2020 – Page 8 – Armenian Directory & News

Turkish Press: Turkey urges Armenia not to breach ceasefire in Nagorno-Karabakh

January 1, 2021January 1, 2021 Toneyan Mark

Hurriyet Turkey

Dec 31 2020

President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has urged Armenia not to attempt to violate the ceasefire in Nagorno-Karabakh in an address to Turkish troops deployed in Azerbaijan to jointly monitor the implementation of a deal between Baku and Yerevan.

“I hope the center to monitor the ceasefire will go operational as soon as possible. I advise the Armenian forces to return from the mistake of attempting to violate the ceasefire as soon as possible,” Erdoğan said, addressing the Turkish troops in Baku on Dec. 31 via Defense Minister Hulusi Akar’s mobile phone.

Akar paid a snap visit to Azerbaijan on the last day of the year to visit the Turkish troops and hold talks with his Azerbaijani counterpart, Zakir Hasanov.

Erdoğan highlighted the historic victory of the Azerbaijani troops in liberating the occupied territories from Armenia in 44-day long clashes, reiterating that Turkey and Azerbaijan are “two states, one nation.”

“Your presence there is a sign of honor indicating the level of the relationship between our countries. As Turkey, we are supporting Azerbaijan’s struggle in the field and in all international platforms,” he said.

‘We are ready to monitor truce’

For his part, Akar underlined that the brotherhood between Turkey and Azerbaijan is unbreakable and that everybody should understand it and not make wrong calculations.

Recalling that the ceasefire agreement between Armenia and Azerbaijan stipulates the formation of a joint center by the Turkish and Russian troops to monitor the truce on the field, Akar said, “Our friends are ready to fulfill this mission.”

The Turkish and Azerbaijani forces continue to cooperate on clearing mines and improvised explosive devices in the areas abandoned by the Armenian army, the minister stressed.

“We only fight against the terrorists or the soldiers. We are not like the ones carrying out massacres in Hocalı or launching missiles to the cities of Azerbaijan,” he said, adding, “Our activities will get intensified once the Joint Center begins to work. We will fulfill our mission to defend the rights of our Azerbaijani brothers by the joint work of Turkish-Russian troops.”

Works are continuing to build the Joint Center in Aghdam province of Azerbaijan where the Turkish and Russian forces will monitor and inspect the implementation of the ceasefire. Turkey has already dispatched the first batch of troops to Azerbaijan.

Facebook banned Holocaust denial from its platform in October. Anti-hate groups now want the social media giant to block posts denying the Armenian

January 1, 2021January 1, 2021 Paul Hambardsumian

Business Insider

Dec 31 2020

Isabella Jibilian

In October, Facebook announced changes to its hate speech policy and insituted a ban on posts denying the Holocaust.

However, the ban did not include the denial of other genocides, such as the Rwandan or Armenian genocides.

Now, advocates are calling for Facebook to ban posts denying the Armenian genocide, too.

From 1915 to 1923, the Ottoman Empire killed 1.5 million Armenians and expelled another half a million. Turkey still falsely claims that the genocide never happened.

Anti-hate advocates are calling on Facebook to ban posts denying the Armenian genocide, which led to the deaths of over 1.5 million ethnic Armenians, saying the social media giant's policy on hate speech fails to address crimes against humanity.

The call to action follows Facebook's October announcement that it would ban posts denying the Holocaust, which came after pressure from human rights groups, Holocaust survivors, and a 500-plus company ad boycott. However, the change did not include the denial of other genocides, such as the Rwandan and Armenian genocides, Bloomberg reported.

"They have an obligation to responsibly address all genocide," said Arda Haratunian, board member for the Armenian General Benevolent Union (AGBU), the largest non-profit dedicated to the international Armenian community. "How could you not apply the same rules across crimes against humanity?"

Now, voices from across the Armenian diaspora and anti-hate groups are calling for the company to change its policy. In November, the Armenian Bar Association penned a letter to Facebook and Twitter (which banned posts denying the Holocaust in the days after Facebook did), proposing that they expand their ban to posts denying the Armenian genocide, too.

"It made us hopeful, because it was a sign that Facebook is taking steps towards fixing its speech problem," said Lana Akopyan, a lawyer specializing in intellectual property and technology, and member of the Armenian Bar Association's social media task force. The Armenian Bar Association has yet to receive a response from either company, Akopyan told Business Insider.

