An \u201corganization\u201d by the name of Virgin Women\u2019s Association, not registered with the Ministry of Justice and actually non-existent, which is an incognito satirical group on Facebook, has managed to become a media star.<\/p>\n
The Virgin Women\u2019s Association NGO Facebook page<\/a>, as of October 17, 2017, has managed to gather over 7,900 followers. Its logo is the image of the goddess Anahit, and from here the humor begins: Anahit is considered a symbol of fertility and maternity.<\/p>\n The Virgin Women\u2019s Association with obvious satirical texts and statements has been able to enter the pages of the press, convince news editors of its existence, and pass off the myth as reality. <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n By the way, this \u201cassociation\u201d so persistently and consistently generates interest around its name that a media outlet that at one time had noted its non-existence also fell into the trap. I\u2019m talking about ArmTimes.com. Though the publication itself had investigated and determined<\/a> that no such organization exists, nevertheless, months later it was unable to withstand the temptation and published on its website several statements issued by this unknown group.<\/p>\n The latest incident was when the Virgin Women\u2019s Association turned its attention to the law on domestic violence: \u201cThe call of responsibility for giving a woman a \u2018marriage kick\u2019 only leads to khlundz<\/em><\/a>.\u201d The website didn\u2019t even notice that the statements issued by the \u201corganization\u201d often use non-existent words such as khlundz<\/em>.<\/p>\n ArmTimes.com earlier had published this \u201cassociation\u2019s\u201d calls aimed at Levon Aronian, Arianne Caoili<\/a>, and Henrikh Mkhitaryan<\/a>. The same statements had been reposted also by other websites, particularly Hayeli.am<\/a>, Asekose.am<\/a>, and Radio Van<\/a>. This, in 2017.<\/p>\n In general, this \u201cassociation\u201d has been making the rounds in the press since 2015. <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n Hraparak<\/em> had written that the Virgin Women\u2019s Association is sponsored by Minister of Diaspora Hranush Hakobyan<\/a>. And when the group wrote on Facebook that finally its registration was complete and soon they\u2019ll open an office, Henaran.am rushed to take the news seriously<\/a>. Note, to date there is no organization with this name in the justice ministry\u2019s electronic state registry of legal entities<\/a>. <\/p>\n One year after that, Iravunq<\/em> newspaper printed an interview<\/a> with the \u201corganization\u2019s president\u201d Arshaluys Yenoqyan. To the journalist\u2019s question on operating also offline, the interviewee said that the group has been allegedly engaged in such activities for a long time, citing as an example the video series Hayu Vokin<\/em><\/a> (The Spirit of the Armenian) filmed jointly by the Ministry of Culture and the Mesrop Mashtots Center for Speech Culture in Yerevan. In the video series, however, there is no mention about the participation of this \u201cassociation.\u201d Then the interviewee adds: \u201cConnected to the 100th anniversary of the Armenian Genocide, within the scope of diaspora minister Hranush Hakobyan\u2019s \u2018100 pillows for living\u2019 project, we initiated \u2018100 almonds for loving,\u2019 \u2018100 rakes of the future,\u2019 and many other steps that aimed to encourage and support the Armenian person, the Armenian type.\u201d \u201c100 almonds for loving\u201d and \u201c100 rakes of the future\u201d are simply word play. <\/p>\n The journalist didn\u2019t verify if any of what the interviewee said was true.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n The Virgin Women\u2019s Association at one time succeeded muddling also the political arena, having again caught the media\u2019s attention at the time. The statement titled \u201cThe board of the Virgin Women\u2019s Association welcomes Civil Contract, Republic, and Bright Armenia political parties\u2019 destined move in this milestone of Armenians\u201d was disseminated by one of the news websites<\/a>. It referred to the signing of the agreement by the three aforementioned parties. <\/p>\n During almost the same period, the Virgin Women\u2019s Association issued a statement that it is joining Artur Baghdasaryan\u2019s Armenian Renaissance political party. Politik.am didn\u2019t let this news go<\/a> without a response. Yerkir Media\u2019s news broadcaster laughed when he read the association\u2019s name<\/a> \u2014 but read it anyways.<\/p>\n But it got to the point that Armenian Renaissance governing council member Artur Misakyan announced on his Facebook page that Virgin Women\u2019s Association NGO doesn\u2019t exist in Armenia \u2014 neither de facto nor de jure. And the press turned its attention likewise to this statement.<\/p>\n Media.am also received a satirical response from the Virgin Women\u2019s Association Facebook page. <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n We had asked the group how they are able to be interesting for the press, not being registered and not engaging in any activities.<\/p>\n \u201cThat local media outlets sometimes disseminate Virgin Women\u2019s Association\u2019s statements without having to add or forcing their own opinion down reader\u2019s throats is only welcoming and speaks to the given media outlet\u2019s professionalism. As for registration, Virgin Women\u2019s Association operates as a supporter of the subsection of the implementation of subprojects of the RA Ministry of Diaspora; it is registered in the list of Armenian preservation organizations of the government of the Republic of Western Armenia, and also on Facebook. Our activities are open and transparent, as well as public,\u201d reads the response we received.<\/p>\n Gagik Aghbalyan<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" An \u201corganization\u201d by the name of Virgin Women\u2019s Association, not registered with the Ministry of Justice and actually non-existent, which is an incognito satirical group on Facebook, has managed to become a media star. The Virgin Women\u2019s Association NGO Facebook page, as of October 17, 2017, has managed to gather over 7,900 followers. Its logo Read the full article…<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":8756,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8761","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-newsroom","author_posts-gagik-aghbalyan"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/media.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8761","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/media.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/media.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/media.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/media.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8761"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/media.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8761\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/media.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8756"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/media.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8761"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/media.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8761"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/media.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8761"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n
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