The trial of the case of the beneficiary of “Veles” NGO Gayane Tumasyan will be heard on 14.03.2017, at 15:00 pm, at the Court of First Instance of Armavir marz (Judge Vahe Khalatyan)
You can get acquainted with Tumasyan’s case here.
http://veles.am/en/gayane_tumasyan_case/
On March 15, at 12:00, the Court of First Instance of Kentron and Nork-Marash Administrative Districts (Judge Mnatsakan Martirosyan) will examine the fabricated criminal case against human rights defender Marina Poghosyan.
Please attend the trial and cover it, thus contributing to the transparency and objectivity of the investigation.
The trial of the case of the beneficiary of “Veles” NGO David Stepanyan will be heard on 14.03.2017, at 10:30 am, at the Court of First Instance of Kentron and Nork-Marash Administrative Districts (Judge Mesrop Makyan)
You can get acquainted with Stepanyan’s case here.
International Women’s Day (IWD), originally called International Working Women’s Day, is celebrated on March 8 every year.It commemorates the struggle for women’s rights.
The earliest Women’s Day observance was held on February 28, 1909, in New York and organized by the Socialist Party of America.On March 8, 1917, in the capital of Russian Empire, Petrograd, a demonstration of women textile workers began, covering the whole city. This was the beginning of the Russian Revolution.Seven days later, the Emperor of Russia Nicholas II abdicated and the provisional Government granted women the right to vote. March 8 was declared a national holiday in the Soviet Russia in 1917. The day was predominantly celebrated by the socialist movement and communist countries until it was adopted in 1975 by the United Nations.
The earliest organized Women’s Day observance was held on February 28, 1909, in New York. It was organized by the Socialist Party of America in remembrance of the 1908 strike of the International Ladies Garment Worker’s Union. There was no strike on March 8, despite later claims.
In August 1910, an International Women’s Conference was organized to precede the general meeting of the Socialist Second International in Copenhagen, Denmark. Inspired in part by the American socialists, German Socialist Luise Zietz proposed the establishment of an annual International Woman’s Day (singular) and was seconded by fellow socialist and later communist leader Clara Zetkin, although no date was specified at that conference. Delegates (100 women from 17 countries) agreed with the idea as a strategy to promote equal rights including suffrage for women. The following year on March 19, 1911 IWD was marked for the first time, by over a million people in Austria, Denmark, Germany and Switzerland. In the Austro-Hungarian Empire alone, there were 300 demonstrations. In Vienna, women paraded on the Ringstrasse and carried banners honouring the martyrs of the Paris Commune. Women demanded that they be given the right to vote and to hold public office. They also protested against employment sex discrimination. Americans continued to celebrate National Women’s Day on the last Sunday in February.
Female members of the Australian Builders Labourers Federation march on International Women’s Day 1975 in Sydney
In 1913 Russian women observed their first International Women’s Day on the last Saturday in February (by Julian calendar then used in Russia).
Although there were some women-led strikes, marches, and other protests in the years leading up to 1914, none of them happened on March 8.In 1914 International Women’s Day was held on March 8, possibly because that day was a Sunday, and now it is always held on March 8 in all countries. The 1914 observance of the Day in Germany was dedicated to women’s right to vote, which German women did not win until 1918.
In London there was a march from Bow to Trafalgar Square in support of women’s suffrage on March 8, 1914. Sylvia Pankhurst was arrested in front of Charing Cross station on her way to speak in Trafalgar Square.
The United Nations began celebrating in International Women’s Day in the International Women’s Year, 1975. In 1977, the United Nations General Assembly invited member states to proclaim March 8 as the UN Day for women’s rights and world peace.
On March 6, at 15:00, the Court of First Instance of Kentron and Nork-Marash Administrative Districts (Judge Mnatsakan Martirosyan) will examine the fabricated criminal case against human rights defender Marina Poghosyan.
Please attend the trial and cover it, thus contributing to the transparency and objectivity of the investigation.
A Vietnamese court sentenced on Wednesday two former executives of a state-owned firm to death for what local media estimates is the largest embezzlement scandal in the nation.
A Vinashin Ship (Photo: Christopher Michel CC BY 2.0)A Hanoi court found the former CEO of the Vinashin shipbuilding firm, Tran Van Liem, and sales manager, Giang Kim Dat, guilty of embezzling US$ 11.38 million from the firm and ordered that the money be returned.
The pair abused their executive positions to steal company assets and conspired with business partners to fix the prices of ships acquired in the late 2000s.
Vinashin’s chief accountant received a life sentence for embezzlement, and Dat’s father also was sentenced to 12 years for money laundering.
Although Dat has embezzled the largest sum, Liem was determined to be the ringleader.
This scandal emerged in 2010 after Vinashin had acquired a debt of $4.5 billion and defaulted on a $600 million foreign loan.
Liem, along with eight other officials, was originally sentenced to 19 years jail time for failing to stop the embezzlement in 2012.
However further investigation revealed that not only did he not stop the embezzlement, but he was one of the chief beneficiaries.
Dat fled the country in 2010 but was brought back to face trial in 2015.
https://www.occrp.org/en/daily/6116-vietnam-death-sentence-for-corrupt-executives
Zero Discrimination Day aims to celebrate individuality, inclusion and human rights while promoting tolerance, compassion and peace. Discrimination refers to the selective practice of unfairly treating a person or a group of people differently than others due multiple factors such as religion, gender, race, sexuality, age and disability amongst others. Despite laws and education, discrimination continues to be a wide-spread problem throughout the world.
