Author: Ani Tigranian

Bright Armenia faction head says conduction of snap elections while having captives in Azerbaijani jail wrong

Ani Tigranian
Aysor, Armenia
Jan 18 2021

Head of Bright Armenia faction Edmon Marukyan speaking at the parliament today said he cannot imagine conduction of snap parliamentary elections now.

“Our brothers and sisters are in Azerbaijani jails, how can we go to their homes and give election booklets. I don’t imagine conduction of snap elections in the conditions of identification process of our martyrs. How will you go to their yards and speak with a microphone?” he said, adding though that as far as the authorities threaten them with snap elections, they are ready for them.

Marukyan also presented the procedure – Nikol Pashinyan steps down, after which the parliament twice fails to elect a premier and dissolves.

“There is no other procedure,” the head of the Bright Armenia faction said.

Stable operational situation maintained along Armenian-Azerbaijani border

Ani Tigranian

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 17:01,

YEREVAN, JANUARY 19, ARMENPRESS. A stable operational situation with no incidents has been maintained along the Armenian-Azerbaijani line of contact of the Armenian state border overnight January 18-19, the Defense Ministry of Armenia told Armenpress.

According to the information provided by the Armenian National Security Service, no border incidents were registered in Vorotan-Davit Bek section of the Goris-Kapan inter-state road which is under the responsibility of the NSS border troops.

The Armed Forces of Armenia and the NSS border troops confidently control the border situation along the entire length of the border zone and fulfill their tasks.

Editing and Translating by Aneta Harutyunyan

COVID-19: Armenia reports 90 new cases, 292 recoveries over past day

Ani Tigranian

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 10:56,

YEREVAN, JANUARY 18, ARMENPRESS. 90 new cases of the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) have been confirmed in Armenia in the past one day, bringing the total number of confirmed cases to 164,676, the ministry of healthcare said today.

292 more patients have recovered in one day. The total number of recoveries has reached 153,064.

6 more patients have died, raising the death toll to 2998.

842 tests were conducted in the past one day.

The number of active cases is 7885.

The number of patients who had coronavirus but died from other disease has reached 729.

Editing and Translating by Aneta Harutyunyan

President’s Office confirms receiving PM’s motion on dismissing Healthcare Minister Arsen Torosya

Ani Tigranian

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 13:41,

YEREVAN, JANUARY 18, ARMENPRESS. President Armen Sarkissian’s office has received Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan’s motion requesting the dismissal of Healthcare Minister Arsen Torosyan, Sarkissian’s aide Hasmik Petrosyan confirmed to ARMENPRESS.

Whether or not Torosyan himself has tendered his resignation to the prime minister wasn’t immediately clear.

Editing and Translating by Stepan Kocharyan

COVID-19: Armenia reports 379 new cases, 932 recoveries over past day

Ani Tigranian

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 11:19, 9 January, 2021

YEREVAN, JANUARY 9, ARMENPRESS. 379 new cases of the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) have been confirmed in Armenia in the past one day, bringing the total number of confirmed cases to 161,794, the ministry of healthcare said today.

932 more patients have recovered in one day. The total number of recoveries has reached 148,893.

14 more patients have died, raising the death toll to 2922.

2123 tests were conducted in the past one day.

The number of active cases is 9279.

The number of patients who had coronavirus but died from other disease has reached 700 (4 new such cases).

Editing and Translating by Aneta Harutyunyan

National Geographic: In Nagorno-Karabakh, people grapple with war’s aftermath and COVID-19

Ani Tigranian
The National Geograhic
Jan 8 2021
 
 

By Kristen Chick
Photographs by Anastasia Taylor-Lind

PUBLISHED January 8, 2021

Two decades ago, Khanum and Volodya Grigoryan planted a pear tree in their new garden as they started over for the second time.

