Category: 2023

Asbarez: Statement on Right to Self-Determination of Artsakh and its People

Andranik Taslakhchian
by Asbarez Staff

 

 March 21, 2023

 

in Armenia, Artsakh, Featured Story, Latest, News, Top Stories

Azerbaijanis, claiming to be environmental activists, have been blockading the Lachin corridor since Dec. 12


The Artsakh Foreign Ministry issued a statement on Tuesday detailing the aspects that make guarantees for the Artsakh population’s right to self-determination a fundamental imperative.

In addressing some of the elements threatening this principle, the Artsakh foreign ministry pointed to Azerbaijan’s continued aggression against Armenians, include the now 100-day illegal blockade of Artsakh.

Below is the text of the announcement.

For 100 days now, Azerbaijan has been subjecting Artsakh to an illegal blockade, the ultimate goal of which is to destroy the population of Artsakh by expelling them from their historical homeland. Through use of force and acts of terror, Azerbaijan is pursuing an ongoing policy aimed at forcibly suppressing the right of the people of Artsakh to self-determination. At the same time, the Azerbaijani authorities are overtly rejecting negotiations as a means of finding a solution to any issue.

It should be noted that for several decades, Azerbaijan has been striving to get rid of the people of Artsakh and resolve the Azerbaijan-Karabakh conflict by force. The first victims of such a criminal policy were, in particular, the Armenians who lived in Azerbaijan during the Soviet period. The deportation of Armenians from Azerbaijan organized by the local authorities in 1988-1990 and accompanied by massacres, torture and pogroms, marked the beginning of a new stage in Azerbaijan’s policy of persecuting Armenians. As early as in 1991, the Azerbaijani authorities continued the deportation of Armenians from Artsakh, which, in various forms and manifestations, has continued to this day.

Subsequently, in violation of international law and the United Nations Charter, and in an attempt to get rid of the people of Artsakh and suppress their right to freedom and self-determination, Azerbaijan has resorted to the use of force three times to resolve the conflict through direct military aggression against Artsakh. All three wars waged by Azerbaijan against Artsakh included massive human rights violations and war crimes, including willful killings of civilians, extrajudicial executions and torture of prisoners of war and civilian hostages, indiscriminate shelling, the use of internationally prohibited ammunition, and deliberate attacks on critical civilian infrastructure.

As a result of the aggression against Artsakh in 2020 and the occupation of a vast part of its territory, more than 40,000 Armenians of Artsakh have been forcibly displaced. All civilians who remained in the territories that came under the control of Azerbaijan were brutally killed by Azerbaijani soldiers. Azerbaijan’s provocations and attacks on the civilians of Artsakh, including willful killings, continued even after the signing of the trilateral ceasefire statement of 9 November 2020.

Widespread and systematic violations of the rights of the people of Artsakh by Azerbaijan, including massacres, deportations, torture and other inhuman acts, are not only encouraged, but also co-ordinated at the state level. The Azerbaijani authorities do not even hide their criminal intentions to carry out ethnic cleansing and genocide in Artsakh. This is evidenced by the numerous public statements made by the President of Azerbaijan. The most recent such statement was made on March 18 2023, during his defiantly provocative visit  to the Armenian village of Talish occupied during the 44-day aggression, the entire population of which was forcibly displaced.  The visit itself, as well as the aggressive and belligerent statements of the Azerbaijani senior leadership during that visit, indicate that official Baku plans to extend the scenario implemented in the occupied village of Talish to the entirety of Artsakh.

Along with this, throughout the entire negotiation process since the 1990s, Azerbaijan has sabotaged all efforts by international mediators, in particular, the OSCE Minsk Group co-chairing countries, aimed at a peaceful settlement of the Azerbaijan-Karabakh conflict based on international law, each time refusing at the last moment from agreements on a compromise solution. Furthermore, after the war of aggression in 2020, the Azerbaijani authorities refused altogether from the peace negotiations, declaring the issues of the life and rights of the people of Artsakh as their internal matter.

