In the penultimate round of the World Chess Olympiad held in the Indian city of Chennai, the Armenian women's team lost to the Azerbaijani team with a score of 0:4.
Armenian team with 14 points share 11-21 places. The Indian team are in the lead with 17 points.
If Berdzor town and Aghavno village are handed over to Azerbaijan on August 25, Artsakh (Nagorno-Karabakh) will be surrounded. Raffi Hovhannisian, former foreign minister of Armenia and Heritage Party leader, told reporters about this Tuesday at Republic Square in downtown Yerevan.
"A few days ago, we saw how the Secretary of the Security Council and the Minister of Foreign Affairs announced that they did not accept such a plan related to the handover of Berdzor; this was the opinion of Yerevan. And now, a few days after that announcement, a man decided that he should hand over native territories; the territories that were not even mentioned in the trilateral statement [of November 10, 2020]. Now it's already visible what 'lowering the benchmark' means," Hovhannisian said.
According to him, territories are being handed over unlawfully without considering the point of view of the Armenian people.
"[PM] Nikol Pashinyan is against the motherland. He has broken his constitutional oath to ensure territorial integrity, sovereignty, and life and safety of citizens. He needs to have that trait to remove himself [from power]. As we opened the 'road of life' before, now that 'road of life' will be closed by our own hands. We will have casualties, and citizen Pashinyan will be the culprit of those casualties," Raffi Hovhannisian said.
As the Armenian side prepares to hand over the towns of Lachin, Sus and Aghavno to Azerbaijan on August 25, questions are raised as to whether the Armenian side withheld information from the public about handing over the Lachin corridor.
Credits: Ruptly
n this regard, Blinken called for de-escalation, while stressing that Washington is closely following the renewed clashes in the region, State Department spokesman Ned Price said in a statement.
French President Emmanuel Macron also asked his Azeri counterpart during a telephone conversation on Friday to "do everything possible to avoid an increase in tension" and to push forward negotiations with the Armenian government.
For his part, the U.S. ambassador to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), Michael Carpenter, has previously urged to take "urgent measures to de-escalate the tension and avoid an escalation" of the conflict.
Earlier on Friday, Armenian authorities accused Azeri forces of violating the cease-fire on the Nagorno-Karabakh contact line, the Defense Ministry of the self-proclaimed republic said in a statement.
The alert by the Armenian authorities comes after two Armenian and one Azeri soldiers were killed in clashes near the region on August 3. In addition, 19 other soldiers were wounded, three of whom are in serious condition.
ArmInfo.The Armenian Assembly of America (Assembly-AAA) calls upon His Excellency Mr. Abdulla Shahid, President of the 76th session of the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) and current Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Maldives, to affirm the Armenian Genocide following the deletion of his original statement on Twitter about his visit to the Armenian Genocide Memorial (Tsitsernakaberd) and Museum-Institute in Yerevan on July 27, 2022, the Assembly reports.
It should be reminded that during his visit to Yerevan, President of the UN General Assembly Abdulla Shahid visited the Memorial of the victims of the Armenian Genocide and made a post about it in his microblog on the social network Twitter. However, a few hours later he deleted the post on the Armenian Genocide, made immediately after visiting the Tsitsernakaberd memorial complex. "Laid a wreath at the Memorial to the victims of the Armenian Genocide. Special thanks to Museum-Institute Director Harutyun Marutyan and Hasmik Martirosyan for a tour of the Museum", Shahid wrote in a deleted post.
As the Assembly noted, in response, Congressman Frank Pallone, Jr. (D-NJ) stated that "The UN should not be complicit in Turkey's rejection of history. UN General Assembly President Abdulla Shahid was wrong for deleting his tweet and capitulating to pressure from Turkey."
"To date, 31 countries and dozens of international organizations recognize the genocide of the Armenian people committed by the Ottoman Turkish Empire from 1915-1923, which resulted in the loss of 1.5 million Armenians and the dispossession of a nation from its three millennia-old Western Armenian homeland. The UNGA codified the crime of genocide by adopting the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (the "Genocide Convention") in December 1948, heeding many of international human rights lawyer Raphael Lemkin's ideas, who coined the term genocide in 1944 and referenced the 1915 Armenian Genocide as a seminal example of the act of genocide.
