and Azerbaijan, met with representatives of organizations uniting Russian citizens of Azerbaijan and Armenian descent. Both diasporas should be fully aware of their responsibility both for the observance of the laws of the Russian Federation and for helping to create an atmosphere conducive to the normalization of relations between Baku and Yerevan,” Lavrov added.

“The Russian co-chair of the OSCE Minsk Group, Igor Popov, was in direct contact with the leadership of the foreign ministries of the two countries. As a result, with active Russian mediation, a ceasefire was reached on August 16, albeit not on the first attempt,” he stressed.

On August 12 the Azerbaijani forces launched an offensive in the Tavush section of the shared border. Armenian civilian settlements and infrastructures were damaged in the attack, a villager was injured.



AEF Announces 2020-2021 Richard R. Tufenkian Scholarship Recipients

Hambardsumian Paul
Asbarez
Aug 21 2020

The Armenian Educational Foundation’s Board of Directors and Scholarship Committee announced the 2020-2021 Richard R. Tufenkian Scholarship Award recipients. Three $3,000 scholarships have been awarded to Armenian undergraduate students at accredited United States colleges or Universities. To qualify for this scholarship, students had to be of Armenian descent, have a minimum 3.0 grade point average, show financial need, and be actively involved in the Armenian community.

In total, 51 applications were received for the Richard R. Tufenkian Scholarship. The committee diligently reviewed and selected the following three students.

Arman Ghazaryan

Arman Ghazaryan (Vayk, Armenia)
Arman Ghazaryan was born in Armenia in 1998. He is a rising sophomore at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) majoring in Business Economics and minoring in Statistics with a 3.7 GPA. Arman graduated from Quantum College International Baccalaureate program in Armenia in 2016. While in high school he has received multiple awards including the annual educational award of the President of Armenia in IT sphere in the nomination of the best high school student of the year (2015), as well as the annual award of the Quantum College as the best college student of the year (2015).

Arman participated in numerous volunteering activities/projects in Armenia including providing training and support to the communities in the bordering areas with Azerbaijan that significantly suffered from conflict, tutoring children in the Nubarashen community of Armenia, and other community service projects organized by different Armenian and International organizations such as AGBU, Fuller Housing, Rotary and Rotaract Clubs Yerevan-International. He also interned with Gyumri TechnoPark and the Constitutional Court of the Republic of Armenia.

Arman was admitted to UCLA in 2016, but after completing the first quarter, was called up to active military service by the Ministry of Defense of Armenia. He spent the next two years in the Armenian Armed Forces as a conscript. He returned to the United States in 2019 with deeper motivation and determination to finish his education and pursue a career in corporate finance with a particular interest in investment banking. Arman hopes to one day be able to support other young Armenians from our homeland to pursue their dreams and receive an education at a world renown university.

Kami Arabian

Kami Arabian (Glendale)
Kami Arabian was born in Glendale, California in 2002. He graduated from Rose and Alex Pilibos as one of the valedictorians for the class of 2020 with an unweighted 4.0 GPA. During his time at Pilibos, Kami served his classmates as a representative in the student council, later to be elected president during his senior year. Kami was involved in his school’s Model United Nations team, serving as its secretary-general. Through these experiences, Kami developed a passion for public service, and as a result, he decided to take an internship in the Office of Senator Anthony Portantino under the direction of the staffer who was responsible for representing environmental issues across the district. Kami supplemented this experience by later interning in the administrative division of the Glendale Department of Water and Power, where he developed an understanding of the policies that impact his local community.

Recently, Kami was admitted to Dartmouth College, an Ivy League institution located in New Hampshire, where he plans to double major in environmental engineering and political science and graduate by 2024. Upon completing his education at Dartmouth College, Kami intends to pursue a degree in law, with the goal of starting his own firm one day in the future. He is determined to give back to the Armenian community since he recognizes the important role that it plays in the success of future generations.

