Friday,
Opposition Leader Looks Forward To Renewed Protests
• Sargis Harutyunyan
Armenia - Opposition leader Vazgen Manukian addresses supporters at Liberty
Square in Yerevan,
An alliance of 17 Armenian opposition parties will step up its campaign for
Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian’s resignation with an upcoming rally in Yerevan,
one of its leaders said on Friday.
The alliance called the Homeland Salvation Movement blames Pashinian for
Armenia’s defeat in the war with Azerbaijan stopped by a Russian-brokered
ceasefire on November 10. It staged a series of demonstrations later in November
and December in a bid to force him to hand over power to an interim government.
The protests did not attract large crowds, leading Pashinian to insist that he
still has a popular mandate to govern the country.
Representatives of the alliance said last week that the protests will resume
soon. The movement coordinator, Ishkhan Saghatelian, announced on Monday that
the first rally will be held in Yerevan’s Liberty Square on February 20.
Vazgen Manukian, a veteran politician nominated by the alliance as a caretaker
prime minister, looked forward to the “big rally,” saying that the pause in the
opposition campaign has “lasted a bit longer than it should have.”
“The movement has discussed what it has done before,” Manukian told reporters.
“I won’t say now what it found right and what it found wrong. But it has drawn
lessons and I think that with the February 20 rally it will continue its
activities with much greater vigor.”
“There are several hundred thousand people who are terribly and emotionally
unhappy,”
he said. “One million other people are also unhappy with Nikol Pashinian but
don’t bother to participate in all this, feeling broken for various reasons. We
must manage to get these people out on the streets in order to have a
full-scale, specular popular movement.”
Manukian said the opposition should also strive to “break” and “discredit” what
he described as Pashinian’s power base: senior members of the ruling My Step
bloc and high-ranking police officers.
Pashinian expressed readiness on December 25 to hold snap parliamentary
elections to end the political crisis in the country. Opposition leaders
continued to insist on his resignation.
In a joint statement issued on February 7, Pashinian and My Step’s parliamentary
group spoke out against the conduct of such elections, saying that it is not
backed by most Armenians.
Armenia, Azerbaijan Continue Talks On Transport Links
Russia -- A Russian-Armenian-Azerbaijani working group on cross-border transport
issues meets in Moscow, January 30, 2021.
Senior Armenian, Azerbaijani and Russian officials held on Friday further
discussions on practical modalities of opening the Armenian-Azerbaijani border
for commercial and other traffic.
The restoration of transport links between Armenia and Azerbaijan is envisaged
by the Russian-brokered ceasefire agreement that stopped the war in
Nagorno-Karabakh on November 10.
Russian President Vladimir Putin, his Azerbaijani counterpart Ilham Aliyev and
Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian decided to set up a trilateral “working
group” for that purpose when they met in Moscow on January 11. They said it will
submit by March 1 a timetable of “measures envisaging the restoration and
construction of new transport infrastructure facilities.”
The group co-headed by deputy prime ministers of the three states held its first
meeting in the Russian capital on January 30.
Their second session held on Friday took the form of a video conference. A
Russian government statement said the three vice-premiers discussed “the course
of joint work” stemming from the Russian-Armenian-Azerbaijani agreements. They
approved a “schedule for further work,” the statement added without elaborating.
The Armenian government issued an identical statement on the video conference.
At their January 30 meeting, Deputy Prime Ministers Alexei Overchuk of Russia,
Mher Grigorian of Armenia and Shahin Mustafayev of Azerbaijan decided to form
two “expert subgroups” tasked with dealing with transport issues and border
controls.
One of the subgroups held a video conference on February 6. According to the
Armenian Ministry of Territorial Administration and Infrastructures, its members
“exchanged preliminary views” on the state of regional road and railway networks.
The truce agreement commits Yerevan to opening rail and road links between the
Nakhichevan exclave and the rest of Azerbaijan that will presumably pass through
southeastern Armenia. Armenia should be able, for its part, to use Azerbaijani
territory as a transit route for cargo shipments to and from Russia and Iran.
Armenian Government Accused Of Trying To Limit Press Freedom
• Artak Khulian
• Sargis Harutyunyan
Armenia -- Photojournalists and cameramen cover an official ceremony in Yerevan,
January 10, 2019.
