Thursday,
Squatters Evicted From Former Defense Ministry Building
• Robert Zargarian
Armenia - Squatters evicted from the former Defense Ministry building outside
Yerevan, .
The Armenian police made more than 20 arrests on Thursday as they evicted
hundreds of squatters from the former building of the country’s Defense Ministry.
The building located about 15 kilometers west of Yerevan housed the ministry
until 2005. More than 150 impoverished families moved to occupy its rooms in the
following years.
The Armenian government decided last year to give the high-rise to its State
Revenue Committee (SRC). The agency comprising the national tax and customs
services is due to relocate there in 2027 after a large-scale reconstruction.
The occupants of the abandoned building received formal eviction orders last
month. They refused to move out, saying that they are too poor to rent, let
alone buy, homes elsewhere.
Hundreds of police officers scuffled with some squatters as they began the
evictions early in the morning. A police spokesman said later in the day that
more than two dozen people were detained as a result.
Armenia - Riot police guard the former Defense Ministry building cleared of
squatters, .
“Who the hell are you?” one man shouted at the policemen. “Under what law? Tell
us about that law.”
“They kicked the door open. It’s such an inhuman treatment,” said Paulina
Petrosian, a middle-aged woman who has shared a room in the building with her
daughter and two young grandchildren for the last four years.
The family previously lived in Gyumri. Petrosian said it left the city for
economic reasons.
After being forced out of their rooms, the squatters gathered in the building’s
courtyard with suitcases and other belongings, refusing to leave. They said they
have nowhere to live.
“If they give us another place to live in, no problem, we’ll hand their
privatized building back to them,” Petrosian told RFE/RL’s Armenian Service. “If
not, I will stay here with the other people.”
The Armenian Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs promised to provide the
evicted people with temporary housing. The ministry said it is also considering
fully or partly paying their rent.
Karabakh To Reopen Schools Despite Lack Of Gas Heating
• Gayane Saribekian
Nagorno-Karabakh - An empty classroom in a school in Stepanakert, January 20,
2023.
Authorities in Nagorno-Karabakh said on Thursday that they will likely fully
reopen all local schools next week even if Azerbaijan continues to block
Armenia’s natural gas supplies to the region cut off from the outside world.
Dozens of schools using natural gas for heating were shut down on February 7
following a fresh disruption in the gas supplies carried out through
Azerbaijani-controlled territory. About half of Karabakh’s 19,000 or so
schoolchildren are enrolled in them.
Classes were not suspended for high school students because the authorities
installed woodstoves in their classrooms. The other Karabakh schools are now
fully heated by firewood.
Azerbaijan reportedly unblocked the flow of gas to Karabakh on Wednesday only to
halt it again two hours later.
“We have wood-heated schools without a second shift,” said Hasmik Minasian, the
Karabakh education minister. “In other schools we installed stoves for grades
9-12. We will try to organize second shifts for the other students.”
“All schools will probably operate in the coming days,” Minasian told RFE/RL’s
Armenian Service.
Karabakh schools had already been shut down for three times since Azerbaijani
government-backed protesters blocked on December 12 the sole road connecting
Karabakh to Armenia. They were most recently reopened on January 30 after a
partial restoration of the gas supply.
Following the February 7 disruption, Karabakh’s leadership urged the
international community to exert stronger pressure on Azerbaijan to end the
blockade. It accused Baku of trying to create “unbearable” living conditions for
the Karabakh Armenians so that they leave their homes.
Russia, the United States and the European Union have repeatedly urged
Azerbaijan to reopen the Lachin corridor. U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken
telephoned Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev for that purpose late last month.
Aliyev again defended the Azerbaijanis blocking the corridor and demanding that
Baku be given access to “illegal” copper mines in Karabakh.
Pashinian Hopeful About Armenian-Azeri Peace Treaty
• Astghik Bedevian
Czech Republic - Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian and Azerbaijani
President Ilham Aliyev talk during an EU summit in Prague, October 6, 2022.
Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian on Thursday expressed hope that Armenia and
Azerbaijan will finalize in the near future a bilateral peace treaty while again
accusing Baku of trying to depopulate Nagorno-Karabakh through an ongoing
transport blockade.
Pashinian said that Yerevan presented the Azerbaijani side on Wednesday with
fresh proposals regarding the treaty. He did not disclose those proposals or
give other details of the deal discussed by the two countries.
“Obviously, this document should be acceptable to Azerbaijan as well, and we
hope that it will be possible to build on some progress observed as a result of
three rounds of negotiations,” he said during a weekly session of his cabinet.
