Month: September 2020

                                        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
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