@VickenSosikian

According to Vardanyan, while clearing the road for Nikol Pashinyan’s motorcade in Lori Province, motorcade police beat several citizens. The officers got into an argument with an elderly man who asked to be spoken to respectfully.

In an interview with Yerevan Today, one of the victims, the son of the elderly man, described the incident in detail. He explained that he, his brother and his underage nephew who also has asthma intervened in the conversation police were having with his elderly father. Then about a dozen police beat the two men and the minor nephew while also using tear gas on them. All three were then taken to the police station, where the beatings continued.

From there, ambulance rushed them to Vanadzor Hospital where they are being treated for severe injuries including punctured lungs and broken bones. No police investigation or a public response has been made yet. According to Vardanyan, even now that the case has received public attention, attempts are being made to exert pressure upon the victims and to give the impression that the victims provoked the dispute.

As the victims remain under medical care, this is now the second major incident involving Pashinyan directly. The first was the killing of Sona Mnatsakanyan and her unborn child – a hit/run Pashinyan motorcade incident whereby no single individual has yet been prosecuted.

By Jonathan Guyer,

Qatar is a player. In the Middle East and across the world, the petrostate of fewer than 3 million people plays an outsized role in politics, media, and art. Its cultural diplomacy has established the country’s influence — and now it’s doing the same with sport.

The country’s absurd wealth is on display this month: It spent about $300 billion on stadiums and groundwork to host the 2022 FIFA World Cup, which kicked off Sunday. That money totaled more than all previous World Cups and Olympics combined.

Qatar exports more liquified natural gas than any other country. Its energy resources have made the royal family among the world’s richest, and with a $335 billion sovereign wealth fund, it is one of the biggest landowners in the United Kingdom, and owns a major stake in the Empire State Building.

Yet Qatar has arguably been a more strategic spender than neighboring oil-rich states. It has focused on successfully constructing domestic cultural and educational institutions for Qataris and creating a national identity. But it’s a national identity presented by the royal family that does not tolerate dissent and does not guarantee human rights.

The achievement of the first World Cup being convened in the Arab world embodies those tensions: Qatar is a state that uses its immense wealth and power to elevate itself and the region, that cares deeply about culture, and yet has few freedoms.

Qatar’s elaborate hosting of the World Cup parallels its art prowess

Doha rapidly developed in recent decades from a small port to a dramatic cityscape in what Qatari artist Sophia Al-Maria describes as “Gulf Futurism.”

Yet for all its lavish spending and foreign-policy influence, Qatar has managed to avoid criticism over the years for restricting rights for women and LGBTQ people and labor violations, including relative silence from its Western allies. (It must help that it’s home to the largest US military base in the Middle East.)

The incredible development of World Cup arenas mirrors Qatar’s staggering art investments. The sister of Qatar’s emir and the head of its network of museums, Sheikha al-Mayassa bint Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani, reportedly spends about $1 billion annually on art. That’s much higher than any major US museum.

Qatar has commissioned epic works by Western artists, like Richard Serra’s hulking steel plates in the desert (“East-West/West-East”) and Damien Hirst’s series of large bronze sculptures, some 46 feet high, of human reproduction from conception to embryo (“The Miraculous Journey”). Qatar has also bought some of the most expensive paintings in the world: Rothko’s “White Center” ($70 million), Cézanne’s “The Card Players” ($250 million), and Gauguin’s “When Will You Marry?” ($300 million).

There has been a huge emphasis on “starchitects” — largely American and European architects building outlandish structures that few other countries could afford, among them Rem Koolhaas and Jean Nouvel.

But Qatar, importantly, hasn’t only imported from the West.

It has created institutions that have helped forge its national identities as a Muslim and Arab country. The breathtakingly minimalist Museum of Islamic Art in Doha’s center, designed by famed architect I.M. Pei, contains a remarkable international collection. On the outskirts of Education City, among satellites of universities like Georgetown, Northwestern, and Virginia Commonwealth, is the Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art, which contains one of the most extensive collections of 20th-century Arab art. (Qatar and the UAE are engaged in a cutthroat race to buy up Arab modern art from across the Middle East.) And part of the capital has a new downtown made to look old, called Msheireb, with many cultural museums including one focused on the country’s history of slavery.

