Famous singer involved in downtown Yerevan fatal traffic accident

News.am, Armenia
Dec 15 2018
Famous singer involved in downtown Yerevan fatal traffic accident Famous singer involved in downtown Yerevan fatal traffic accident

14:04, 15.12.2018
                  

A famous Armenian singer is suspected of causing Friday’s fatal traffic accident in Yerevan, the capital city of Armenia.  

According to shamshyan.com, police have found the driver and his SUV which had hit a woman who already was hit by another SUV in downtown Yerevan, and who had fled the scene with his vehicle.

This driver is Haykaram Ghevondyan, 46, who is known among the Armenian people as singer Spitakci Hayko, and the vehicle he was driving is a Range Rover Stratstone.

It was also found out that the Kia Sorento—which first had hit this woman—was driven by Arayik Ch., 43, who serves in a military unit of the Ministry of Defense, and the victim was Yerevan resident Knarik Petikyan, 68.

The police have impounded the Range Rover, while Spitakci Hayko underwent a medical examination, and it was determined that he was not under the influence of alcohol at the time of this accident.

A forensic medical examination of the woman’s body has been commissioned to find out whether she had died as a result of the first or the second impact.

Both drivers have been released on a signature bond.

How will posts of Armenia new parliament committees’ chairpersons be allocated?

News.am, Armenia
Dec 15 2018
How will posts of Armenia new parliament committees’ chairpersons be allocated? How will posts of Armenia new parliament committees’ chairpersons be allocated?

12:35, 15.12.2018
                  

It is already known that, as a result of the snap parliamentary election on December 9, the number of MPs in the next National Assembly (NA) of Armenia will be 132, instead of the current 105 lawmakers.

The dissolved, yet still functioning current NA has nine standing committees, but this number may change in the new legislature.

The Constitution of Armenia specifies that up to twelve standing committees may be set up in parliament, and this matter is decided at the first sitting of the new NA.

The D’Hondt method—or the Jefferson method—decides which political forces in the legislature will be allocated the positions of the NA standing committees’ chairpersons, and based on the number of parliamentary seats these forces have won.

The vice-chairpersons of these standing committees as well as the heads of the Armenia’s delegations to European parliamentary organizations also are determined in accordance with the D’Hondt method.

Russian-Armenian businessman donates $2.8 mln to Hayastan Fund

PanArmenian, Armenia
Dec 15 2018

PanARMENIAN.NetHayastan All-Armenian Fund summed up the results of the fundraising telethon held in late November, revealing that the owner of the Tashir group of companies, Samvel Karapetyan, has donated $2.8 million in addition to the more than $11 million raised with the help of Armenians around the world.

“Karapetyan donated $2.8 million, the major part of which will be sent to Karabakh," the director of the Foundation, Haykak Arshamyan, told a press conference in Yerevan.

"Approximately $1 million of all the funds will go to families who have a fourth child ($4000 for each family). A youth center is also being built there, the construction of which will be completed by the HayastanFund with the remaining funds."

Arshamyan also said that the total amount of donations at the moment stands at $14.11million dollars.

On the eve of Telethon 2018, Artur Vanetsyan, Head of the National Security Service, visited Hayastan All-Armenian Fund’s Yerevan office with his son.

The National Security Service made a contribution of some AMD 9,5 million (approx. $20,000) to the Fund, while Vanetsyan donated his monthly salary.

President of Armenia, Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the Fund Armen Sarkissian too visited the office of the Fund on the eve of the event and signed a donation ticket for more than AMD 5.7 million (approx. $12,000) which makes his salary for six months.The President will also donate his salary for the next six months to the Fund.

Acting PM Nikol Pashinyan, meanwhile, donated AMD1 million from the Prime Minister’s fund and AMD 500,000 from his own funds ($3000 in total).

The biggest donations came from an anonymous benefactor ($2.5 million), Iranian-Armenian philanthropists Henrik and Adrine Ter-Ghukasyan ($1.34 million) for the renovation of a key road in Artsakh, Grand Holding owners Karen and Mikayel Vardanyan (AMD 60 million or approx. $123,000) for the renovation of the road connecting the Armenian towns of Dilijan and Ijevan, while U.S.-based Armenians Andranik Baghdasarian and Albert A. Boyajian have donated $1 million each.

Alex Holding donated $200,000.

