The Other Armenia

[Lucin]

Re: The Other Armenia

I do believe that the problems/ negative and dark side of Armenia should be assessed and discussed and people (officials) involved, confronted strongly... But there are some problems here. How can we know that such stories are true? Obviously, there are many who are trying to make unnecessary noise for their personal gains. How can we readers/ people distinguish the facts from their lies? The real from the fantasy?

And how can a clown like N. Pashinian be sympathetic to the Armenian people? How can such opportunistic trash be caring and understanding of our problems?

So, put aside the infamous hypocrite individuals like Nikol Pashinian or simple folks trying to stir up controversy for their personal/ political gains and self-pity, I see nothing wrong in discussing and exposing the negative and the dark reality of Armenia, of course without making any 'definite', hopeless, helpless and pessimist conclusions for the country.

[Anonymouse]

Re: The Other Armenia



I am tired of having to clean up threads. If any thread is derailed and taken off-topic because of personal attacks or insults, you will all be banned.

This is the only warning. I already warned everyone in the Russian Empire thread and it goes here to.

If you disagree with what someone says, offer counter-arguments and/or rebut their argument with evidence presented of your own. List comprehensively your premises for your arguments and make a conclusion.

Take a word of advice. In any argument if you get personal (1) you lose, and (2) you have a one way ticket to the banning axe.

Jesus Christ it's as if you are guys are each others imagined Turk or some such thing.

If you simply cannot engage in a discussion of disagreeing viewpoints, I suggest sticking to your respective Dashnak / anti-Dashnak threads and camps and don't interact, discuss or post anything in each other's threads.

We are one more insult away from mass bannings and I don't care who gets caught in the storm. Either buck up or the buck stops here.

[zeytuntsi]

Re: The Other Armenia

I do believe that the problems/ negative and dark side of Armenia should be assessed and discussed and people (officials) involved, confronted strongly... But there are some problems here. How can we know that such stories are true? Obviously, there are many who are trying to make unnecessary noise for their personal gains. How can we readers/ people distinguish the facts from their lies? The real from the fantasy?

And how can a clown like N. Pashinian be sympathetic to the Armenian people? How can such opportunistic trash be caring and understanding of our problems?

So, put aside the infamous hypocrite individuals like Nikol Pashinian or simple folks trying to stir up controversy for their personal/ political gains and self-pity, I see nothing wrong in discussing and exposing the negative and the dark reality of Armenia, of course without making any 'definite', hopeless, helpless and pessimist conclusions for the country.

Are you simply "trying to make unnecessary noise for your personal gains?" If you have in mind anything you have read in this thread then please quote.

I agree with you, it's healthy to question the veracity of information shared in public but it's a shame that your intent seems questionable and you don't sound sincere. If you had the same concern when it comes to what is posted by your friends then this thread wouldn't have existed.

Thank you for the lip service.

[TomServo]

Re: The Other Armenia

Another Opposition Youth Assaulted

By Karine Kalantarian

A young Armenian opposition activist was attacked and beaten up by unknown men in downtown Yerevan on Wednesday, the second such incident reported in less than a month.

Narek Hovakimian, a member of the Hima (Now) youth movement supporting former President Levon Ter-Petrosian, was hospitalized with serious head and stomach injuries.

Hovakimian said that the assault occurred in an underground pass in the city center where he claimed to have taken refuge while being chased by several young men.

“As I left the university building late in the afternoon a young man with a dodgy look, who was probably aged 25, approached me and said he has something to discuss with me,” the 19-year-old student told RFE/RL in Yerevan’s Grigor Lusavorich hospital. “He said it’s about a girl, but I figured he is lying because there just couldn’t be such a problem … He caught my hand but broke free and ran to the underground pass.”

“I have no doubts that I was assaulted for political reasons,” said Hovakimian. “The illiteracy of the attackers showed that they are servants of these authorities.”

The opposition activist was visited and questioned by police officials in the hospital later in the day.

The incident occurred almost one month after Hima’s 25-year leader, Arsen Kharatian, was assaulted and hospitalized in similar circumstances. The police say they are still looking for the assailants. Nobody has been prosecuted in connection with that attack.

Several other young supporters of Ter-Petrosian were attacked in the run-up to last February’s presidential election in which the ex-president was the main opposition candidate. One of them, Narek Galstian, was taken to hospital with serious injuries last November just days after publicly claiming to have been detained and ill-treated by the police for distributing opposition leaflets in Yerevan.

(Photo courtesy of Gagik Shamshian.)

[Armenian]

Re: The Other Armenia

Another Opposition Youth Assaulted

It's about time,

[zeytuntsi]

Re: The Other Armenia

"Those who had once left are now returning"

Let's hope but it's good listen to what those who live in Armenia has to say.





