As the gate squeaked, the door opened and a pregnant woman came out with a man in a military uniform following her. The smile spread over his face as if we had been old friends, and he invited us inside: “Come in! Come in!”, though it was the first time we met. Poverty and cold inside, faded walls with huge holes, a balcony with broken glasses, beds and a table with meager food, pickles and a half empty bottle of vodka… “Sit down! Sit down!” said the home master gladly. Had we started to drink with him, he would never ask who we were and why did we arrive. So I had to ask him: “Don’t you want to know who we are?” Replied the home owner: “Its of no importance”.

Armen Avetisyan, a soldier known for his feat in the village of Achajur, has been defending the border near to the village of Vazashen, since 1988 when the Karabakh War started. He took part in the fights in Lachin corridor, on the Karabakh front.

At least 25 apartments purchased by the state using European Union grant money to be used by graduates of children’s orphanages are not fit for occupation.

ArmeniaNow reporters visited the apartments and found that some are constantly flooded with sewage waters, making them useless even for keeping animals.

Getting apartments for these young people, deprived of parents since childhood, and their children has led to illnesses generated by humidity. Some have left the apartments to escape being washed up by sewage waters. The apartments are all eirther on the first or the last floor, so, humidity penetrates from either above or beneath. The apartments were bought at prices several times higher than the market price, thus enriching some officials at the expense of depriving the orphans of comfortable conditions. Almost none of the apartments conform to the criterion for being “available for occupancy”.

The most significant change for Nagorno-Karabakh brought on by the five-day war in Georgia is that the risk of hostilities has reduced, said Sergey Minasyan, head of the Political Research Department of the Caucasus Institute, at a discussion about the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict Thursday.

“The precedent that a former center (Tbilisi) failed to repeat what happened in Srpska Kraina (when Croats conquered a Serbian autonomy at the point of bayonet), i.e. failed to destroy a de-facto state (South Ossetia) after long and meticulous preparations and armament was a strong message for Baku,” Minasyan explains.

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev sought to deepen ties with a Caucasus ally on the second day of his first official visit to Armenia Tuesday.

Together with his host Serzh Sargsyan he participated in a ceremonial opening of Russia Square in central Yerevan attended by thousands of city residents before heading for talks with the Armenian leader.

(The square is situated near Yerevan municipality, the Moscow House and the statue of Myasnikyan – the area that saw the March 1-2 post-election riots).

Speaking at the event, Medvedev praised relations between the two states, saying that naming a square in Yerevan after Russia “confirms the absolute sincerity and genuineness of our fraternal feelings and testifies to the openness and depth of the two states’ relations.”

In his remarks, Sargsyan said that for the first time the Russian flag was raised in Armenia in 1827 on top of the fortress that used to stand near that square. It was also the place where prominent 19th century Russian diplomat and writer Alexander Griboyedov’s famous “Woe from Wit” play was for the first time staged. Both presidents called the square a symbol of friendship between the two nations.

Editor’s note: In late September the Institute for War and Peace Reporting (www.iwpr.net) organized a visit of Armenian, Georgian and Azerbaijani reporters to the conflict zone in Georgia to familiarize themselves with life there a month after the shooting has stopped . . .

Gori and refugees


The three smoking buildings shown across the globe as a proof of the Russian intervention are under reconstruction with the traces of war swept away from them. But on the other side of the town is the refugee camp that speaks of the still unfinished confrontation.

Citizens of Armenia and Diaspora Armenians under 40 will get opportunity to study in the most highly rated universities (about 130) in the US, Europe, Japan, Russia and China in a program sponsored by the state. The Luys (Light) Foundation was created for that purpose, it will implement and finance the program.

Physicist Artur Ishkhanyan, corresponding member of the National Academy of Sciences of Armenia initiated the program last September sending a letter to the authorities of the country asserting highly rated universities abroad provide quality and standards of education unavailable at similar institutions in Armenia. The letter also said one of the major components of Armenia’s educational strategy should be making studying in those universities available for Armenian students. Despite the letter was signed by academicians, university deans and department heads, it was perceived as an insult by some Armenian authorities.

When Shushan first told her parents she is a homosexual, she felt all at once she is no more part of their family. Destroying the wall of double life in the family meant destroying also the perceptions of closeness according to traditional understanding of family, and building another wall estranging her from the parents.

A year later she declared of her being a homosexual all across Yerevan, when she, along with eight homosexual artist women friends, opened “Coming to you not to be with you” exhibition- video art, installation, fine arts, reading- at Utopiana NGO on 34 Zaroubyan street. The group members became the first female citizens of Armenia (two are Diaspora Armenians), which publicly revealed their homosexuality.

The most serious result of the five-day Russian-Georgian war was the emergence of a new entity in the South Caucasus, which is South Ossetia, Caucasus Institute Director Alexander Iskandaryan said during a roundtable discussion focusing on South Ossetia and Abkhazia earlier this week.

The leading political analyst explained that during the years of struggle for independence in the early 1990s, unlike Abkhazia and Nagorno-Karabakh, South Ossetia saw no ethnic cleansings and the population there included both Georgians and Ossetians.

National Assembly Vice-Speaker Hrair Karapetyan representing the Armenian Revolutionary Federation (Dashnaktsutyun) urged the public to participate in protests against the arrival of the Turkish president in Armenia, which he said will begin from the airport, as he spoke before thousands of party sympathizers Tuesday.

Even though the Dashanktsutyun rally near Matenadaran was formally dedicated to the 17th anniversary of Nagorno-Karabakh’s declaration of independence from Azerbaijan, Karapetyan and other speakers put emphasis on Armenian-Turkish relations and Abdullah Gul’s visit to Armenia due on September 6.

The municipality had initially banned the rally, but the administrative court later overturned that decision in favor of Dashnaktsutyun.

Dashnaktsutyun Bureau member Levon Mkrtchyan said that relations with Turkey cannot improve unless the latter recognizes the genocide of Armenians committed by the Ottoman Turkish government in 1915.

An exhibition presenting the hitherto mostly unknown pages of history of Armenian sports in Ottoman Turkey opened at the Armenian Genocide Museum in Yerevan on Tuesday.

The display called “Armenian Sport in the Ottoman Empire” features photographs of sportsmen and sport groups in Western Armenia in the early 20th century, issues of the first sport periodical in the Ottoman Empire “Marmnamarz”.

Museum Director Hayk Demoyan, who conceived the idea, says that last year he discovered all issues of “Marmnamarz” at the museum’s library and as a historian was also interested in the subjects of nationalism in sports and sport competition inside the Ottoman Empire and most of all he was interested in the combination of sport and genocide.