I’m not sure what I make of this. Aleppo was the first place I went to an Armenian Church (and made a donation to hear the priest sing). Arka news agency reports on the development of a new village not far from Aleppo by the Kilikia community.

On October 23, the ceremony of putting the fundament [sic] of the village
took place. The Minister of Urban Development of Syria Mohammad
Nihad Mushantat, the Governor of Aleppo Usame HAmid Adi, Council
General of Armenia to Aleppo Armen Melkonyan and other officials,
representatives of clergy and the public were present at the ceremony.

I’d love to hear more about this…

Mediamax reports (Via Groong) on the rise of economic and drug-related crime. While the number of reported crimes dropped by 4%, those involving drugs rose by over 30%.

In the course of the fight against drug trafficking, 339 drug-related
crimes were registered in January-September 2004, which is 102 cases
more than in the same period of last year. A total of 12,782 kg of
drugs were seized.

The NationMaster website has a detailed profile of crime and criminals in Armenia.

According to the site, there are:

2,866 prisoners in Armenia
2% of these are female
127 murders

All this information is from 2000.

HETQ Online has a photostory on the Nork Children’s Home in Yerevan.

“It is also one of the main depositories for children waiting to be adopted. However, in an investigation conducted last year by American-Armenian Ara Manoogian and RFE/RL reporter Emil Danielian [read article], it transpired that most of the children in the Children’s Home are instead temporarily placed there by predominantly single mothers unable to feed and clothe them.”

Another report has surfaced about a conference in Vienna between Armenia and Turkey on the “Armenian problem”:

“Turkey will discuss for the first time, the Armenian problem, internationally. During the Turkey-Armenia historical meeting to be held in the first half of 2005, academicians will demonstrate their relevant documents.

Armenia’s History Institute Director and Genocide Museum Director will represent Armenia and the History Institution Director Prof. Yusuf Halacoglu and Foreign Ministry experts will represent Turkey in the meeting.

The outcome of the meeting will be announced from Vienna”

This seems to be a reoccurrence of a conference that was alleged to have taken place this year. So far nobody has offered any proof that the conference actually took place.

Ara Manoogian posts about what he calls “Turkification”.

One of the ways Armenians from Artsakh migrate to the West is via political asylum. And who better to qualify than a child from a mixed marriage, the father being Armenian and the mother Turkish, who can not live in Azerbaijan or Armenia/Artsakh in fear of religious prosecution.

He goes on to talk about the sale of altered birth certificates to give one an Azeri famiyl name so they can claim asylum in Europe.

Read the full article.

Out of a survey of 81 countries to see who are the world’s most unhappy countries, Armenia has come 79.

Contrary to popular belief, economic wellbeing is not a key factor in one’s happiness. People from developing countries, Mexico and Puerto Rico, reported to enjoy their lives the most. Others from the top five include Columbia, Ireland, and the Netherlands. The United States ranks 15th.

It would be interesting to see a breakdown of people’s happiness by profession in Armenia.

The Turkish Daily News reported yesterday that Oskanian had said that ‘Genocide’ not condition for normal ties with Turkey.

But isn’t it Turkey which is imposing the blockade and Turkey which has stated that normalization depends on Armenia ceasing its support of Armenian diaspora efforts aimed at winning international recognition for the alleged genocide.
Maybe he is referring the ending of the conference in Brussels:

An Armenian lobby in Europe argue that recognition of the alleged genocide should be a condition of Turkey’s accession into the EU. Backing Armenian claims, Greek Cypriot Parliament Speaker Dimitris Christophias said during a visit to Yerevan that Turkey should recognize the allegations before joining the EU.

In Brussels in the European Parliament, a two-day convention of Armenians living in Europe ended on Tuesday with a statement appealing to EU leaders not to let Turkey join the EU unless it recognized the alleged genocide.

Armenialiberty.org has some good news of sorts: “Armenia again fared better than most other ex-Soviet states but was just a whisker away from being rated as a highly corrupt nation in a closely-watched annual report on corruption around the world released on Wednesday.”

