The California
Courier Online, February 8, 2024
1- Fake Names
on List of Donors to
Pashinyan’s
Candidate for Yerevan Mayor
By Harut
Sassounian
Publisher, California Courier
www.TheCaliforniaCourier.com
2- Goddess
Anahit statue, kept at British
Museum,
to be
exhibited for first time in Yerevan
3- Three
Armenian Political Parties in Western US
Issue Joint
Statement about Artsakh
4- Armenia formally joins international criminal
court in snub to Russia
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1- Fake Names
on List of Donors to
Pashinyan’s
Candidate for Yerevan Mayor
By Harut
Sassounian
Publisher, California Courier
www.TheCaliforniaCourier.com
Prime Minister of Armenia Nikol Pashinyan has boasted for
five years about his political party’s fair conduct in elections, blaming the
former leaders of carrying out fraudulent elections. As the proverb says,
“People who live in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones.”
Pashinyan has used the considerable resources of his
government to gain an unfair advantage over his political opponents during
local and parliamentary elections. Nevertheless, some of the opposition
candidates, following their election to a public office, are removed after
being arrested, tried and jailed by pro-Pashinyan judges.
A recent example of fraud carried out by Pashinyan’s
political party is the September 17, 2023 elections for the City Council of
Yerevan. After ousting his own party member Hayk Marutyan from the position of
mayor for daring to criticize the ruling party, Pashinyan planned to replace
him with former Deputy Prime Minister Tigran Avinyan.
Pashinyan’s backers resorted to a typical fundraising trick
to ensure that Avinyan, who had little public support, becomes the Mayor of
Yerevan. To accomplish their objective, they raised over one million dollars in
campaign funds from mysterious individuals under fake names, an investigation
revealed.
Infocom.am journalists contacted many of the names on the
donors’ list and found out that some of them were fake.
The scandal starts with a Pashinyan supporter borrowing the
ID card of a friend to donate using her name 2.5 million dram ($6,200), the
maximum amount allowed by law, to Pashinyan’s political party, Civil Contract.
This lady’s ID card was used to hide the real donor’s name. Unbeknownst to her,
she was listed as a large donor to Pashinyan’s party. The fraudulent
transaction took place on July 31, 2023, hours before a fundraising event held
later that evening during which Pashinyan’s party claimed that 987 donors had
raised over one million dollars (506 million dram), for the City Council race.
When asked by the media, Pashinyan’s political party refused
to make the donors’ names public. Only after the Freedom of Information Center
filed a lawsuit, the party disclosed the list of donors with fake names on
January 12, 2024. The list included 996 names who had donated nearly $1.3
million (509 million dram) to the campaign.
When the lady, who was reported as donating 2.5 million
dram, saw her name on the donors’ list, she was very upset. Infocom.am
contacted other names on the donors’ list. Many of them were surprised that
their names were used as donors to a political campaign. 87% of the donors were
listed as donating over a million dram each, 70% of whom (140 individuals) were
listed as donating the maximum amount of 2.5 million dram. Among the large
donors were 88 candidates for City Council from the ruling Civil Contract
party.
Infocom.am disclosed that the largest donors were the owners
of major corporations, their executives and employees. Eight of the large
donors worked for a single prominent company. It was confirmed that its
employees had not donated from their personal funds, but the business owners
had paid in their names. Several other big businessmen were listed as donating
the maximum amount. Among the donors on the list were the names of employees of
the City Council of Yerevan.
Infocom.am, after contacting the donors on the list provided
by the Civil Contract party, concluded that some of the names on the donors’
list are “at least suspicious. The investigation showed that through organized
mechanisms, funds of unknown origin were directed to the Civil Contract party’s
fundraising, sometimes under the names of citizens who were generally unaware
of the process.” In addition, since the law does not allow fundraising
donations in cash, Infocom.am asked Avinyan’s campaign officials how the
donations were made during the fundraising event. They answered that employees
of ‘Hayeconobank’, who were present, transferred the cash to the account of the
party. Among the shareholders of Hayeconobank is the ruling party parliament
member and well-known oligarch Khachatur Sukiasyan, known as Grzo.
