Tag: armenia

Crackdown on the Church ‘Beginning of the End’ for Armenia’s Pashinyan: Academic

The Armenian government’s clampdown on the Church and opposition is growing wider, targeting an archbishop, deacons and scores of opposition activists in a wave of mass arrests this week. Sputnik asked a local academic to help get to the bottom of just what’s taking place in Armenia.

“This person [Pashinyan, ed.] does not understand the psychology of the people. He only knows that they can be intimidated. But he doesn’t understand that this can be done once, twice, [and only to] part of the people,” Aikazun Alvrtsyan, director of the Center for the Study of Armenian Issues in Western Armenia, said, commenting on the wave of repression.

“When you go against the Church, against everything holy that the Armenian people have,” it cannot end well. “This is the beginning of the end for this government,” Alvrtsyan stressed, commenting on the events, which began with the detention of Russian-Armenian businessman Samvel Karapetyan, and has now escalated to arrests of leading Church figures.

“The Church plays a special role in our lives. This prime minister has declared himself prime minister only in the Republic of Armenia, and is afraid of the authority of the Church and the Catholicos” and priests in general, whose authority among the people is “very great,” Alvrtsyan explained.

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Burial of Two Infants Found Under Dragon Stone At Prehistoric Armenia Site

An international team of scientists has unearthed the remains of two infants buried beneath a basalt monument known as a dragon stone at the Lchashen site in Armenia. This finding is remarkable not only for the unusual funerary context but also for the exceptional preservation of the remains, and the genetic information gleaned from said funeral. 

Dragon Stones: A Study in Armenian Folklore and Animal Motifs 

Dragon stones, or Vishapakar, are prehistoric basalt stelae adorned with animal images, primarily found in the Armenian Highlands and surrounding regions. These structures have long fascinated archaeologists due to their mysterious iconography and complex history of use and reuse, as per a new study published in The Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports.  

Approximately 150 dragon stones have been documented, with more than ninety located in the Republic of Armenia and the rest in neighboring regions. These monoliths vary in height, ranging from about 150 to 550 cm (59 – 216.5 inches). 

Archaeologists have identified three types of dragon stones: those with carvings resembling fish (piscis), those depicting the remains of bovids such as goats, sheep, and cows (vellus), and hybrid dragon stones that combine features of both types. 

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Israel’s Other War: Ethnic Cleansing in the South Caucasus

Over the past month, legacy and social media have been saturated with reports of the Netanyahu regime’s war on Gaza, which is being met with growing calls from the international community to invoke the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.

Less known, however, is the role the Israeli government has played in another genocide that took place in West Asia only a month and a half ago. This genocide, little noted in the Western press, involved the ancient Christian community of Armenians in Nagorno-Karabakh, known within Armenia as the Republic of Artsakh, that was ethnically cleansed by the Ilham Aliyev, the Shia dictator of Azerbaijan, in late September and early October. The muted response to Azerbaijan’s crime might plausibly be chalked up to the strength of its well-funded and influential lobby in Washington which profits off of the oil and gas revenue generated by SOCAR, the State Oil Company of the Azerbaijan Republic. SOCAR has links to the Podesta Group (co-founder John Podesta currently serves as a senior adviser to President Biden), lobbying powerhouse BGR Government Affairs, LLC, as well as numerous think tanks and academics associated with, among others, The Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) and the American Foreign Policy Council.

Yet another reason for the subdued response by Washington is the well documented ‘special relationship’ between the 51st US state, Israel, and Azerbaijan. A discussion I had last week with the Armenian academic Dr. Benyamin Poghosyan, who serves as Chairman of the Center for Political and Economic Strategic Studies and Senior Research Fellow on Foreign Policy at the Applied Policy Research Institute (APRI) of Armenia, shed some light on the role the Israeli government and its defense industry has played in enabling Azerbaijan – and why.

The relationship between the two countries began to deepen around 15 years ago when Azerbaijan, flush with revenue from its oil and gas deposits in the Caspian basin, began looking to purchase advanced weapons systems.

According to Poghosyan, “as late as September 2023, just before the most recent Azerbaijani attackseveral cargo planes went to Israel and came back to Azerbaijan full of weapons. And there is even information that Israel continued to supply weapons to Azerbaijan even after October 7th.”

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