Anaida Fahradyan

Anaida Fahradyan (Yerevan)
Born in Yerevan, Armenia, Anaida Farhadyan has recently completed her freshman year at Wilson College in Pennsylvania, with a 4.0 GPA. Anaida is pursuing an undergraduate degree in Business Management, History and Political Science, and a minor in Spanish – her fourth language. She expects to complete her Bachelor’s in May of 2023. Anaida’s parents are both still living in Yerevan, with her mother unemployed and her father unable to finance Anaida’s education on an Armenian income. Anaida is the recipient of multiple awards and honors, including: President’s Volunteer Service Award, Valedictorian at her high school, Student of The Year Award, over 100 community service hours’ award, “best delegate” award at Euro Youth Parliament Yerevan Regional Session, Athlete Award in Cross Country and Track, Armenian Language Olympiad, and International Linguistics Olympiad.

During her junior year of high school, Anaida was an exchange student in the state of Kansas through the Future Leaders Exchange (FLEX) Program. This cultural exchange inspired her to give back to her communities both in Armenia and the US by participating in and initiating community service activities, local clean-up projects, educational workshops, and leadership programs. She is the first of her family to pursue a degree in the United States and hopes to be successful enough to start her own scholarship fund in the future to make education accessible to all Armenians. In her free time, Anaida enjoys playing the piano, reading, and photography.

The Richard R. Tufenkian Scholarship Fund was established by Ralph and Savey Tufenkian in memory of their son Richard. The $230,000 endowed fund has provided over $470,000 in scholarships since 1991. Currently, $17,500 in scholarships is awarded each year, including $2,500 to a student attending the American University of Armenia and six full tuition scholarships for students attending public universities in Armenia.

AEF is most grateful to the Tufenkian Family for their commitment to helping Armenians globally through their philanthropy, unconditional love, and continued support of the education and advancement of Armenian youth in the United States and abroad.

As AEF looks with optimism toward the future, it hopes to be of even greater assistance to students of Armenian parentage pursuing higher education, as well as to continue providing financial help to institutions in Armenia, the United States and around the world.

The Armenian Educational Foundation is a non-profit organization, established in 1950, with the aim to render financial assistance to Armenian educational institutions, and to provide financial assistance to students of Armenian parentage.



Pashinyan Slams Ankara’s ‘Destructive’ Actions

Garnik Tadevosian
Asbarez
Aug 21 2020

Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan on Friday slammed Ankara for what he called its “destructive” action that are having “destabilizing” effects on the region.

“I think that Turkey’s destabilizing and destructive actions are causing serious concerns to our partners in the Middle East, the Eurasian region and the European region,” said Pashinyan during meeting of Armenia’s National Security Council on Friday.

“This is an agenda that has already been formed, and our future steps should be the subject of substantive discussions in the Security Council, the Government, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and today’s session will address this issue among other agenda items,” Pashinyan said according to his press office.

Since Azerbaijan began brazenly attacking civilian and military targets in Armenia’s Tavush Province on July 12, official Ankara has continued its aggressive posturing toward Yerevan. The Turkish government’s overt endorsement of Baku’s attacks were followed by a diplomatic attack on Yerevan over Armenia’s leaders’ statement about the 100th anniversary of the Sevres Treat. Just this week, Ankara again lashed out at Yerevan, whose government unequivocally threw its support to Greece and Cyprus over Turkey’s attempts to destabilize the Eastern Mediterranean Sea.

Pashinyan seized on Armenia’s victories in last month’s attacks to also express Armenia’s position on the matter, as well as the ongoing Karabakh conflict settlement process, saying that Azerbaijan’s “failures” on the ground should be perceived as Baku’s conceding to Armenia and the international community.

He said prior to the July events, Azerbaijan had adopted a position by which it would resolve the conflict through military force, as witnessed by the ongoing rhetoric from official Baku.

Azerbaijan’s “failure to launch an offensive and resolve the Karabakh conflict by force should be perceived as a concession to both Armenia and the international community,” Pashinyan told the security council.

“Throughout this time, we had been urging the Azerbaijani leadership to refrain from speaking to Armenia from the position of strength and to give up their bellicose rhetoric,” Pashinyan explained, adding there can be no military solution to the Karabakh conflict.