MIGRATION NEGATIVE BALANCE RECORDED IN JANUARY-MAY IN ARMENIA

Noyan Tapan

http://www.nt.am/news.php?shownews=114825

June 23, 2008

YEREVAN, JUNE 23, NOYAN TAPAN. Migration negative balance was recorded
in the five months of this year in Armenia, which made 69.6 thousand
people.

That index exceeds the index of the same period of previous year by
2.1 thousand or by 40.6%. As Noyan Tapan correspondent was informed
by Vahan Bakhshetian, the Deputy Head of Migration Programs Department
of Migration Agency of the RA Ministry of Territorial Administration,
in May the negative balance made 9300 drams.

It was also mentioned that migration has a seasonal nature in
connection with New Year holidays and leaving for abroad for
working. According to it, usually a negative balance is recorded in
January-May, positive in June-July, negative in August-September,
and positive in October-December.

A. Bakhshetian also said that passenger flows volumes grow year
by year.

Last year the total volume of passenger flows made 925.2 thousand
people, which exceeds the index of the same period of the previous
year by 16.4%.

[Norserunt]

Re: The Other Armenia

Let's hope but it's good listen to what those who live in Armenia has to say.

I see that a political vacuum was created in this forum recently. And this counterproductive thread is awfully biased and pathetic. Armenians are posing this type of self destructive misinformation? Had Turks posted this material against the beleaguered Armenian state this thread would have been shutdown and its initiators banished for good. Sadly I see it's self hating Armenians engaged in anti-Armenia propaganda here. Anyway, let's take a look at what some Armenians are saying in the 'other' Armenia.

Long in diaspora, Armenians return home

What would prompt a young family to abandon a comfortable life and move to a poor country where running water is still a luxury for many, politics are messy and the threat of war looms large?

For Aline Masrlian, 41, her husband, Gevork Sarian, and their two children, it was their motherland calling.

"It is something special when you live in your own land," said Masrlian, who moved here after her family had lived for generations in Syria.

Lured by the economic opportunities in a fast changing country and the lure of home, some people from Armenia's vast diaspora are moving to the land that their ancestors had long kept alive as little more than an idea. Longtime residents, meanwhile, are no longer fleeing the country in large numbers.

While 3.2 million people live in this landlocked Caucasus mountain nation — the smallest of the ex-Soviet republics — an estimated 5.7 million Armenians reside abroad. The largest disappears are in Russia (2 million), the United States (1.4 million), Georgia (460,000) and France (450,000), according to government data.

Most of the diaspora, like Masrlian's family, are descendants of those who fled the killings of up to 1.5 million Armenians in Ottoman Turkey during World War I — a tragedy Armenia wants to be recognized as genocide but modern Turkey insists was an inherent part of the war's violence.

Much later, others ran away from the economic collapse that Armenia suffered following the 1991 breakup of the Soviet Union, when electricity was available only several hours a day, people had to chop down trees for heat, and bread and butter were strictly rationed.

The devastating conflict with neighboring Azerbaijan over the disputed territory of Nagorno-Karabakh, in which over 30,000 people have died, compounded the exodus. An estimated 500,000 people left the country in 1992-94, many heading to Russia.

However, over the past four years Armenia has registered an overall population inflow of 33,200, the first positive trend since gaining independence in 1991 with the Soviet collapse, said Vahan Bakhshetian, a migration expert with the Territorial Management Ministry. While it's difficult to tell how many Armenians are returning permanently, Bakhshetian said the trend offers hope.

"We are now seeing many of those who had left return," said Foreign Ministry spokesman Vladimir Karapetian.

Among the returnees are many from the Russian diaspora. Some are lured back by economic improvements here, while others are escaping growing xenophobia in Russia.

Garik Hayrapetyan of the United Nations Population Fund said Armenians also are no longer leaving in large numbers, but he cautioned that the emerging repatriation will not be sustained without economic and political progress.

For many, the country's biggest asset is its rich cultural heritage. Two millennia ago, Armenia was a vast kingdom stretching between the Black and Caspian seas. Eventually it was divided and absorbed by bigger states, including the Ottoman empire and czarist Russia, and later the Soviet Union.

Armenians like to brag that Noah's Ark came to rest in their country, on the biblical Mount Ararat — though the snowcapped mountain is now part of Turkey, overlooking Yerevan. The country is said to be the first state to adopt Christianity as its religion.

Still, in many ways Armenia remains an unlikely place to attract returnees. Despite economic progress in recent years, over a quarter of the population lives in poverty and the average monthly wage is a meager $275.

