This is the 23rd Annual National Meeting of the Armenian Bar Association, which took place on May 19, 2012, in Glendale, CA.
Panel I: Human Rights, Civil Liberties, and Social Movements in Armenia
Moderator:
Antranig Kasbarian, Executive Director, Tufenkian Foundation
Panelists:
Edik Baghdasaryan, Editor-in-Chief, Hetq Online Magazine
Sara Anjargolian, Attorney & Documentarian
Ursula Kazaryan, President and Founder, Armenian Environmental Network
IMPORTANT NOTE:
Ursula Kazaryan has later contacted us with request to amend a few of the figures she used in her presentation. She had intended to recalculate the figures to fit American standards (such as football fields instead of hectares) and, unfortunately, did not change the measurements, so that a few of the numbers are, in fact, wrong as presented. Below are the corrections:
- The allocated land for the Teghut mining operation is 3,684 acres — 82% (or 3,044 acres) of which is covered with forests.
- The project plans clear-cutting nearly 900 acres of old growth, virgin forest.
- Exploitation of the mine will produce about 500 million tons of tailings and 600 million tons of various other wastes, to be dumped in the gorge of Duqanadzor River.
- Further, tailings containing lead, arsenic, zinc, sulfurous compounds and much more would be dumped into the Shnogh and the Debed rivers, making them unfit for drinking, irrigation or plant and animal life.