The Broader Security Context of Azerbaijani-Belarusian Ties

Jamestown Foundation
Dec 14 2018
Presidents Alyaksandr Lukashenka (left) and Ilham Aliyev

Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev traveled to Belarus on November 19 (see EDM, December 6). During his visit, both governments signed a number of key agreements, including regarding the supply of Belarusian air-defense weapons to Azerbaijan. President Aliyev praised the level of “military-technical cooperation” with Belarus, asserting its long history; and he suggested that “another consignment of military equipment” from Minsk could follow. Belarusian President Alyaksandr Lukashenka, in turn, named Azerbaijan “a reliable strategic partner” (President.az 1 and 2, President.gov.by, Belta.by, November 19).

The most important document to come out of the Aliyev-Lukashenka meeting was their joint declaration reflecting Belarus’s support for a resolution of the Karabakh conflict in accordance with the United Nations Security Council’s relevant resolutions (that is, urging Armenian forces to withdraw from Azerbaijan’s occupied territories) as well as in tune with international principles of territorial integrity and the inviolability of Azerbaijan’s borders (1new.az, November 20). Minsk notably demonstrated a similar stance in response to the April 2016 violent escalation between Azerbaijani and Armenian forces along the Line of Contact in Karabakh—the so-called “Four Day War” (Azertag.az, April 3, 2016).

Shortly after Aliyev’s trip, Belarusian media reported the list of heavy offensive and defensive weapons that Azerbaijan has hitherto purchased from Belarus (42.tut.by, November 23, 2018; see EDM, December 12, 2017). The latest signed bilateral agreements, thus, will expand on this inventory. This past summer, Azerbaijan received initial tranches of Belarus’s advanced Polonez multiple-launch rocket systems (MLRS), which Baku procured to offset Yerevan’s long-range offensive capability acquired thanks to the Iskander theater ballistic missile system that Armenia earlier bought on credit from Russia (see EDM, June 19, 2018). Azerbaijan’s military ties with Belarus is a win-win situation for both, which Armenia sees as a zero-sum loss for itself (Trend, November 17).

A week prior to hosting the Azerbaijani leader, President Lukashenka met with Azerbaijan’s ambassador to Minsk. The two men spoke about the political situation within the Russia-led Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), and Lukashenka assured Baku’s envoy that “Belarus has no closed topics” with Azerbaijan (President.gov.by, November 12). Both Belarus and Armenia are members of the CSTO, but Azerbaijan remains outside the alliance. Two days later (November 14), the Belarusian ambassador to Baku was received by President Aliyev, who spoke to the diplomat in favorable terms about the high quality of Belarusian weapons purchased by Azerbaijan and the continuation of this trend. Aliyev added that his government was closely observing the latest CSTO summit, at which the members were debating the choice of the next secretary general. “[W]e are not indifferent” about “which country’s representative heads the CSTO,” Aliyev declared, since Armenia (which has heretofore held the rotating CSTO secretary general post) is a country that continues to occupy Azerbaijani territory. Azerbaijan’s head of state alleged that the CSTO’s internal problems were “created by Armenia” (President.az, November 14).

Hikmet Hajiyev, the head of the Foreign Policy Department within the Azerbaijani Presidential Administration, asserted earlier this month that his country, which is not a CSTO member state, does not intend to interfere in the organization’s internal process. Yet, he added, “Armenia is trying to hide behind the CSTO to pursue its policy of occupation against Azerbaijan” (Azertag.az, December 7). Specifically, the CSTO’s (now former) administrative head, Armenia’s Yuri Khachaturov, recently made a statement about “a ceasefire violation” along the Armenian-Azerbaijani state border, which Azerbaijan’s foreign ministry called “biased [and] contradictory” to other CSTO members’ positions.

Though Yerevan has tried in the past to draw the Moscow-led alliance into militarily backing Armenia in a possible war (beyond Armenian borders) with Azerbaijan, such attempts have repeatedly failed due to Baku’s positive relations with Moscow, Minsk and Astana (see EDM, October 1). Indeed, Belarus and Kazakhstan do not want to share in the “responsibility” of encouraging Armenia’s continued military occupation of Azerbaijan’s territories. And as Azerbaijani media has pointed out, the CSTO’s legal framework neither authorizes any of its members from violating international laws nor does it require other members to support their allies’ illegal acts (1news.az, December 8).

