12:35,
YEREVAN, NOVEMBER 11, ARMENPRESS. In a few days, Yerevan will become the main platform of the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly, the National Assembly of Armenia said.
300 delegates from around 50 countries will arrive in Armenia. The host party is the National Assembly.
The 21st Autumn Meeting of the OSCE PA will be held 18 – 20 November in Yerevan, Armenia.
13:30,
YEREVAN, NOVEMBER 11, ARMENPRESS. Israel must stop killing babies and women in Gaza, French President Emmanuel Macron has told the BBC.
While recognising Israel's right to protect itself, "we do urge them to stop this bombing" in Gaza, he said.
''But he also stressed that France "clearly condemns" the "terrorist" actions of Hamas,'' the BBC reports.
14:45,
YEREVAN, NOVEMBER 11, ARMENPRESS. Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi has called on the leaders of Islamic countries to reach a firm decision on the issue of Palestine and fully implement it.
Speaking before departing Tehran on Saturday morning to attend the extraordinary meeting of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), Raisi emphasized the importance of concrete actions, reports the Iranian news agency IRNA.
“It is expected that the heads of Islamic countries will reach a firm decision on the issue of Palestine, which is the most important issue in the world, and the decision will be fully implemented,” he said, calling for action instead of paying lip service to the Palestinian issue.
As IRNA reports, Raisi noted that Palestine is the reason behind the establishment of the OIC, adding that an immediate halt to Israeli bombardment of Gaza, opening of a way to help the people of Gaza, lifting the blockade of the enclave, and realization of Gaza’s rights are the main goals of the organization.
15:18,
The heads of diplomatic missions, accompanied by the Matenadaran directorate, toured the museum. The possibilities of implementing joint programs were also discussed.
16:42,
YEREVAN, NOVEMBER 11, ARMENPRESS. Drug addicts, dealers and homeless who have plagued San Francisco’s downtown have miraculously disappeared this week as the city cleans up for a huge international event, reports the New York Post.
The homeless have been pushed to other parts of the city in preparation for the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit, which starts tomorrow and runs through Nov. 17, reports the Post.
NEW YORK (AP) — Citigroup intentionally discriminated against Armenian Americans when they applied for credit cards, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau said Wednesday, as some bank employees argued internally that Armenians were more likely to commit fraud and referred to applicants as “bad guys” or affiliated with organized crime.
The CFPB found that Citi employees were trained to avoid approving applications with last names ending in “yan” or “ian” — the most common suffix to Armenian last names — as well applications that originated in Glendale, California, where roughly 15% of the country’s Armenian American population lives.
As part of the order, Citi will pay $24.5 million in fines as well as $1.4 million in remedies to impacted customers.
The origins of the case come as a result of some organized crime syndicates operating in Southern California that involve Armenian Americans. The leaders of the Armenian crime rings have been charged with identity theft and other financial crimes, including stealing COVID-19 financial relief funds in recent years.
Citi, based in New York, said a few employees were attempting to stop potential fraud due to this “well-documented Armenian fraud ring operating in certain parts of California.” However, in the bureau’s order, these Citi employees used identifiable information that broadly discriminated against Armenian Americans in general.
“We sincerely apologize to any applicant who was evaluated unfairly by the small number of employees who circumvented our fraud detection protocols,” the bank said in a statement. “Following an internal investigation, we have taken appropriate actions with those directly involved in this matter and we promptly put in place measures to prevent any recurrence of such conduct.”
In its investigation, the bureau found that Citi employees were instructed to single out applications that had Armenian last names, but then to conceal the real reason on why those applications were denied. These employees knew they were running afoul of bank laws that prohibit discrimination against national origin, and kept any decisions off recorded phone lines or writing it down.
“Citi stereotyped Armenians as prone to crime and fraud. In reality, Citi illegally fabricated documents to cover up its discrimination,” said Rohit Chopra, the director of the CFPB, in a statement.
CFPB officials said the case involves “hundreds of individuals” who were impacted by Citi’s discrimination, which is relatively small for a bank that has tens of millions of customers. However because the behavior was so egregious, the bureau’s fine against Citi is relatively high compared to the number of people impacted.
https://apnews.com/article/citi-citigroup-cfpb-armenia-armenianamericans-606c86b08f8f571b643f0edd12137f6b
By Emily Flitter
Nov. 8, 2023, 11:33 a.m. ET
Citigroup employees labeled a group of roughly 80,000 Armenian-Americans living near Los Angeles — the largest Armenian community outside Yerevan, the Armenian capital — as “bad guys” and secretly denied them fair access to the bank’s credit card products, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau said in a statement on Wednesday.