In 1988, they’d fled a violent backlash against ethnic Armenians in Azerbaijan and settled in neighboring Armenia. They waited as a war raged between Armenia and Azerbaijan over Nagorno-Karabakh, a breakaway region in southwestern Azerbaijan populated primarily by Armenians. The conflict ended with Armenians seizing control of Nagorno-Karabakh and seven surrounding Azerbaijani districts, including Kalbajar (known as Karvachar to Armenians). All of Kalbajar’s Azerbaijani inhabitants—some 60,000 people—were expelled, and ethnic Armenians, including Khanum and Volodya, moved in.

(How the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict has been shaped by past empires.)

 

The couple built their house on a former resident’s foundation, gradually adding comforts like electricity and plumbing. The pear tree grew and bore fruit. Khanum filled the shelves of her small kitchen with preserves from the garden, and they painted the walls of their sitting room turquoise. Behind their home, on a rocky hillside jutting toward the sky, the crumbling remains of an abandoned house served as a reminder of the valley’s previous Azerbaijani occupants.

The couple expected to stay there for the rest of their lives. But war broke out again in September 2020, and this time, Azerbaijan prevailed. Under a Russian-mediated ceasefire, Armenia agreed to return territories it seized in the first Nagorno-Karabakh war to Azerbaijan, including Kalbajar. In November, Khanum, 60, and Volodya, 61, packed up their lives once more. All around them, neighbors did the same. Woodcutters swarmed the hillsides, harvesting as much as they could from the land before it changed hands. When they came for the pear tree, Volodya stopped them. He still held on to the hope that he and Khanum might stay. “Forget about it,” his wife told him. “It’s over.”

The couple’s relatives and friends loaded what possessions they could fit into the back of a truck: a worn mustard-colored sofa; the jars Khanum used to pickle cauliflower; the wood-burning stove that heated their home. They dug up her roses, packing the roots into plastic water jugs. She supervised from the doorway, squinting behind her rectangular eyeglasses and barking instructions. When they had finished, she fed them a lunch of bread, cheese, and homemade vodka.

"Let's drink to our heroes," she said, as they all raised their glasses. "They killed so many of our young people in the war. I just want peace. Armenians have always been suffering from this."

Volodya locked the door for the last time. They were homeless once again.

The six-week war between Armenia and Azerbaijan killed more than 5,000 people, displaced tens of thousands more, and, on top of all that, unleashed an uncontrolled outbreak of COVID-19, illustrating what an ugly breeding ground war can be for the virus. And the ceasefire did not even resolve the long-running conflict. While thousands of Azerbaijanis who’d been displaced in the 1990s will now be able to return to what is left of their homes, thousands of Armenians are now being forced from theirs. The Armenians worry about the preservation of their cultural heritage in the territory returned to Azerbaijan—as well as the preservation of their own future in a land where they’ve lived for generations.

The roots of the strife go back more than a century to the end of the Ottoman and Russian empires, but the modern conflict began in the last years of the Soviet Union. Nagorno-Karabakh was an autonomous region of the Soviet republic of Azerbaijan, but in 1988, its majority Armenian population demanded to join the Soviet republic of Armenia instead. As the Communist confederation broke apart, the dispute grew into a war that killed between 20,000 and 30,000 people, and eventually displaced more than a million people, the majority of them Azerbaijanis. Nagorno-Karabakh declared itself an independent republic, a designation Azerbaijan and the rest of the world have never recognized. After a ceasefire in 1994, the conflict remained frozen, flaring up in occasional clashes.

(These teens are fighting a war older than they are.)

When the conflict erupted again on September 27, 2020, the world was distracted and consumed with the COVID pandemic. Azerbaijan crippled Armenia’s defenses with drone attacks, and launched artillery attacks on civilian areas, including Stepanakert, Nagorno-Karabakh’s capital. Armenian forces targeted civilian areas in Azerbaijan with rocket attacks.