Bagrat Yesayan, an official advising President Robert Kocharian anti-corruption initiative, found the assessment rather encouraging. “The comparison with last year’s rankings shows that the situation here has not worsened and has even slightly improved,” he told RFE/RL.

Yesayan also stressed that Armenia continues to be regarded by Transparency International as the second least corrupt member of the Commonwealth of Independent States after Belarus. Its two ex-Soviet neighbors, Georgia and Azerbaijan, were again rated much more poorly, languishing in 133rd and 140th places respectively.

Read the full article.

Georgian paper The Messenger reports that Russia is allowing traffic through the Roki Tunnel, between North and South Ossetia, and Georgia officials have stopped some buses entering Georgia proper from South Ossetia.

It also mentions the new Astrakhani (Russia)-Enzeli (Iran)-Meghri (Armenia) route, designed to bypass Georgia altogether.
I’ll have to look at the map and see how long that is.

Stone Garden Productions have a new book out: The Stone Garden Guide to Armenia and Karabagh.

Amazon has some encouraging reviews:

Adventure Magazine (UK), July, 2004
“Well researched and incredibly informative, this guide is a must for anyone considering a trip to the region.”

Outpost Magazine (Canada) July, 2004
“This is the definitive and off-the-beaten-track experience!”

Photographers Matthew Karanian and Robert Kurkjian have teamed up again to bring this guide to Armenia and Karabagh, where they have lived and worked
more…

SFGate.com has a glowing article on travel to Armenia.

The author weaves her way past Khor Virap, Noravank, and Zorats Qarer, to my favourite place, Tatev:

The road to Tatev is bumpy, but it soon opens to reveal a lushly wooded canyon — the monastery perched on top like a crown. Indeed, this 9th century complex was viewed as something of a prize to invaders who attacked the site in numerous bloody waves. Other than a caretaker (an old woman who appeared periodically to gather pears that have fallen beneath a courtyard tree) we were once again practically alone, free to explore the faded frescoes in dark rooms; to consider the grisly remnants of a fairly recent chicken sacrifice; to climb the lurchy heights of the fortified walls, and to imagine the 13th century Mongols who, historians say, pushed Christians into the gorge.

Read the full article.

An admirable, well-researched article by Jane Wampler.

The International Crisis Group has a report on the future stability of Armenia.

The report carries a series of recommendations:

To the government it says “Conduct a credible and public investigation into the behaviour of law enforcement agencies during the April 2004 demonstrations, reform laws and law enforcement agencies so as to end administrative detention and severe physical ill-treatment in pre-trial detention, and improve the judiciary by training and appointing new and additional judges, and by increasing the Justice Ministry budget so it can provide better working conditions for judges.” This will be bitter medicine for the Kocharyan government.

And to the opposition it says:
“Counter the perception that the opposition is only interested in regime change by developing issue-based platforms on key political and economic topics, including anti-corruption strategy and youth and rural-oriented programs.”
more…

In the middle of moving to a new computer, I found that Google have added Armenian to their list of languages. You can use their Armenian home page, or google.com and set your default language to Armenian.

Select Preferences and then Armenian from the pull-down list, then finally click the Save Preferences button. Of course you need to have Armenian fonts on your system to be able to read them.

Thanks to Onnik for passing this on. It’s good to see a first-world newspaper giving voice to this kind of article. Rob Maguire is a student living in Yerevan, and has written about the rise in the price of electricity and its effect upon the poor.

Energy-widely recognized as a fundamental need for human development-has become increasingly inaccessible in Armenia. At the insistence of the World Bank, control over this precious commodity has been handed over to foreign interests, where social priorities are sacrificed in the name of corporate profit and capitalist ethos.

more…

This story appears both in Bakutoday and ArmeniaLiberty.org. Russia’s pledge to lobby for the resuming of a rail link between Russia and Armenia:

“Our delegation will fly from Armenia to Azerbaija… and then on to Georgia in order to try to reopen [rail] traffic throughout the entire territory of the Transcaucasus,” Levitin told a Russian-Armenian business forum in Yerevan.