Azerbaijan’s deliberate policy of ethnic cleansing against the people of Artsakh indicates the need for the international community to reconsider their approaches to the issue of the status of Artsakh and the political settlement of the Azerbaijan-Karabakh conflict. The scale and gravity of the crimes committed by Azerbaijan at the state level against the people of Artsakh, as well as the ongoing genocidal policy, require decisive and urgent action by the international community, including the bodies responsible for maintaining international peace and security.

We believe that, at this stage, the development of additional legally binding obligations to resolve the conflict by peaceful means, the consolidation of the principles of non-use or threat of force and equal rights and self-determination of peoples as the basis for negotiations, as well as the restoration of the international mechanism for direct negotiations between Artsakh and Azerbaijan meet the requirements international law and the universal commitment to the protection of human rights around the world. Universal recognition of the Artsakh people’s inalienable right to self-determination is the most effective way in which the international community can guarantee the protection of human rights and fundamental freedoms in Artsakh.

We would like stress that according to international law and international practice, the denial and forceful suppression of the right to self-determination, accompanied by massive human rights violations, as well as the rejection of negotiations as a means of resolving conflict, are sufficient grounds for recognizing the right of a people to establish an independent state.

AW: Book Review | A Book, Untitled

Liana Toganian
March 20, 2023 Lisa Gulesserian, PhD Literary Corner, Reviews 0

A Book, Untitled
By Shushan Avagyan
Translated by Deanna Cachoian-Schanz
AWST Press, 2023
208 pp.
Paperback, $24

When one opens A Book, Untitled—Deanna Cachoian-Schanz’s English-language translation of «Գիրք-անվերնագիր» (Keerk-ahnvehrnahkeer), Shushan Avagyan’s 2006 experimental novel written in Eastern Armenian—one enters a wonderfully disorienting world populated by various fictional, literary, historical and contemporary figures who speak through postcards, poems, letters, conversations, drafts, redactions and dreams. Akin to what one character calls the “familiar, strange” experience of a diasporan hearing and seeing Yerevan and its residents, A Book, Untitled challenges us to revisit and reinvigorate the suppressed, forgotten or sanitized past. In Avagyan’s novel, lovingly rendered into English by Cachoian-Schanz, there are many benefits to uncomfortably encountering the past anew: figures from history are revived, multiple genres are reinterpreted, and language itself is re-formed.

In 26.5 chapters, Avagyan’s ambitious novel moves nonlinearly through the multiple timeframes of the novel’s four “authors”: a pair of historical figures (the early 20th-century Armenian writers, Shushanik Kurghinian and Zabel Yessayan) and a pair of contemporary figures (two 21st-century researchers discussing their efforts to find Kurghinian and Yessayan in the archive library of the Museum of Literature and Art in Yerevan). Avagyan’s narrator, the “typist/writer/translator,” has been translating Kurghinian’s poems (as did Avagyan herself for I Want to Live: Poems of Shushanik Kurghinian, published in 2005 by AIWA Press), and her friend Lara has been researching Yessayan (as did Lara Aharonian for her and Talin Suciyan’s 2009 film Finding Zabel Yesayan). The contemporary pair discuss their difficulties in finding materials about either historical figure in the archive library, where what they encounter are “pages that have been torn out, burned, and destroyed by the critics.” As Cachoian-Schanz summarizes in her explanatory foreword to the novel, both historical figures were cruelly dismissed by their detractors: “Kurghinian is derided and forgotten; Yesayan is killed,” and their archival legacy is a censored mess. To counter this lacuna in the archive, Avagyan stages an imaginary meeting between Kurghinian and Yessayan in 1926. Rescuing this pair of historical figures from archival purgatory was revolutionary in 2006, the year that Avagyan wrote and distributed Keerk-Ahnvehrnahkeer. At that time, both Kurghinian and Yessayan were not as well known as they are today. Thanks to books like Avagyan’s, movies like Finding Zabel Yesayan and AIWA Press’ English-language translations of a book of Kurghinian’s poetry and a trio of Yessayan’s books, both Kurghinian and Yessayan are no longer unknown, unread and untranslated. And now, with Cachoian-Schanz’s translation of Avagyan’s novel for English-language contemporary fiction readers and scholars, Avagyan’s rescued historical figures can join their literary kin mentioned in A Book, Untitled: Virginia Woolf as reimagined by Michael Cunningham in The Hours and Bertha of Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre as reimagined by Jean Rhys in Wide Sargasso Sea.