Within weeks, more than half of Nagorno-Karabakh’s population of 150,000 fled to Armenia. Across Stepanakert, the branches of persimmon trees were heavy with orange fruit that went unharvested. Windows were fortified with sandbags and tape, and the wail of sirens and subsequent booms of shelling became a familiar soundtrack. Those who remained in the city took refuge in the city’s crowded basements. There, they were vulnerable to COVID.

Before the war started, Nagorno-Karabakh had managed to keep the virus in check with border controls, contact tracing, and strict isolation of cases, even while the numbers rose in neighboring Armenia. Gayane Mkrtchyan, a nurse at the Republican Medical Center, Stepanakert’s main hospital, received special training for caring for COVID patients in the summer. She wore full protective gear to treat them: mask, visor, gloves, goggles, and coveralls. After leaving the ward, she would shower. In July, health officials opened a new lab to test samples in Stepanakert, rather than sending them to Armenia.

But when the war began, preventive efforts such as contact tracing suddenly ceased, even as people crowded into basements. Testing became difficult, and doctors abandoned protocols as they struggled to deal with the wounded. Medical and military volunteers from Armenia, where cases increased eight-fold in the two months after the war’s start, surged across the border, bringing the virus with them. It spread like wildfire through the hospital, and through the population. “I’ve had COVID, all the doctors have had COVID, all the nurses have had COVID,” says Mher Musayelyan, the hospital’s director. Overwhelmed medical staff kept treating patients even when they were infected. About a week after the fighting started, Mkrtchyan had a fever and a cough. She didn’t take a COVID test, but she suspects she contracted the virus. “We couldn’t even lay down to sleep. We didn’t have enough people, so we had to keep working,” she says.


On a late afternoon in early November, Mkrtchyan was making the rounds to check on her patients in the city’s infectious disease clinic, which had become a makeshift COVID hospital when the main hospital was damaged in an Azerbaijani rocket attack. All the patients were elderly: Too old or too stubborn to flee, they were also some of the most vulnerable to COVID. Mkrtchyan shone like a beacon as she moved through the gloomy building in her powder-blue protective gown. Gone was the visor and the goggles. Sometimes she didn’t even wear a mask. “We don’t pay attention to procedures now,” she says. “Because we see all these horrible things, and we’re so stressed, we really consider [COVID] as a secondary concern.”

It was a mild fall day, and Mkrtchyan stepped outside for a break with two fellow nurses. Arina Sarkisyan, a tiny, bird-like woman, brought small cups of thick, dark coffee. Another handed out persimmons. The women shared a close bond—all three had sent their children to Yerevan, Armenia’s capital, as soon as the war began, and all three had husbands fighting on the front lines. They lived at the hospital, working almost nonstop and taking turns sleeping on small cots in a tiny room. They spoke of the hospital as their own front line. Mkrtchyan told her two daughters, whom she hadn’t seen since the war began, that if she or their father doesn’t come back, “You shouldn’t cry. You should be proud of us because you should know that your parents are heroes.”

Just a week later, Mkrtchyan and Sarkisyan had to evacuate the clinic with 10 minutes’ notice. Azerbaijani forces had entered Şuşa, known to Armenians as Shushi, the mountain city overlooking the capital, and residents fled Stepanakert in a panicked rush. Sarkisyan had no time to take any of her belongings. She rode in an ambulance with five wounded soldiers, treating their injuries on the road.

Armenia’s Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan soon agreed to a Russian-mediated ceasefire, with terms that so enraged the Armenian populace they flooded the streets of Yerevan in protest. Azerbaijan would keep the territory in Nagorno-Karabakh it gained in the conflict, and Armenia would return the surrounding Azerbaijani districts, like Kalbajar, that its forces had captured in the 1990s. Russian troops quickly rolled in to enforce the accord.