The calls to expand hate speech policies come as social media platforms face a wider reckoning on how they regulate speech. Politicians on both sides of the aisle have criticized section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, a legal provision that shields internet companies from lawsuits over content posted on their sites by users and gives companies the ability to regulate that content.

In recent years, Facebook has struggled with human rights issues on the platform. In 2018, a New York Times investigation found that Myanmar's military officials systematically spread propaganda on Facebook to incite the ethnic cleansing of the country's Muslim Rohingya minority population. Since 2017, Myanmar's military has been accused of carrying out a systemic campaign of killing, rape, and arson against Rohingyas, leading over 740,000 to flee for Bangladesh, according to the United Nations Human Rights Council.

Facebook's current hate speech policy prohibits posts that directly attack a protected group, including someone of a racial minority, certain sexual orientation or gender, or religion. But the platform lacks a cohesive response to other "harmful false beliefs," like certain conspiracy theories, said Laura Edelson, a PhD candidate at NYU who researches online political communication. Rather than a systematic approach to harmful misinformation, Edelson likened Facebook's strategy to a game of "whack-a-mole."

"You are allowed to say, currently, the Armenian genocide is a hoax and never happened," said Edelson. "But you are not allowed to say you should die because you are an Armenian."

From 1915 to 1923, the Ottoman Empire killed 1.5 Armenians and expelled another half a million. However, Turkey still falsely claims that the genocide never happened.

"Holocaust denial is typically done by fringe groups, irrational entities. The denial of the Armenian genocide is being generated by governments… which makes it a far greater threat," said Dr. Rouben Adalian, Director of the Armenian National Institute in Washington, D.C.

It also makes enforcement a thorny issue for Facebook, since it may involve moderating the speech of political leaders.

"Facebook doesn't want to wrangle with this issue, not because it's technically difficult, because it isn't, but because it is difficult at a policy level," said Edelson. "There's a government agent here, that you are going to have to make unhappy. In the case of the Armenian genocide, it's the Turkish government."

Facebook did not respond to Business Insider's requests for comment. Twitter said hateful conduct has no place on its platform and its "Hateful Conduct Policy prohibits a wide range of behavior, including making references to violent events or types of violence where protected categories were the primary victims, or attempts to deny or diminish such events." The company also has "a robust glorification of violence policy in place and take action against content that glorifies or praises historical acts of violence and genocide,"a spokesperson said.

Yet online the falsehoods proliferate, advocates told Business Insider. On Facebook, the page "Armenian Genocide Lie" has thousands of followers, and screenshots of tweets shared with Business Insider show strings of identical posts that appear to be posted by bots, calling the Armenian genocide "fake."

And stateside, Armenians point to a string of hate crimes, including the arson of an Armenian church in September and the vandalism of an Armenian school in July, as evidence that anti-Armenian sentiment is a growing issue.

The calls for change come amid international conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan over the region of Nagorno-Karabakh in the South Caucasus, which is internationally recognized as part of Azerbaijan and is populated by many ethnic Armenians. War broke out in September. In November, Armenia surrendered and Russia brokered a peace deal. Tensions continue to flare in the area and videos of alleged war crimes have surfaced online.

"Facebook has a responsibility, first and foremost, to its users, to protect them against harmful misinformation. The idea that the Armenian genocide did not happen pretty clearly falls into that category," said Edelson.

The Anti-Defamation League (ADL), which successfully lobbied for social media companies to ban Holocaust denial, is also supporting the calls for change.

"ADL believes that tech companies must take a firm stance against content regarding genocide and the denial or diminishment of other atrocities motivated by hate," said an ADL spokesperson in a statement to Business Insider. "Tech companies should, without doubt, consider denial of the Armenian genocide to be violative hate speech."

Dr. Gregory Stanton, founding president of human rights nonprofit Genocide Watch, says that denial is a pernicious stage of genocide, since it seeks to erase the past and can predict future violence.

"Denial occurs in every single genocide," said Stanton. "I think it's irresponsible…. with Facebook's incredible reach, it absolutely should be taken down."

As for Akopyan, her fight to change Facebook's policy is personal. Her family survived the Baku Pogroms in Azerbaijan, a campaign in 1990 in which Azeris killed ethnic Armenians and drove them from the city. Akopyan's family left all their belongings behind and fled in the night, Akopyan said. The International Rescue Committee sponsored her family, and she relocated to Brooklyn, New York, at 10-years-old.

