Author: Arbi Tashjian

On October 14, 2016 “HayPost” CJSC put into circulation one stamp dedicated to the first Armenian  writer, poet, publicist, public and educational figure, the first Armenian novelist  Srbuhi Tyusab’s 175th anniversary. She protested against the female subordination, supported the right for the education and the requirements for the labor.

The stamp has been printed in “Cartor” Printing House, France, with a face value of 230 Armenian drams. The stamp depicts Tyusab on the background of an extract from her poem.  The stamp has been designed by David Dovlatyan, designer of “Haypost” CJSC.

The official cancellation ceremony of the stamp took place at the Ministery of the Diaspora of the RA in the frames of “Our Greats” program with the start of the 8^th all-Armenian summit of journalists. The cancellation was carried out by the RA Minister of Diaspora Hranush Hakobyan, RA Deputy Minister of Transport and communication Gagik Tadevosyan and the Managing Director of “HayPost Trust Management” B.V., Juan Pablo Gechidjian.

Secretary General of the Council of Europe Thorbjørn Jagland during the PACE autumn session on October 10 stressed the need for the Council of Europe to have access to Nagorno Karabakh.

“We share the view of Secretary General of the Council of Europe Thorbjørn Jagland that the organization should fulfill its mandate also in Nagorno-Karabakh, and politicization of the issue of access to Nagorno Karabakh is inacceptable,” Ani Sargsyan, Spokesperson for the NKR Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in comments to News.am.

“The goal of the Council of Europe is to promote the principles of democracy, human rights and the rule of law throughout the European continent, and the unresolved Azerbaijani-Karabakh conflict should not serve as an excuse for ignoring the rights of the people of Nagorno Karabakh,” she added.

“By impeding the visit of representatives of the Council of Europe to Nagorno Karabakh Azerbaijan demonstrates, first of all, its disregard for the goals and principles, which lie at the core of this organization,” the Spokesperson stressed.

By Shanifa Nasser

Less than one year ago, Mher Minassian was in charge of an Armenian cemetery in Syria.

“I saw very bad things… I buried very young people, I buried innocent people.”

It’s a far cry from where he was on Thanksgiving weekend in Toronto.

Minassian was one of nearly 200 Syrian refugees who gathered for their first-ever Thanksgiving in a Toronto-area Armenian church on Sunday. While he had never celebrated the holiday before, for him and many others, starting a new life in Canada was at the top of the list of things to be grateful for.

The Thanksgiving lunch, held at Holy Trinity Armenian Church in Scarborough, was hosted by Armenian Family Support Services, a non-profit organization that has sponsored nearly 300 Armenian-Syrian refugees since November 2015.

“We are thankful first that we are alive because we escaped from the war and second, thanks to the Canadian government. They brought us here,” Minassian told CBC News on Sunday.

It’s a sentiment many there repeated as they celebrated.

‘No war, no bombs’

Zovij Bartiajian has been in Canada for one year and two months.

“I’m so happy to come here because I live in peace. No war, no bombs… A lot of water, a lot of electricity,” Bartiajian said, celebrating her second Thanksgiving.

But while she says she has plenty to be thankful for, her family members back at home in Syria remain at the top of mind.

“Only my body is here. My heart and my brain are back home because our family is still there… They want to come here but it’s so difficult.”

Rita Odjaghian, chair of Armenian Family Support Services, said while the group holds a sponsorship privilege, its work goes far beyond that.

“We got into bringing the refugees but it doesn’t end there. What we do, we try to help them integrate in the society,” adding that the group helps refugees find employment, English classes and even teaches them to identify mental health challenges.

Many of the refugees at the Thanksgiving event have family members back home, Odjaghian said, making events like Sunday’s that much more important to hem.

“There is such a huge isolation in them so they feel being embraced by a larger family.”

The value of that isn’t lost on Bartiajian.

“Thanks for everything,” she said. “Thanks for the peace.”

CBSLA.com — Reality television star Kim Kardashian is getting political.

The 35-year-old Kardashian took out a full-page, paid advertisement in the New York Times Saturday.

In it, she denounced the Wall Street Journal for running an ad paid for by Turkic Platform denying the genocide of 1.5 million Armenians in the year 1915.