Armenian media organizations have accused the government of trying to restrict
press freedom with bills that would sharply increase fines for libel and make it
harder for journalists to use anonymous sources.
“The psychological pressure on the mass media is already evident,” Boris
Navasardian, the chairman of the Yerevan Press Club (YPC), said on Friday. “I
think it has a very concrete purpose: to make the information environment much
more favorable for Armenia’s ruling political force.”
“Naturally, that cannot be deemed acceptable, especially given the serious
contradictions with international conventions and, I think, Armenia’s
constitution,” Navasardian told RFE/RL’s Armenian Service.
One of the controversial bills calls for a fivefold increase in maximum legal
fines set for defamation. The National Assembly passed it in the first reading
on Thursday despite strong objections voiced by the YPC and several other press
freedom groups.
Those groups have also expressed serious concern over another bill that was
circulated by several pro-government lawmakers last week. It would ban
broadcasters, newspapers and online publications from quoting websites and
social media accounts belonging to unknown individuals.
In an explanatory note attached to the proposed amendments to an Armenian law on
mass media, the lawmakers said that disseminating information from “sources of
unknown origin” could endanger the country’s national security.
Ashot Melikian of the Yerevan-based Committee to Protect the Freedom of Speech
dismissed the official rationale for the proposed ban, saying that it would not
stop the spread of fake news and disinformation.
“The proposed approach would instead damage quality journalism and create
serious obstacles for investigative reporters,” Melikian told RFE/RL’s Armenian
Service.
Armenia’s human rights ombudsman, Arman Tatoyan echoed these concerns when he
met with the heads of several media associations earlier this week.
Navasardian warned that the controversial bills, if enacted, will reverse
“positive trends” in the Armenian media environment which he said were observed
in 2018 and 2019.
Opposition Party Suspects Secret Border Deal With Azerbaijan
• Naira Nalbandian
Armenia -- Bright Armenia Party leaders Edmon Marukian (L) and Taron Simonian at
a news conference in Yerevan, .
A major opposition party demanded on Friday explanations from the Armenian
government over allegations that a controversial delimitation of Armenia’s
border with Azerbaijan was the result of its secret agreement with Baku reached
following the autumn war in Nagorno-Karabakh.
The delimitation followed Armenian troop withdrawals from border areas along
Armenia’s southeastern Syunik province that began after a Russian-brokered
ceasefire stopped the war on November 10.
Syunik borders the Zangelan and Kubatli districts southwest of Karabakh which
were mostly recaptured by Azerbaijan during the six-week hostilities. Armenian
army units and local militias completed in December their withdrawal from parts
of the districts close to Syunik’s capital Kapan and many other communities.
Some of those lands are located along the Soviet-era Armenian-Azerbaijani border
which has never been demarcated due to the Karabakh conflict. Local government
officials in Syunik and opposition figures in Yerevan have accused Prime
Minister Nikol Pashinian of hastily and illegally ceding them to Baku. Pashinian
has insisted that “not a single inch” of Armenia’s internationally recognized
territory has been lost as a result of the troop withdrawal.
Earlier this week, opposition sources posted on Facebook a copy of what they
described as a secret Armenian-Azerbaijani agreement reached after the
ceasefire. The purported document specifies, among other things, a section of
Syunik’s main highway placed under Azerbaijani control.
Deputy Prime Minister Tigran Avinian acknowledged on Wednesday that Yerevan and
Baku reached an understanding on the highway passing through “disputed
territory.” But he did not confirm or deny the veracity of the published
document.
“If you look at that document you will see provisions that have been effectively
implemented,” said Edmon Marukian, the leader of the opposition Bright Armenia
Party (LHK). “We therefore have reason to suspect that it is either the text of
a verbal agreement or a signed document.”
Another senior LHK member, Taron Simonian, said that the border agreement, if it
was indeed signed, is null and void because it was not certified by Armenia’s
Constitutional Court and ratified by the Armenian parliament.
Sisak Gabrielian, a lawmaker representing the ruling My Step bloc dismissed the
document as a fraud.
Reprinted on ANN/Armenian News with permission from RFE/RL
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