"I grew up in that tension as a child, where Azerbaijani mobs tried to kill me and my family, and I escaped," she said in an interview. "How many times [do] our people have to lose everything and be driven away from their homes to start over?"

"And it continues to happen," she added. "I can't help but think it's because there's constant denial of it ever happening to begin with."

Armenia MFA issues official position over demarcation processes in response to Ombudsman’s inquiry

December 31, 2020December 31, 2020 Edgar Tavakalian

10:20,

YEREVAN, DECEMBER 30, ARMENPRESS. The Office of the Human Rights Defender of Armenia informs that the Ministry of Foreign Affairs has issued an official position in connection with the demarcation processes, in response to the inquiry of Ombudsman Arman Tatoyan.

Ombudsman Tatoyan made a respective post on social media on this:

“Following the results of my visit to the Syunik province of Armenia, I sent an official inquiry to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in connection with the demarcation processes, taking into account the direct impact of these processes on human rights in the current situation.

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs has issued an official position. I publish it in full below (citation):

“Demarcations are successive bilateral international processes that require the existence of a joint commission and within the framework of which professional discussions and negotiations are held. A prerequisite for the above-mentioned processes is the existence of normal bilateral relations, including diplomatic relations, between the neighboring states.

In international practice, a bilateral intergovernmental commission (chaired by representatives of the foreign ministries of the countries) is formed to carry out demarcation and demarcation processes between neighboring countries, consisting of representatives of state stakeholders (foreign policy, defense, security), experts (particularly in the field of geodesy cartography).

The first stage of the work of such commissions, as a rule, ends with a separate bilateral agreement on the legal basis of the demarcation, and later, after the demarcation, on the joint implementation of the demarcation process.

Upon successful completion of the bilateral process, the Commission concludes an agreement on the border between the two countries, which stipulates that all border issues have been resolved.

Prior to the commencement of the above-mentioned processes, "their successful completion, the deployment of armed forces or border troops to conduct combat duty along the state border is a purely defensive" security measure, in areas actually under the control of the parties, negotiated directly or indirectly between representatives of the armed forces."

Therefore, the implementation of the current measures is not related to status issues, cannot be interpreted as a final agreement on demarcation, or mechanical approval of existing administrative boundaries”.

The Human Rights Defender of Armenia has established effective cooperation and reliable cooperation with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs on the mentioned issues, as well as on various other issues, especially with our country's permanent representatives in international structures and our ambassadors to a number of countries”.

COVID-19: Armenia reports 582 new cases, 902 recoveries in one day

December 31, 2020December 31, 2020 Manouk Vasilian

11:22,

YEREVAN, DECEMBER 30, ARMENPRESS. 582 new cases of the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) have been confirmed in Armenia in the past one day, bringing the total number of confirmed cases to 158,878, the ministry of healthcare said today.

902 more patients have recovered in one day. The total number of recoveries has reached 141,844.

3508 tests were conducted in the past one day.

10 more patients have died, raising the death toll to 2807.

The number of active cases is 13,548.

The number of patients who had coronavirus but died from other disease has reached 679 (3 new such cases).

Editing and Translating by Aneta Harutyunyan

Russia reports 26,513 new cases of COVID-19 in one day

December 31, 2020December 31, 2020 Christine Harutyunian

12:27,

YEREVAN, DECEMBER 30, ARMENPRESS. Russia confirmed 26,513 new coronavirus cases in the past day and the total case tally hit 3,131,550, TASS reports citing the anti-coronavirus crisis center.

In the past two days, the growth rate did not exceed 0.9%.

Moscow confirmed 5,105 new coronavirus cases. Some 3,764 COVID-19 cases were registered in St. Petersburg, 1,608 in the Moscow Region, 503 in the Nizhny Novgorod Region, 406 in the Sverldovsk Region and 395 in the Pskov Region.

Currently, 549,706 people are ill in Russia.

As many as 29,235 coronavirus recoveries were recorded in Russia in the past day. New recoveries exceeded daily cases for the first time since December 9.

The total number of coronavirus recoveries has reached 2,525,418. According to the crisis center, 80.6% of coronavirus patients have recovered in Russia.