The bank has agreed to pay $25.9 million to settle a case brought by the consumer bureau under the Equal Credit Opportunity Act, the federal law that prohibits banks from discriminating against people based on a host of qualities, including race, national origin and religion. Of the total, $1.4 million will go to the victims of Citigroup’s discriminatory practices, the regulator said. The other $24.5 million is a penalty for the bank’s misconduct.
“Citi stereotyped Armenians as prone to crime and fraud,” Rohit Chopra, the director of the consumer bureau, said in a news conference on Wednesday. “In reality, Citi illegally fabricated documents to cover up its discrimination.”
Mr. Chopra said that Citigroup had been caught violating bank regulations on several occasions. The consumer regulator said Citigroup’s discriminatory practices regarding Armenians were in place from at least 2015 to 2021. “I am concerned about Citi’s longstanding problems when it comes to managing the many parts of its sprawling business,” Mr. Chopra said.
According to the regulator, Citi employees pegged the community, in Glendale, Calif., as a group whose members were likely to rack up huge debts and then flee the country. They warned new hires not to give credit card applicants with Armenian-sounding last names that ended in “ian” or “yan” the same rates that other customers received, and in some cases urged them to reject these applicants altogether.
The people affected by the bank’s practice were not applying for Citigroup-branded cards; they were seeking cards offered by retailers, like Home Depot and Best Buy, that were underwritten by the bank. Eric Halperin, the consumer bureau’s enforcement director, said during the news conference that Citigroup was still trying to identify how many people were affected by the discrimination, but so far regulators had identified “hundreds.”
Karen Kearns, a spokeswoman for Citigroup, said in a statement that the bank had been “trying to thwart a well-documented Armenian fraud ring operating in certain parts of California,” and that “a few employees took impermissible actions.”
According to regulators, Citi managers knew excluding Armenians was illegal and warned employees “not to discuss it in writing or on recorded phone lines.” Even so, regulators found evidence of Citi employees discussing over email how to cover up their denial of applicants from Glendale.
“It’s been a while since I declined for possible credit abuse/YAN — gimme some reasons I can use,” one employee wrote to another in 2016, seeking advice on how to tell a potential customer that a credit card application had been denied without revealing the real reason, according to the consumer bureau.
“We sincerely apologize to any applicant who was evaluated unfairly,” Ms. Kearns said. “Following an internal investigation, we have taken appropriate actions with those directly involved in this matter, and we promptly put in place measures to prevent any recurrence of such conduct.”
Emily Flitter covers finance. She is the author of “The White Wall: How Big Finance Bankrupts Black America.” More about Emily Flitter
Over the past week Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan and other Armenian officials have been hinting that a peace deal with Azerbaijan could be imminent.
They say the sides have reached agreement on three core principles of a deal while "details" remain to be settled.
Pashinyan told parliament on October 30 that a peace deal is "realistic" if the sides remain faithful to the principles of mutual recognition of territorial integrity, delimitation/demarcation of the shared border based on the 1991 Almaty declaration and the opening of transport links in a way that respects the two countries' sovereignty and customs laws.
Later, ruling party MP Gevorg Papoyan echoed the prime minister, saying that only the "details" of the agreement are left to be hammered out.
Azerbaijan's deputy foreign minister, Elnur Mammadov, confirmed that "most points" of the peace agreement had been agreed with Yerevan. Mammadov said that reaching a deal had become "easier" thanks to Azerbaijan's takeover of Nagorno-Karabakh after its September 19-20 lightning offensive.
Following that offensive, several planned meetings between Azerbaijani and Armenian leaders failed to take place in a reflection of the sides' differing preferences on who should mediate.
Baku refused to take part in EU-led peace talks in Granada, Spain and in Brussels, while Armenia's prime minister was a no-show at a CIS summit in Bishkek where he'd been expected to meet with Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev and Russian President Vladimir Putin. However, Armenia was represented at a meeting in Tehran on October 23 that involved Russia, Turkey, Iran, and Azerbaijan.