In trying to push its CSTO allies on the Karabakh conflict, and within the scope of recent internal debates over the organization’s secretary general position, Armenia overplayed its hand. The next administrative leader of the Eurasian alliance will presumably be from Belarus (Frontnews.eu, December 6). This will undermine Yerevan’s so-called balancing manoeuvres in its foreign policy. The CSTO heretofore served Armenia mainly as a mechanism for receiving discounted weapons from Russia. The other CSTO members did not benefit in any major way from a formal alliance with Armenia; whereas, their relations with Azerbaijan translated into lucrative bilateral arms deals (Eurasianet.org, November 9, 21). While Russia retained situational neutrality in this process, Belarus and Kazakhstan rejected Armenia’s maximalist claims within the CSTO because Yerevan’s conduct was shaking the internal dynamics of their alliance (Ekhokavkaza.com, November 9).

According to reports, the next CSTO secretary general will likely be Stanislav Zas, the current secretary of Belarus’s Security Council, who graduated from the Baku Higher Military Command School (Kommersant.ru, November 4). Therefore, Zas (if appointed) is likely to more clearly delineate the CSTO’s role in regional conflicts, which will challenge Yerevan’s belief in the alliance’s possible “pro-Armenian” security assurances (see EDM, June 19).

In the run-up to Armenia’s parliamentary elections (held on December 9), then-acting prime minister Nikol Pashinyan ramped up his foreign policy rhetoric (Kommersant, November 11). Domestically, this seemed to help him (or at least did not hurt), considering that his party won over 70 percent of the vote (see EDM, December 10). Yet, the consequences beyond Armenia’s borders remain to be seen. As Russian media noted, Pashinyan’s domestic addresses always tend to be brash and antagonistic, even as he behaves “quieter than water below the grass” abroad (Moskovsky Komsomolets, December 6).

In sum, the deepening of Azerbaijani-Belarusian relations is backed by two main factors: open communication on a number of issues of shared interests and long-term priorities, as well as predictability in mutual attitudes. The core of their bilateral relationship is not composed solely of political proximity or security aspects but also economic relations, which are significantly more extensive than Armenia’s (Azerbaijan-news.az, December 4). Baku, even without being a CSTO member, has independently cultivated its bonds with many of the alliance’s key members by building reciprocal trust. Despite its aloofness from military pacts and membership in the Non-Aligned Movement, Azerbaijan is capable of fostering pragmatic relations with the members of various military alliances regardless of their internal political situation. However, Baku will continue to oppose Yerevan’s efforts to solicit military support or de facto political backing from the CSTO for its illegal occupation of Azerbaijani territories.

Bright Armenia party representatives acted from Nikol Pashinyan’s behind to make the movement fail: Tigran Urikhanyan promises details

Aysor, Armenia
Dec 15 2018

The Bright Armenia-Prosperous Armenia parties’ conflict on Facebook continues with PAP Tigran Urikhanyan and Vahe Enfiajyan responding to Gevorg Gorgisyan from Bright Armenia who stated that Tsarukyan is part of the old regime and has offered a deal to them.

“One of the ‘political changes’ of Bright Armenia – Gevorg Gorgisyan – continuing the parade of bright changes decided to again refer to Prosperous Armenia party,” Urikhanyan wrote, stating that the latter during the very first days of Nikol’s campaign was in all TVs and mass media claiming that Pashinyan betrayed his colleagues and was making senseless steps.

Urikhanyan also said that throughout all campaign Bright Armenia's big and small representatives were meeting with Republicans in cellars discussing how to destroy Nikol’s movement, Urikhanyan wrote, saying that Gorgisyan was one of them.

“At the time when Pashinyan’s victory was unavoidable, they suddenly remembered that they are Nikol’s colleagues, expressing their assistance but at the same time continuing acting from behind impeding the movement of new Armenia,” Urikhanyan wrote, saying that no one has remained who does not know the golden sponsor of Bright Armenia and whose legitimate interests they will be representing in the parliament. Urikhanyan promised to present other remarkable details about the Bright Armenians.

Another member of the PAP said Bright Armenia will very soon become a political corpse, one of the youngest in the political field.

Gevorg Gorgisyan in response wrote that after big political debates Gagik Tsarukyan assigned his subordinates to blacken the party and involved Kentron TV channel in that works.

“Our approach remains unchanged, oligarchs must not spoil the politics which for us is a way to make people happy,” Gorgisyan wrote.

Wrongful detention case: 32 nurses fly to Armenia

Deccan Herald, India
Dec 15 2018
 
 
Wrongful detention case: 32 nurses fly to Armenia
 
Thirty-two nurses who were wrongfully detained by immigration officials and the city police at the Kempegowda International Airport in the early hours of November 27, 2018, left for Armenia to pursue their German language course.
 