In the article titled, “Genocide Denial Cannot Be Allowed,” Kardashian writes:

“My family and I are no strangers to BS in the press … but when I heard about this full-page ad that ran in the Wall Street Journal denying the Armenian genocide, I couldn’t brush it off.”

At the Armenian Consulate in Glendale, several Armenian protesters gathered to voice their concerns over corruption in the Armenian regime.

Their take on Kardashian’s advertisement?

“My first reaction … she’s right on point,” said one man, while another said: “Media should be careful in what they print, what message they are trying to give society.”

The advertisement mentioned the WSJ’s response was, “We accept a wide range of advertisements, including those with provocative viewpoints.”

Back in April, when the ad surfaced in the WSJ, Kardashian took a similar stance.

Coincidentally, monument in remembrance of the Armenian genocide was unveiled Saturday in downtown LA’s Grand Park.

Archeological excavations started at Teishebani (modern Karmir Blur) site in 2015, and 281 mausoleums have already been discovered in a short period of time. What do the new findings reveal? Will they provide an opportunity to review history?

 

 

 

Armenians have had four viceroy seats, one of them in Artsakh. Archeologists have discovered four viceroy bonze wands during excavations at Teishebani, archeologist Hakob Simonyan, Deputy Head of the Research Center of Historical-Cultural Legacy under the Ministry of Culture, told reporters today. He said the findings unearthed from the site shed light on disputable pages of history.

The excavations that resumed in 2015 have revealed that back in the Urartian period Armenia was divided into provinces, each ruled by a viceroy. After the death of the latter the highest symbol of power – the scepter– has also been laid at the mausoleum.

“What’s most important is that it’s now proven that Artsakh was part of the united Kingdom of Van in the 8th to 7th centuries BC.  The excavations come to refute all assertions that Artsakh has never been part of Armenia,” the archeologist said.

According to him, another importance of the findings is that they come to disperse the uncertainty regarding the origin of Urartians. “The Urartians were natives of the Ararat Valley,” he noted.

“I’m deeply confident that Urartu is an Armenian kingdom with its multi-layer population, where the Armenian element has been dominant,” Hakob Simonyan said.

A number of different interesting items have been unearthed during the expedition. These include jewelry (necklaces, bracelets, cufflinks, buttons), also as a whole arsenal of weapons.

The findings comprise a huge material for anthropological research. With DNA tests it’s possible to reveal the illnesses the locals suffered from, calculate their life expectancy, study their beliefs and rituals.

 

 

 

Candidate for Prosecutor General’s post Arthur Davtyan had a meeting with representatives of four factions represented at the National Assembly today.  He pledged to ensure the publicity of activity of the Prosecutor General’s Office, if elected.

At a meeting with representatives with the Republican Party, the Armenian Revolutionary Federation, Orinats Yerkir and Heritage factions, Davtyan presented his approaches and answered questions.

The parliamentary forces seem not to mind Davtyan’s candidacy. Head of the Republican faction Vahran Baghdasaryan described him as “experienced,” while Armen Rustamyan of ARF said “he’s a promising candidate.”

The Prosecutor General’s post has been vacant since Gevorg Kostanyan announced his resignation on August 4. The National Assembly shall elect the new Prosecutor General by a secret ballot.

Turkey’s foreign minister suggested Wednesday Ankara was ready to calm a row over a German parliamentary resolution labelling the Ottoman massacre of Armenians a genocide but warned against treating Turkey as a “second-class country,” AFP reports.

The bitter dispute has seen Turkey barring German lawmakers from visiting their nation’s troops at the Turkish airbase of Incirlik, from where NATO forces are fighting jihadists in Syria and Iraq.

Germany last week stressed that the June parliamentary vote was a political statement and not legally binding, and voiced hope its parliamentarians would be able to visit Incirlik in October.

Asked about the request, Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu told Die Welt daily that “if Germany continues to conduct itself as it does now, then we will consider it”.

“But if Germany tries to treat Turkey badly, then this won’t be the case,” he added, according to the newspaper’s German translation, stressing that “Turkey is not a second-class country”.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel met Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan at a G20 summit in China at the weekend and afterwards said she hoped for progress “in the coming days” on the requested airbase visit.

