Tuesday, 

Armenia Slams Azerbaijan Over Large-Scale War Games


 . Lusine Musayelian


Large-scale military exercises in Azerbaijan in April 2017

Official Yerevan has accused Baku of failing to meet its obligations
to an international organization after Azerbaijan launched large-scale
war games on Monday.

"Azerbaijan began its military exercises without notifying in advance
the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) member
states and with a gross violation of its obligations before the
organization," Tigran Balayan, a spokesman for Armenia's Ministry of
Foreign Affair, wrote on Twitter.

Azerbaijan's five-day war games involving about 25,000 troops and a
large number of military hardware come weeks before the country's
early presidential election scheduled for April 11.

The issue of Nagorno-Karabakh, an Armenian-control region that broke
away from Azerbaijan as a result of a war in the early 1990s, is
likely to feature prominently during the campaign leading up to the
vote in which current President Ilham Aliyev is expected to win his
fourth consecutive five-year term.

Military authorities in Azerbaijan do not specify the location of the
current war games, only mentioning that they are unfolding "in the
difficult conditions of the mountainous terrain."

Some 250 tanks and other armored vehicles, up to 1,000 artillery units
of different calibers, multiple rocket launcher systems and mortars,
as well as up to 50 units of army and front-line aircraft are also
involved in the exercises, according to Azerbaijan's Ministry of
Defense.

According to official sources in Azerbaijan, during the exercises
"army units will repulse the attack of the conventional enemy and will
launch a counteroffensive."

During the five-day exercises, the Azerbaijani armed forces will also
reportedly use a number of new types of weapons recently acquired from
Russia, Israel and the Czech Republic.

Responding to the criticism coming from Yerevan regarding the conduct
of the exercises, Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry spokesman Hikmet Hajiev
insisted that the war games taking place "in the sovereign territory
of Azerbaijan" correspond to "the OSCE's Vienna document of 2011".

In 2017 Azerbaijan conducted several military exercises, causing the
wrath of the Armenian side. The largest exercises last year were held
in April and involved some 30,000 troops. Those war games came a year
after the deadliest Armenian-Azerbaijani fighting in Nagorno-Karabakh
since the 1994 ceasefire known as a four-day war.




Public TV Show Criticized For `Ridiculing' Female Prison Inmates


 . Nane Sahakian


Armenia -- The logo of Armenian Public TV's Lav Yereko (Fine Evening)
show, undated.

A report aired during last week's evening show on Armenia's Public
Television sparked criticism among human rights activists who insist
that female prison inmates featured in the program became a target of
unsolicited ridicule.

As part of the "Fine Evening" show broadcast on March 8, a public
holiday marking Women's Day in Armenia, a young woman apparently
posing as an ing nue reporter interviewed seven female convicts
serving their sentences in a penitentiary in Abovian, a town some 15
kilometers to the northeast of capital Yerevan. The reporter asked
some frivolous `girly' questions, including whether there were any
"cute guys among the guards", and the answers of the women were
accompanied with off-screen giggles.

Zaruhi Hovannisian, a member of the public group engaged in prison
monitoring, said the show raised some questions that needed to be
answered by the Ministry of Justice.

"Were these women aware of how their words would later be edited [for
the report] and whether a laugh track would be added? Secondly, did
these women have the opportunity to choose whether to answer or not or
the prison administration itself chose the women who were to answer
the reporter's questions?" she queried.

The show also raised eyebrows in the media community because dozens of
journalists in Armenia are known to have difficulty in accessing
prisons for filming. Some have to wait for months before their
requests are likely to be rejected for some reason.

"It turns out that access to prisons for investigative journalists is
banned and for those who film for entertainment purposes it is not,"
complained Grisha Balasanian, a journalist writing for the Hetq
magazine.

Balasanian said he had been waiting for permission to film at the
hospital for convicts for already a year. "I have made a request to
the chief of the establishment and have also turned to the minister of
justice# During the year I have periodically received rejections with
the explanation that they are too busy," the investigative journalist
said.

The Hraparak daily encountered the same attitude from the penitentiary
department as its request for filming inside a prison located in a
Yerevan suburb for the purpose of getting acquainted with the
conditions of prison cells, the library and the canteen was rejected.

"We make a request to visit some convict at some penitentiary and get
a cynical reply that they cannot let a journalist in because of the
[administration's] being busy," Hraparak editor Armine Ohanian said,
adding that the ombudsman officially confirmed to her that the refusal
was unlawful.