Four nurses flew on December 7, while 28 of them left in one flight on Sunday (November 9) to the University of Traditional Medicine of Armenia (UTMA) from the Kempegowda International airport. Their travel documents and other formalities were facilitated by Tony’s wife Jwala Tony, a resident of Whitefield in Bengaluru.
 
The nurses were detained at the airport as the authorities suspected that they were being trafficked to Armenia and even arrested the organiser Tony Tom from Mangaluru.
 
Tom was running an educational consultancy named Hopeson International in Mangaluru. Tony’s kin alleged, his business rival had tipped off two Intelligence Bureau sleuths who in turn took it up with the immigration officials and the airport police to detain them. Though the nurses had all travel documents in place and were authentic, they were not allowed to fly as the authorities suspected a case of human trafficking. The KIA police had even lodged a case of human trafficking and forgery and sent Tony to jail.
 
Bail for Tony
 
On Thursday, a local court granted bail for Tony and he was released on Friday. Sources said there is no evidence to establish it was a case of human trafficking, and the police may submit a B-report soon.
 
 
 
 
 

Armenia Orinats Yerkir Party leader quits politics

News.am, Armenia
Dec 15 2018
Armenia Orinats Yerkir Party leader quits politics Armenia Orinats Yerkir Party leader quits politics

14:54, 15.12.2018
                  

YEREVAN. – Armenia’s Orinats Yerkir (Rule of Law) Party (RLP) Chairman Arthur Baghdasaryan is leaving active politics, stepping down as party leader, and terminating his party activities.

This political force has issued a respective statement, in which it is noted that the RLP on Saturday convened a special congress, which acknowledged Baghdasaryan’s statement on concluding his duties as Orinats Yerkir Party leader.

In his statement, Arthur Baghdasaryan noted that, from now on, he will be engaged in public activity and endeavor to contribute to resolving the problems in Armenia.

Baghdasaryan added that he will return to active politics solely at the people’s wishes, and when he senses its need and necessity.

Subsequently, the RLP congress nominated and unanimously elected Hovhannes Hovhannisyan as the new chairman of this party.

CW Network stands up to Turkish and Azerbaijani government threats

News.am, Armenia
Dec 15 2018
CW Network stands up to Turkish and Azerbaijani government threats CW Network stands up to Turkish and Azerbaijani government threats

22:07, 15.12.2018
                  

The CW Network has stood strong against Turkish and Azerbaijani government efforts to block the broadcast of Armenian dancers in the Hollywood Christmas Parade, a 90-year old holiday tradition that attracts hundreds of thousands along its route and is broadcast to millions of viewers worldwide, the Armenian National Committee of America reported.

The parade was broadcast on December 14.

Immediately following the November 25th parade, Turkish Consul General in Los Angeles Can Oğuz and his Azerbaijani counterpart Nasimi Aghayev demanded that the CW Network cut the Armenian segment from the broadcast because, in addition to an Armenian dance troupe, it included marchers wearing Artsakh T-Shirts and carrying Artsakh flags and an Artsakh balloon. The Turkish and Azerbaijani diplomats described this as support for “terrorism.”

The show is produced by Armenian American David McKenzie, a prime mover behind the Armenian Genocide and Artsakh documentary “Architects of Denial.”

Hate propaganda precedes a genocide

The Tribune, India
Dec 16 2018
 
 
Hate propaganda precedes a genocide
 
 
The lesson to be learnt from history and the Indian tragedies of 1984 and 2002 is that all genocidal murders targeted at a community were preceded by propaganda of hatred against the community. Ignoring lesser violations amounts to creating the stepping stones for larger violations.
 
Pritam Singh
Professor, Oxford School of Global and Area Studies, University of Oxford
 
THE month of December this year has the 70th anniversary of two remarkable documents that have played a pivotal role in the evolution, globally, of the concept of human rights (HR) and of institutional mechanisms to protect these rights.
 
On December 9, 1948, the United Nations (UN) passed unanimously the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, and on December 10, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was adopted. The UN itself was the product of the realisation of the horrors of World War II (1939-45) and of the recognition  that the differences and conflicts between nation states need to be negotiated and resolved not by totally ignoring those differences and conflicts but moderating them by juxtaposing them and, if necessary, subordinating them to common concerns of humanity.
 