“I think the time has come for the Azerbaijani leadership to acknowledge this fact, since as I have mentioned on several occasions, if the Karabakh issue were to have a military solution, then the people of Artsakh might state that they have resolved it a long time ago,” said Pashinyan, referring to the Artsakh’s decisive victory in the Karabakh war.

The prime minister stressed that Armenia continues with its constructive stance on the Karabakh issue. “Our position is that the conflict should be settled through peaceful talks. Armenia has always been adhered to this very position on the Karabakh issue, regardless of the political background of its governments,” said Pashinyan.

“The most important point we have to make is that the Republic of Armenia is in a position to meet the emerging security challenges. At the same time, we must improve the country’s security environment every week, every month and every year. The Security Council is just the working format which should discuss and resolve such issues,” added Pashinyan.


Montebello councilman, sheriff get involved in tiff over Armenian-Azerbaijani relations

Emil Lazarian
Whittier Daily News, MA
Aug 21 2020

Montebello Mayor Jack Hadjinian (Photo by Raul Romero Jr, Contributing Photographer)

By Mike Sprague | [email protected] | Whittier Daily News
PUBLISHED: at 6:00 a.m. | UPDATED: at 1:06 p.m.

Montebello City Councilman Jack Hadjinian’s decision to resign from the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Youth Foundation Board of Directors in protest of its decision to hold an Aug. 12 town hall meeting for the Azerbaijani American community — which was later cancelled —  has triggered the latest flareup in the already tense relationship between the Azerbaijani and Armenian communities.

Hadjinian, the first Montebello mayor of Armenian heritage,  is up for re-election, seeking a third City Council term in November.  He’d served for four years on the board of the foundation board, which raises money for youth programs.

“I can no longer support such a reckless leader as Sheriff (Alex) Villanueva who continues to challenge the Board of Supervisors, and now has planned an event with a terrorist group known as the Azerbaijani Community,” said Hadjinian in a Facebook post announcing his resignation.


“The Azeris are spreading anti-Armenian propaganda and Sheriff Villanueva is giving them a platform to further extend their lies across the County of Los Angeles,” Hadjinian wrote in the post he later made private. “I will never compromise my principles just to carry a badge or an ID card.”


The town hall meeting was scheduled after a July 21 protest, sponsored by the Armenian Youth Federation, was staged at the Azerbaijan Consulate on Wilshire Boulevard in Los Angeles.

“The Azerbaijanis showed up to the demonstration with hammers and crow bars,” Hadjinian said.

A press release from the Los Angeles Police Department said more than 500 Armenian protesters showed up at the Azerbaijan consulate and were confronted by as many as 50 counter-protesters across the street. During the protest, the two opposing groups became increasingly agitated, which resulted in a physical altercation, the release said.

In an unsigned emailed response on Wednesday, the Consulate General of Azerbaijan denied the charges and said detectives are investigating three hate crime/battery incidents that occurred during the protest.

Three Azerbaijani victims came forward and have reported the assaults to police, which are being investigated as hate crimes, police said in the release. The three victims sustained non-life threatening injuries during the altercation, and received medical treatment at a local hospital.


The protest was over a confrontation between the two Asian countries that began July 12 in Tavush, a northern province of Armenia near the border of Azerbaijan. The fighting claimed at least sixteen lives in the most serious outbreak of hostilities in the South Caucasus since 2016, according to Paul Stronski, a senior fellow in Carnegie Endownment for International Peace, in an article he wrote for the organization.

“Since the late Soviet era, Armenia and Azerbaijan have fought over Nagorno-Karabakh, a mostly ethnically Armenian breakaway region of Azerbaijan,” Stronski wrote. “After the Soviet Union collapsed, ethnic Armenians in the territory declared their independence from Azerbaijan. But Azerbaijan still considers the area part of its sovereign territory.”

The consulate also called on Hadjinian to apologize.

Hadjinian insulted hundreds of thousands of Azerbaijani-Americans by calling them “a terrorist group,” the consulate wrote, branding the comments as racist.

Meanwhile, in a post on his Twitter site, Villanueva said Hadjinian misunderstood the reason for the meeting.