RFE/RL's Armenian service (Azatutyun.am) asked the Penitentiary
Department of the Ministry of Justice to clarify the situation and was
still waiting for the reply to its written inquiry at the time of this
posting. Neither the Public Television of Armenia has reacted to the
criticism yet.



Ex-Justice Minister Named As Chairman Of Armenian Constitutional Court


 . Tatevik Lazarian


Hrair Tovmasian (an archive photo)

Less than two weeks after being elected member of the Constitutional
Court Armenia's ex-Minister of Justice Hrair Tovmasian has been named
as a candidate for the post of the Court's chairman.

The nomination of the 47-year-old co-author of Armenia's Basic Law was
made on Tuesday by Armenian Parliament Speaker Ara Babloyan.

Earlier, Babloyan terminated the powers of Gagik Harutiunian as
chairman of the Constitutional Court following his resignation and
election as Chairman of the Supreme Judicial Council, a new body
established under Armenia's reformed Constitution.

The post of the chairman of the Constitutional Court has become vacant
before April 9, which means that the 2015 Constitution will not apply
to the election of the new chairman. Accordingly, under the 2005
Constitution, it is the National Assembly that will elect the new
chairman of the Constitutional Court within a period of 30 days.

If the elections were to be held in accordance with the Constitution
reformed in 2015, the Constitutional Court would elect its chairman
from among its judges for a period of six years without the right to
be re-elected. Meanwhile, under the provisions of the Basic Law passed
in 2005, the chairman of the Constitutional Court, who shall be
elected by the National Assembly, will serve until he or she attains
the age of 65.

Artak Zeinalian, a member of the parliament's opposition Yelk faction,
thinks that the authors of the Constitution, including Tovmasian
himself, have foreseen such a development. "The goal is to ensure that
Tovmasian will serve as chairman of the Constitutional Court until
2035 when he turns 65. Formally, there seems to be no problem... But I
think that with this trick the logic of the new Constitution is
blocked. Under the new Constitution, the members of the Constitutional
Court are replaceable and a more democratic mechanism is to be
applied. But I think this was done specifically to neutralize it and
for the chairman of the Constitutional Court to carry out the
political will of the political majority. That is, it was done so as
to turn the Constitutional Court into a politicized body," he charged.

Eduard Sharmazanov, a deputy parliament speaker and spokesman for the
ruling Republican Party of Armenia, meanwhile, said that it is "quite
logical" that the norm supposed to be applied before April 9 will be
applied in the election of the new chairman of the Constitutional
Court.

"I believe that Tovmasian is the person who can be a worthy successor
to Gagik Harutiunian," he concluded.

The election of the new chairman of the Constitutional Court by secret
ballot will take place at the National Assembly during the four-day
session commencing on March 20.



Experts In Armenia Raise Concerns Over `Discriminatory' TV Ad


 . Narine Ghalechian


Armenia -- A screenshot from a TV commercial, Yerevan, 12Mar2018

An Armenian television commercial using comparisons of prices and
quality of goods with people of different age, color of the skin and
physique has sparked criticism against its authors who have been
accused of showing a discriminatory approach.

On the video advertizing one of the building materials markets in
Yerevan a construction foreman explains to his workers, among whom
there are an elderly man, a man with a black skin, an obese person and
others, why one should buy goods at a particular store, making
references to the peculiarities of these people for instructive
purposes.

Eduard Aghayan, the head of the marketing department of the Yerevan
Fair, said they had no intention of insulting anyone by showing this
TV commercial. He called it just humor. In a written reply to RFE/RL's
Armenian service (Azatutyun.am) Aghayan said: "We have never sought to
ridicule anyone or spread racism. It's just a humorous video and for
greater imagery and better presentation we invited actors who play
these parts, and there is no insult to these people. The goal was to
make it interesting for people to watch."

The company representative said that an Armenian could have played the
part of the black person. "There can be nothing racist in it. It's
just a humorous advertisement. We realize what age it is now to afford
such a thing," Aghayan added.

Meanwhile, media expert Suren Deherian said that the advertiser should
also bear social responsibility. "For some, there may be different
levels of humor, but this ad should not have contained this cynicism,
which I think forms a negative attitude towards another person."

Varduhi Aramian, head of the Armenian Camp NGO that deals with
disability issues, voiced concern that TV commercials like the one in
which in her view people are ridiculed because of their physical
parameters, age or color of their skin do the opposite to what her
organization has been doing for years through social ads and various
programs - trying to overcome discrimination in society.

