Category: News

The Foreign Ministers of Armenia and Indonesia Edward Nalbandian and Retno Marsudi held a meeting in Jakarta today. The parties discussed the development of bilateral relations, as well as a number of urgent issues on regional and international agenda. They attached importance to the intensification of the political dialogue between the two countries, the need to boost the inter-parliamentary ties, expand the legal framework, encourage educational and cultural exchange.

The interlocutors discussed the perspectives of cooperation within different integration frameworks.

The Foreign Ministers of Armenia and Indonesia referred to the situation in the Middle East, the Syrian crisis, the fight against terrorism and conflicts.

The Indonesian FM briefed Minister Nalbandian on the processes taking place in South-Eastern Asia and presented her country’s approaches. Edward Nalbandian presented the efforts of Armenia and the OSCE Minsk Group co-chairing countries towards furthering the Karabakh peace process.

Edward Nalbandian invited Retno Marsudi to visit Armenia.

At the end of the meeting the Foreign Ministers signed an agreement on elimination of visa requirements for holders of diplomatic passports, also as a Memorandum of Cooperation between the Foreign Ministries of the two countries.

Armenian Foreign Minister Edward Nalbandian and Indonesian Minister for Science, Technology and Higher Education Mohammad Nazir signed a Letter of Intents on cooperation in the fields of science, technology and higher education.

The Foreign Ministers of the two countries made a statement for the press following the meeting.

In the run-up to its annual Thanksgiving Day Telethon, titled “My Artsakh,” on November 1, the Hayastan All-Armenian Fund launches its SMS donation campaign in Armenia.

By sending an SMS to the number 8000 or by calling 090008000, subscribers of all cell-phone carriers in Armenia can support Artsakh with donations of 300 AMD. The proceeds will be allocated to initiatives for rebuilding war-ravaged Artsakh communities, various measures to ensure the safety and security of the peaceful population, and the construction of homes for large families throughout the republic.

The Hayastan All-Armenian Fund’s flagship fundraising event, the Thanksgiving Day Telethon, will be held in Los Angeles on November 24. The SMS as well as donations-through-Haypost campaigns in Armenia will be complemented by fundraising efforts in Artsakh and across the diaspora. From November 16 to 20, the fund’s Pan-European Phoneathon will take place in France, mobilizing the Armenian communities of France, Germany, and Switzerland.

Also participating in the Phoneathon will be the Armenian community of Greece, which will raise funds locally on November 19 and 20.

The first of these events took place in Toronto on October 23, when the local Armenian community raised a record $1 million at its banquet.

Photo by Ali Fawaz

 

Lebanon’s parliament elected former army commander Michel Aoun as president on Monday, filling a post that had been vacant for more than two years and injecting hope that the country’s long-running political paralysis would come to an end, the Associated Pess reprts.

Aoun, a Maronite Christian, enjoys a wide base of support among Lebanon’s educated Christians.

Aoun secured a simple majority of votes in parliament after a tension-filled, chaotic session that saw several rounds of voting because extra ballots appeared in the ballot box each time. In the end, the transparent box was placed in the middle of Parliament, where lawmakers cast their votes in front of two witnesses who watched to make sure no extra ballots were put in.

“We haven’t voted in a long time. We’re learning again,” Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri joked of the nearly two-hour process.

In the end, Aoun garnered 83 votes out of 127 lawmakers present at the session. He had been widely expected to achieve a two-thirds majority in the first round, but failed by two votes.

Members of parliament broke out in applause after Aoun was finally declared president. His supporters across the country erupted in cheers as they watched the proceedings on screens set up in the streets. Celebratory gunfire could also be heard in the capital.

Photo: AFP

 

Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg, who helped thousands of Hungarian Jews to escape Nazi mass murder in World War Two, has been formally pronounced dead by Sweden’s Tax Agency, the reports.

He was arrested by Soviet forces in Hungary in 1945 and disappeared. He is thought to have died in a Soviet prison, but his fate remains a mystery.

Thousands of Jews escaped deportation to Auschwitz because Wallenberg gave them Swedish protective passes.

His story became legendary after 1945.

The former Soviet authorities said he must have died in a Moscow prison in 1947.

But his family were sceptical about that version of events, and spent decades trying to establish what actually happened to him.

Last November they called on the Swedish Tax Agency to officially declare him dead. The request was made via Sweden’s SEB Bank, acting as a trustee.

“He shall be deemed to have died 31 July, 1952,” the tax agency said.

Pia Gustafsson of the tax agency said that date was chosen because it fell “five years after he went missing, which was believed to be the end of July, 1947”.

Armenian Defense Minister Vigen Sargsyan received today the Personal Representative of the OSCE Chairman-in-Office, Ambasssador Andrzej Kasprzyk.

The Armenian Defense Minister briefed Ambassador Kasprzyk on the situation at the line of contact and underlined that Azerbaijan has been recently keeping tensions high at the line of contact by increasing the number of shots and using weapons of larger caliber.

He said the Armenian forces resort to response actions only in case of extreme necessity and remain committed to the restraining strategy.

Ambassador Kasprzyk noted, in turn, that the Office of the Personal representative of the OSCE Chairman-in-Office maintains efforts to ease tensions at the line of contact and said he hopes for progress in that direction in the near future.

The prime minister of Iraq has urged the Islamic State group to surrender as government troops close in on its last urban stronghold in the country, Mosul, the BBC reports.

Haider al-Abadi appeared on state TV wearing combat fatigues and said: “They have no choice. Either they surrender or they die.”

Iraqi special forces are now about 1km (0.6 of a mile) away from Mosul’s eastern edge and preparing to enter.

Units of the army are meanwhile advancing from the south.