The number of coronavirus-related fatalities in Russia went up by 599 in the past 24 hours, compared to 562 on the previous day, taking the total to 56,426.

Sports commentator Karen Giloyan appointed deputy minister of education, science, culture and sport

December 31, 2020December 31, 2020 Tatoyan Vazgen

10:33,

YEREVAN, DECEMBER 30, ARMENPRESS. Sports commentator Karen Giloyan has been appointed deputy minister of education, science, culture and sport of Armenia.

The respective decision has been signed by Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan.

Karen Giloyan has long served as head of the sports department at the Public TV.

Editing and Translating by Aneta Harutyunyan

Russia’s Lavrov expresses readiness to organize meeting between Armenia, Azerbaijan over NK conflict

December 31, 2020December 31, 2020 Emil Lazarian

12:40,

YEREVAN, DECEMBER 30, ARMENPRESS. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has expressed readiness to organize a meeting between Armenia and Azerbaijan for discussing the unresolved political issues in the Nagorno Karabakh conflict.

“As for the political issues which are still not resolved, I can reaffirm our readiness both at the national level and within the OSCE Minsk Group Co-Chairs to assist in organizing such meetings when the sides are ready to that”, Lavrov told TASS.

The Russian FM noted that currently the agenda is focused on not allowing any ceasefire violation, as well as clearing the territory from explosive objects, exchanging the prisoners of war and the bodies of the dead, ensuring the security of the return of refugees and internally displaced people, solving humanitarian problems, preserving the historical monuments regardless of their religious affiliation, unblocking transportation and economic ties.

“There is something positive in all these directions, but problems are emerging which are inevitable given the situation’s being as extraordinary”, he said.

Editing and Translating by Aneta Harutyunyan

Opposition faction head meets with Mayor of Kapan

December 31, 2020December 31, 2020 Emil Lazarian

12:42,

YEREVAN, DECEMBER 30, ARMENPRESS. Head of the opposition Bright Armenia faction of the Parliament Edmon Marukyan met with Mayor of Kapan Gevorg Parsyan, the party said in a news release.

The officials discussed in details the recent challenges and their determination to resist them.

It is reported that the ideas discussed during the meeting will become legislative initiatives and proposals for government decisions.

Editing and Translating by Aneta Harutyunyan

Putin congratulates Armenia’s President on New Year and Christma

December 31, 2020December 31, 2020 Vardan Badalian

12:48,

YEREVAN, DECEMBER 30, ARMENPRESS. President of Russia Vladimir Putin has sent a congratulatory letter to Armenian President Armen Sarkissian on New Year and Christmas, the Armenian President’s Office told Armenpress.

“I hope the difficulties and concerns which this year brought will stay in the past. I would like to reaffirm the intention to further develop the Russian-Armenian allied partnership for the welfare of our two brotherly peoples, for the strengthening of peace and security in the South Caucasian region.

I wish you and your relatives good health, happiness and all the best, and to all citizens of Armenia – peace and prosperity”, reads the Russian leader’s congratulatory message.

On behalf of the Russian President, collection of souvenir stamps dedicated to USSR Hero Gevorg Vardanyan has been handed over to President Armen Sarkissian.

Editing and Translating by Aneta Harutyunyan

Lavrov comments on post-armistice Azeri attack on two villages in Artsakh

December 31, 2020December 31, 2020 Meline Chalian

12:41,

YEREVAN, DECEMBER 30, ARMENPRESS. Russian Minister of Foreign Affairs Sergey Lavrov has commented on the post-armistice incident which happened in Nagorno Karabakh, when on December 13 the Azerbaijani military violated the ceasefire and attacked two villages – Hin Tagher and Khtsaberd, in the Republic of Artsakh.

In an interview to TASS, Lavrov said the incident had taken place in a location where at that time Russian peacekeepers were not deployed.

“There haven’t been any provocative actions against Russian peacekeepers so far,” Lavrov said.

“The only noticeable violation in the line of contact on December 13 took place in a location where there are no Russian peacekeepers. The steps initiated by the command of our peacekeeping contingent in contacts with our Azerbaijani and Armenian colleagues allowed us to avoid an escalation of the incident. We will further continue making all efforts to not allow ceasefire violations.”

Lavrov added that the situation in the Nagorno Karabakh conflict zone has a tendency of resolution.

Editing and Translating by Stepan Kocharyan