Category: 2023

This year marks the 31st anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between China and Armenia. In an exclusive interview with CGTN, Sergey Manassarian, the Armenian ambassador to China, shared his understanding of Chinese-style modernization and his views on China-Armenia bilateral relations and cooperation in the future.

Reporter: Cui Yingjie

Video editor: Cui Yingjie

Camera: Zheng Hao, Zhao Wenting, Zhang Xiulian, Quan Hao 

Producer: Li Meng

Supervisor: Liu Yuqi

Tehran, Jun 24 (IANS): Five Iranians imprisoned in Armenia have been repatriated under a prisoner extradition agreement between the two countries, media reported.

The convicts are expected to serve the remainder of their jail terms in Iran, the the semi-official Fars news agency report said on Friday.

Fars quoted the Iranian Foreign Ministry as saying the prisoner extradition process will increase coordination between the Iranian and Armenian juridical and law enforcement authorities.

Iran and Armenia signed the prisoner extradition agreement in February 2022, Xinhua news agency reported.

According to Iranian Justice Minister Amin-Hossein Rahimi, most of the Iranians imprisoned in Armenia are accused of carrying narcotics including codeine-based sedatives.

Reuters: Russia urged Azerbaijan to fully unblock the Lachin corridor on Friday, the only road that links Armenia with the Nagorno-Karabakh enclave where more than 100,000 ethnic Armenians live and rely on it for vital supplies.

Nagorno-Karabakh is internationally recognized as part of Azerbaijan, but its inhabitants are predominantly ethnic Armenians. The enclave broke away from Baku's control in a war in the early 1990s.

After heavy fighting and a Russian-brokered cease-fire, Azerbaijan in 2020 took over areas that had been controlled by ethnic Armenians in and around the mountain enclave, and Baku is now pushing for ethnic Armenian government and military structures to be dissolved and for the population to accept Azerbaijani passports.

Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said in a statement on Friday that the entrance to the corridor had been blocked by Azerbaijan in a move she said increased tensions at a time when Baku and Armenia are trying to agree to a peace treaty.

There have been reports that the road was totally closed after June 15, when shots were fired in an incident in which the South Caucasus countries said in separate statements that one Azerbaijani and one Armenian border guard had been wounded.

"Such steps lead to increased tension and are not conducive to maintaining a normal atmosphere around the ongoing process of normalizing relations between Azerbaijan and Armenia with Russian assistance. We call on Baku to unblock the Lachin corridor in its entirety," said Zakharova.

Baku has denied imposing a blockade but has said it has taken what it called "relevant measures to investigate the reasons for this provocation, as well as to ensure the security of the border checkpoint."

Azerbaijan in April established a checkpoint at the entrance to the corridor following months of disruption caused by people who called themselves Azerbaijani environmental activists, a step it said was essential due to what it cast as Armenia's use of the road to transport weapons.

Ruben Vardanyan, a billionaire banker who was a top official in Karabakh's separatist government until February, on Thursday accused Baku of trying to "ethnically cleanse" the enclave by imposing what he called a goods and energy blockade — allegations that Azerbaijan denies.

Azerbaijan's foreign minister told Reuters in an interview that Baku was rejecting a demand from Armenia to provide special security guarantees for the enclave's ethnic Armenians ahead of a new round of peace talks, saying they were sufficiently protected.

By PanARMENIAN

A group that works to help persecuted Christians is hoping to get United States assistance to Armenia in the form of supplying them with arms in a manner similar to what was done for Ukraine.

Philos Project President Robert Nicholson was joined by Ambassador-at-Large for International Religious Freedom Sam Brownback in a press conference ahead of their fact-finding mission to Armenia. The group has largely focused on Christian persecution throughout the Middle East but has shifted its focus this year to focus on Armenia. Nicholson is hoping to drum up support in the United States to push the U.S. government to support Armenia in more direct ways, including providing the country with weapons to even the odds against its hostile neighbor, Azerbaijan.

"The situation is very urgent," Nicholson said. "It's extremely urgent and existential. I say that comparatively."

He contrasted the situation with Israel, which though facing no shortage of threats, is powerful and well-protected. Armenia, by contrast, is small and isolated, lacking U.S. support, he said.

"Armenia is a much smaller country, a much more precarious country, a country that is crushed between some pretty big and, in many cases, malicious players and specifically with respect to its neighbor Azerbaijan," he continued. "Every day that we were on the ground, there were territorial violations of Azerbaijani troops on Armenian soil."

Nicholson said there are promising signs of the U.S. taking more direct, diplomatic steps to assist Armenia, but more should be done.

"There is, however, a U.S.-led peace process that I think presents a unique opportunity and one that I hope this trip helps push forward," he said.