Using another name for IS, Mr al-Abadi said: “We will close in on Daesh from all angles and God willing we will cut the snake’s head. They will have no way out and no way to escape.”

Mr al-Abadi is the commander-in-chief of the Iraqi armed forces.

On November 1, while paying an official visit to Jakarta, Edward Nalbandian, Foreign Minister of Armenia, was received by Muhammad Jusuf Kalla, Vice President of Indonesia.

Welcoming the Foreign Minister of Armenia, the Vice President of Indonesia attached importance to the further deepening of bilateral relations, in that regard outlining the significance of the visit of the Foreign Minister of Armenia to Jakarta.

During the meeting the sides emphasized the necessity to intensify political dialogue between Armenia and Indonesia, to expand cooperation between different agencies, to foster trade and economic cooperation, while attaching importance to the organization of business forums, establishment of interaction between the trade palaces, promotion of people-to-people contacts and tourism to that end.

Jusuf Kalla and Edward Nalbandian exchanged views on a number of international and regional issues and the efforts being undertaken towards their settlement. The interlocutors mutually outlined the necessity to settle issues exclusively through peaceful means by excluding the use of force.

On the same day Edward Nalbandian visited the Parliament of Indonesia, where he had a meeting with Agus Hermanto, Vice Speaker of the House of Representatives of Indonesia, and the members of the Parliament’s Foreign Affairs Committee.

At the meeting the possibilities to develop cooperation between the Parliaments of the two countries was discussed, importance was attached to the establishment of friendship groups and collaboration within the international parliamentary formats.

The interlocutors touched upon numerous issues of bilateral agenda, as well as expansion of legal framework.

Upon the request of the Indonesian Parliamentarians, Minister Nalbandian presented Armenia’s foreign policy priorities, touched upon the efforts exerted by Armenia and the OSCE Minsk Group Co-Chairs to create conductive conditions for the advancement of settlement process of the Azerbaijan-Artsakh (Nagorno-Karabakh) conflict.

The Foreign Minister of Armenia and the Vice Speaker of the Parliament of Indonesia share the view that attempts to give a religious pretext to conflicts is inadmissible and issues need to be solved exclusively through negotiations and peaceful means.

Peter Balakian received the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for poetry at the 100^th  anniversary Ceremony of the Pulitzer Prizes held at Columbia University on Oct. 13. Balakian was one of the seven recipients in the fields of Letters, Drama, and Music, the reports.

Among the other recipients were Viet Thanh Nguyen in fiction for his novel The Sympathizer, Lin-Manuel Miranda in drama for the musical Hamilton, and jazz composer Henry Threadgill for “In For a Penny In for a Pound.” Among the fourteen prizes in journalism were Kathryn Schultz for Feature Writing at the New Yorker, Alyssa J. Rubin for International Reporting at The New York Times, and the Los Angeles Times Staff for Breaking News Reporting.

Professor Daniele Allen, Director of the Edmond J. Safra Center For Ethics at Harvard University, was the keynote speaker. The awards were presented by Lee C. Bollinger, President of Columbia University.

The Pulitzer committee cited Ozone Journal for “poems that bear witness to the old losses and tragedies that undergird a global age of danger and uncertainty.” Writing about Ozone Journal in Consequence Magazine, Keith Jones wrote: “Balakian is a master of—the drifting, split-second mirage, the cinematic dissolve and cross-cut as well as the sculptural, statuesque moment chiseled out of consonant blends and an imagistic, jazzman’s ear for vowels… beautiful, haunting, plaintive, urgent, in our dying world’s age, these poems legislate a vital comportment to the demands of our shared present, timely and untimely both.” And David Wojahn in Tikkun wrote: “Few American poets of the boomer generation have explored the interstices of public and personal history as deeply and urgently as has Balakian.”

Balakian is the first Armenian American to be awarded a Pulitzer Prize since William Saroyan in 1940.

President of the Belgian Senate Christine Defraigne visited the Tsitsernakaberd Memorial today, accompanied by Vice-Speaker of the Armenian National Assembly Hermine Naghdalyan and Head of the Armenia-Belgium Deputy Friendship Group Shirak Torosyan.

Christine Defraigne and members of her delegation laid flowers at the memorial to the Armenian Genocide victims and paid tribute to the memory of the victims with a minute of silence.

Noting that Belgium was one of the first countries to recognize and condemn the Armenian Genocide, Mrs. Defraigne said: “We continue the work at the Senate and we attach importance to the adoption of a bill criminalizing the denial of the Armenian Genocide, which is important for the heirs of both genocide victims and its perpetrators. We would like the Armenian and Turkish communities to come together one day.”

Photo: Reuters

 

The detention of journalists from independent newspaper Cumhuriyet, the closure of the remaining Kurdish media, and the jailing of elected mayors in the southeastern city of Diyarbakir in the space of two days is evidence of the deepening crackdown in Turkey, Human Rights Watch said today.

On the morning of October 31, 2016, police detained Murat Sabuncu, the editor of the independent Cumhuriyet daily newspaper and, during the course of the day, 11 more of its journalists and managers. There are warrants out for the arrest of at least three more, including former editor Can Dündar. The Istanbul prosecutor alleges that the newspaper has “committed crimes on behalf of” both the armed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) and what the government refers to as the Fethullahist Terrorist Organization, led by the US-based cleric Fethullah Gülen.

“Targeting one of Turkey’s last independent opposition newspapers with ludicrous charges shows the depths of the Turkish government and president’s crackdown,” said Emma Sinclair-Webb, Turkey director at Human Rights Watch. “Over 160 media outlets have been closed down since the failed coup, and there are few critical voices that have not been ruthlessly silenced.”