Tuesday, September 8, 2020 Another Former Armenian Official Indicted Armenia -- Ruling Republican MP Mher Sedrakian, 22 Feb, 2016 A law-enforcement agency brought on Tuesday corruption charges against a notorious former lawmaker and influential member of former President Serzh Sarkisian’s Republican Party of Armenia (HHK). The Investigative Committee said Mher Sedrakian abused his powers to sell a large part of a public park to his son and brother when he ran Yerevan’s southern Erebuni district from 1999-2008. It claimed that Sedrakian helped his relatives privatize the 12,000-square-meter plot of land in 2004 after they illegally built properties there. It was not immediately clear if Sedrakian will plead guilty to the accusations. The 69-year-old was not arrested pending investigation. The Investigative Committee had him sign instead a pledge not to leave the country. Sedrakian, who is better known as “Tokhmakhi Mher,” held sway in Erebuni for many years, controlling many local businesses and strongly influencing election results there. Press reports repeatedly implicated his clan in violent attacks on opposition activists and journalists as well as vote rigging. Sedrakian was also dogged by scandals when he represented the former ruling HHK in the Armenian parliament from 2012-2017. He reportedly insulted and threatened journalists on at least two occasions, drawing strong condemnations from the country’s leading media associations. Also facing criminal charges are several other controversial HHK figures and former officials. Some of them have fled to Russia to avoid imprisonment. Only one of them, former parliament deputy Levon Sargsian, has been extradited to Armenia so far. Relatives Of 2008 Unrest Victims Boycott Kocharian Trial • Karlen Aslanian • Naira Nalbandian Armenia -- Former President Robert Kocharian and three other former officials stand trial in Yerevan, September 17, 2019. Relatives of nine people killed in the 2008 post-election violence in Yerevan have decided to boycott the ongoing trial of former President Robert Kocharian and three other former officials prosecuted on coup charges. A lawyer representing them, Tigran Yegorian, claimed on Monday that the trial, which began in May 2019, has become a “farce” because of what he called delay tactics adopted by Kocharian and the other defendants. He complained that a Yerevan district court is still not examining substantive issues because of numerous petitions mostly relating to procedural issues submitted by the defendants’ lawyers. Yegorian also said that he and his clients do not trust the Armenian judiciary because they believe the country’s current government has not done enough to reform it since taking office after the 2018 “Velvet Revolution.” The boycott is therefore also a “message” addressed to the government, he told RFE/RL’s Armenian service. Justice Minister Rustam Badasian dismissed the criticism on Tuesday. Badasian said that while he shares the relatives’ concerns about the course of the trial he believes that the government must not interfere in court hearings on the case. Such intervention would run counter to judicial independence guaranteed by the Armenian constitution, he told reporters. Badasian also defended “quite intensive” judicial reforms launched by Armenia’s current political leadership. “I think it’s wrong to link the overall course of the reforms to a particular court case,” he said. Sargis Kloyan, whose son Gor was among eight protesters killed in March 2008 street clashes with security forces, said the boycott will continue until the authorities initiate major changes in the judiciary. He was particularly upset with Kocharian’s release from prison ordered by Armenia’s Court of Appeals in May this year. Kocharian, who was first arrested in July 2018, his former chief of staff and two retired army generals stand accused of illegally using Armenian army units against opposition protesters in the wake of a disputed presidential election held in February 2008. They reject the accusations as politically motivated. Kocharian, who handed over power to Serzh Sarkisian in April 2008, has consistently defended the use of force against supporters of Levon Ter-Petrosian, the main opposition candidate in the presidential ballot. He maintains that security forces thwarted a violent seizure of power by the Ter-Petrosian-led opposition. Karabakh Lifts Coronavirus Travel Restrictions • Marine Khachatrian Nagorno-Karabakh -- A road in northern Karabakh leading to Armenia, September 8, 2018. Authorities in Nagorno-Karabakh lifted on Tuesday serious restrictions on people leaving and entering the Armenian-populated region which were imposed following