Like many Armenians, Sarkisyan saw the deal as a surrender. “If Pashinyan was going to give up the land, he should have done it from the beginning, without killing our men in battle,” she says. Losing the surrounding Armenian-occupied districts made her feel vulnerable as they had provided a defensive buffer against Azerbaijan. With the memory of the Armenian genocide by the Ottoman Empire a century ago still potent, Turkey’s support of Azerbaijan stoked her fears, as did gruesome videos circulating on Telegram, a cloud-based messaging platform, purporting to show Azerbaijani soldiers beheading Armenians, mutilating corpses, and abusing captured soldiers. Amnesty International authenticated some of the videos, as well as others depicting Armenian forces engaged in abuses against Azerbaijanis. Rights groups accused forces on both sides of committing war crimes.

Though Azerbaijanis and Armenians had lived as neighbors in Nagorno-Karabakh until three decades ago, both sides now deny the other’s history and connection to the land. Many Armenians fear the destruction of their cultural heritage in the territory newly controlled by Azerbaijan. The fears are not unfounded: After the first war, Armenian cultural monuments including churches and graveyards were destroyed in Azerbaijan’s exclave Nakhichevan; Azerbaijani mosques and graveyards were damaged in Nagorno-Karabakh; and the entire Azerbaijani city of Aghdam was destroyed after Armenians captured it. During the most recent war, Azerbaijan bombed an Armenian cathedral in Şuşa twice, and videos showed it defaced with graffiti soon after the city’s capture by Azerbaijan.

Many Armenians feared what would happen to one of their most prized historical sites: the medieval monastery of Dadivank. Nestled in the side of a mountain in Kalbajar, the graceful stone churches at Dadivank, built over even older remains, are evidence of Armenians’ historical connection to the region.

On a cold morning in November, days before Kalbajar was to be handed over to Azerbaijan, hundreds of people thronged the monastery for what they feared could be the last time. Worshippers packed into a small, dark cathedral, jostling as they pushed their children toward the priest, who performed baptism after baptism. Outside, a woman ran her hand reverently over the medieval Armenian script carved into the stone. Young people waited in line to take pictures with two massive khachkars, the intricately carved stone crosses used by Armenians since the medieval period as memorials and monuments.


Suddenly, thick grey smoke billowed into the sky above the monastery, and a crowd gathered on the ridge next to the complex. Below, a house was burning. Its owner, the monastery’s guard, sat on a rock and wiped his tears with a blue rag. Like many others in the region, he had set his home alight rather than leave it for Azerbaijanis. But his tears were for the monastery, he said. “We can build new houses, but we cannot build a new Dadivank.”

The abbot, Father Hovhannes, tried to reassure the weeping pilgrims. “We are not going to leave. We are staying here,” he said. “This belongs to us. Never will it be separated from us. The [Azerbaijanis] don’t have the history, so we are not allowed to leave this to them.”

Despite his words, the following day workers were removing whatever they could. Outside the cathedral, a generator’s roar echoed off the stone walls, its cord snaking in through the heavy wood door. The clatter of machinery echoed from inside, where workers said they were removing frescoes. Two empty niches stood where the khachkars had been. The church’s bell sat on a wooden pallet, waiting to be loaded into a truck. Russian peacekeeping troops arrived to safeguard the site, parking their armored vehicles at the entrance to the monastery.

As the truck carried the monastery’s treasures to Armenia, it passed dozens of plumes of smoke rising from houses on fire. In a graveyard in Kalbajar town, two graves had been dug up and the bodies removed. The road was clogged with trucks piled high with the belongings of those fleeing.

Heading in the opposite direction were busloads of people returning to Stepanakert, which remained in Armenian hands. The city was quietly coming back to life after the ceasefire went into effect on November 10. Elderly municipal employees raked up leaves grown thick in the center of roundabouts. Residents swept up their broken windows and began clearing the rubble from bombed houses. Mourners brought bright plastic flowers to rows of fresh graves at the military cemetery.