"It turns out that people are equated to goods as their qualities are
compared. This is a bad trend. Perhaps the next time someone will
decide that a person without one leg should be compared to a table or
a chair missing one leg. Such commercials are a stimulus for deepening
these stereotypes. That's why we sound the alarm, because one video,
which has an impact on a wide audience, undoes all our long-term
work," she said.

The Yerevan fair whose store was advertized in the controversial TV
commercial belongs to well-known Armenian entrepreneur Khachatur
Sukiasian. Earlier this year, his company was criticized for the "Our
Country" advertising board depicting cows dressed in Armenian women's
national costumes. Ethnographers then said that comparing an Armenian
woman to a cow was offensive, while the company manager explained that
the billboard was humorous.




Prosecutor-General's Office Sees No Reasons For Questioning Kocharian


 . Ruzanna Stepanian


Armenia -- Former president Robert Kocharian gives an interview to
RFE/RL, Yerevan, 05Sep2015

There are no grounds for instructing the investigation body to
interrogate former Armenian president Robert Kocharian in connection
with the 2008 post-election violence, the Prosecutor-General's Office
told RFE/RL's Armenian service (Azatutyun.am) on Tuesday.

Last week leader of the parliamentary faction of the opposition Yelk
alliance Nikol Pashinian asked the country's prosecutor-general to
subpoena Kocharian for questioning over his ordering the use of lethal
force to suppress protests held by the opposition in the wake of a
disputed presidential election ten years ago.

Pashinian, an active participants of the protests who was later tried
and convicted as one of the organizers of the unrest, in a video post
on his Facebook account on March 5, in particular, said that Kocharian
must explain where from he got the information about gunshots fired by
opposition supporters at security forces, which was a key formal
excuse for the authorities to quell the nonstop anti-government
protests.

Pashinian's application to the prosecutor-general came less than two
weeks after a senior ruling party lawmaker who led a parliamentary
investigation into the deadly events years ago repeated that same
question once addressed to Kocharian during hearings in parliament on
the eve of the 10th anniversary of the events.

In its reply the Prosecutor-General's Office said that Pashinian had
no status as a participant of criminal proceedings related to the
March 1-2, 2008 events. "Therefore, there is no legal basis for
admitting Pashinian's application for an investigative action in
criminal-procedural manner," it said.

The Prosecutor-General's Office also insisted that "according to the
data collected by the investigation body so far there are no grounds
for ordering the interrogation of Kocharian as a witness."

Remarkably, head of Kocharian's office Viktor Soghomonian brushed
aside Pashinian's move on Monday, describing the oppositionist as the
main "provocateur and organizer" of the 2008 unrest.

Ten people, including two police officers, were killed in the 2008
melees followed by a continued crackdown on the opposition during and
beyond a 20-day state of emergency imposed by the then outgoing
president Kocharian. No one has yet been charged with murders
committed back then.




Press Review



"Zhamanak" comments on the reaction of ex-president Robert Kocharian's
office to opposition leader Nikol Pashinian's request to the
prosecutor-general to subpoena the former leader for questioning over
the 2008 deadly post-election events. "Of course, to put it mildly, it
is very unlikely that the prosecutor-general will respond to this
petition affirmatively. On the other hand, Kocharian is likely to have
grown concerned about the fact that not only the opposition lawmaker,
but also ruling Republican Party MP Samvel Nikoyan, who once led a
parliamentary probe into the post-election violence, spoke about the
need for interrogating him. It is not ruled out that this very
circumstance made Kocharian treat seriously the petition of Pashinian
and break a durable silence through his mouthpiece," the paper writes.

"Past" writes on the large-scale war games that began in Azerbaijan on
March 12 and the negative reaction to them from Armenia. Commenting on
the matter, political analyst Ruben Mehrabian said that he saw
parallels between the war games and the planned visit of Karabakh
leader Bako Sahakian to the United States and the related negative
reaction from Azerbaijan. According to the analyst, Azerbaijan is
getting prepared for war and the current military exercises are "an
important stage of preparations."

"Haykakan Zhamanak" writes on the upcoming presidential elections in
Russia where, it says, like in Armenia, Azerbaijan, Tajikistan,
Belarus and other post-Soviet countries the notion of "elections" is
downgraded to a "legal" term. "Simply from the legal point of view the
start of another presidential term of Vladimir Putin will be
registered. The contrast between Russia and the West will be
accentuated even more deeply. Society may face a dilemma: to choose
the future, development and real stability or the Middle Ages,
darkness, the era of irreplaceable leaders and fathers of the people,"
the Armenian daily comments.

(Anush Mkrtchian)


Reprinted on ANN/Armenian News with permission from RFE/RL
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