the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic. Ever since March Karabakh residents have not been allowed to travel to Armenia without a written permission issued by the head of a Stepanakert-based government body coordinating the authorities’ response to the pandemic. The body has also required citizens of Armenia and other countries to undergo COVID-19 tests before entering Karabakh. The “commandant” heading the body, Zhirayr Mirzoyan, attributed the scrapping of these restrictions to a “drastic decrease” in coronavirus cases recorded in Armenia of late. Mirzoyan said the Karabakh authorities will at the same time step up their enforcement of anti-epidemic safety rules. In particular, they will keep medical workers deployed at Karabakh border checkpoints. The latter will measure the temperature of people arriving in Karabakh from Armenia. The authorities have reported 316 coronavirus cases and no fatalities in Karabakh so far. According to them, 277 of the infected local residents have recovered from COVID-19. The first case was registered in early April ahead of a second round of voting in a presidential election. The runoff vote went ahead despite serious concerns about the spread of the disease in Karabakh. Armenia’s Coronavirus Cases Continue Downward Trend • Marine Khachatrian Armenia -- A medical worker takes notes at the Surp Grigor Lusarovich Medical Center in Yerevan, the country's largest hospital treating coronavirus patients, June 5, 2020. The daily number of new coronavirus cases registered in Armenia is continuing to decline steadily after peaking three months ago. The Armenian Ministry of Health reported on Tuesday that 108 people have tested positive for COVID-19 in the past 24 hours, sharply down from an average of 550-600 cases a day registered in the first half of July and roughly 250 daily cases recorded in early August. The ministry said 471 other patients have recovered from the disease, reducing to 3,182 the total number of active cases in the country of about 3 million. The number stood at over 7,700 a month ago. The ministry data also shows that less than 6 percent of coronavirus tests carried out in the last two days came back positive. The positive test rate hovered between 20 percent and 25 percent in late July and has fallen steadily since then. “If compare the number of tests, newly detected cases and recoveries in the past week or ten days we can say that the downward trend is holding steady,” a spokeswoman for the Ministry of Health, Lilit Babakhanian, told RFE/RL’s Armenian service. The trend has allowed the health authorities to reduce the number of hospitals treating COVID-19 patients. There were two dozen such hospitals across Armenia at the height of the coronavirus crisis early this summer. According to Babakhanian, only eight of them are continuing to deal with the pandemic now. The country’s infection rates have been falling despite the lifting in early May of the vast majority of government restrictions on people’s movements and business activity. Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian’s government has since put the emphasis of getting Armenians to practice social distancing, wear face masks and follow other anti-epidemic rules. Mask-wearing has been mandatory in all public areas since June. ARMENIA -- A bride and a bridegroom wearing protective face masks exchange kisses during a wedding ceremony in a church in Saghmosavan village on June 14, 2020. The government decided late last month to lift virtually all remaining restrictions. It went on to introduce strict safety protocols for Armenian schools and universities that are due reopen on September 15. Despite the improving epidemiological situation opposition figures and other critics continue to accuse the government of mishandling the coronavirus crisis. They argue that with almost 45,000 coronavirus cases recorded to date Armenia has had one of the highest infection rates in the world. Critics also point to the deaths of at least 1,179 Armenians infected with the disease. The health authorities say that COVID-19 was the primary cause of 903 of those deaths. The 276 other infected people have died from other, pre-existing conditions, according to them. Pashinian, Health Minister Arsen Torosian and other government officials dismiss the opposition criticism. In particular, Torosian has argued that Armenia’s COVID-19 mortality rate is significantly lower than that of many Western nations that spend a lot more on healthcare. Reprinted on ANN/Armenian News with permission from RFE/RL Copyright (c) 2020 Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty, Inc. 1201 Connecticut Ave., N.W. Washington DC 20036.