As Avagyan rescues historical figures in A Book, Untitled, she also frees genres from their calcified conventions. The novel that Avagyan writes is one that cuts, pastes and transforms letters from literary scholars, unsent postcards, biographies, song titles, odes to urban spaces, archival documents rife with redactions, and poetry and prose from Kurghinian and Yessayan. In bringing all these genres together in her novel and simultaneously mimicking their forms in her own prose, Avagyan does what her narrator surmises is the point of writing: “In literature, new ideas emerge mainly when old and familiar concepts are (trans)ferried from one form to another.” Avagyan’s transformations of genres and their conventions help us realize how texts are edited, censored, redacted and modified by writers, translators, editors, critics, archivists and even government officials. Further, in choosing to address the reader and admitting that “the typist/writer forgets to put quotation marks around cited words or sentences,” Avagyan’s narrator urges readers to realize that “quotation marks privatize words and make them someone else’s property. [. . .] The words belong neither to the typist/writer nor to you, reader.”

In Avagyan’s book, words are invitations to experiment and interpret; one of Avagyan’s major contributions to contemporary Armenian literature is her innovative use of language. She invents neologisms and breaks apart words to arrive at an essential meaning. In the hands of a less capable translator than Cachoian-Schanz, Avagyan’s innovations would have gone unnoticed. But with Cachoian-Schanz’s skillful and careful interpretation of the text, A Book, Untitled gains another writer, who modifies the Armenian-language original of four authors with the following line: “The book has four—or five?—authors who are as different as the seasons of the year.”

Readers seeking a challenging book worth the effort will love A Book, Untitled, Cachoian-Schanz’s translation of Avagyan’s first novel, Keerk-ahnvehrnahkeer.

Avagyan’s Eastern Armenian novel «Գիրք-անվերնագիր» (Keerk-ahnvehrnahkeer) can be purchased from Abril Books.

You can read excerpts from A Book, Untitled in Asymptote and WORDS without BORDERS before the entire volume is published in April 2023. A Book, Untitled is available for pre-order from AWST Press (US) and Tilted Axis Press (UK and worldwide).

Readers in the northeast can listen to a conversation between the reviewer and Deanna Cachoian-Schanz in person on March 29, 2023 at 7:00 p.m. Eastern at the Guild Hall of the Diocesan Center in New York City. The event is part of the “Literary Lights” series organized by the International Armenian Literary Alliance (IALA), the National Association for Armenian Studies and Research (NAASR) and the Krikor and Clara Zohrab Information Center.

  •  Bio
  •  Latest Posts
Lisa Gulesserian is Preceptor on Armenian at Harvard, where she teaches three levels of Western Armenian and Armenian culture courses. She is the lead editor of Mayda: Echoes of Protest.


AW: AEBU scholarship program open for 2023-2024 applications

Antranik Varosian
March 21, 2023 Guest Contributor Announcements 0

PASADENA, Calif. – The Armenian Educational Benevolent Union (AEBU) Scholarship Fund Committee is pleased to announce the opening of the 2023-2024 AEBU Scholarship applications on April 1, 2023.

Individual scholarships, up to $2,000 each, will be awarded to qualified undergraduate students. To be eligible, the applicant must be of Armenian descent, enrolled as a full-time student in an accredited four-year university in the United States, have a minimum 3.5 GPA, and demonstrate community engagement, with particular attention to service in the Armenian community. 

All completed scholarship application packets must be submitted by mail or online by June 30, 2023. Applications may be mailed to AEBU Scholarship Committee, 1060 N. Allen Ave., Pasadena, CA 91104, and postmarked by the deadline.

AEBU grants annual scholarships through a competitive application and review process. Recipients of this year’s scholarships will be announced online by August 1, 2023. An award ceremony to recognize the scholarship recipients will be held on August 27, 2023.

Armenian Educational Benevolent Union was established in 1969 by a group of volunteers dedicated to enriching the lives of those in need by providing tuition assistance and educational opportunities.