“Qatar has always been much more connected, if you will, to that sense of their own past and their historical memory,” Kishwar Rizvi, a professor of art history and architecture at Yale University, told me. “There’s this global stage on which they want to present themselves,” she explained, but also a sense that, “We have oil, wealth, and all of that, but we also need cultural capital, because that also is part of what makes a nation.”

Perhaps because Qatar’s cultural investments have been so savvy, I’ve been taken aback by the ostentatiousness of its World Cup stadiums. One stadium is shaped like a traditional Qatari tent and another is made of shipping containers. Most of the marquee stadiums for world sporting events are showy or trying to represent the host country’s culture, but with this year’s, everything looks ornamental or too obvious.

Can cultural diplomacy thrive without human rights?

I visited Qatar in 2016 to attend a blue-chip conference of artists and architects, all presided over by Sheikha al-Mayassa. Conceptual artist Marina Abramović equated her and Qatar’s royal family to modern-day Medicis, with the funds to support artists like Serra in creating monumental works.

That money, it seems, does buy the complicity of powerful people. “To just come and criticize, it’s such an easy way to close the culture forever, but I want to open this culture,” Abramović told me.

On the sidelines of the swish confab at the W Hotel Doha, I interviewed Jeff Koons, one of the world’s most expensive living artists and a frequent guest of the royal family. I asked him: Why Qatar? “I would say because of the openness of Qatar to ideas, to education, to the humanities, to psychology and philosophy and all the different things that can stimulate the public for growth and development,” he told me.

I pushed Koons to discuss reported labor violations, that his nudes could never be exhibited in the conservative country, and the fact that a Qatari poet was imprisoned at the time for a protest song. “Going back to some of the problems here in Qatar and these different things, I’m naïve of some of the aspects,” Koons told me. “I know that internationally there has been a movement to try to make working conditions better for laborers, and I think that a lot of problems, not only here but internationally, have been addressed to try to make situations where, if abuses take place, they’re corrected.”

Qatar is a monarchy with a large expat and migrant labor population that has very limited rights. Migrant workers can’t join labor unions. The Guardian has reported that 6,500 migrant workers died over a decade, and a Kenyan blogger who wrote about it was arrested in 2021.

Beyond that, women are stifled by guardianship laws, LGBTQ people lack rights, and internet activists have been imprisoned. The courts are not independent, the press cannot freely cover the country’s politics, and there are no serious elections for leadership and no political parties.

“If you’re in Qatar, and your rights are trampled on as a woman or as a queer person or anything, if you don’t like it, you’re just thrown into jail and good luck,” Wafa Ben-Hassine, a human rights attorney based in Washington, DC, told me. “It’s like you have certain rights and freedoms only if you belong to a certain class of protected people” — the wealthy or certain expats — “then they become not human rights.”

Qatar has largely eluded scrutiny over the years. Now that the country is getting so much attention, there have been some articles criticizing a double standard that Qatar is being held to. But Ben-Hassine said that scrutiny is merited.

“I’m happy that an Arab nation is hosting one of the most lucrative spectacles in the world,” Ben-Hassine said. “But it can be better, and it should do better. We should be clear-eyed about the state of affairs that this country has and aim to hold it to the highest standards.”

And it’s not just about Qatar. It’s about the world systems in which Qatar operates, and the ways in which the tournament serves Western interests, as Guardian columnist Nesrine Malik writes, at the expense of those who lack rights in Qatar.

Nasser Rabbat, a professor of Islamic architecture at MIT, put it this way: “I don’t want to absolve the patrons, the contractors, and the builders, from the amazing human rights violations they have sustained all these years. I’m not going to come to the defense of any of these countries in saying that their labor treatment is acceptable. It is absolutely unacceptable. But I’m not going to blame them as well.”

“Because, at the end of the day, those who are making the most amount of money from the construction boom in the Gulf are companies from our part of the world, from the United States and from Europe,” Rabbat told me. “They are responsible for the deaths of hundreds, if not thousands, of workers, but we too are responsible for those deaths. And we too have benefited from those deaths.”