Armenia's lack of interest in Moscow-brokered peace talks comes as the country looks to the West for new strategic and security allies, signing an arms deal with France and intensifying diplomatic relations with a number of Western states.
Prior to Azerbaijan's September offensive, which triggered the exodus of the region's entire Armenian population, the Karabakh Armenians' fate had been the thorniest issue in the talks. Baku had rejected the prospect of granting the region autonomous status, as well as Yerevan's calls for an international mechanism that would ensure the Karabakh Armenians' rights and securities under Azerbaijani rule.
During Azerbaijan's attack on Karabakh on September 19, Pashinyan announced that Armenia's priority was to ensure that Karabakh Armenians could remain in the region and live a "dignified" life there. But now that it has been emptied of Armenians, Yerevan seems to have abandoned this demand and instead started the process of granting them refugee status or Armenian citizenship.
"Our policy is that if those displaced from Nagorno-Karabakh do not, objectively speaking, have the opportunity to return to Nagorno-Karabakh – our wish is that they all stay in Armenia, and live and work here," Pashinyan told a cabinet meeting on November 2.
Another critical issue is "the opening of transport links," a provision of the 2020 ceasefire agreement that cemented Azerbaijan's gains in the Second Karabakh War.
Baku long discussed this provision in the context of its "Zangezur corridor" project, which for a time it insisted was to be a seamless corridor connecting mainland Azerbaijan with its exclave Nakhchivan through Armenian territory and beyond Armenian sovereignty.
Azerbaijan stepped back from the maximalist version of this project in February, and, after the September offensive, began giving assurances that it would no longer insist on a corridor and would instead make do with an alternative route through Iran.
But Armenians are wary of these assurances, particularly given Russia's apparent interest in the Zangezur corridor project.
Fears persist in Armenia that Azerbaijan will use force to make the corridor a reality, and continued rhetoric from Baku about "Western Azerbaijan" is doing nothing to allay these fears. This is the notion that parts of Armenian territory rightfully belong to Azerbaijan, or that, at the very least, Azerbaijanis have the right to settle in formerly Azerbaijani-populated parts of Armenia.
These concerns are shared by the EU, which has called on Azerbaijan to commit to respecting Armenian territory and by the U.S., where, according to Politico, Secretary of State Antony Blinken briefed members of Congress in early October on the risk of an Azerbaiajni invasion of Armenia. (The State Department rejected this report.)
The Lemkin Genocide Prevention Institute issued a "red flag alert" on November 1 over a possible "invasion of Armenia by Azerbaijan in the coming days and weeks."
On November 2, the US State Department told the Voice of America's Armenian service: "Any violation of Armenia's territorial integrity will have serious consequences."
By Eurasianet.org
https://oilprice.com/Geopolitics/International/Azerbaijan-Softens-Stance-On-Zangezur-Corridor-As-Peace-Deal-Nears.html
Every November people across Britain and the world are invited to observe “Red Wednesday”, an annual day of commemoration for the 360 million Christians estimated to be living under severe religious persecution. Armenians have often been among these millions.
Indeed, at the heart of the leafy London suburb of Ealing, a silent witness to the horrors of Armenian history now stands tall. The striking flame-shaped 6-foot monument, carved from tuff, Armenia’s national stone, was recently installed as England’s first dedicated memorial to the victims of the Genocide against its people.
The genocide Armenian Christians experienced at the hands of the Ottoman Empire, which historians consider the first “modern” genocide, claimed the lives of up to 1.5 million Armenians between 1915 and 1916. On the instruction of Ottoman politician Talaat Pasha, Armenians were marched into the Syrian desert and brutally massacred, raped, robbed and starved.
The Turkish government still refuses to acknowledge these atrocities as anything more than an accident of war, but the historical consensus is that it was an organised, violent and deliberate attempt to eradicate this ancient Christian community, who had long faced periodic violence and systemic persecution under their Muslim rulers.
However, London’s Armenian community has been left feeling “under attack” after the monument dedicated to this brutal historic episode was vandalised following attempts by masked extremists to interrupt its unveiling ceremony.
As the 23 September inauguration ceremony unfolded, what should have been a solemn occasion quickly turned into a shocking display of hatred and attempted intimidation. A group of men arrived (pictured), some of whom had concealed their faces, waving Turkish flags and grinning as they displayed fists with the little finger and index finger raised: a “Turkic hand gesture” associated with the Grey Wolves, a proscribed terror group in several countries.