"The Armenians inside this territory, first of all, need security guarantees, right? This is the oldest Christian nation facing, for the second time in only about a century, the possibility of genocide. And I think that without those security guarantees, without the United States as a mediator, ensuring that those guarantees are not only there but even more robustly than we might think to place them in otherwise, then that possibility becomes very real."

Nicholson then transitioned to make the case for arms shipments to Armenia, arguing that the U.S. should remove barriers to weapon shipments to the country.

Preempting fatigue over extensive weapon shipments to Ukraine, he argued that Armenia can make do with much less.

"This is not Ukraine," Nicholson said. "There is a little that can do a lot in this conflict. The Armenians are not asking for handouts. For example, one of the big roadblocks they face is their inability to buy certain weapons systems from the United States to buy them, not to just get them for free, so that they can protect themselves.

"Are there reasons why those regulations are in place?" he continued. "[Yes], but I think one of the easiest things that we can do as the United States is help Armenians protect themselves. That's what they want. We have the ability to help them, and I think that we should do that."

Part of the fact-finding mission will be to outline what actions can be taken by the U.S. government to clear the way for weapon shipments to the country. Nicholson said that a member of his delegation asked a member of the Ministry of Defense what top three weapons the country wanted.

"The official came back saying, 'Well, three is a nice number, but we've actually submitted a list of 13 items,'" he said. The items range from "things like anti-aircraft systems, missile defense systems, to, you know, things that are much smaller, like small arms and comms equipment and things like that. And the requests have until now been denied."

CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER

The reason for the holdup, Nicholson explained, was nervousness over Armenia's traditional protector, Russia.

"The United States is concerned that whatever weapons it sends to Armenia will fall into Russian hands or the IP will be stolen by Russian engineers," he said. "Obviously with the Ukraine war raging, that's … more acute of a problem than even … before."

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/policy/foreign/christian-group-aims-to-get-us-to-help-armenia-through-ukraine-model

Clergy living in Jerusalem know that nothing good comes out of a random encounter with young haredim in the alleys of the Old City.

The striking clothing of Armenian priests, the heavy crosses hanging on the chest of monks from each of the 15 different churches represented here – and lately also Christian buildings, especially entrance gates to churches – have become favorite targets for Jews to spit on.

Why do some Jews spit on gentiles? This was the subject of an emergency conference of scholars on Christianity and Christian communities in Israel, run by the Institute for the Study of Relations between Jews, Christians and Muslims at the Open University.

Yisca Harani, a scholar who has devoted years to the study of the phenomenon as part of her extensive research on the Christian denominations in the Holy Land, conceived and planned the conference as an initial response to the increase in these incidents.

The conference, initially planned to be held at the Tower of David Museum, was almost canceled due to Mayor Moshe Lion’s opposition to connecting the municipal institution with such a sensitive issue. On very short notice, the organizers moved the conference to the Armenian complex in the Old City.

Videos shown included ultra-Orthodox or National-Religious youths spitting in the face of priests or at their feet; stopping for a second – even while sitting in a car– just to spit at the entrance to a monastery or church; and disturbing graffiti. It all painted a worrying picture of a serious deterioration of relations with Christians in the holy city.

Some downplay the severity of the phenomenon, attributing it to bored young people who do not really understand the seriousness of the act.

Deputy Mayor Arieh King, who does not support the spitting incidents, has maintained that Christians, including the Evangelicals who love Israel, are all engaged in missionary work. He has said that this issue should be addressed, and not the spitting phenomenon, and accused the organizers of running an “antisemitic conference.”

For the conference organizers, the spitting phenomenon has been aggravated by political events. On Jerusalem Day, King – along with Rabbi Zvi Thau, who has been leading a hard line against Christians for years – protested during a traditional ceremony of Evangelical Christians at the Davidson Center, claiming that it was a blatant missionary event.

Harani said that the current political atmosphere in the country has enabled the spitting phenomenon to worsen. Now, she said, it is no longer a question of “bored brats,” but an organized campaign at least on the ideological level, which originates from the claim of fighting missionaries. In this context, King’s comments are significant, despite the fact that he does not approve of the spitting incidents.

The fact that the Armenian Church has never engaged in missionary activity does not seem to bother those who wish to increase the fight against the Christian presence in Israel. 

Dr. Amnon Ramon, a researcher on Christian communities in Israel at the Jerusalem Institute for Policy Research, pointed to the hostility that sectors of the extreme Right have toward Christians. This, he maintained, is a continuation of acts that occurred in the 1980s, such as when arsonists torched the Baptist Church in Rehavia.

According to Ramon, the extreme Right feels that the threat of Christianity to the State of Israel’s Jewish identity is much more dangerous than the fight against the Muslims. Ramon also said he believes that the current political extremism in the country is enabling the worsening of the spitting phenomenon.

With the exception of a letter issued about two weeks ago by former Sephardi chief rabbi Shlomo Amar, in which he expressed his opposition to the practice, silence on the subject among rabbis from all sectors is deafening. ❖