So the World Cup — with the blitz of global media and the arrival of a million visitors — exposes Qatar to new pressures from the outside. In welcoming teams and fans from around the globe, the cameras may reveal the country’s limitations. Qatar’s deep investments in culture can’t shield it from criticism for the shallowness of rights there.

Source: https://www.vox.com/world/23475120/qatar-wealth-rich-2022-fifa-world-cup-human-rights?sponsored=0&position=1&scheduled_corpus_item_id=5ce82b16-9ba7-4f1a-bec9-ecc4049d0a43

Koryun Simonyan,

According to the former judge of the Constitutional Court, Alvina Gylumyan, judgments regarding the constitutionality of a possible “peace” treaty can be made when their content is known. Until now,

there are 2 versions being discussed: the Russian version and the American version, and according to popular information, the Russian version, the issue of Artsakh is left for the future, and in the case of the American version, there is no mention of Artsakh at all. According to Gyulumyan, it is worrying that if they are not even constitutional, then in what way will it be possible to prevent their ratification?

“I would refrain from evaluating them, it’s like looking for a cat in the front room. We haven’t read those 2 agreements, if any, and don’t know what they actually say. Even the title gives cause for doubt, we don’t know what title it will have, because according to our Constitution there are contracts that must go through a mandatory ratification process, we need to know what kind of contract it is. In order for the impeachment process to pass, the conclusion of the Constitutional Court must also be on its constitutionality. Now, will they be constitutional or not? I repeat, we should be familiar with those wordings, but in the conditions of the questions you mentioned: renunciation of Artsakh, etc., in these conditions, in the case of the existing Constitution, we should not forget the preamble of the Constitution. the legal force of which was referred to by the Constitutional Court both before and more recently by this composition of the Constitutional Court. I am more concerned with the next question, even if we accept that it is not constitutional, if we proceed from that presumption, what possible means do we have to prevent its ratification? This is where a question arises. whether today’s Supreme Court will go so far as to recognize it as inconsistent with the Constitution, or if the Supreme Court finds, based on purely legal wordings, that… and there has been this practice in the past, when the Supreme Court finds that our obligations there is no issue of constitutionality, that is, we discuss the compliance of the obligations with the constitution and find that there is no such issue, but the expediency of ratification is the task of the National Assembly. Now, in the presence of such a decision, will today’s National Assembly go to him, so as not to find it politically expedient to ratify it? In general, in any case, when the ruling majority has a so-called stable majority, when it has enough votes to make a decision, it is difficult to say under these conditions,” Gylumyan said.

To the question of “Hraparak”, what days are expected for the judges, taking into account that Karen Andreasyan, who is one of the supporters of vetting, has become the president of the BSC, and previously stated that there are corrupt judges in the system. Gyulumyan recalled the example of changing the composition of the CC.

“You know what, no one could say that the judges of the Constitutional Court were corrupt, and I don’t think that even with the so-called low threshold of the public’s confidence in the judiciary, the Constitutional Court could not do anything in that regard. to say. However, there was a desire to change it, and it was changed.”

According to the former judge of the CC, judges should not give way during their activity so that they can be pressured, the society also has something to do.

“Firstly, judges should not give any reason during their activities, so that it is possible for them to… and secondly, the society should be able to appreciate a good judge and stand in the positions of his protection. We have such examples when, for example, in Poland, the public rose up, when there was an attack on the courts, but our political culture is such that often even the current political power, the executive and sometimes even the legislator, try to choose a scapegoat for the problems that have arisen in the society. and often it is the courts.’

Ամբողջական հոդվածը կարող եք կարդալ այս հասցեով՝ : https://hraparak-am.translate.goog/post/0a923bd8c14660bf9d5c62af0e9df4d1?_x_tr_sl=hy&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=en&_x_tr_pto=nui,sc

© 2008 – 2021 «Հրապարակ օրաթերթ»

Azerbaijani Armed Forces continue shelling civilians in Artsakh, preventing them from carrying out agricultural work.

At 11.55 p.m. on November 25 the resident of the Karmir Shuka community of the Martuni region of Artsakh S. Grigoryan applied to the Artsakh police station for an interview. Grigoryan applied to the department of the same community of the district police department with a report that on the same day at about 11:30 in the administrative territory of Tagavard village when performing agricultural works on the tractor Belarus he came under indiscriminate fire from the enemy positions, as a result of which the agricultural works were stopped.

