Tankian: It’s apparent that Azeris had the weapon of surprise

April 3, 2016 By administrator

default5 Although both Armenia and Azerbaijan claim each other as aggressors, it’s obvious that the Azeris had the weapon of surprise on their side, American-Armenian musician Serj Tankian, who is lead singer of the world-renowned American Armenian rock band System of a Down, wrote on his Facebook page.

According to Tankian, there have been three developments this week on the Nagorno-Karabagh resolution effort ”that have led to what seem to be a very distributing all out war on the border of Nagorno-Karabagh and Azerbaijan”.

”1. [Recognition od Nagorno-Karabakh independence by Hawaii] may have led Azerbaijan to believe that time is against them in the eventual recognition of the Republic of Karabagh. 2. A meeting with U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and Vice President Joe Biden with Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev (a corrupt despot who inherited the oil rich regime from his father) hours before the resumption of violence, may have given Aliyev the feeling that the U.S. would condone his outright aggression to seize Karabagh. 3. A meeting in Switzerland between the presidents of Armenia and Azerbaijan over last weekend,” Tankian wrote.

”Although both sides claim the other as aggressors, for me it’s obvious that the Azeris had the weapon of surprise on their side and went in with full armaments immediately and claim to have taken over land. Kissing the ass of oil should not have produced war, right ? Wrong,” he said.

5 Azeri tanks encircled tonight by Armenians near Martakert, Azerbaijan has lost more than 200 soldiers today

April 2, 2016 By administrator

arton124073-480x316 This Saturday night, while the fighting continues, 5 Azeri tanks are caught between the Armenian lines to Mardakert northeast border of Nagorno-Karabakh by the Russian agency Interfax based on information of the Armenian Defense Ministry .

According to him, Armenians are trying to recover these 5 tanks. otherwise we learned from various sources that the Armenian Azeri casualties would amount to more than 200 soldiers killed on the line of contact of Nagorno Karabakh on Saturday 2nd April.

Nothing in the village of Talish, a commando of 30 Azeri military was neutralized by Armenian forces. Azerbaijan would use missile batteries MM21 (Grad) fired against Armenian positions but also on civilian residential areas. Armenians say they also destroyed three tanks, two military helicopters and 2 unmanned aerial vehicles.

Krikor Amirzayan

KARABAKH An Armenian Azeri victim of a shooting in Artsakh

March 18, 2016 By administrator

arton123359-480x321 The Defense Ministry of Nagorno Karabakh said that Artyom Varderesyan (born 1996), defense forces of Artsakh, was killed by a shot from the Azeri positions on 17 March. The survey Armenian side on the circumstances of the shooting is in progress. The Ministry of Defense of Artsakh sent condolences to the family and relatives of the fallen soldier, who was a volunteer. The Azerbaijani side has more than 400 times

Two Azeri Soldiers Killed as Karabakh Counters Attacks

March 12, 2016 By administrator

STEPANAKERT—Nagorno-Karabakh Republic Armed Forces repelled an attack by Azerbaijani soldiers late Thursday night, during which two Azerbaijani soldiers were killed, reported the Artsakh Defense Ministry.

The frontline divisions of the Artsakh Defense Army were quick to spot the Azerbaijani advances and forced them to retreat.

The Azerbaijani soldiers fired more than 5,500 rounds in the direction of the Armenian positions on March 10 and 11, using artillery weapons of different caliber, as well as 60 and 82 mm mortars, RPG-7 and HAN-17 grenades, and howitzers.

Azatutyun.am reported on Friday that Karabakh military authorities have warned Baku against further escalating the situation at the volatile line of contact after accusing Azerbaijani forces of targeting, for the first time since the 1994 ceasefire, positions deep inside Stepanakert-controlled territory with artillery fire.

The Defense Ministry of Nagorno-Karabakh issued a statement on Friday, claiming that its advanced units managed to repulse another commando raid attempted by Azerbaijani forces overnight, killing two and wounding several Azerbaijani troops. It said Armenian forces sustained no losses in the engagement.

It further suggested that Azerbaijan’s armed forces fired 5,500 shots from firearms of different calibers and also used mortars of different calibers and gun-howitzers to shell Armenian positions on March 10-11.

“It is remarkable that last night the enemy used artillery fire not only against Armenian positions located in the direction of Akna (Aghdam), but also territories that are located at quite a distance from the line of contact. This is unprecedented since the signing of a ceasefire agreement in May 1994. One can draw one conclusion from this: the adversary has adopted a tactic aimed at destabilizing the situation in the conflict zone, which is fraught with unpredictable consequences,” the Nagorno-Karabakh Defense Ministry said.