RFE/RL Armenian Report – 03/21/2023

Greg Madatian 
                                        Tuesday, March 21, 2023


Aliyev Rejects U.S. Calls For Lifting Of Karabakh Road Blockade
March 21, 2023

Nagorno-Karabakh - Azerbaijani protesters block Nagorno-Karabakh's only land 
link with Armenia, December 26, 2022.


In a phone call with U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Azerbaijani 
President Ilham Aliyev reportedly dismissed on Tuesday U.S. calls for an end to 
the three-month blockade of the sole highway connecting Nagorno-Karabakh to 
Armenia.

“Secretary Blinken encouraged finding solutions to outstanding issues and 
underscored that there is no military solution,” said Vedant Patel, a spokesman 
for the U.S. State Department. “He reaffirmed the importance of reopening the 
Lachin corridor to commercial and private vehicles.”

According to an official Azerbaijani readout of the call, Aliyev again claimed 
that the corridor was not blocked by Azerbaijani government-backed protesters 
and described reports to the contrary as “false Armenian propaganda.” He said 
that Russian peacekeepers and the International Committee of the Red Cross have 
escorted thousands of vehicles through that road over the last three months.

Aliyev again accused Armenia of shipping military personnel and weapons to 
Karabakh and said that an Azerbaijani checkpoint must be set up at the corridor.

Yerevan has rejected such demands, saying that they run counter to the terms of 
the Russian-brokered ceasefire that stopped the 2020 Armenian-Azerbaijani war. 
It has also strongly denied any military supplies to Karabakh.

Armenia - U.S. Ambassador Kristina Kvien visits an Armenian border checkpoint 
leading to the Lachin corridor, March 10, 2023.

The United States has repeatedly called on Baku to lift the road blockade that 
has caused serious shortages of food, medicine and other essential items in 
Karabakh. The U.S. ambassador in Yerevan, Kristina Kvien, made a point of 
visiting an Armenian border checkpoint leading to the Lachin earlier this month.

“The Lachin corridor should be opened immediately,” Kvien tweeted during the 
trip.

Blinken phoned Aliyev one day after speaking to Armenian Prime Minister Nikol 
Pashinian. He told both leaders that Washington remains committed to helping the 
two South Caucasus nations reach a “sustainable peace.”

The top U.S. diplomat organized and mediated the most recent meeting between 
Aliyev and Pashinian held in Munich on February 18. Louis Bono, a U.S. special 
envoy for Armenian-Azerbaijani peace talks, visited Baku and Yerevan afterwards.

In a March 7 interview with RFE/RL’s Armenian Service, Bono made clear that the 
U.S. is not considering imposing sanctions on Baku because of the blockade.

During his phone conversation with Blinken, Pashinian expressed concern over 
“Azerbaijan’s increasingly aggressive rhetoric.” He and other Armenian officials 
have repeatedly accused Azerbaijan this month of planning a “new military 
aggression” against Armenia and Karabakh.

Aliyev on Tuesday blamed the Armenian side for increased ceasefire violations 
reported from the conflict zone in recent weeks.




Senior Prosecutor Set To Become Armenia’s Rights Defender
March 21, 2023

Armenia - Deputy Prosecutor-General Anahit Manasian.


The ruling Civil Contract party said on Tuesday that Deputy Prosecutor-General 
Anahit Manasian will be its candidate for the vacant post of Armenia’s state 
human rights defender.

The party’s parliamentary group revealed the nomination two months after the 
unexpected resignation of the previous ombudswoman, Kristine Grigorian. The 
latter said she is planning to move on to another job.

In line with the Armenian constitution, Grigorian’s successor will be appointed 
by the parliament controlled by Civil Contract.

None of the two opposition groups represented in the National Assembly has 
nominated its own candidate for the post so far.

Manasian, 34, was appointed as a deputy prosecutor-general less than five months 
ago. She previously worked as a deputy rector of Armenia’s Justice Academy and 
an adviser to two former chairmen of the Constitutional Court. She has also 
taught constitutional law at Yerevan State University since 2015.




More Yerevan Officials Arrested
March 21, 2023
        • Narine Ghalechian

Armenia - The Yerevan municipality building.


Two more senior local government officials in Yerevan were arrested on Tuesday 
four days after the resignation of Mayor Hrachya Sargsian.