“Recently there was a social media posting, which stated the community conversation that was going to be held today was going to discuss Azerberjian-Armenian relations,” Villanueva tweeted about the town hall meeting,

“That was erroneously stated and was not the intended purpose for the community conversation,” he said. “The community conversation as going to only be about public safety concerns. I apologize for the confusion and concerns that occurred as a result of this. We will continue to focus on community conversations regarding public safety which originate from within Los Angeles County’s diverse communities.”

Hadjinian said he talked with Sheriff’s Department Capt. John Burcher to discuss his planned resignation “but he failed to appreciate the sensitivity of the political overtones that will come out of this event,” Hadjinian said in his email to the board.

“He was defensive and reluctant to listen,” Hadjinian said, “while I was trying to explain to him avoiding the unnecessary political ramifications from the more than 300,000 Armenian-Americans in Los Angeles County.”

After Hadjinian’s resignation became public last week, hundreds of emails with identical comments — all from the U.S. Azeris Network, headlined “Decry Jack Hadjinian’s racist remarks!” — were sent to Montebello city officials and this news media group.

Most were sent from people with addresses on the East Coast. The consulate said it is not responsible for the emails.

“Please take a minute to send this letter to the Montebello city government and the local media to inform them about the hateful and racist message from one of the elected officials who is supposed to serve people, not divide and harm them,” the email said. “There is no place for a racist in our government, both local and federal!”

Mayor Sal Melendez said he had received about 500 of the emails and in response met with the Armenian National Committee members and others to get a “better understanding of the situation.”

Councilwoman Kimberly Cobos Cawthorne, who has received more than 400 emails, said she’s sorry the incident “put Montebello in a bad way.”

Hadjinian said he has been asked to reconsider his statements, but for now he said “I need to cool off a little bit.”




Lavrov Blames ‘Unresolved’ Karabakh Conflict for July Tensions

Karagyozian Lena
Asbarez
Aug 21 2020

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov blamed a “whole host of reasons,” primarily the “unresolved” Nagorno-Karabakh conflict for the resumption of tensions last month between Armenia and Azerbaijan.

In an interview published Friday in the Russian Trud newspaper, Lavrov explained that since since the 1994 ceasefire agreement, last month border tensions were the second largest “violation” of the cease fire, after the April 2016 War, when Azerbaijan launched a large-scale military attack on all directions of the Artsakh-Azerbaijan border, also known as the line of contact.

“For the first time in the past 26 years, high-intensity clashes using field artillery, mortars and attack drones took place not on the line of contact in Karabakh, but directly on the state border between Armenia and Azerbaijan,” Lavrov told Trud.

“A whole host of reasons led to the conflict,” said Lavorv. “The basis, of course, is the unresolved Karabakh problem.”

Russia’s top diplomat said that Russia is doing its utmost to resume the Karabakh conflict settlement process, saying that as soon as the border escalation began in July he held telephone conversations with his counterparts in Armenia and Azerbaijan and urged to immediately halt the military operations. He told Trud that he also met with representatives of the Armenian and Azerbaijani communities in Russia and urged them to follow all Russian laws and help “create an atmosphere conducive to the normalization of relations between Baku and Yerevan.”

“The Russian Co-Chair of the OSCE Minsk Group Igor Popov was in direct contact with the foreign ministers of the two countries. As a result, with active Russian mediation, a ceasefire was reached, albeit not on the first attempt, on July 16,” Lavrov told Trud, in reference to Russian efforts to quell the hostilities on the Armenia-Azerbaijan border when Azerbaijani forces attacked civilian and military targets in Armenia’s Tavush Province beginning on July 12.

He also attributed the “overwhelming public sentiments on both sides of the border” for the resumption of clashes.

However, it was Lavrov’s inclusion “geographic” factors triggering the tensions that raises concerns of his assessment of the situation.

“The decision by Armenia to revive an old border checkpoint located 15 kilometers (approximately nine miles) from Azerbaijan’s [gas] pipelines that caused heightened concern for one side, and an unjustified response for the other side, as a result of which a confrontation arose with the most unpredictable consequences,” Lavrov told Trud.