Sarikisyan returned, too. It wasn’t her choice—hospital employees were told to return to work or lose their jobs, she said. COVID cases were rising again as people brought the virus back with them from Armenia, and she was needed at work. She and her children, 11-year-old Narek and 12-year-old Mariam, boarded a bus for home.

Their ground-floor apartment was just as they had left it. A sheltered, west-facing garden caught the winter afternoon sun, and Narek ventured out to inspect the few green peppers that remained on the plants he’d grown from seed. A neighbor girl called down to him from a window and he grinned, happy to be home. But Sarikisyan was not sure how long they would stay. “We left with a happy heart, although it was war, because we thought we were protected,” she says. “But we came back broken, and very sad.”

No longer confident of a future for her children here, she says she will begin looking for a way out—maybe Armenia, or Russia. Many of her friends were doing the same. “It’s dangerous here,” she says. “What’s next? We don’t know what will happen next.”

Kristen Chick is a writer based in the UK. Her work focuses on gender, conflict, and migration. Follow her on Twitter @kristenchick.

Anastasia Taylor-Lind is an English-Swedish photojournalist covering issues relating to women, war and violence. She is a National Geographic photographer, a TED fellow and a 2016 Harvard Nieman fellow. She has previously worked in Nagorno-Karabakh, reporting on the Birth Encouragement Program, which gives cash payments for each baby born in the region, along with additional social support for large families. To see more of her work, follow her on Instagram.

See all photos at the link below: 
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/history/2021/01/nagorno-karabakh-people-grapple-war-aftermath-covid/

Turkish Press: Russian peacekeepers provoke reaction in Azerbaijan

Ani Tigranian
Anadolu Agency, Turkey
Jan 7 2021
Russian peacekeepers provoke reaction in Azerbaijan

Ruslan Rehimov   | 07.01.2021

BAKU, Azerbaijan

In its peacekeeping role between Azerbaijan and Armenia in the Upper Karabakh region, Russia has exhibited behavior favoring the Armenian side, experts said Thursday.

In one instance, commander of the Russian peacekeeping force Rustam Muradov was caught on camera with senior figures of the so-called Armenian entity Upper Karabakh, drawing ire from Baku.

Azerbaijan has also decried the presence of the so-called flag of the Armenian entity during talks between the Russian and Armenian delegations as negligence of international law by Moscow.

In one of its online news reports, the Russian Defense Ministry recently used the term "Republic of Nagorno-Karabakh," which it subsequently had to remove following the Azerbaijani reaction.

Azerbaijani frustration with Russia mounted further when the peacekeeping force allowed Armenian Foreign Minister Ara Ayvazyan to use the Lachin corridor to visit the so-called Armenian entity in Upper Karabakh, which Baku considers a blatant provocation.

In interviews with Anadolu Agency, Azerbaijani experts have underlined that such actions by Russia would do little to contribute to peace and stability in the region.

Araz Aslanli, a senior expert at Azerbaijan's State Customs Academy, said some of the discourse and policies of the Russian peacekeeping troops in the region have raised doubts concerning Moscow's goodwill among Turks and Azerbaijanis.

"Russian troops should act with the awareness that they are currently deployed on Azerbaijani soil," Aslanli said.

Another expert, Nazim Cafersoy of the Caucasian Center for International Relations and Strategic Studies (QAFSAM), said Russia appeared to be contributing to the continued presence of illegal armed elements in the region, rather than ensuring peace and stability for Azerbaijanis and Armenians.

"Russian troops should engage in activities in accordance with their job definition to uphold the cease-fire in the region and avoid any kind of action against Azerbaijan's territorial integrity," he added.

Relations between the former Soviet republics of Armenia and Azerbaijan have been tense since 1991, when the Armenian military occupied Nagorno-Karabakh, internationally recognized as Azerbaijani territory, and seven adjacent regions.

When new clashes erupted on Sept. 27 last year, the Armenian army launched attacks on civilians and Azerbaijani forces and violated several humanitarian cease-fire agreements.

