Happy New Year
With 2008 almost upon us, it’s time once again for me to wish readers a Happy New Year. Under normal circumstances I’d also announce that the number of posts will be less as a result, but with the presidential election in Georgia a matter of days away, that hardly seems likely. On the other hand, with parliamentary elections held in Armenia in May earlier this year and the unofficial pre-election campaign starting at the end of 2006, perhaps the situation is not too dissimilar to that this blog found itself in a year ago when the situation was almost as hectic as it is now.
Then, no sooner had Karabakh war veteran Zhirayr Sefilyan been detained on coup charges just before the New Year holidays, and with ethnic Armenian journalist and editor Hrant Dink shot dead in Istanbul in January, there was hardly time to relax and take a break at all. In March 2007, I also visited Kutaisi for the Newport Kutaisi Association and EveryChild to document social work and deinstitutionalization in Georgia’s second largest city.
Various articles and photo essays for EurasiaNet continued along with the publication of a feature story on the return of the Mkhitarist Fathers to Armenia for CNEWA One magazine in May. Soon after returning to Armenia, the a period of mourning followed the sudden death of the prime minister and a State funeral ushered in May’s long anticipated parliamentary election. Once again, not only did this blog full cover the event, but I also provided most of the photographs for EurasiaNet’s special election coverage site.
After the success of that coverage, the Armenia Election Monitor 2008 blog was established in July in preparation for the 19 February 2008 presidential election in Armenia. Finally, in October I started as the Caucasus editor for Global Voices Online and also put together another feature story and photos for Geographical, the magazine of the Royal Geographical Society in the U.K. This time the focus was on Yezidis, Armenia’s largest ethnic minority.
In conclusion then, 2007 proved to be quite a productive year for Oneworld Multimedia and as we all look forward to 2008 I can only hope that your past year proved to be the same. Here’s wishing us all success and productivity in the coming year. Happy New Year to you all. Thanks for visiting Oneworld Multimedia. See you all again in 2008.
Happy New Year Onnik jan,
Your blog is one of the main trustful sources I keep updating myself on Hayastan, thanks
Melikset
Comment by Melo — January 1, 2008 @ 7:30 pm