The UNGA President's actions are demonstrative of genocide denial, which is the worst form of hate speech. To honor the 50th anniversary of the Genocide Convention in 1998, over 150 distinguished scholars and writers issued a statement to commemorate the Armenian Genocide and condemn the Turkish government's denial of this crime against humanity. In the statement, the scholars emphasized that the "denial of genocide strives to reshape history in order to demonize the victims and rehabilitate the perpetrators. Denial of genocide is the final stage of genocide. It is what Elie Wiesel has called a 'double killing.' Denial murders the dignity of the survivors and seeks to destroy remembrance of the crime." UNGA President Shahid's action undermines the international community's trust in and responsibilities towards upholding the letter and spirit of the UN Genocide Convention. The Armenian Assembly of America urges UNGA President Shahid to issue a public explanation and retraction with respect to his deleted tweet, and affirm his commitment to recognize the Armenian Genocide and condemn its denial,"the Assemblymessage reads.
11:11, 6 August 2022
YEREVAN, AUGUST 6, ARMENPRESS. US Congresswoman Lori Trehan called on the United States and allied countries to condemn the latest violence against Artsakh by Azerbaijan, ARMENPRESS reports, she wrote on her "Twitter" page.
“I've heard from many Armenian Americans in Massachusetts who are rightly outraged by Azerbaijan's latest violent attack that has led to tragic and unnecessary loss of life. The U.S. and our allies must condemn this violence and work diplomatically to prevent future escalation”, she wrote.
Azerbaijani MP Gudrat Hasanguliyev made a confession about the Azerbaijani state policy aimed at the ethnic cleansing of the population of Nagorno-Karabakh, Armenian Human Rights Defender Kristinne Grigoryan reveals.
In particular, the lawmaker stated that “Armenia should put an end to its territorial ambitions towards Azerbaijan and stop supporting the bloody separatism of Karabakh. Unless this is done, we should not recognize their (the population of Nagorno-Karabakh) right to life in peace.” Subsequently, the MP stated that in the current situation it is not possible for Armenians to live in Azerbaijan.
Another deputy, Fazil Mustafaev, echoing his colleague, also directly threatened the physical existence of the population of Nagorno-Karabakh.
“In reality, there are a number of examples and proofs of the Azerbaijani policy of ethnic hatred and ethnic cleansing of Armenians, however, it is striking that high-level officials representing the Azerbaijani leadership are making these statements amid provocations carried out by their armed forces in recent days, as a result of which two Armenian servicemen were killed and 19 others were injured,” the Ombudswoman said.
“It is a fact the right to life of the peaceful population of Nagorno-Karabakh is not guaranteed, and the Azerbaijani officials are directly confirming that,” she said.
The Ombudsperson has shared this information with foreign colleagues, as well as with the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD), which in the coming days will review Azerbaijan’s periodic report on the implementation of the UN International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination.
18:06, 3 August 2022
YEREVAN, AUGUST 3, ARMENPRESS. On August 3 the President of the Republic of Artsakh Arayik Harutyunyan signed a decree, announcing a partial military mobilization from August 3, 2022, ARMENPRESS was informed from the office of the President of the Republic of Artsakh.
Vardan Voskanyan, an expert on Iranian studies, has reflected on a meeting of the Turkic-speaking countries held in the Kyrgyz resort town of Cholpon-Ata on Tuesday.
The leaders of the countries’ special services also met with Kyrgyz President Sadyr Japarov, the expert said on Telegram.
“It’s worth noting that the meeting with the heads of special services of Turkey, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan was attended by two representatives of Azerbaijan, particularly the heads of the State Security Service and Foreign Intelligence Service, which indicates how seriously the Baku dictatorial regime, in fact, takes such events coordinated by Turkey, which have far-reaching pan-Turkic goals,” Voskanyan wrote.
He highlighted that Turkmenistan did not participate in the meeting, which “causes a geographical and geopolitical gap in the establishment of the illusory Turan.”
“Therefore, from the security point of view concerning Armenia, the meeting should be of interest to us not only because it involves Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan, which are in alliance with Armenia within the CSTO, as well as hostile countries Azerbaijan and Turkey, but also because Turkmenistan is not taking part in it,” Voskanyan said.
“In general, it is such important events that should be part of the real agenda, which Armenia should deal with in a broad sense, rather than the short-term clown tricks with which they are trying to direct us, figuratively speaking, to TikTok with the pointer"Armenia," where the ‘key agenda’ of discussion imposed on us is conditionally someone's ‘nose picking’,” he added.