“In order to suppress the activity of the enemy advanced units of the Defense Army resorted to purposeful punitive measures. Armenian forces confidently control the situation along the entire perimeter of the frontline.”

Earlier, the military authorities in Stepanakert also denied reports in Azerbaijani media that Armenian armed forces fired at civilians in Azerbaijan’s Aghdam district.

Meanwhile, Armenian Defense Ministry spokesman Artsrun Hovannisian denied Azerbaijani reports about Armenian casualties in recent days. Azerbaijan claims up to 15 Armenian servicemen were killed and some Armenian military equipment was destroyed by Azerbaijani forces in the conflict zone in recent days. Baku also accuses the Armenian side of violating the truce.

Talking to RFE/RL’s Armenian Service (Azatutyun.am), Hovannisian linked the latest escalation of tensions in the Karabakh conflict zone with the March 10 meeting of Armenian President Serzh Sarkisian with his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin in Moscow during which the two leaders also discussed issued related to the Karabakh settlement process.

“Azerbaijan always escalates the situation at around the time of such high-level meetings,” he said, denying reports about some Armenian positions in Karabakh being seized by Azerbaijani forces.

The current escalation comes amid stalled internationally mediated negotiations between Armenia and Azerbaijan aimed at finding a peaceful solution to the protracted dispute.

President Sarkisian and his Azerbaijani counterpart Ilham Aliyev last met in Bern, Switzerland, in December for talks organized by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe’s Minsk Group and its American, Russian and French co-chairs. The meeting brought little calm to the region where dozens of soldiers on both sides are killed annually in ceasefire violations.

Ukraine fighter admits combating on Azeris’ side in Karabakh war

March 10, 2016 By administrator

Mama Tanya, a member of volunteer battalions fighting alongside Ukraine’s army said in one of The Guardian’s recent projects that the war in Ukraine isn’t the first one she has participated in, the other being the Nagorno Karabakh war, the news agency reports.

In the 1990s she was living with her husband in Azerbaijan and served as a medic during the Nagorno Karabakh conflict.

Her experience and committed nationalism has drawn her into the war in eastern Ukraine, where her task is to administer first aid and pull wounded soldiers out of battlefields during special operations.

The volunteer battalions are known for being fearless on the battlefield. They also have a reputation for fierce nationalism and far-right views. One of these units is the assault battalion Aidar, based in the town of Shchastya, whose members have been accused of human rights abuses by Amnesty International. What is less known is that the volunteers include several women among their ranks – some working as medics and support staff but others in active combat roles.

Financial crisis in Azerbaijan: One Azeri is immolated, indebted by the devaluation of the manat

January 9, 2016 By administrator

arton120718-480x297 Direct effect of the financial crisis in Azerbaijan. A Neftchala a man of 63, Ali Navrouzov January 7 attempted to commit suicide in front of the school where he worked setting fire to his clothes impregnated with oil. The man committed this act of desperation as a result of the devaluation of the Azerbaijani manat currency, it could no longer pay its debts. The manat has been devalued by almost a third of its value by the Central Bank of Azerbaijan who could no longer support its currency. A. Navrouzov protested because he could not repay the loan is from a bank. With severe burns he was the unfortunate man was hospitalized.

Krikor Amirzayan

Azeri oil rig fire kills 32 workers in Caspian Sea – report

December 5, 2015 By administrator

A major fire has broken out on an offshore oil platform in Azerbaijan’s waters. While no official casualty count was immediately available, an independent report indicated that the disaster claimed 32 lives.

The ongoing rescue operation is hampered by stormy weather with waves rising up to 11 meters high, Trend news website reported.

The fire started overnight at a rig at the Gunashli field southeast of Neft Daşları (Oil Rocks) settlement. It was caused by strong winds that damaged a gas pipeline on the platform, the Azeri state energy company SOCAR said.

The independent Oil Workers’ Rights Protection Committee told Reuters that 32 platform workers were killed in the blaze and 42 rescued. The numbers were not immediately confirmed by SOCAR. The Azeri news agency ARA reported that 63 people worked on the rig, which doesn’t match the numbers provided by the independent committee.

Rescuers reported saving 32 people from the platform, but didn’t confirm any deaths.

In a separate incident in the area, the storm waves hit a small house near e Caspian shore with three people inside who remain missing, according to the news website Day.Az.