Infocom.am told the Deputy Head of the Civil Contract party
Vahagn Aleksanyan that the donors it contacted said that they have made no such
donations. Aleksanyan asked for the names of these individuals in order to
verify them. When told that Infocom.am cannot disclose their names, Aleksanyan
replied that perhaps they did not identify the correct individuals.
According to the law, the government can inspect the
fundraising of a campaign only eight months after the election. The law states
that by May 31 of the year following an election, political parties have to
present their financial reports to the Anti-Corruption Committee.
When Infocom.am asked the former President of the Central
Election Committee Vahagn Hovakimyan, a former Parliament member from the Civil
Contract party, about its refusal to disclose the list of donors, Hovakimyan
replied: “You are treating the political forces as potential criminals.”
This is a clear illustration of the fraud committed by
Pashinyan’s party during the elections for the City Council of Yerevan.
Nevertheless, the election was not as successful as expected for the ruling
party. Avinyan was elected mayor only after the opposition parties, which had
more City Council members than the ruling party, had failed to combine their
votes to elect their own candidate for mayor.
This is the sad picture of the so-called democracy in Armenia. I
seriously doubt that the Anti-Corruption Committee will take any legal action
against Pashinyan’s political party for violating election laws.
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2- Goddess Anahit statue, kept at British Museum,
to be
exhibited for first time in Yerevan
(News.am)—Due to an agreement reached between the History
Museum of Armenia and the British Museum, the statue of the Goddess Anahit, which is
kept at the British Museum, will be exhibited this September for the
first time in Yerevan,
according to the Tourism Committee of Armenia.
According to the British
Museum, the sculpture is
a bronze head from a cult statue of Anahita, and has been widely admired since
its discovery and likened to the Aphrodite of Knidos by some scholars. The eyes
were originally inlaid with either precious stones or a glass paste, and the
lips perhaps coated with a copper veneer. The top of the head was damaged
during excavation. The thin-walled casting of the bronze head suggests a late
Hellenistic date, between 200-100 BC.
Anahit, in Armenian mythology, was the Mother Goddess—the
goddess of fertility and love. Temples
to Anahit were located in Bagaran, Erez, Armavir, Artashat and Ashtishat.
According to the Greek historian Plutarch, the temple in
Erez (also known as the ancient Armenian Erznka) was the richest and most
majestic in Armenia.
A fragment of the statue was found in 1872 by a Turkish
peasant on the territory of modern Turkey
near the town of Sadak (ancient Satala), not far
from the city of Erez.
Apparently the peasant sold the fragment to a local collector, after which it
changed hands for some time, before it ended up with famous Italian collector
Alessandro Castellani who sold the work to the British Museum
in 1873.
Some time later the gallery was presented with the left hand
of the statue, squeezing the fabric. Extraordinary efforts were made to acquire
the statue. Professor Lucia Patrizio Gunning, a historian, journalist and
linguist, has argued that the Satala was sold in violation of both Ottoman and
Italian laws. Bartın University archeologist Şahin Yıldırım said the head
was "smuggled" from Turkey.
Castellani bribed Italian customs officials to export his collection. The
acquisition was negotiated by Charles Thomas Newton, the museum's Keeper of
Greek and Roman Antiquities. Newton
appealed directly to British Prime Minister William Ewart Gladstone, who agreed
to provide £27,000 (£2 million in 2021) for Castellani's collection.
The hand was donated by Castellani to the British Museum
in 1875. The rest of the statue was never found, despite further excavations
funded by the museum. As of 2022, the fragments are displayed at the museum's
Room 22 in a glass case over a ventilation grille.
"The journey of the head illustrates a methodology for
the acquisition of pieces for the British
Museum, the efficiency of
the deployment of diplomatic channels to enrich its collection, and the
workings of the nineteenth-century trafficking chain. It opens a series of
complicated ethical questions about the head and to whom it belonged in the
first place, whether to the inhabitants of Armenia or the governing Ottomans,
and whether it should have been allowed to reach Italy and, from there,
England," says Gunning.