Azerbaijani leaders have said all along that the treaty must be based on key
elements which it presented to Armenia in March 2022. Those include mutual
recognition of each other’s territorial integrity. This would presumably mean
Armenian recognition of Azerbaijani sovereignty over Karabakh.
Armen Grigorian, the secretary of Armenia’s Security Council, said earlier this
week that the peace deal should make a reference to Karabakh. He said Yerevan is
pressing for an “international mechanism” for direct negotiations between Baku
and Stepanakert regarding the security and rights of Karabakh’s ethnic Armenian
population.
The Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry deplored Grigorian’s comments on Wednesday,
saying they show that Armenia has not abandoned territorial claims to
Azerbaijan. A ministry spokesman ruled out any talks with the Karabakh Armenians
whom he described as Azerbaijani citizens.
Nagorno-Karabakh - Empty shelves at a supermarket in Stepanakert, January 17,
2023.
As well as reaffirming his declared commitment to the Armenian-Azerbaijani
treaty, Pashinian condemned the continuing Azerbaijani blockade of the sole road
connecting Karabakh to Armenia and the outside world. Baku has also been
blocking Armenia’s supplies of electricity and natural gas to Karabakh,
aggravating the humanitarian crisis there.
“Azerbaijan's actions have one goal: to complete the policy of ethnic cleansing
of the Armenians of Nagorno-Karabakh,” charged Pashinian.
Azerbaijan’s Foreign Minister Jeyhun Bayramov again defended Azerbaijani
government-backed protesters blocking the road when he spoke with U.S. Assistant
Secretary of State Karen Donfried by phone on Wednesday for the second time in a
week. Bayramov said that the protesters’ demands for an end to “illegal” mining
in Karabakh have still not been met.
The United States as well as the European Union, Russia and international human
rights organizations have repeatedly called for an immediate reopening of the
Lachin corridor.
Later on Thursday, Pashinian flew to Munich to attend an annual international
security conference that will open in the German city on Friday.
Pashinian’s press office said he will hold “a number of bilateral meetings” with
foreign leaders on the sidelines of the forum. The office declined to say
whether Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev, who is also scheduled to participate
in the Munich Security Conference, will be among them.
Armenia Sees More Progress In Normalization Talks With Turkey
• Ruzanna Stepanian
Turkey/Armenia – The ruins of a medieval Armenian bridge on the Turkish-Armenian
border, April 23, 2014.
Armenia and Turkey have agreed to speed up efforts to normalize their relations,
Foreign Minister Ararat Mirzoyan said on Thursday after his landmark visit to
Ankara.
Mirzoyan met with his Turkish counterpart Mevlut Cavusoglu and also visited
Adiyaman, one of the cities in southeastern Turkey ravaged by last week’s
powerful earthquake. The Armenian government sent more humanitarian aid to its
residents during his trip.
Mirzoyan said he and Cavusoglu reached “concrete understandings” on bilateral
ties as he spoke during a weekly government meeting in Yerevan chaired by Prime
Minister Nikol Pashinian.
“I can announce a decision to accelerate the process of dialogue and the process
aimed at the ultimate opening of the [Turkish-Armenian] border,” he told fellow
cabinet members.
Mirzoyan reiterated that the two sides plan to rebuild a medieval bridge over a
river marking a section of the closed frontier. He also announced that they
could open the border to citizens of third countries as well as holders of
Turkish and Armenian diplomatic passports this summer.
Turkey - Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu and Armenian Foreign Minister
Ararat Mirzoyan meet in Ankara, .
Speaking at a joint news conference with Mirzoyan on Wednesday, Cavusoglu said
the assistance provided by Armenia to victims of the devastating earthquake
could facilitate the normalization process. But he appeared to link that process
to the outcome of Armenian-Azerbaijani peace talks.
Turkey has for decades made the opening of the border and the establishment of
diplomatic relations with Armenia conditional on an Armenian-Azerbaijani peace
deal acceptable to Azerbaijan. Turkish leaders have repeatedly reaffirmed this
precondition since the start of the normalization talks with Yerevan in January
2022.
Ankara briefly opened one of the border crossings on Saturday and Wednesday to
receive two batches of Armenian humanitarian aid. According to Mirzoyan, it will
also allow the 27 members of an Armenian search-and-rescue team, who flew to
Adiyaman last week, to return home through the same border gate.
Reposted on ANN/Armenian News with permission from RFE/RL
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