The Grey Wolves, a Turkish nationalist organisation, were behind spates of bombings and shootings throughout the 1970s, targeting not only Armenians but also Kurds and members of the opposition Democratic Peoples’ Party in Turkey. The group has displayed hostility to most non-Turkish or non-Sunni elements within Turkey and has distributed Turkish translations of Nazi literature.
In 2020, France banned the group for hate speech and political violence. In 2019 Austria outlawed its characteristic hand gesture. They are also outlawed in Kazakhstan.
Despite the group’s attempted provocation, attendees like Anna, a 13-year-old scout who spoke at the event, stood firm. “Me and my fellow scouts were hurt and shocked by the disrespect of the individuals who decided to turn up and show the sign of a Turkish extremist group,” she told me.
“These disgusting actions did not interrupt the ceremony, and we continued to proudly speak about our country, as we spoke and told the stories of our ancestors while they stood in the back. They failed to interrupt our ceremony, showing how strong us Armenians are when we are together.”
“The Grey Wolves gesture is the moral equivalent of a Nazi salute,” explained Annette Moskofian, who chairs the UK’s Armenian National Committee, a grassroots community body.
“To me personally, history is repeating itself. The idea of one nation, two states between Turkey and Azerbaijan means the Azerbaijani regime wants to finish what the Ottomans started in 1915, and that there are people in the UK who share these ideas makes us feel under attack,” she declared.
“Even in a civilised developed country like the UK, we have seen these attempts to intimidate our community, and the extremists who agree with the approach of the Turkish and Azeri governments feel able to threaten us with their hatred and racism.”
For the Armenian community in the UK, the attacks on their event and the genocide memorial itself did not feel like an isolated incident; instead they have served as a harsh reminder of the challenges their community has long faced, with little external support.
“Within 10 days of the inauguration ceremony, the memorial was desecrated by bright yellow paint, and the word Genocide on the plaque was scratched as if someone was trying to erase that specific word,” Moskofian explained. Fortunately, the memorial is under CCTV camera surveillance, and the police are actively investigating the incident as a “hate crime”. Moskofian says she is “confident that the perpetrators will be brought to justice and serve as an example”.
This disturbing display of extremism occurred at the peak of the recent crisis in Artsakh, which Baku had subjected to a harsh humanitarian blockade since last December. In September, the crisis provoked the exodus of almost all of the 100,000 ethnic Armenians from the enclave as Azeri forces launched a takeover, ending more than 1500 years of Armenian Christian presence in the small, mountainous region.
Moskofian shares a personal connection to the genocide. Her grandmother was a survivor, the sole member of a family of 100 who lived to tell the tale. “The Armenian Genocide Memorial Inauguration was a very proud moment for me as her descendant”.
“We have been keen to erect a monument to the Genocide ever since Ealing Council officially recognized it in 2010.”
“Although this was for me a token recognition until the UK joins other countries, including the US, in officially naming the atrocities committed by the Ottoman Empire against Armenians during that period as what it was: a genocide.”
For now, a flame-shaped symbol of the eternal souls of Armenian genocide victims continues to stand in a leafy corner of London. Sadly it seems that the embers of hatred are still glowing nearby.
At the time of writing the Home Office has yet to respond to a request for comment regarding its policy towards The Grey Wolves.
https://catholicherald.co.uk/british-armenians-fear-a-repeat-of-history-as-genocide-memorial-vandalised/
Jerusalem’s Old City, which has been deserted since the Gaza War, just had its most significant explosion of anger since the recent conflict erupted.
The Old City is no stranger to tension. It is arguably the main cauldron of the Israel-Palestine conflict.
What made Sunday’s eruption different was where it took place: a normally quiet car park in the Armenian Quarter, tucked away in the south-east corner of the Old City.
On the face of it, an increasingly heated quarrel in this corner of Jerusalem is about property development. But it cuts to the heart of the agony so many communities in Israel and Palestine have experienced in more than 100 years of conflict.
The current war, the Armenians say, has focused global attention on the unbearable violence in Israel on October 7 during Hamas' surprise attack, and the subsequent massive Israeli bombardment of Gaza.