“We do realize what a difficult task it is. We must try to solve it together with you,” he added, referring to the conflicts over Nagorno-Karabakh and Abkhazia that left Armenia without rail access to the outside world more than a decade ago.

more…

ArmeniaNow.com reports on the shopping center (mall) opened recently in Yerevan by Robert Kocharyan and Yerevan Mayor Yervand Zakharyan.

According to the Chief - designer of Tashir, Ashot Arshakyan, only GUM’s walls are left to hold up a brand new day of capitalism in the capital.

The fully renovated seven-floored Tashir (also a name of an Armenian historical province) offers a wide range of goods from dairy products and butcher shops to elite watches and suits.

Shoppers are welcomed to Tashir by a comfortable lobby with fountains, cafes, Internet club and escalators to all floors. There’s a playground, where parents can leave their children under supervised care, while the adults go off to spend in any of 285 shops selling local and imported goods.

Tashir director Vahe Karapetyan brags that the new firm offers items from 5 cents to several thousand dollars.

Maybe they could arrange the 5 cents products in one area and the $1000 products in another, and have entrances for ’super-rich’ and ‘the rest of us’.
Is it just me, or are all the big development projects aimed at the richest 1% of the nation’s population? The philosophy of expensive hotels and shops will attract wealthy people to Armenia doesn’t seem to be a sustainable way forward.

There is a lot of buzz about Turkey’s upcoming accession talks with the EU, even though most estimates say it will take up to 15 years for Turkey to formally become a member of the European Union.

ArmenPress reports:

artan Oskanian disapproved today the European Union’s intention to start talks on Turkey’s accession process, saying it did not deserve the membership. Speaking at a joint news conference with the visiting foreign minister of Norway, Jan Petersen, Oskanian blamed Turkey for the continued closure of its border with Armenia and a law that criminalizes mentioning of the Armenian Genocide.

more…

Does my memory fail me, or was there not a very emphatic statement by the Kerry campaign back in August about recognising the Armenian genocide?

Still, this from Zaman Online (Via Dhimmi Watch)has appeared.

Kerry denied claims made by the Armenian lobby in late August that he will accept the Armenian Genocide resolution. The Presidential candidate told Zaman that he contributed to Senator Robert Dole’s initiatives on the subject in 1990, but said he has not made any statement that he would accept the resolution either before the upcoming elections on November 2nd or within the last 10 years. Kerry said, “Turkey is one of America’s oldest allies and it will remain so.

more…

I’ve had a bit of free time today, courtesy of this super-typhoon bearing down on Tokyo, so I’ve changed the logo ever-so-slightly.

Thanks to Hakob for pointing this out and Katy for seconding him. I have rectified the typo. In my defence I can say I showed it to my Armenian teacher and she didn’t mention it!

Armenpress reports on the so-called Dortmund forum, a conflict-resolution group set up to mediate the Karabagh conflict, with representatives from Armenia, Azerbaijan, Nagorno Karabagh, USA and Russia.

Azerbaijan insists that all Azeri lands occupied by Armenian troops be given back, which is not acceptable to Karabagh:

“These territories are of vital importance for Nagorno Karabagh, making today some 60 percent of its territory, and only 6-7 percent of Azerbaijan,” Babayan said, adding that there are other aspects of the issue. “There are some regions that cannot be given back, such as Kelbajar, where all Karabagh rivers originate from. During the Soviet times these rivers were contaminated by the order of Heydar Aliyev, resulting in drastic increase in the number of cancer cases, though before the 1970-s Karabagh boasted of its residents’ record live expectancy in the USSR, and we have all grounds to say that then Soviet Azerbaijan carried out hydro-terrorism against the population of Karabagh,” he said.
Babayan said the US and Russian moderates do not offer concrete proposals, acting as mediators in an effort to help the sides to find the golden mean, which they have failed so far. According to him, the Karabagh participants of the discussions may refuse to further participate because of Azeris stiff position.