The fact that another World War has not taken place since 1939 is a testament to the robustness, however limited, of that 1948 resolve especially if we keep in mind that the Second World War had taken place merely 25 years after the First World War (1914-18) when such an international coordinating body such as the UN did not exist.
 
The post-World War II period was also the period of decolonisation and of the birth of several new post-colonial nation states. The creation of the geographical boundaries of these nation states, sometimes done in extreme hurry as in 1947 in the case of India and Pakistan, and the idea of the new nations were not unproblematic outcomes. Many aspiring nations, linguistic groups and ethnic communities were clubbed together to form the territorial boundaries of the new post-colonial nation states.
 
The potential for future nationalist and ethnic conflicts was, therefore, created right at the very birth of the new nation states. It is not a mere coincidence that the wars between countries have been replaced increasingly by internal wars within countries ravaged by their internal nationalist and ethnic conflicts. The largest deployment of armies does not take place now to fight wars between countries but to deal with internal contestations — armed or otherwise. Such contestations, when turned into armed conflicts, have been the major cause of large-scale violations of HR not only in the post-colonial states in the Third World but also in parts of Europe, especially in the wake of the break-up of former Yugoslavia.
 
The Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide adopted in 1948 was itself a response to violence by a nation state against its own citizens. The German government of Adolf Hitler's Nazi party had murdered six million Jews between 1941 and 1944. Most of the massacred Jews were German citizens.
 
The genocide convention
 
Raphael Lemkin, a lawyer of Polish Jewish descent, coined the term 'genocide' in 1943 to characterise this mass murder and drafted the genocide convention passed by the UN. In his autobiography published in 2013, many years after his death in 1959 at the age of 59, Lemkin mentions that he was originally led to his researches and the subsequent life-long anti-genocide campaign by the Armenian genocide that took place between 1915 and 1917 in which between one million and one and a half million (estimates vary) Armenians died. The Armenian genocide is believed to be the first modern genocide in which the Turkish Ottoman Empire organised pre-meditated killings of Armenians, most of whom were citizens of the Ottoman Empire.
 
The definition of genocide used in the 1948 Convention includes reference to acts committed with 'intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group'. This definition, though admiringly precise, is not sufficiently comprehensive in capturing all instances of mass murder.
 
Genocides in 20th century
 
There are two instances of mass murder in the 20th century that present different degrees of difficulty in reconciling with this definition.
 
1 First, the Stalinist purges of political opponents in the 1930s and the repression let loose against the Russian peasantry that led to about one million deaths (estimates vary around this figure). These murders did not have an ethnic dimension; they were either due to political opposition to Stalin's appropriation of power or due to misguided Stalinist industrialisation strategy requiring peasanty to be suppressed.
 
2 Second, the Stalinist Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge regime murdered over 1.5 million Cambodians, close to 25 per cent of the total population, during 1975-79 in their campaign of social engineering involving forcible uprooting of the city population for agricultural collectivisation. Because of a certain shade of racial superiority in Khmer Rouge nationalism and its dealings with other religious (Christians and Muslims) and ethnic minorities (Vietnamese), the Khmer Rouge murders have been characterised as 'genocide'.
 
The Convention signed and ratified by a majority of the countries (149) is aimed at both prevention and punishment of genocidal crimes but there has been massive failure on prevention although some limited progress on punishment has been made. Two Khmer Rouge leaders were convicted of genocide last month; Slobodan Milosevic, Serbia's president, was accused of genocide in 1999 and died in police custody before being convicted and a Hutu politician (Jean-Paul Akayesu) from Rwanda (where half a million people of Tutsi minority were hacked to death in 1994) became the first person ever to be convicted of genocide in 1998.
 
From the viewpoint of institutionalising accountability, eliminating impunity and providing deterrence, it is important to convict those accused of genocide and other human rights violations.
 
However, from the viewpoint of protecting vulnerable citizens in any region of the world, it is even more important to prevent a genocide. This requires new tools of gathering data that can provide early clues to a possible mass-scale murder and intervention strategies to prevent such murder. New advances in information technology, such as satellite imaging, can help in such data collection, but even more important is to monitor the political language of hatred against a community.
 
If there is one lesson to learn from global history and from the Indian tragedies of 1984 and 2002, it is this that all genocidal murders targeted at a community were preceded by propaganda of hatred against the community. This means that human rights violations occur on a sliding scale. Ignoring lesser violations amounts to creating the stepping stones for larger violations. In a period of the rise of aggressive nationalism that we are going through globally, the UN needs to be even more active and effective than it was 70 years ago.