PanArmenian.Net reports that Armenian bloggers have protested the opening of the Days of Azerbaijan posted earlier. Well, it’s fair to say that they don’t represent Armenian bloggers as a group, but it is interesting to see the use of the word blog in a headline or story. Usually local publications here take news from time to time off blogs, but fail to quote the source while the rest of the world’s media see no problem in doing so at all.
Anyway, the group of bloggers do not speak for all of us, and it’s interesting to note that such an event could not have taken place without the permission of the Ministry of Education and Science (I assume). Certainly, those coming from Azerbaijan would have had to receive visas, and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs have welcomed the initiative as well, so perhaps this group of bloggers should have instead sent bars of soap there too, but anyway.
What is interesting, however, is that this protest appears to have been staged before RFE/RL published its story so why wasn’t it mentioned? On the other hand, this PanArmenian.Net article is hardly objective either, but at least doesn’t leave out a significant incident which RFE/RL appears to have done.
/PanARMENIAN.Net/ A group of Armenian bloggers handed a symbolic present – a peace of soap - to Georgy Vanyan, the initiator of “Days of Azerbaijan” in Yerevan. The present was handed with a wish “for better work.”
The measure had for an object to teach the organizers of the so-called Days of Azerbaijan a good lesson.
December 17, a rather strange event titled “Days of Azerbaijan” took place in Yerevan. The event was organized by well known director of Mkhitar Sabastatsi educational complex Ashot Bleyan and his assistant Georgy Vanyan, who represents a Caucasus center of peace sponsored by the UK Embassy. Not to mention absurdity of the event jointly with a state which tries to justify Armenia and Nagorno Karabakh’s blockade in the eyes of the world community, it’s noteworthy that such an initiative could hardly occur in Azerbaijan.
The RA Armenian Ministry of Science and Education did not react.
Armenian schoolchildren were offered to write a composition with a title “Open letter to my peer”, “How I see Azerbaijan”, “Armenia-Azerbaijan: the future.”
Comments are unnecessary, but taking into account the writings of the schoolchildren who are being filled with the ideas that “Baku and Ankara are Armenia’s best friends and the evil comes from Diaspora and Dashnaks, who keep on speaking of a genocide.” No one wants war, especially Armenians. But there is a difference between desire for peace and treason. Unfortunately, Bleyan and Vanyan are not the people to understand this.
(more…)