One of them, Davit Dallakian, is the acting head of the Yerevan municipality’s 
architecture and urban development department, while the other, Seyran 
Mejlumian, served as the chief of the municipality staff until this week.

Mejlumian tendered his resignation right after Sargsian, who had appointed him 
to that position, stepped down on Friday.

Armenia’s Anti-Corruption Committee (ACC), which made the arrests, refused to 
reveal what the two men are accused or suspected of. The law-enforcement agency 
said only that the arrests are not connected with criminal proceedings launched 
by it against Deputy Mayor Gevorg Simonian.

Simonian, who previously worked as a deputy minister of health, was arrested ten 
days ago on charges stemming from what the ACC described as misuse of government 
funds provided for the fight against COVID-19. Also arrested was the head of a 
private clinic accused of defrauding the Armenian government of 119 million 
drams ($305,000) in 2020 and 2021. Both men deny the charges.

It was not immediately clear whether ACC investigators have also questioned 
Sargsian. The ex-mayor did not return phone calls or answer written questions 
sent by RFE/RL’s Armenian Service.

Armenia - Former Deputy Prime Minister Tigran Avinian attends a session of 
Yerevan's municipal assembly, September 23, 2022.

Sargsian’s resignation is widely seen as being part of the ruling political 
team’s preparations for municipal elections that are due to be held in Yerevan 
in September. Voters in the Armenian capital will elect a new municipal council 
empowered to appoint the city’s mayor.

Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian’s Civil Contract party has nominated Tigran 
Avinian, another deputy mayor, as its mayoral candidate. According to some 
observers, Pashinian and his entourage hope that Sargsian’s resignation will 
boost Avinian’s chances in the upcoming elections.

In a Facebook post, Avinian commented on the ACC’s “recent actions in the 
municipality,” saying that he expects a “full and comprehensive” inquiry. He 
also urged all municipal employees to “sober up” and serve only “the interests 
of Yerevan and Yerevan’s citizens.”




Armenia Sees Closer Ties With Iran
March 21, 2023

Iran - Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi and Armenian Prime Minister Nikol 
Pashinian make statements to the press, Tehran, November 1, 2022.


Armenia hopes to broaden its relations with neighboring Iran, Prime Minister 
Nikol Pashinian said on Tuesday when he congratulated the top Iranian leaders on 
Nowruz, the ancient Persian New Year.

Armenian-Iranian ties remain of “special importance” to the Armenian government, 
Pashinian said in a congratulatory message to Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah 
Ali Khamenei.

“I sincerely hope that in the near future we will witness the expansion of our 
bilateral multi-layered agenda, which will become a stimulus for the further 
deepening of our friendly relations for the benefit of the well-being of the 
Armenian and Iranian peoples and regional peace,” he wrote.

In a separate message to Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi, Pashinian expressed 
confidence that Yerevan and Tehran “will give a new rise” to that agenda this 
year.

Iran’s Deputy Foreign Minister Ali Bagheri Kani announced, meanwhile, that he is 
heading to Yerevan for a two-day visit. He said Tehran is “strengthening the 
neighborhood policy and prioritizing the Caucasus.”

Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian met with his Armenian 
counterpart Ararat Mirzoyan in Geneva late last month. Amir-Abdollahian 
reaffirmed his country’s strong support for Armenia’s territorial integrity and 
opposition to “geopolitical changes” in the region.

Iranian leaders have repeatedly made such statements over the past year amid 
Armenian-Azerbaijani negotiations on restoring transport links between the two 
South Caucasus states.

Such links are envisaged by the Russian-brokered ceasefire that stopped the 2020 
war in Nagorno-Karabakh. The deal specifically commits Yerevan to opening rail 
and road links between Azerbaijan and its Nakhichevan exclave.

Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev regularly demands an exterritorial land 
corridor that would pass through Syunik, the sole Armenian province bordering 
Iran. Armenian leaders maintain that Azerbaijani citizens and cargo cannot be 
exempt from Armenian border controls.

Iran has warned Azerbaijan against attempting to strip the Islamic Republic of 
the common border and transport links with Armenia.