The Artsakh Ministry of Internal Affairs reports that in the morning of November 25, the enemy violated the ceasefire regime in the direction of the village of Chankatagh of the Martakert region. Azerbaijani Armed Forces fired at civilians, preventing them from carrying out agricultural work.

Employees of district police departments collected and handed over facts to the Russian peacekeeping contingent.

Arman Tatoyan,

As the chief guest of the Defense of the Interest Week organized by the Armenian Court of Australia Armenian National Committee of Australia will present during the events scheduled from 28 November to 3 December 2022

Nikol Pashinyan has decided to destroy some materials from the NSS archive, one can only guess what nature is. Today, in an extraordinary session,

the Parliament discussed and adopted the project of amendments presented by the government, which paves the way for the above-mentioned process: the NSS is granted the authority to destroy the archives. Prior to that, the current legislation stated: “The materials of the archive of the authorized body are declassified in accordance with the law.” At the proposal of the government, that wording was changed: “The materials of the archive of the authorized body are declassified or destroyed in accordance with the procedure established by the law and other legal acts.”

As expected, intense discussions took place. Deputy Director of Armenia faction Gegham Manukyan inquired from Andranik Simonyan, the main speaker of the project, Deputy Director of National Security Service. “For example, someone named “Alfa” cooperated with the National Security Service. Now, with the change you proposed, could it happen that the documents certifying the cooperation of “Alfa” with the National Security Service will be destroyed one day by some legal act?” Andranik Simonyan explained: “There was no procedure for destruction, and this change was made with the logic of having an authorizing norm for destruction. What is the problem? I don’t understand your anxiety.”

Gegham Manukyan explained: “In the secret services, at some point, they can declassify the activities of any person. That’s how it happened in the case of the famous detectives Vardanyans. But according to this law, the NSS is given the right to destroy the documents.” Andranik Simonyan remained adamant. “Very good. The law provides for the possibility of destruction. What is the problem? Someone is not going to tear up some paper and throw it away.” Then Artsvik Minasyan announced that their claim was quite clear. “Could it be found out one day that they destroyed archival materials that could reveal agency networks?” Which law defines the procedure for the destruction of confidential information? Taking advantage of the right to speak, Gegham Manukyan announced that with this, the NSS will have the opportunity to destroy the materials and documents that have ever been related to the persons who at some time cooperated with the National Security Service, therefore, in case of destruction of these materials, possible criminal prosecution against such persons will be excluded. The opposition MPs, complementing each other, raised objective questions, the public has a question: what is the serious justification for such a change, what is the reason that according to the law, the director of the NSS is given the right to destroy such documents, what is that? it happened that they decided to bring this project in the emergency mode, to report in a few minutes. “I don’t understand why you are now raising the issue of identifying agents, because if there are no agents, the special services cannot do anything regarding the destruction of documents,” wondered Andranik Kocharyan from the CP. in case of destruction of these materials, possible criminal prosecution against such persons will be excluded. The opposition MPs, complementing each other, raised objective questions, the public has a question: what is the serious justification for such a change, what is the reason that according to the law, the director of the NSS is given the right to destroy such documents, what is that? it happened that they decided to bring this project in the emergency mode, to report in a few minutes. “I don’t understand why you are now raising the issue of identifying agents, because if there are no agents, the special services cannot do anything regarding the destruction of documents,” wondered Andranik Kocharyan from the CP. in case of destruction of these materials, possible criminal prosecution against such persons will be excluded. The opposition MPs, complementing each other, raised objective questions, the public has a question: what is the serious justification for such a change, what is the reason that according to the law, the director of the NSS is given the right to destroy such documents, what is that? it happened that they decided to bring this project in the emergency mode, to report in a few minutes. “I don’t understand why you are now raising the issue of identifying agents, because if there are no agents, the special services cannot do anything regarding the destruction of documents,” wondered Andranik Kocharyan from the CP. were raising objective questions, the public is wondering what is the serious justification for such a change, what is the reason that according to the law the director of the NSS is given the right to destroy such documents, what happened that they decided to act urgently mode to bring this project, report in a few minutes. “I don’t understand why you are now raising the issue of identifying agents, because if there are no agents, the special services cannot do anything regarding the destruction of documents,” wondered Andranik Kocharyan from the CP. were raising objective questions, the public is wondering what is the serious justification for such a change, what is the reason that according to the law the director of the NSS is given the right to destroy such documents, what happened that they decided to act urgently mode to bring this project, report in a few minutes. “I don’t understand why you are now raising the issue of identifying agents, because if there are no agents, the special services cannot do anything regarding the destruction of documents,” wondered Andranik Kocharyan from the CP.

