“During the war, our nation won the right to live in freedom, and we should be able to keep that,” said Commander of the Nagorno Karabakh Defense Forces and Defense Minister Major-General Seyran Ohanyan.
If your roots are in Togh, or you are in any way connected to Togh, you can be sure that you are mentioned in Petros Ghahriyan's book. Petros Dayi (Uncle Petros) is the author of the chronicles of Togh, and one of the most respected people in the village. His word is law.
The village of Togh is proud of its heroes--Vigen Grigoryan, Armen Gasparyan, Arkady Ter-Tadevosyan, Ashot Khachatryan, Robert Sarkissyan, Susanna Balayan, and others. Not all of them are alive today. The village lost thirty-two people to the war.
Businessman Levon Hayrapetyan finds it hard to say which is the most important region among the five regions of the Nagorno Karabakh Republic, but the war led him toward some new revelations.
“I don't know what to do - whether to have the sixth one, or not,” mused Nune Poghosyan, a 33-year old resident of the village of Azokh.
Once in the 1960's, the cave in the village of Azokh in the Hadrut region was surrounded by Azerbaijani policemen sent here from Baku for some six months.
More that 340 people of Hadrut Region fell victims during the Artsakh war. Nearly 30% of its area has been ruined and burnt several times, but the people of Hadrut liberated itself through heavy sufferings.
On August 14, the 12-year-old Mariam Dolukhanian stood by the spring of Azokh village of Hadrut Region for 3 hours. This day differed with nothing from other days spent in Azokh.
Arkady Arzumanian finds it hard to say exactly which generation of the Arzumanyans living in Togh community he actually belongs to.
Nineteen years ago historian Hayk Hakobyan had no idea that he was standing above an entire complex of pagan temples. In 1987 he and a group of archaeologists arrived in the village of Hoghmik in the Amasia region to study the area before the construction of the Kaps reservoir began.
In a closed-door session on March 3, the Military and Criminal Court of Appeal extended by two months the prison terms of Royal Armenia ltd. co-owner Gagik Hakobyan and vice-president Aram Ghazaryan.
"A citizen of the Republic of Armenia cannot simultaneously be a citizen of another country." This is the second part of Article 14 of the current Constitution, which categorically denies dual citizenship.
In just a few days, on November 27 th , the citizens of the Republic of Armenia are to say "yes" or "no" to a draft containing amendments to the principal legal document of the country, the Constitution.
I didn't know that they loved me so much at the bottom of their hearts," Armenian President Robert Kocharyan proclaimed at a November 3 rd meeting with students at Yerevan State University's law department.
Not many people in Armenia know about the Bay Area Friends of Armenia (BAFA, www.bafa.org), an organization established by Armenian-American orthopedist François Antounian, despite the fact that the organization has undertaken many projects.
According to Tigran Farmanyan, the editor-in-chief of the only government-subsidized newspaper, Hayastani Hanrapetutyun , "There is freedom of speech in Armenia-even in the USA the press is not as free, but in Armenia there is no independent press." By independence, Faramanyan means financial independence.
"In 1953 they took from us all the documents related to our homes and told us that in the near future we would get new apartments. But this near future never arrived, and we have been left with no rights," say the people here.
"May God give you so much money that it pours out your windows and the neighbors collect it," is the toast made over and over again in various formulations on Tatevik Chiloyan's eighteenth birthday. It makes sense that the toastmakers were Tatevik's neighbors in Kond. People there can't forget about their difficult conditions, even on special occasions.
"Yes, I have committed theft, but I didn't steal from my neighbors. I have only stolen from the state, because the state has turned me into a pauper," says Anahit Chiloyan, a resident of 148 Kond, not promising not to do it again.
"For two years now our family has been under siege. People we were friends with for forty disappeared over night; our telephone doesn't ring, no one cares about us," says Ludmila Bojolyan, the wife of Murad Bojolyan, an orientalist who was convicted of high treason and given a ten-year sentence.
Last January and February, Armenians were in the spotlight in California , featured in broadcasts by ABC and NBC, the largest US TV networks.
"I don't understand all the uproar about the Hrazdan gorge. Nothing serious has been built there. A few establishments can't damage the environment," said Narek Sarkissian, chief architect of Yerevan, in response to our inquiry about the construction work underway in the Hrazdan gorge.