Azeri Journalist Writing for Armenian Newspaper Receives Death Threats, Forced to Live Abroad

November 5, 2015 By administrator

BY VERA TAN
FROM GLOBAL JOURNALIST

Azerbaijan-born journalist and blogger Arzu Geybullayeva has written for major news outlets like Foreign Policy and al-Jazeera. Yet it’s her work for Agos, a Turkish-Armenian newspaper, that has led to threats from her native land.

Azerbaijan and neighboring Armenia do not have diplomatic relations. The former Soviet republics have fought periodic border skirmishes since a 1994 ceasefire suspended a war over Nagorno-Karabakh, a Rhode Island-sized enclave within Azeri borders that is populated mainly by ethnic Armenians.

For the Istanbul-based Geybullayeva, the criticism of her work for Agos began with small Azeri outlets, and spread to Azerbaijan’s state-owned media. Eventually Geybullayeva, who frequently blogs about human rights in Azerbaijan, received death threats online. By 2014 she realized it was no longer safe for her to return to her home country.

That year the Azeri government of President Ilham Aliyev unleashed a crackdown on the media. Among other incidents, the government arrested Khadija Ismayilova, an Azeri journalist who investigated corruption in Aliyev’s family. Ilgar Nasibov, a journalist and human rights activist, was beaten unconscious in what his wife told local media was likely an attack by Azerbaijan’s Interior Ministry.

Among the tactics the Azeri government has used against Geybullayeva is to apply pressure to her family in Azerbaijan, a strategy it has used againstother journalists and dissidents. Geybullayeva, 32, spoke with Global Journalist’s Vera Tan about press freedom in Azerbaijan and why she continues to write despite the risks.

Global Journalist: How did you know you wouldn’t be able to return to Azerbaijan safely?

Geybullayeva: I started to get mentioned in the news a lot more than I should have been mentioned. I was mostly labeled as a traitor because of my work [writing about] , and also because of my work with Agos.

Global Journalist: When did you start fearing for your life?

Geybullayeva: It was October [2014] when I received my first death threat – he told me [online] about the number of days I had left, he told me the exact location I’d be buried. I obviously realized that going home was out of the question because when you’re labeled a traitor, it’s quite a serious accusation…You realize that once you get labeled and such, it’s not really safe to go back, especially when a lot of people were ending up in prison at the time.

GJ: How long did the threats continue?

Geybullayeva: To be honest with you, some of them I stopped reading. It got to me, psychologically. And to me, what really pissed me off was when it went from being against me to against my family. People started calling my mom a whore, people started calling my father a traitor. When someone calls you a whore or a bitch, or imagines the many ways that want to rape you, that’s one thing, but when this imagination extends to your parents and the things that they imagine doing to your mother, for instance, I really think that’s borderline. At least it was for me.

GJ: Your brother has been threatened due to your work. How has that made you feel?

Geybullayeva: I try not to blame myself for the pressure and the stuff that he had to go through… But of course I do feel the responsibility… I so very clearly remember our conversation when – this was last summer – he called me yet again, and he was yelling on the phone, telling me how sick and tired he is of my writing and my work and then he told me that I should publicly apologize for my mistakes. He called my work a mistake… And it got to me.

But after that, I thought, no. I’m not going to write anything anywhere and to apologize for anything because I haven’t done anything wrong. And if it really does bother him, then I decided to tell him that he should disown me, that he should publicly disown me… And I think that sort of pushed his boundaries to actually realize that I am actually family.

GJ: How is it to live in Turkey knowing you can’t go back to Azerbaijan?

Geybullayeva: You really start understanding what freedom really is and what it really means in various circumstances. It makes me feel really sad because I cannot travel back to Azerbaijan, because I cannot visit my father’s grave, and I can’t visit my friends, but it definitely gives me the space and opportunity to do the work that I do.

GJ: Why do you still continue the work that you do?

Geybullayeva: I’ve always felt privileged. I’ve had the comfort of life that not everyone in Azerbaijan had… and I feel like I’m returning a favor to my upbringing by trying to tell the stories of those who did not or do not or will not have the same privileges… I sometimes wonder if it actually is making a difference, because to me it’s sometimes feels like it’s actually making matters worse, and more people get arrested, but then I also realize that if we keep silent then it’s even worse.

Already I see that people don’t know much about Azerbaijan. That is despite all the advancing that’s taking place in the sidelines, so what if people like me shut up? What if we stop doing the work that we do? Then what? I think that would not be me doing justice to my peers back home. Because I owe them at least a fight.

