Henrik Abrahamyan, brother of former Prime Minister of Armenia Hovik Abrahamyan, who has been charged for illegal possession of firearms, has been remanded in custody for two months, the Special Investigation Service told Armenpress.
The court approved the motion to remand him in custody.
This is the first major exhibition to explore the remarkable artistic and cultural achievements of the Armenian people in a global context over fourteen centuries—from the fourth century, when the Armenians converted to Christianity in their homeland at the base of Mount Ararat, to the seventeenth century, when Armenian control of global trade routes first brought books printed in Armenian into the region.
Through some 140 objects—including opulent gilded reliquaries, richly illuminated manuscripts, rare textiles, cross stones (khachkars), precious liturgical furnishings, church models, and printed books—the exhibition demonstrates how Armenians developed a unique Christian identity that linked their widespread communities over the years.
Representing the cultural heritage of Armenia, most of the works come from major Armenian collections: the Mother See of Holy Etchmiadzin; the Matenadaran (Ancient Manuscripts); the National History Museum in the Republic of Armenia; the Catholicosate of the Great House of Cilicia in Lebanon; the Brotherhood of St. James in Jerusalem; and the Mekhitarist Congregation of San Lazzaro degli Armeni in Venice.
Almost all of these works are on view in the United States for the first time; some have not travelled abroad for centuries.
#MetArmenia
The exhibition is made possible by The Hagop Kevorkian Fund.
Additional support is provided by the Carnegie Corporation of New York, the Armenian General Benevolent Union, The Giorgi Family Foundation, the Karagheusian Foundation, The Nazar and Artemis Nazarian Family, the Ruddock Foundation for the Arts, The Strauch Kulhanjian Family and The Paros Foundation, Aso O. Tavitian, and the National Endowment for the Arts.
The catalogue is made possible by the Michel David-Weill Fund, The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the Dolores Zohrab Liebmann Fund, the Ruben Vardanyan and Veronika Zonabend Family Foundation, Joanne A. Peterson, The Tianaderrah Foundation, The Armenian Center at Columbia University, Elizabeth and Jean-Marie Eveillard, and Souren G. and Carol R. K. Ouzounian.
Armenian defense ministry spokesperson Artsrun Hovhannisyan has released photos showing Ordubad – the second largest town in Nakhijevan – and nearby villages. The photos were taken from Armenian positions, he said.
“If this means to control, then turns out we are fully controlling Ordvan-Ordubad and nearby villages. I personally took the photos,” Hovhannisyan said on Facebook, sarcastically referring to the recent Azeri reports where they would take photos of certain Armenian locations in that border section and claim control over it.
Naira Badalyan. The head of the Armenian government plans in the future to review his own powers, enshrined in the new Constitution of the Republic of Armenia. Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan announced this on July 20, commenting on the journalist's question about "how convenient it is for him to dress as a super-prime minister."
According to Pashinyan, he did not abandon the idea at the legislative level to reduce the powers of the prime minister. Today, as well as when he was an oppositionist, Nikol Pashinyan believes that there should not be a super-premier institute in Armenia.
As the prime minister pointed out, it is necessary to do this in a way that does not violate the stability of the entire state system. In the future, according to Pashinyan, establishing new powers, Armenia should balance not between the president and the prime minister, but between the government and the parliament, as is done, say, in Germany.
When exactly there will be legislative changes that will lead to the eradication of the institution of super- premiership, established by the "legislative efforts" of the authors of the new Constitution, today the head of the Armenian government refrained from calling.
Avedis Hadjian presents a genocide-scarred culture where Armenians deny their identity
Avedis Hadjian seeks out people in the villages and towns of Western Armenia, chatting to anyone who will talk to him.