That crisis, in turn, has empowered radical Israeli settlers to seize more Palestinian land and intimidate communities
Armed men with guard dogs descended on part of the car park right next to a private garden over which an Armenian flag stands tall.
Hagop Djernazian, a community leader, stood in the fray surrounded by Israeli police, lawyers, clergy and large crowds of agitated residents.
“I was at home. At three o’clock I got a message that a group or armed settlers had arrived,” he said, amid the furore.
“They have pepper spray. They kicked us out of the property. When the police came we went back in. The priests arrived as did our lawyer.”
Tensions had already been high before the arrival of the armed men. The car park in which they were prowling is the centre of a bitter and murky property battle, involving a private developer’s plan to build a hotel on the site, which makes up 25 per cent of the entire quarter.
The land was sold by the Armenian Patriarch with the involvement of a now-defrocked priest who was responsible for the Patriarchate’s vast property portfolio.
“The whole thing stinks,” Daniel Seidemann, an Israeli anti-settlement activist and lawyer, told The National.
“This patch of land is strategically located. In Camp David, [Prime Minister Ehud Barak] was willing to give Palestinians the Christian and Muslim Quarter, but only half of the Armenian Quarter. Israel wanted its road, one of the only vehicular routes in the Old City” Mr Seidemann added.
“I’ve said to my friends in the international community, ignore the legalities for now. There are hundreds of members of a community confronting armed people with dogs and weapons. It’s on the brink of an explosion. The last thing we need is an eruption of convulsive violence in Jerusalem. Sort out the legal issues later – make this go away.”
The Armenian community is indeed seething. They fear the deal might spell the end of their presence in the Old City.
Without a car park, the Quarter’s already dwindling numbers would not be able to keep its institutions going, turning the area from a centre of Armenian life into a museum, they say.
Garo Ghazarian, a high-profile US-Armenian attorney and part of a group of international lawyers who have banded together to prevent the deal, summed up the stakes at the end of a fact-finding mission in June:
“The Armenian Quarter is of national and international importance for all Armenian people all over the world,” he told a packed courtyard of residents and international journalists, flanked by peers from across the Armenian diaspora.
“It is of the highest historical value and wealth to the Armenian nation. It is an integral part in the identity of the Armenian people in general. It is living proof of the centuries-old history of our people. It is testament to our great civilisation in world history.”
On October 26, the Patriarch announced that he had a sent a cancellation letter to the developers, although no one from the community has seen it.
That same day, bulldozers turned up to the site and began knocking down walls, prompting members of the community to keep watch on regular intervals.
Although they were already on alert, Sunday was different. The arrival of anonymous armed men was a significant escalation.
Mr Djernazian beckoned in rage in the direction of one particular man, Danny Rothman, a figure at the heart of the property deal about whom very little is known.
Mr Rothman declined to comment on the reason behind his surprise arrival and the current status of the wider property deal.
Perhaps worst of all, many in the community feel betrayed by their religious leadership. Many believe the Patriarch was incompetent at best for signing away the property. Others believe corruption is the reason.
The breakdown in trust is dangerous for the tiny community.
Armenians in the Holy Land, numbering only a few thousand people, are mostly the descendants of victims of the Armenian Genocide, who scattered themselves throughout the Middle East to escape the Ottoman Empire's oppression in the early 20th century.
There is also a much older religious community, whose presence for centuries makes the Armenians one of the foremost Christian denominations in Jerusalem.
Now, those two parts of the community, co-religionists in one of Israel's worst crises, are bitterly divided.
There are, however, signs things might be improving.
Many priests joined the community in the car park on Sunday, not easy given their boss started the saga. A new bishop has just arrived from Armenia to deal with the institution’s property. A number of figures in the community told The National they hold him in high regard.
The Patriarch himself even turned up, according to a press release. “The community stood strong, with 200 members in unity to prevent the takeover and save the Armenian Quarter,” it read.
On Monday, quiet had returned to the car park. Mr Djernazian stood by the rubble kicked up by the bulldozers mere days previously.
“Jerusalem has been targeted for years, but it’s important to note that people are using the war in Gaza to target Armenians when they are most likely to be alone,” he said.
“We have had a presence here since the 4th century, so we will never give up. Losing this land would mean endangering not just the Armenian presence in Jerusalem but the Christian one, too.”