LOS ANGELES: Councilman Krekorian Urges Congress to Stand Against Azeri Aggression and Save Armenian Lives

October 27, 2015 By administrator

Los Angeles City Councilman Paul Krekorian

LOS ANGELES- In response to the recent escalation of violence and war threats by the government of Azerbaijan against Armenians in Artsakh and the Republic of Armenia, Councilmember Paul Krekorian, the first Armenian-American elected to public office in the City of Los Angeles, urged U.S. Congressional leaders to take immediate action to save Armenian lives. In an recent letter to Southern California Congressmembers, Krekorian asked leaders to sign the Royce-Engel letter and hold Azerbaijan accountable for its crimes, refrain from further violence and take measures toward establishing a lasting peace in the region. Krekorian’s letter is attached and reprinted below:

Dear Congressmember:
As you know, more than 20 years after Artsakh’s declaration of independence and the ceasefire in its subsequent war with Azerbaijan, ongoing tension in the Caucasus region continues to devastate innocent lives and threaten regional stability. In particular, the Republic of Azerbaijan has engaged in both increasingly bellicose rhetoric and an increasing willingness to engage in active violence in violation of the ceasefire agreement.

In the past few weeks, for example, Azerbaijan’s shelling of villages in the Tavoush region of Armenia has killed numerous civilians, including 83-year-old Paytsar Aghajanyan, Sona Revazyan, 41, and Shoushan Asadryan, 94, along with at least four Armenian soldiers. Many other innocent civilians have been wounded in separate unprovoked attacks. Shellings like these, as well as cross-border killings by Azeri snipers, have taken countless lives of civilian men, women and children.

The response from our government has been pathetically weak. U.S. Ambassador and OSCE Minsk Group Co-Chair James Warlick has said that both sides should refrain from violence, but the United States refuses to state clearly that there is only one state that continues to be the predominant aggressor and provocateur, and that is Azerbaijan.

Any statement of moral equivalence in the face of continued aggression by the government of Azerbaijan is not an acceptable way forward. It could give the world the perception that the U.S. government sees no difference between the perpetrators of violence and the victims. Our government has an obligation to stand on the right side of this issue and should not give Baku cover for their crimes against the Armenian people in Artsakh and in the Republic of Armenia.

I urge you to join so many of your colleagues in signing the Royce-Engel letter, calling for a transition away from a failed policy of false parity to a constructive, accountability-based approach to peacekeeping. Renewed U.S. leadership in keeping the peace along the Nagorno Karabakh line of contact is absolutely necessary as Azerbaijan steps up its attacks.

This sensible, bipartisan letter proposes three concrete steps to help save lives, avert war, and reach a just and lasting peace:

1. An agreement from all sides not to deploy snipers along the line of contact;
2. The placement of OSCE-monitored, advanced gunfire-locator systems and sound-ranging equipment to determine the source of attacks along the line of contact; and
3. The deployment of additional OSCE observers along the line of contact to better monitor cease-fire violations.
Armenia has already agreed to abide by these principles, but the Aliyev regime continues to refuse to do so.

Please sign the Royce-Engel letter today. Azerbaijan’s unprovoked attacks will continue unless we stand together for justice and peace. The government of Azerbaijan must honor its OSCE obligations to refrain from violence and to undertake confidence-building measures toward a lasting peace.

Thank you for your attention to this critical issue. I am confident that your leadership will make a material difference in helping to prevent the destructive slide toward a new war.

Very truly yours,
PAUL KREKORIAN
Los Angeles City Councilmember
Second District

Azeri military base, 5 soldiers destroyed in Armenia’s retaliation

September 25, 2015 By administrator

Armenian troops retaliated to Azeri shelling of Armenian villages in the province of Tavush. At least 5 Azerbaijani soldiers were destroyed in the counterattack, with another 5 injured, Panorama.am reports.

Azerbaijani military base, located on the hills opposite to Armenian village of Paravakar was also destroyed.

The Armenian village of Paravakar in Tavush province was shelled by Azerbaijani armed forces Thursday, September 24.

A village resident, Paytsar Aghajanyan was deadly wounded, the chief of Paravakar, Roland Margaryan told PanARMENIAN.net.

Other border villages were also bombarded: Sona Revazyan (born in 1974) and Shushan Asatryan (born in 1921) were killed in the border village of Berdavan.

The Armenian military warned about retaliatory measures, “with Azerbaijani military-political authorities to bear the entire responsibility for the consequences.”