Addressing the opposition’s concerns in the final speech, NSS Deputy Director Andranik Simonyan expressed hope that none of them have a legal education. NA Vice President Ruben Rubinyan wanted to clarify. “In other words, with the new regulation, there will be no document that was previously impossible to destroy without declassification, but now it is possible.” Andranik Simonyan gave a positive answer. “Yes, there is nothing new.”

Rubinyan added: “I think we got the answer to an important question. I don’t understand why you were talking about agents for half an hour, and it was not clear which agents.” Before the voting of the bills, Artsvik Minasyan responded to the Deputy Director of the NSS. “There are many persons with legal education in our faction, including me. Unlike Mr. Simonyan, we received that education from high-ranking professors of YSU Faculty of Law, and with that strength we raise questions.

The Constitution stipulates that the authorizing norms must be clear enough, and that is what we spoke about.” Artsvik Minasyan faulted the official saying that he is distorting the facts. “The legal acts cited by Simonyan speak of destruction only after they are declassified. And with this wording, “declassification or destruction”, it turns out that the material can be destroyed without declassification.

By the way, the topic of these changes brought to the agenda opened up a field of discussions in the opposition circles yesterday, some expressed the opinion in private conversations that either Nikol Pashinyan has decided to leave in the near future, and before that he intends to clean up his tracks, or from the findings of foreign intelligence centers. afraid, they decided to eliminate some important materials.

Ամբողջական հոդվածը կարող եք կարդալ այս հասցեով՝ : https://hraparak-am.translate.goog/post/6a7bf40bec2fad72c51f769119a587a1?_x_tr_sl=hy&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=en&_x_tr_pto=nui,sc

© 2008 – 2021 «Հրապարակ օրաթերթ»

Hayka Aloyan,

Aram Vardevanyan, deputy of the “Hayastan” faction, announced today that he is resigning his parliamentary mandate and returning to the legal profession.

According to the news that reached us, the next candidate to enter the parliament on the list of the “Armenia” faction of the National Assembly is Ruben Melkonyan, Dean of the Faculty of Oriental Studies of YSU, Turkologist, Doctor of Sciences. However, our source said that Ruben Melkonyan is not going to take the deputy mandate and go to the National Assembly. However, in the conversation with us, he mentioned that there is still a lot of time and he will make a statement about his decision.

“There is still time, when it will be more specific, I will make an appropriate statement, I don’t want to say anything now,” said Melkonyan.

We tried to clarify whether he is more inclined to go to the parliament or whether he intends to refuse, to which the latter replied that when he presents an explanation to the public, then he will clearly justify his decision.

“I will say everything in the statement, let the time come, I will say everything. I think one more week will pass as it should, I think there is another one ahead of me, let the time come, let’s not be in a hurry. The important thing is that being in office is never a priority for me and I have to serve my state and homeland, and I am ready to serve where I can give more benefit,” said Melkonyan.
And can the National Assembly become just such a place, where it is possible to give more benefit, Melkonyan dodged again, urging to wait until he makes a statement.

HG: Indeed, the next, transient number on the list of the “Armenia” alliance is Rima Ghazaryan, who is on the 36th position, and is a doctor-internist at the “Vanadzor Medical Center”. However, they say in the bloc that Ruben Melkonyan’s candidacy will most likely be discussed. 

Ամբողջական հոդվածը կարող եք կարդալ այս հասցեով՝ : https://hraparak-am.translate.goog/post/31f41f8dabd1195a4094843b5441ce9f?_x_tr_sl=hy&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=en&_x_tr_pto=nui,sc

© 2008 – 2021 «Հրապարակ օրաթերթ»