If you’ve ever visited Turkey, you will have encountered people you assumed were Turkish but who could well have been Armenian. Avedis Hadjian, author of Secret Nation: The Hidden Armenians of Turkey, spent three years travelling round eastern Turkey, the historic Armenian homeland, meeting those mountain people who keep a low profile in a country accused of murdering or deporting about 1½ million of their people. The account of these horrendous times is littered with euphemisms such as “forced migration” or “forcibly minoritised”. Though always denied by Turkey, the word soykurum – Turkish for genocide – encompasses the whole sorry story.
Hadjian is part of that story. A journalist, born in Aleppo and educated in Buenos Aires and Cambridge, he bears an Armenian family name and, of vital importance, speaks Hamshetsnak, the almost-forgotten dialect of western Armenia which is now part of Turkey. During his travels, he seeks out people in the villages and towns of that most mountainous part of Turkey, chatting with anyone who will talk to him.
Generally, he is welcomed courteously, guided along perilously steep mountain paths, offered lifts from one village to the next often with someone phoning ahead to introduce him. But nearly always there is the denial: No, we’re not Armenian. We are Turkish and we are Muslim. But your name, Hadjian will say having done his research, is Armenian. At this they shake their heads. Maybe many years ago but not now. Some see him as stirring up trouble for them and on one occasion are angry enough for him to beat a hasty retreat.
But why the denial? One explanation is that after the defeat of the Ottomans and their 300 years of Sunni rule, people wanted a united Turkey, some wanting it at any price. Turkey for the Turks was the call. Villagers tell Hadjian stories their grandparents told them of Armenian villages laid bare, of Armenians hunted, hounded and pushed off bridges into the Euphrates or dying during forced marches across the Syrian desert. (In eastern Syria, in the Armenian church in Raqqa, I saw pictures of Armenian women against whom the most evil of sexual crimes had been committed.)
Some Armenians, hoping to pass as Turkish, survived by adopting Islam, freely or otherwise, the latter process known as Islamicisation. Coincidentally, Hadjian introduces us to a bus driver who explains the policy by holding up his index finger: one country, one flag, one language. No room for minorities there.
When survival is paramount, the denial of their origins by some Armenians is understandable though Hadjian is puzzled by the reaction of people to whom he has shown documents proving they are Armenian. Many respond with amazement, wanting to know more about their supposed Turkish origins or their suggested Armenian background. And despite the evidence, they maintain that though they may indeed be Armenian they remain Muslim even though before going to the mosque to have Iftar they might deviate to the Armenian Orthodox Church to light a candle or two.
Some Armenians actually designated themselves Turkish – which meant remaining silent about the genocide – because they invested their hopes in Kemal Ataturk and his post-Ottoman dream of a united secular Turkey.
Though teetering towards information overload – so many villages, so many people – this doorstop of a book gives us a fascinating if challenging account of present-day mountain life in Turkey: the annual tea harvesting done by the whole family, sheep herding, hoeing in the shadow of Mount Ararat. There’s the big family meal and the get-together which ends in fisticuffs. As the Persian saying goes: “They hate each other like cousins.”
Whatever you say, say nothing is the order of the day. Armenians distrust the Kurds, suspecting they collaborated with Turks to carry out the 1915 genocide. The Turks see the Christian Armenians as infidels and the Christian Armenians denigrate those Armenians who became Muslim. Distrust casts a shadow over everything. Occasionally, however, Hadjian shines a light into the darkness when Vartan tells his story. Vartan’s Armenian father, orphaned when his family was murdered, was taken in by a kindly Turkish family who brought the child up as a Muslim. Vartan was 25 before he learned he was actually Armenian. But, married to a Kurd, their children Muslim, he lives in a desolate place not of his making: “I feel alone and cold,” he says.
For those dispossessed of their past, the Armenia story is one that has yet to reach its ending.
https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/books/secret-nation-review-insight-into-the-invisible-armenians-in-turkey-1.3566917
“We all want to see him, say that you have won, good job, and we are sure you will find out the cases of our children.”