Outside aid is crucial. Diaspora Armenians send millions of dollars for investment and aid projects, and much of the population survives on individual money transfers from relatives abroad. The International Monetary Fund estimates that remittances make up 10 percent of the country's economy.

Those sending money are moved by the same love of country that draws Armenians back. James Tufenkian, an Armenian-American, has invested some $30 million in reviving the traditional carpet industry — largely destroyed in the Soviet era — building hotels and running charity efforts. Today, he provides jobs to over 1,000 people here.

Tufenkian, 47, said he decided to help after his first visit at the height of Armenia's economic decline in the early 1990s.

"I felt like I had a chance to do something to improve people's lives, that it was my homeland calling," Tufenkian said in a telephone interview from New York.

Today, Yerevan is slowly transforming itself from a run-down city into a vibrant, modern capital. The downtown boasts Western boutiques, expensive restaurants and young people in trendy outfits.

Yet the rest of the city, perched on steep hills, is a bleak mix of Soviet-era concrete apartment blocks and dilapidated two- and three-story houses with laundry hanging on balconies. The air is heavily polluted, mostly from the exhaust of the battered Soviet-era cars that clog the city. Some districts in Yerevan continue to have shortages of running water, which were common in the 1990s.

While Armenia is considered one of the freer countries among post-Soviet republics, its fragile hold on democracy became apparent earlier this year. Eight people were killed in clashes between government forces and opposition activists protesting election results. The Nagorno-Karabakh conflict also keeps tensions high.

But ask Gevork Sarian about life in Armenia, and the emigre who returned from Syria with his wife and children talks more about finding a homeland than about the wider political climate.

The bearded, smiling Sarian attended university in Yerevan in the early 1980s and said he always wanted to return. The family moved back in 1998, and he started several successful businesses, including a lingerie store run by his wife.

Now 46, Sarian said he had felt separated from his Syrian neighbors. "Even if they look at you in a good way, you are still a stranger — this is the feeling of Armenian diaspora everywhere," he said.

His 15-year-old son Ardag added that in Armenia "you feel that it is your country."

Repatriation wasn't as easy for Aline Masrlian, the wife in the family. She recalled a middle-class life in the northern Syrian city of Aleppo, with running water available 24 hours a day and the markets full of fruits and vegetables. In Yerevan, when the family first arrived, water was on just two hours a day, sometimes the only bread she could find was stale, and she missed the job she had loved, as a construction engineer.

But 10 years later, sitting in a new, spacious apartment decorated with family photos, Aline said she has no regrets. "I decided that this is my country."

More recent returnee Zorair Atabekian, 36, hopes for a similar future. He came back in 2005 after five years in Canada, homesick and hoping to go into business. Though he still earns far less selling xxxelry in Yerevan than he did running an apartment design firm in Montreal, he said he knew his decision would eventually prove right.

"Today this country offers a lot of possibilities," he said. "That is why many diaspora are returning here to start up businesses."

http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5i42ITqq43gB0SejmG6d0HVt8AXLAD9160UB00

[Norserunt]

Re: The Other Armenia

Oh my, look at this US State Department funded report. Could this be the commencement of a political/economic evolution of sorts in the 'other' Armenia? Does this mean we won't need a Washington inspired revolution in Armenia?

Government Moves To Improve Business Climate

By Emil Danielyan

The government approved on Thursday a wide-ranging plan of actions designed to improve Armenia’s business environment which Prime Minister Tigran Sarkisian said leaves much to be desired.

A government statement said the program envisages more than two dozen specific measures relating to tax collection, enterprise registration, contract enforcement, investor protection and other aspects of doing business in the country.

It gave no further details, saying only that all government agencies will be obliged to report to the Armenian Ministry of Economy on a monthly basis about their implementation of those measures. The ministry will in turn have to sum up and submit that information to the prime minister’s office, the statement said.

In his opening remarks at the weekly cabinet session, Sarkisian indicated that the progam is part of his government’s broader efforts to combat widespread corruption which he described as “our number one enemy.” “The number one problem in the Republic of Armenia is not the lack of democracy or the absence of free speech, it’s corruption,” he said. “That’s the number one problem hampering our reforms. If we fail to create a level playing field for all economic entities, there will be no democracy in Armenia.”

Government connections have long been vital for engaging in lucrative forms of large-scale economic activity in Armenia. Some sectors of its economy have effectively been monopolized by wealthy entrepreneurs and their government patrons.

The launch of the program was announced amid the government’s ongoing stated efforts to simulatenously reduce tax widespread tax evasion and corruption among tax officials. The drive has already prompted protests from some local businessmen.

Meeting with Sarkisian on Tuesday, they complained that the tax authorities anxious to meet their rising revenue targets have stepped up the controversial practice of forcing private firms to pay more taxes at any cost. They also implied that government-connected tycoons continue to enjoy priveleged treatment.