Armenian Parliament Refuses To Back Karabakh Self-Determination
March 21, 2023
        • Ruzanna Stepanian

Armenia - Deputies from the ruling Civil Contract party attend a session of the 
National Assembly, Yerevan, March 21, 2023.


The Armenian parliament rejected on Tuesday an opposition proposal to speak out 
against Azerbaijani control over Nagorno-Karabakh and to voice support for the 
Karabakh Armenians’ right to self-determination.

The main opposition Hayastan alliance drafted a relevant parliamentary statement 
on the 100th day of Azerbaijan’s continuing blockade of the Lachin corridor. The 
document says Baku’s actions show that Karabakh cannot be a part of Azerbaijan 
and that self-determination of its ethnic Armenian population is the only way to 
ensure its security.

The parliamentary majority representing the ruling Civil Contract party refused 
to even debate the opposition initiative during an ongoing session of the 
National Assembly. According to Artsvik Minasian, a senior Hayastan lawmaker, 
its leaders objected to the draft statement’s references to “the 
Nagorno-Karabakh Republic” and self-determination.

The rebuff sparked bitter recriminations and insults between pro-government and 
opposition deputies.

Armenia - Opposition deputy Andranik Tevanian addresses the parliament, Yerevan, 
March 21, 2023.

Hayastan’s Andranik Tevanian accused the ruling party of breaking its 2021 
election campaign pledge to strive for Karabakh’s self-determination in the 
international arena.

“Dear compatriots, they have fooled you because in their pre-election program 
they pledged to seek the realization of Artsakh’s right to self-determination,” 
Tevanian charged, appealing to voters.

Civil Contract’s parliamentary leader, Hayk Konjorian, responded by alleging 
that Hayastan’s top leader, former President Robert Kocharian, himself had been 
ready to recognize Azerbaijani sovereignty over Karabakh.

The pro-government majority already blocked in December a similar resolution put 
forward by Hayastan and the second parliamentary opposition force, Pativ Unem.

Successive Armenian governments had for decades championed the Karabakh 
Armenians’ right to determine the disputed region’s status. But a year ago, 
Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian and other senior Armenian officials stopped 
making references to the principle of self-determination it in their public 
statements.

Since then they have spoken instead of the need to ensure “the rights and 
security of the Armenians of Nagorno-Karabakh,” fuelling opposition allegations 
that Yerevan is now ready to agree to Azerbaijani control over the 
Armenian-populated region. Pashinian underlined that policy change during a news 
conference held on March 14.

Nagorno-Karabakh - Demonstrators carry a huge Karabakh flag in Stepanakert, 
September 2, 2022.

On March 13, Karabakh’s leading political groups issued a joint statement 
demanding that Yerevan refrain from calling into question “the Artsakh people’s 
right to self-determination.” They said Pashinian’s administration must comply 
with a 1992 parliamentary act that bans Armenia’s government from signing any 
document recognizing Karabakh as a part of Azerbaijan.

Pashinian stated in January that the international community has always regarded 
Karabakh as an integral part of Azerbaijan. The claim was denounced by the 
Armenian opposition and Karabakh’s leadership.

Self-determination was one of the basic principles behind Karabakh peace plans 
jointly drafted by the United States, Russia and France prior to the 2020 
Armenian-Azerbaijani war. The opposition resolution blocked by Pashinian’s party 
emphasized this fact.


Reposted on ANN/Armenian News with permission from RFE/RL
Copyright (c) 2023 Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty, Inc.
1201 Connecticut Ave., N.W. Washington DC 20036.

Armenpress: Armenian patriarchate calls on Israeli authorities to take serious measures following attack on St. Mary’s Church

Lilit Nahapetian

Save

Share

 09:34, 22 March 2023

YEREVAN, MARCH 22, ARMENPRESS. The Armenian Patriarchate of Jerusalem has strongly condemned the attack on St. Mary’s Church of Gethsemane and called on Israeli authorities to take “serious measures” to protect the holy sites.

In a statement released on March 21, the Chancellery of the Armenian Patriarchate of Jerusalem said that “religious intolerance and hate crimes in all their forms and perpetrations will never allow the conditions of peaceful co-existence to manifest.”

Below is the full communiqué released by the chancellery.