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3- Three Armenian Political
Parties in Western US
Issue Joint
Statement about Artsakh
The Western U.S. leadership of the Social Democratic
Hunchakian Party, the Armenian Revolutionary Federation, and the Armenian
Democratic League (Ramgavar Party) met on January 22, at the latter’s offices.
During the two-hour meeting, the parties discussed the situation related to
Artsakh Armenians and issues related to the local community. Each party delegation
was headed by its chairperson: Vazken Khodanian from the Hunchakian party; Avo
Kechichian from the ARF; and Tamar Poladian-Perron from the Ramgavar party.
The situation facing Artsakh following the 44-Day War and
its subsequent depopulation in September, 2023 and the imperative for
political, social and humanitarian efforts to deal with them was emphasized.
The need for collective efforts toward regaining the national rights of the
Artsakh Armenians was also stressed.
Emphasis was also placed on the pursuit of the Armenian
Cause without wavering, as well as expending maximum resources and targeted
efforts toward strengthening the statehood and independence.
“The policy to exterminate Armenians by genocidal Turkey and its ally, Azerbaijan, continue to be advanced
today. We have a duty to express our solidarity to the people of Artsakh, by
addressing the current crisis in local, state, and federal levels,” the parties
stated. It was decided during the meeting that the community structures will
organize the April 24 commemorations, as has become a tradition throughout the
years.
“The Armenian Nation and the Homeland is in an existential
struggle. It is our duty to serve the homeland and the nation collectively and
united. We appeal to the community to unite around our national and
organizational institutions and prioritize our aspirations and rights, and take
part in the advancement of our nation’s security and perseverance,” the parties
concluded.
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4- Armenia formally joins international criminal
court in snub to Russia
(The Guardian)—Armenia
has formally joined the international criminal court (ICC), officials said, a
move which traditional ally Moscow
has denounced as unfriendly. The Hague-based court in March issued an arrest
warrant for the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, over the war in Ukraine and the illegal deportation of children
to Russia.
Yerevan
is now obliged to arrest the Russian leader if he sets foot on its territory.
“ICC Rome statute officially entered into force for Armenia on 1
February,” the country’s official representative for international legal
matters, Yeghishe Kirakosyan, told AFP.
The Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said Armenia had taken a “wrong decision” when its
parliament voted in October to ratify the ICC’s Rome statute, and the Russian foreign
ministry has called the move an “unfriendly step”.
Armenia
is home to a permanent Russian military base and is part of the Moscow-led
military alliance the Collective Security Treaty Organisation (CSTO), that
consists of several ex-Soviet republics.
Western countries hailed the ratification, which marks the
expansion of the court’s jurisdiction into what was long seen as Russia’s back
yard.
“The world is getting smaller for the autocrat in the
Kremlin,” the European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, said in
reference to Putin after Armenia ratified the ICC statute in October.
Armenia’s prime minister, Nikol Pashinyan, has tried to
reassure Russia that his country is only addressing what it says are war crimes
committed by its neighbour, Azerbaijan, in their long-running conflict, and is
not aiming at Moscow.
Kirakosyan said: “Joining the ICC gives Armenia serious
tools to prevent war crimes and crimes against humanity on its territory.
“First of all, this concerns Azerbaijan,” he added. Yerevan has fought two
wars with its arch-foe over the disputed Nagorno-Karabakh region.
But Armenia’s
move illustrated a growing divide between Moscow
and Yerevan, which has grown angry with the
Kremlin’s perceived inaction over Azerbaijan’s belligerence.
In September Azerbaijani forces swept through Karabakh –
where Russian peacekeepers are deployed – and secured the surrender of Armenian
separatist forces that had controlled the mountainous region for decades.
“Armenia
hoped that by joining the ICC, by making such a sensitive step for Russia, it
could receive security guarantees from the west,” independent analyst Vigen
Hakobyan told AFP. “But apparently it has strained its Russia ties
without receiving real security guarantees from the west.”
Armenia
signed the Rome
statute in 1999, but did not ratify it, citing contradictions with the
country’s constitution.
The constitutional court said in March those obstacles had
been removed after Armenia’s
adoption of a new constitution in 2015. Last November, Yerevan
formally deposited its instrument of ratification of the Rome statute.
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