Germany hopes to invest 58 million euros ($65 million) in mobile barracks and other facilities for its more than 200 troops in Incirlik, from where it runs surveillance and refuelling flights as part of multinational efforts to fight the Islamic State group, Defence Minister Ursula von der Leyen said Tuesday.

Other sources of discord remain, including German criticism of the Erdogan government’s treatment of critical journalists, its Kurdish minority and of many of the alleged plotters detained in sweeping arrests after a failed coup in July.

Several people have been shot dead in a shooting at a shopping centre in the German city of Munich, police say, the BBC reports.

A big operation is under way. Police are telling people to stay at home and avoid the streets.

Several people have also been injured at the shopping centre in the north-western Moosach district.

Reports speak of one or more attackers. Some shopworkers are reportedly unable to leave the building.

There is no information about a possible motive for the attack.

The security forces have been on alert after a teenage migrant stabbed and injured five people on a train in Bavaria on Monday.

The authorities had warned of the danger of further attacks.

Turkish officials slammed the passage of a measure by the French National Assembly last week criminalizing the denial of the Armenian Genocide, among other crimes against humanity, reported the .

The Turkish foreign ministry warned that the bill would limit freedom of expression, while a former Turkish diplomat tied the passage of the measure to what he called “personal interests” of French politicians, claiming that their ties to wealthy French-Armenians prompted their legislative action.

“We have closely followed the preparation and approval processes of the draft amendments to the Law on the Freedom of Press that the French National Assembly adopted concerning criminalization of the denial of war crimes, crimes against humanity and the crime of genocide under certain conditions,” said Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Tanju Bilgiç in a written statement released late on Wednesday.

“In the event that the draft is enacted in its present form, it has the potential to pose the risk of unlawfully limiting the freedom of expression, especially imfringing on the jurisprudences of the ECtHR [the European Court of Human Rights] and the Constitutional Council of France,” said Bilgiç in the statement, which came in the form of an official answer by the spokesperson to a journalist’s question.

“We will also closely follow the upcoming process at the French senate in the near future regarding the draft, which has not yet been enacted,” said the statement. “We expect that the French senate will remove the elements that may have the potential to pose the risk of limiting the freedom of expression from the draft.”

Last Friday, the French National Assembly—the lower house of the country’s legislature—passed a measure that criminalizes the denial of the Armenian Genocide, among other war crimes.

In an interview with the Azerbaijan Press Agency (APA), Osman Korutürk, a former ambassador of Turkey to Paris, said that France’s adoption of a bill criminalizing genocide denial was “not due to love for Armenians,” but rather it’s “an issue completely relating to the personal interests of French politicians.”

“There are Armenians in France’s different regions who own great wealth,” said Korutürk, a former Istanbul deputy for the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), in the interview posted on Wednesday.

“They can influence the policy. One of [French President Francois] Hollande’s advisors during his election was Armenian. Hollande had promised Armenians that this bill will be adopted. After the parliament adopted the bill with the initiative of a politician like [former French President Nicolas] Sarkozy, who did not obey rules of law, the Constitutional Council of France had rejected the bill because it was against freedom of speech and expression, human rights. We were happy at that time that the Constitutional Council of France foregrounded the human rights [because] France is the cradle of the freedom. Now, the bill with the same content was adopted by the parliament with the initiative of Hollande. Compared to [the] previous bill, a small amendment was made in it: to criminalize ‘genocide’ denial, the ‘genocide’ does not need to be confirmed by any independent court,” said the retired veteran diplomat.

“This time, the Constitutional Council of France may not reject the bill. [The] Turkish government has sent the representatives of [the] other three parties in the [Turkish] parliament, who are engaged in this issue, to relevant countries to struggle politically, diplomatically and legally… [against] such issues,” he also said.

Maria Zakharova, Spokesperson for the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, walked in downtown Yerevan, took some photos and shared her impressions on Facebook.

“While the bosses are having supper after a “good job” as Sergey Lavrov said, there is an opportunity to walk about post-afternoon Yerevan. This city attracts with its character, not luxury,” Zakharova wrote.

Maria Zakharova was accompanying Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, who had arrived in Armenia to participate in the meeting of the CSTO Council of Foreign Ministers.