Sarkisian acknowledged the practice and pledged to do his best to eliminate arbitrary tax collection.

“Unfortunately, we have to say that today we do not enjoy the business community’s confidence,” the premier told ministers on Thursday. “Of course it’s not good when you are not trusted, but at least they can now freely and audaciously speak about that. We can achieve serious changes in that area only through consistent work.”

http://www.armenialiberty.org/armeniareport/report/en/2008/06/9329269A-8155-4845-BAD2-BAEBB098A942.ASP

[Norserunt]

Re: The Other Armenia

Considering that Armenia is a poor, landlocked, resource-less nation surrounded by enemies in the most volatile region of the world, the Caucasus - this is pretty good I must say... I wonder why the initiator of this thread could not find this report (or the two above) to showcase the 'other' Armenia? Could it be that the individual in question is trying to project his inner hate for the homeland? Yes, I have seen the enemy and the enemy is us.

ARMENIA - THE BEST COUNTRY FOR BUSINESS IN CIS

Armenia is the best country for business in CIS, according to Forbes data, "Azatutyun" radio-station reported. Armenia ranks 63 among 121 countries in the Forbes ranking of Best Countries for Business, leaving behind all other CIS countries. The ranking is based on the reports of the Transparency International, the Freedom House and other international organizations. GDP growth, inflation and unemployment rates, the state of tax and customs systems, and publications on human freedoms. "Over the past years the Armenian authorities have taken certain steps to improve the tax and customs systems. However, although high paces of economic growth were registered, the unemployment rate in the country remains high, the fight against corruption is not enough and human freedoms are restricted," the Forbes states. Georgia is the next CIS country that is favorable for business. It ranks 68th, the main obstacle here is unemployment. Azerbaijan is 82nd and Russia is 86th.

Source: http://www.azg.am/EN/2008070103

[zeytuntsi]

Re: The Other Armenia

Courtesy of freakyfreaky http://forum.armenianclub.com/showthread.php?t=11068

http://www.armenialiberty.org/armeniareport/report/en/2008/07/FA904CD2-192D-4CC2-A454-D5CD5A22CFF6.ASP

Prosecutors Insist On Opposition ‘Hypnosis’ Of Armenians


By Emil Danielyan and Ruben Meloyan

Prosecutor-General Aghvan Hovsepian has stood by his view that Former President Levon Ter-Petrosian and his associates resorted to a mass hypnosis Armenia’s population and other “psychological tricks” to muster popular support for their continuing campaign for regime change.

The theory about opposition recourse to the so-called “neuro-linguistic programming” (NLP) is part of the Armenian authorities’ coup case brought against the opposition leader following last February’s disputed presidential election. Hovsepian declared in early March that Ter-Petrosian managed to attract unexpectedly strong popular support for his presidential bid because of his “psychological sabotage” launched against disgruntled Armenians.

Ter-Petrosian, who had served as Armenia’s first president from 1991-1998, was thought to be highly unpopular when he ended his decade-long political retirement and announced his participation in the presidential ballot in September 2006. Despite an extremely hostile coverage of his political activities by the government-controlled media, he quickly attracted a substantial following and emerged as Prime Minister Serzh Sarkisian’s main election challenger with his harsh attacks on the government.

According to the Central Election Commission, Ter-Petrosian won 21.5 percent of the vote, trailing only Sarkisian, the official election winner. The ex-president has rejected the official vote results as fraudulent and rallied tens of thousands of supporters in Yerevan to demand a re-run of the ballot. The authorities used lethal force to end the protests on March 1-2, claiming to have foiled a coup d’etat. Dozens of opposition members and supporters were arrested in the following days.

In an interview with the daily “Aravot” published on Tuesday, Hovsepian insisted that many of the opposition demonstrators were hypnotized by Ter-Petrosian’s and other opposition leaders’ use of words such as “fatherland,” “family” and “we’ll win.” “Of course I remain of the opinion which is substantiated by materials of the criminal case,” he said.

“We have certain individuals who have openly declared that they were in such a state [of psychosis.] The criminal case contains testimony to the effect that they were in delusion,” the chief prosecutor added without elaborating.

Ter-Petrosian aides were quick to again laugh off the allegations. “I can understand an individual with Soviet criminal mentality who probably has no idea of political struggle, political statements, political tactics and public mobilization,” said Arman Musinian, a spokesman for the ex-president.

“I think we shouldn’t be upset with that,” Musinian told journalists. “Each of us knows some things and doesn’t know other things. The sad thing is that an individual lacking elementary knowledge occupies the post of prosecutor-general.”