During the 44-day conflict, Azerbaijan liberated several cities and nearly 300 settlements and villages from the nearly three-decade-long occupation.

Despite the Nov. 10 deal signed to end the conflict, the Armenian army several times violated the agreement and martyred several Azerbaijani soldiers and a civilian, according to the Azerbaijani Defense Ministry.

The truce is seen as a victory for Azerbaijan and a defeat for Armenia, whose armed forces have withdrawn in line with the agreement.

*Writing by Ahmet Gencturk


Tigran Abrahamyan calls attention to worsening security threats

Ani Tigranian
Panorama, Armenia

Jan 7 2021

Recently, various incidents have been reported on the line of contact between the Artsakh and Azerbaijani troops, from indiscriminate shootings to provocations against civilian vehicles, Tigran Abrahamyan, head of the Henaket Analytical Center and the Artsakh president’s former security advisor, said on Thursday.

“At first glance, these are small incidents of a local nature, however, they make it clear that security threats contain high risks of exacerbation and may lead to different developments,” he wrote on Facebook.

“Even in the face of such enormous human and territorial losses, the November 9 trilateral statement failed to resolve one of the main problems – the provision of clear security guarantees. Moreover, these challenges will further worsen at different times in the future,” the analyst said. 



9 more bodies found during search operations in Jabrayil-Hadrut directions

Ani Tigranian

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 11:40, 5 January, 2021

YEREVAN, JANUARY 5, ARMENPRESS. 9 more bodies have been retrieved from the battle zones, in particular during the search operations in Mekhakavan (Jabrayil)-Hadrut directions: 3 of them are civilians (two women, a man), the State Emergency Service of Artsakh reports.

So far, a total of 1184 bodies have been found as of January 4.

The search operations continue in Talish-Mataghis, Hadrut region and Fizuli directions.

Yerevan Declares Position on Border Demarcation Process

Ani Tigranian

December 30,  2020



Armenia-Azerbaijan border

Border demarcations are successive bilateral international processes that require the existence of a joint commission and within the framework of which professional discussions and negotiations are held. A prerequisite for the above-mentioned processes is the existence of normal bilateral relations, including diplomatic relations, between the neighboring states, Armenia’s Foreign Ministry said about the process, which has become a point of contention since the signing of the November 9 agreement.

The foreign ministry released its position in response to an inquiry from Armenia’s Human Rights Defender Arman Tatoyan, who published the statement on social media.

“Following my visit to the Syunik province of Armenia, I sent an official inquiry to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in connection with the demarcation processes, taking into account the direct impact of these processes on human rights in the current situation,” Tatoyan explained.

Excerpts of the statement are presented below.

In international practice, a bilateral intergovernmental commission (chaired by representatives of the foreign ministries of the countries) is formed to carry out demarcation and demarcation processes between neighboring countries, consisting of representatives of state stakeholders (foreign policy, defense, security), experts (particularly in the field of geodesy cartography).

The first stage of the work of such commissions, as a rule, ends with a separate bilateral agreement on the legal basis of the demarcation, and later, after the demarcation, on the joint implementation of the demarcation process.

Upon successful completion of the bilateral process, the Commission concludes an agreement on the border between the two countries, which stipulates that all border issues have been resolved.

Prior to the commencement of the above-mentioned processes, “their successful completion, the deployment of armed forces or border troops to conduct combat duty along the state border is a purely defensive” security measure, in areas actually under the control of the parties, negotiated directly or indirectly between representatives of the armed forces.”

Therefore, the implementation of the current measures is not related to status issues, cannot be interpreted as a final agreement on demarcation, or mechanical approval of existing administrative boundaries”.

The Human Rights Defender of Armenia has established effective cooperation and reliable cooperation with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs on the mentioned issues, as well as on various other issues, especially with our country’s permanent representatives in international structures and our ambassadors to a number of countries.”