Author: Anna Tamamian

The football legends of Armenia and Georgia will meet in a match in Yerevan on June 16.

The match dedicated to the 30th anniversary of the Football Federation of Armenia will take place at Hanrapetakan (Republican) Stadium after Vazgen Sargsyan and will kick off at 19:00.

The Armenian team will feature Yura Movsisyan, Marcos Pizzelli, Edgar Manucharyan, Robert Arzumanyan, Karlen Mkrtchyan, Gevorg Kasparov, Arthur Edigaryan, Levon Hayrapetyan, Valeri Aleksanyan, Arthur Sarkisov, Ararat Arakelyan, Samvel Melkonyan. Keeper Roman Berezovsky will coach the team.

The Georgian national team will feature Levan Kobiashvili, Alexander Iashvili, Gocha Jamarauli, Jano Ananidze, Georgi Demetradze, Otar Martsvaladze and others. The coach of the team is David Mujiri, the assistant coach is Mikhail Kavelashvili.

A concert program is planned before the match and during the break.

Tickets go on sale next week. All proceeds from the sale will go to charity.

ArmInfo. A September Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe resolution on the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict cited the "catastrophic impact" of the  long-running conflict "on the cultural heritage and property of the  region, for which both Armenia and Azerbaijan have a responsibility."  This is stated in the US State Department annual Report on  International Religious Freedom: Armenia.

The report notes, "The constitution states that everyone has freedom  of thought, conscience, and religion.  It recognizes the Armenian  Apostolic Church (AAC) as the national church and preserver of  national identity but also establishes separation of religious  organizations and the state.  The law prohibits, but does not define,  proselytism, which may be interpreted as forced conversion."

According to the report, "The trial continued of a prominent Baha'i  lawyer, Edward Manasyan, charged in 2017 with organizing illegal  immigration; Baha'i community members said they believed the charges  were brought because of his religion.  The country's highest court of  appeal, the Court of Cassation, rejected a Baha'i appeal alleging the  government had illegally wiretapped the group and used the  information gathered to prosecute Manasyan.  Yezidi human rights  activist Sashik Sultanyan was indicted on charges of "inciting  hatred" based on off-the-record comments he made to a journalist  criticizing the treatment of Yezidis in the country that were  surreptitiously recorded and posted online by the journalist.   Sultanyan's prosecution drew strong criticism from international  human rights groups. 

 In February, the government announced it planned to remove a course  on the history of the Armenian Church from the mandatory school  curriculum as part of a broader educational reform, generating  significant public debate.  A September Parliamentary Assembly of the  Council of Europe resolution on the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict cited  the "catastrophic impact" of the long-running conflict "on the  cultural heritage and property of the region, for which both Armenia  and Azerbaijan have a responsibility." Representatives of some  religious minorities, such as the Seventh-day Adventists and several  evangelical groups, as well as the Jehovah's Witnesses, reported that  public attitudes towards them had generally improved compared with  the previous year and reported little or no negative content in the  media during the year.  Anonymous social media users, however,  continued to target the evangelical Word of Life Church with online  hate speech and harassment," the report reads.

" Some members of the Jewish community and civil society members  reported that antisemitism, including negative speech by members of  the public and vandalism, increased after Azerbaijan used  Israeli-supplied weapons during intensive fighting in the  Nagorno-Karabakh conflict in the fall of 2020.  During June  parliamentary elections, an opposition figure who had never held  elected office criticized the Word of Life Church and Jehovah's  Witnesses, referring to them as "sects," a term these religious  groups did not use to describe themselves and which was generally  perceived as pejorative.  Human rights groups stated that verbal  targeting of religious minorities, both on and offline, decreased  during the year, as the individuals who had previously targeted  religious groups largely pivoted to discussing the aftermath of fall  2020 fighting and COVID-19.  On February 12, the Holocaust and  Genocide Memorial was vandalized for the third time since the 2020  fighting.  Representatives of minority religious groups stated that  societal and family pressure remained a major deterrent for ethnic  Armenians to practice a religion other than the Armenian Apostolic  faith.  The U.S. Ambassador and other embassy officials continued to  promote religious tolerance, respect for religious minorities, and  interfaith dialogue during meetings with government officials.   Embassy representatives raised with government officials and members  of parliament the cases of criminal prosecution of Yezidi and Baha'i  leaders and monitored their trials.  The Ambassador and other embassy  officials regularly consulted with religious groups, including the  AAC, evangelical Christians and other Protestants, Jehovah's  Witnesses, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Church of  Jesus Christ), Yezidis, the Jewish community, Apostolic Assyrians,  Pentecostals, and Baha'is, and individual members of the Muslim  community, to discuss the state of religious freedom in the country.   Embassy officials engaged government officials and civil society  representatives to discuss the impact of the Nagorno-Karabakh  conflict on religious group

ArmInfo.rmenia has amended the agreement with the United States in the field of biological safety. On June 2, the Government of the Republic of Armenia approved the  signing of the protocol to the agreement "On cooperation in the  prevention of the dissemination of technologies, pathogens and  knowledge that can be used in the development of biological weapons",  signed in September 2010.

<The purpose of the agreement is to promote effective regulated  cooperation between the parties in this area. According to paragraph  5, Article 4 of the Agreement, the Armenian side undertakes to  transfer to the US Department of Defense the required samples of  dangerous pathogens that are collected in Armenia for preventive,  military and peaceful purposes. The agreement also provided for the  transfer of epidemiological data>, the document says.  It is noted  that, given the forthcoming adoption of the Comprehensive Law on  Biosafety and Biosecurity, which regulates the field of biological  safety and clearly establishes the absence of any obligations on the  state to transfer pathogen samples to any country, and also based on  the need to ensure a balanced policy with partners in the field of  biological security, it is proposed to amend paragraph 5 of Article  IV accordingly. "It should be noted that this is in line with the  foreign policy of the Republic of Armenia and the international  obligations assumed," the conclusion says.