Insights with Eric Hacopian, a political analyst, look at the main events of the week in and around Armenia. (CivilNet)

Welcome to this week's episode of Insights. During this week's show, we're going to cover three topics. The first one is going to be an update on the Azeri delegation's expulsion from PACE. The second one is going to be an update on our illegally held political prisoners and POWs in the dungeons of Baku. And lastly, we're going to cover the issue of labor migration from India and other places to Armenia. Now what is PACE?

 

Let's give you an explanation of what that organization is. PACE is the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe. It's the parliamentary arm of the Council of Europe, actually. The Council of Europe is a 46-nation international organization, which is primarily dedicated to human rights, democracy, and the rule of law.

 

So what actually happened at PACE is that the Parliament Assembly of the Council of Europe refused to ratify the credentials of the Azeri delegation, citing the country's poor human rights records and democracy records, anticipating this result that they're going to be thrown out of PACE. The Azeri delegation itself withdrew from PACE a few hours before the vote was going to happen for them not to be allowed in. The reasons given by PACE for the expulsion of the Azeri delegation was the following. 

 

The body had concluded that the country had not fulfilled major commitments stemming from its joining the council in 2001. PACE had serious concerns about Azerbaijan's ability to conduct free and fair elections. The lack of an independent judiciary and respect for human rights, illustrated, which has been illustrated by numerous European Court of Human Rights opinions that have come out against the country.

And most importantly for us, they spoke about the illegal blockade of Artsakh last year and the ethnic cleansing of Artsakh in September of last year. Now, what was the Aliev’s regime response to all this? They blamed their expulsion on three things. The first one is that they're victims of Islamophobia and they're also victims of racism on behalf of Western European countries. And lastly, their claim that the Council of Europe is demanding that their country turn gay.

 

Now, going over the Azeri responses on the first point about Islamophobia being the cause of their expulsion, what's interesting is that the regime in Baku actually at this point probably has a lot more Islamic activists in prison than they actually do Armenians. On the second matter of note, any charges of racism coming from the regime in Baku are quite rich because part of this delegation and their foreign ministry parliamentary delegation actually went as far as calling Armenians in Europe the tumors of Europe.

 

 And lastly, when it comes to the charges of their demand of the Council of Europe to turn gay, we've actually found no evidence with this, and the only thing I could imagine is that maybe the Council of Europe demanded that they change the national anthem to the Village People's YMCA, but then I don't think the Council of Europe would do that because for all of their artistic faults, civilized people actually brought a lot of joy to people. 

 

Now what does all of this mean in real terms? One which should not exaggerate its importance because the Council of Europe is actually the junior cousin to the European Union so it's actually not as important. It is however a very important first step in the targeting of the delegitimization of the regime in Baku. In fact, historically, if you want the EU to move towards sanctions and other actions against a regime, you actually start in the Council of Europe. There's actually history of that. What this also means is that we need to double down on all of our attacks and demonization of the regime in Baku, both in the Council of Europe, which actually should be a lot easier because they're not even there to defend themselves, and in all other European and international bodies.

Now we're going to move on to our second topic of the week, which is an update on our illegally held political prisoners in POWs in Baku. Last week the regime released these photos of the former Artsakh presidents looking happy in prison, reading books, comfortable in their rooms.

 

 And what can we say about this? These are actually lies from the pits of hell. Alexander Lapshin, the Israeli blogger that was illegally kidnapped by the regime in Baku,said that he was kept actually in the same prison and he was forced to take similar pictures with essentially being threatened with retribution if he did not smile for the camera and have photos of him taken looking happy. On the same front, when it comes to the case of Ruben Vardanyan, the regime actually extended his illegal pre-detention before trial by four months.

 

I supposed to give them more time to fabricate crimes that he's never committed. I'll actually make it easier for the prosecutors in Baku if you actually want to charge Mr. Vardanyan with something that he's guilty of. Actually, you can use what I call, what is the LWA statute under Azeri law. And you might ask, what is LWA? UA and that is living while Armenian which is in truth is actually illegal to be an Armenian in Azerbaijan or in areas like Artsakh which is occupied by the regime in Baku. 

 

Now we're going to move on to the third topic of the week which is the issue of labor migration and specifically Indian labor migration to Armenia. You know last year outside of the ethnic cleansing of Artsakh, this was probably the biggest story coming out of Armenia. It is reported that over 60,000 Indian labor migrants actually moved to Armenia over the last couple of years, and that number is actually expected to double over the next few years. 

 

These individuals work in agriculture, in the service industry, construction, now pretty much at all parts of the service economy. They're obviously not the only labor migrants to this country. We have labor migrants in Russia, Iran, Syria, and as far away as West Africa. And these individuals actually work on all levels, from some of the highest paying jobs to some of the lowest. 

 

What is the driving force of this migration? There's a few things. The first one is continued economic growth. The second one are large-scale labor shortages. And lastly, which is more of a cultural phenomenon, is now there's actually jobs in Armenia that Armenians are no longer willing to do. 

 

Now, in analyzing this, what can we say? First and foremost, in the modern world, there's really no such thing as mono-ethnic countries anymore. So this is actually quite the norm in the world. Secondly, any kind of economic development anywhere in the world actually draws in labor migrants. That's just the way the world economy works.

 

But what is necessary for us not to have issues and problems is that if these people are actually going to stay, and we're not sure if this is the case and how this is going to work out, I'm sure that some of them will, that what you have is you have integration, not ghettoization. What's important is that all of this is done within some scale of limits, and that you actually preserve local cultural dominance over the long run and that people who are staying here and living here actually add to the cultural commons rather than deducting from it.

 

 In conclusion, what's important here is that one of the things that we need to learn is that we need to understand the difference between ethnicity and citizenship. In the future, there's going to be significant numbers of people that are actually citizens of the Republic of Armenia who are not ethnically Armenian. Now what is interesting is that given our people's history around the world, this is something that is actually should come quite naturally for us, because that is our story from around the world, where we're actually one thing, we're Armenian while at the same time we have a citizenship of nationality of another country. 

 

 

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