The parents of 10 victims of March 1, 2008, want to meet with Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan. “We all want to see him, say that you have won, good job, and we are sure you will find out the cases of our children. We also have several questions to ask, the monument should be installed,” Sargis Kloyan, father of Gor Kloyan, told “A1 +”.
Parents of the victims hope that the case of March 1, though not at once, will be fully discovered during Nikol Pashinyan’s government. “The moment of the parents’ dream – April Revolution, led by Nikol Pashinyan, came. If it were no power, the parents would continue to be deceived “said Vachagan Farmanyan, father of Armen Farmanyan.
“It is already our power, we can say that a new Armenia, a new government. The investigators have already changed, the NSS has changed, the SIS has changed, it can be said that Aghvan Hovsepyan has run away, and our senior investigator Vahagn Harutyunyan has left the case on March 1,” Sargis Kloyan said.
Former Defense Minister Mikayel Harutyunyan is wanted for the March 1 case. Head of Robert Kocharyan’s office Victor Soghomonyan has already stated that the army was brought to the capital those days for internal security and thus the Constitution was not violated.
“I am sorry, but Soghomonyan is wrong. There is no state of emergency in the Constitution, there is only a martial law, and in that case they could bring in the army during an ultra-violent situation. I saw with my eyes the soldiers in cars, in streets of Melk-Adamyan and Tigran Mets, from 17:30 to 18:00,” Sargis Kloyan said.
The relatives of the victims of March 1 await Robert Kocharyan’s interrogation and are eager to hear the answer of the key question: as a supreme commander-in-chief, why did he order to shoot people? Robert Kocharyan promised to come to the SIS after July 25, when he returns to Yerevan.
PanARMENIAN.Net – 661 branded hotel rooms will open in Armenia throughout 2018, analysis by JLL Hotels & Hospitality Group, Russia & CIS revealed, according to TravelDailyNews International.
Data provided by the JLL reveals that 114 branded rooms have already opened in Armenia, while the remaining 547 will open in the course of the year.
All the 114 rooms are those of The Alexander, a luxury hotel that was inaugurated in downtown Yerevan in late March. Part of the world-renowned chain of Luxury Collection Hotels owned by Marriott International, The Alexander meets the best international standards and was built with quality materials and furnishings.
An estimated $54 million were invested in the project. The hotel, which can accommodate up to 230 visitors simultaneously, offer a variety of luxury rooms, including family suites and a presidential suite, as well as at least four restaurants and bars.
In terms of the geography of new hotels, 6,000 branded rooms (or 62% of all planned for 2018 new room stock) in the CIS and surrounding countries are announced in Russia. Further, the highest activity of international brands is in Georgia and Kazakhstan (approx. 1,000 rooms in each country).
85 branded hotel rooms will open in Azerbaijan in the reporting period.
Azerbaijan made over 155 individual ceasefire violations in the Artsakh line of contact over the week ( July 1 – July 7 ), the ministry of defense of Artsakh said.
According to the ministry, Azerbaijani troops used various caliber firearms to fire more than 1500 rounds at Artsakh positions.
“The Defense Army [Artsakh] continues to be in control of the tactical-strategic situation and takes necessary steps for reliable organization of protection of combat positions,” the ministry said in a statement.
Former President Serzh Sargsyan’s brother Lyova Sargsyan, a diplomat serving as Ambassador at-large, has been charged by the special investigative service for not declaring property and illicit enrichment. Lyova Sargsyan’s daughter Ani, and son Narek have also been charged.
Narek Sargsyan owns shares of JLJ PROJECT COMPANY. His house was searched by detectives and bank papers showing undeclared deposited 6,800,000 USD were discovered. The papers, dated in the second semester of 2017, were under the names of Lyova Sargsyan, Narek himself and his sister, Ani.
Under the law, officials and their families have to file asset declarations.
Lyova Sargsyan and his children have failed to declare the abovementioned money.
The special investigative service requested a court to remand Lyova Sargsyan in custody, which was approved.
Lyova Sargsyan has been declared wanted.
The court approved a bail motion for his children.