Zero Discrimination Day was first celebrated by UNAIDS, the United Nations‘ HIV/AIDS Program, in December of 2013. The following year, the UN and other global organizations officially celebrated the day on March 1st, 2014 in an effort to promote everyone’s right to live a full life with dignity regardless of age, gender, sexuality, nationality, ethnicity, skin color, height, weight, profession, education, and beliefs.
It should start from the top: ‘And to reach that top, we need a political will’
The fact that corruption is evil and it hinders Armenia’s development is admitted by everyone, be it opposition, NGOs, government and international organizations that provide funds for combating corruption.
This fight is manifested in high-profile revelations, arrests and legislative amendments. However, according to Sona Ayvazyan, Executive Director of Transparency International Anti-Corruption Center (TIAC), that’s hardly enough.
In her words, if those corruption revelations had been accompanied by the arrests not merely in the lower branches of power, then it would have been possible to think that there is a real anti-corruption fight underway: ‘It can’t be regarded as an ongoing fight against corruption, not until the prosecution mechanisms are activated.”
Several cases were solved by the National Security Service within the last month. One of them involved large-scale extortion under the pretext of bribing a judge as part of the criminal case. The matter concerns an attempt to interfere in the proceedings and ensure a favorable verdict to a defendant through the judge. Approximately US$8,000 were demanded in exchange for the aforesaid.
In another criminal case, the materials were prepared on abuse of official powers by a police officer, who, under various pretexts, was dragging the process of restituting the lost military service record card and demanded a bribe amounting to US$200 to allegedly speed up the process.
The National Security Service’s (NSS) report on 3 Armenian universities issuing fake diplomas to the graduates also evoked a wide public response.
However, according to Varuzhan Hoktanian, TIAC Project Director, the aforesaid revelations are not enough to efficiently combat corruption, since anti-corruption fight should start from the top: ‘And to reach that top, we need a political will. But since there is a lack of it, what is actually going on now can be regarded as a show.’
He noted that the NSS recently solved the case in the social welfare field. As a result, several high-ranking officials of the Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs, including the Head of Medical and Social Expertise Agency Armen Soghoyan, were arrested. Overall 12 officials were involved in the case.
According to the NSS, when defining the disability degree, Armen Soghoyan-led agency was accepting bribes amounting to AMD 20,000-40,000 (about US$40-80). Certain portion of the amount earned by the medical committee chairmen was regularly transferred to the agency chief, Soghoyan.
Varuzhan Hoktanian reminded that prior to Armen Soghoyan, this position was held by Mikael Vanyan, who was dismissed in October 2012, after some corruption risks had been exposed in his agency. In the expert’s opinion, the preconditions for recurrence of crime are much deeper and punishment is no longer an effective solution:
“If a crime reoccurs in the same agency of the same field, it means that what took place was actually a show rather than a fight against corruption. I’m not saying that people shouldn’t be arrested, but that’s hardly enough. What we need is prevention. Punishments are not the only means of combatting corruption.”
Karen Zadoyan, President of the Armenian Young Lawyers Association (AYLA), believes that an independent body should be set up to ensure effective fight against corruption, because the current situation poses ‘a serious threat to national security.’
Armenia has the Anti-Corruption Council, that was set up during former Prime Minister Hovik Abrahamyan’s term in office and later transferred to the incumbent Premier, Karen Karapetyan. It comprises high-rank officials, including the general prosecutor, justice minister, finance minister, as well as the Anti-Corruption Coalition.
Establishment of the aforesaid Council caused wide public outcry, because it included such high-ranking officials, who, in the opinion of social and political circles, were not far from that process themselves and the number of medial publications and their property declarations testified to that: while they were holding those posts, their family members were setting up huge businesses and, consequently they can’t be fighting corruption. Therefore, experts believe that this fight against corruption is ‘artificial’ to some extent.
On a side note, the U.S. Ambassador to Armenia, Richard Mills, recently stated about inefficiency of the Anti-Corruption Council’s activity. As he pointed out, only 2,5% of the initially intended sum was transferred to the Council’s account, since it hadn’t shown as much progress as expected.
The Armenian authorities assure that the Armenian government spares no efforts to combat corruptio and that the developed strategy is being gradually implemented. According to the Armenian Deputy Justice Minister, Suren Krmoyan, the executive government tries to apply some innovative methods in its fight against corruption:
“We are using our human resources and electronic tools to form possibly transparent and integrated management which will help eliminate the risks of bribe-taking. And there are high risks in such areas as: education, health, police and tax authorities. Consequently, we are targeting these very areas, as a matter of priority.”
There will be no corruption in Armenia when every fourth citizen or his/her family members stops giving bribes, when people start openly discussing problems. On a side note, the public opinion poll in 2016 revealed that 67% of respondents would not have reported corruption cases, if they had witnessed them. Aghasi Tadevosyan, an ethnographer, says the reason lies in the people’s mindset:
“The majority of Armenians, who are involved in a corruption chain, don’t even realize that they are committing a crime. They understand that it’s illegal, but they perceive it as being part of daily relations. They don’t regard it as a bribe, but rather a ‘favor’ and ‘gratitude for one’s help.’ An official, who has helped to settle some issue, is presented gifts, given ‘kickbacks’ and sometimes laid festive tables.”
In the ethnographer’s opinion, the citizens find it easier to solve their problems through corrupt processes rather than though the legal means.
According to the ethnographer, corruption in Armenia should be eradicated from the ‘top’, and this requires political will: ‘The problem will exist as long as people seek power in order to enjoy the fruits of corruption.’
The trial of the case of the beneficiary of “Veles” NGO David Stepanyan will be heard on 23.02.2017, at 10:30 am, at the Court of First Instance of Kentron and Nork-Marash Administrative Districts (Judge Mesrop Makyan)
You can get acquainted with Stepanyan’s case here.