“The Armenian Patriarchate of Jerusalem strongly condemns the attack on the St. Mary’s Church of Gethsemane, which according to the Status Quo of the Holy Places is under the joint control of the Armenian and Greek Orthodox Churches.

Though it was the first attack on St. Mary since the beginning of this year, the Christian Holy Shrines have been in constant state of both physical and emotional duress by rogue attackers. Had these previous attacks on the Christian Holy Places been swiftly condemned by the local authorities leading to the perpetrators’ punishment to the full extent of the law, there would not be an influx of new attacks on the churches and monasteries of these Christian communities.

Religious intolerance and hate crimes in all their forms and perpetrations will never allow the conditions of peaceful co-existence to manifest. In fact, their presence – especially when gone unchecked by prevailing authorities – will encourage other hateful crimes and intolerances to take place. These actions and their lack of condemnation lead to unsafe conditions for these communities and establishes a lack of trust between worshipers, tourists, and residents with the local authorities.

Therefore, we call upon the Israeli Government and the Police to take serious measures to prevent such attacks and to protect both the Christian Holy sites and their daily worshipers from further vandalism and suchlike attacks.”

Israel reportedly strikes Aleppo airport

Tania Jagharian

Save

Share

 10:07, 22 March 2023

YEREVAN, MARCH 22, ARMENPRESS. An Israeli airstrike on March 22 targeted the international airport of the Syrian city of Aleppo, causing only material damages, the Syrian state media reported.

In a statement issued to SANA news agency, an unnamed military source said “the Israeli enemy launched an aerial act of aggression with a number of missiles” from the direction of the Mediterranean Sea, “targeting the vicinity of Aleppo International Airport.”

“At about 03: 55 a.m. on Wednesday, the Israeli enemy launched an aerial act of aggression with a number of missiles from the direction of the Mediterranean Sea, west of Lattakia, targeting the vicinity of Aleppo International Airport,” SANA reported citing the military source. The source added “the attack caused some material damages to the airport.”

Israel has carried out hundreds of strikes on targets inside government-controlled parts of Syria in recent years, including attacks on the Damascus and Aleppo airports, but it rarely acknowledges or discusses the operations, according to the Associated Press.

Israel has acknowledged, however, that it targets bases of Iran-allied groups, such as Lebanon’s Hezbollah.

Missing soldier found alive

Paul Hambardsumian

Save

Share

 11:03, 22 March 2023

YEREVAN, MARCH 21, ARMENPRESS. The Armenian soldier who went missing on March 21 has been found alive Wednesday, the Ministry of Defense announced.

The serviceman went missing on Tuesday after getting lost in the terrain while delivering food supplies to an outpost, according to the Ministry of Defense.

Netherlands continues “active measures” for opening Lachin Corridor – PM Rutte

Talar Tumanian

Save

Share

 11:26, 22 March 2023

YEREVAN, MARCH 22, ARMENPRESS. The Netherlands continues to take active measures in the direction of opening the Lachin Corridor which has been blocked by Azerbaijan since December 2022, according to Prime Minister Mark Rutte.

PM Rutte made a few comments on the Lachin Corridor at the Dutch parliament when asked on the matter by Stieneke van der Graaf, a member of the House of Representatives for the Christian Union (CU).

The Dutch Prime Minister said that Azerbaijan has a highly limited interpretation of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) ruling, while the Dutch government’s perception differs and the Azeri ambassador has been notified about it, the Federation of Armenian Organizations of the Netherlands (FAON) reported.

PM Rutte said that the Netherlands continues to take active measures bilaterally and in context of the EU for opening the Lachin Corridor as soon as possible.

Asked about the political repercussions of the fact that Azerbaijan is importing gas from Russia to be able to supply gas to the EU under its energy deal, Rutte said that Azerbaijan’s supplies from Russia are “limited”, while the European Commission has already announced that it will discuss the matter with Baku.

The United Nations’ highest court – the International Court of Justice (ICJ) – ordered Azerbaijan on February 22 to “take all steps at its disposal” to ensure unimpeded movement of persons, vehicles and cargo along the Lachin Corridor in both directions. Azerbaijan has so far ignored the order.