Friday,
Another Oppositionist Arrested
• Naira Nalbandian
Armenia - Riot police guard the building of the Armenian prime minister's office
during a cabinet meeting in Yerevan, .
An Armenian opposition politician was arrested on Friday on suspicion of trying
to pay university students to participate in ongoing anti-government
demonstrations in Yerevan.
Organizers of the protests condemned the arrest of Avetik Chalabian, saying that
it is part of government attempts to suppress the two-week opposition campaign
for Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian’s resignation.
Chalabian leads a small party that has voiced strong support for the campaign.
He is also a co-founder of a private charity helping the Armenian military as
well as border villages in Armenia and Nagorno-Karabakh.
Investigators took Chalabian into custody after searching his Yerevan apartment
on Thursday night. They also detained Emma Sargsian, a lecturer at the Armenian
National Agrarian University.
The criminal case against them is based on a leaked audio of fragments of their
conversations with the chairman of the university’s student council, Tornik
Aliyan. Law-enforcement authorities say it shows that he was offered 2 million
drams ($4,200) in return for ensuring the presence of 2,000 students at
opposition rallies.
Aliyan was being interrogated by the Investigative Committee when RFE/RL’s
Armenian Service contacted him by phone. He was unable to answer questions. The
deputy chairman of the student council insisted that it was not Aliyan who
secretly recorded the conversation with Chalabian and Sargsian.
Ruben Melikian, a lawyer representing the arrested lecturer, said the
five-minute audio was doctored by the authorities and does not corroborate their
allegations. He also noted that Aliyan is the first to talk about cash in the
recording.
Armenia - Riot police arrest an opposition protester in Yerevan, May 2, 2022.
Opposition leaders went farther, saying that the recording is a government
provocation aimed at discrediting their push for regime. One of them, Ishkhan
Saghatelian, linked the case to recent days’ arrests and prosecution of a dozen
other opposition activists.
Five of them are accused of assaulting several elderly residents of Gyumri hours
before an opposition rally held there on May 8. The young men claimed after the
incident that the pensioners provoked them by swearing and throwing eggs at them.
Two other activists were arrested a week ago on charges of paying people in
Armavir province west of Yerevan to attend the anti-government protests. The
accusations, strongly denied by them, are based on publicized excerpts from
their secretly recorded phone conversation.
Saghatelian charged that the arrests are aimed at intimidating the opposition
and its supporters. “All this pressure is only making us stronger,” he said.
The authorities have not launched criminal proceedings against any of the riot
police officers accused by the opposition as well as human rights groups of
disproportionate use of force. One policeman was caught on camera punching a
protester last week while another officer spat at an opposition supporter a few
days later.
Armenian Opposition Blocks Another Government Building
• Narine Ghalechian
• Artak Khulian
Armenia - Opposition supporters block a government building in Yerevan, May 13,
2022.
Armenian opposition leaders and their supporters blocked a key government
building in Yerevan on Friday on the 13th day of their street protests aimed at
forcing Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian to resign.
All entrances to the building housing several Armenian ministries remained
blocked for around 90 minutes, with the protesters not allowing their employees
to leave it. Some of them watched the action from the building’s balconies or
looked out of office windows.
Ishkhan Saghatelian, a deputy parliament speaker leading the crowd, urged the
civil servants to “join the people” campaigning for Pashinian’s removal from
power. “Nobody can threaten to fire you,” Saghatelian said through a loudspeaker.
“We must show every day that Nikol has no power in Armenia,” he went on,
appealing to the crowd.
Riot police warned the protesters that the blockade is illegal but did not try
to disperse them. They similarly refrained from using force when the opposition
surrounded the building of the Yerevan mayor’s office on Wednesday.
After the blockade, the protesters marched back to the city’s France Square, the
scene of daily rallies and a tent camp set up by Armenia’s two main opposition
groups on May 1.
Armenia - A protester holds posters demanding Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian's
resignation, .
Earlier in the day, groups of young opposition activists again entered
university campuses in the capital and urged students to join the opposition
push for regime change. Six of them were detained after blocking a street
intersection in downtown Yerevan.
Opposition leaders also organized fresh processions of cars that drove slowly
through various parts of the city to try to drum up greater popular support for
the campaign.
Saghatelian said the campaign will continue until Pashinian agrees to step down.
He and other opposition leaders pledged earlier to install an interim government
of technocrats that will run Armenia for at least one year before holding fresh
general elections. They did not specify who would head it.
Pashinian, who is accused by the opposition of planning to make sweeping
concessions to Azerbaijan, has rejected demands for his resignation. The prime
minister and his allies say they received a popular mandate to continue to
govern the country in last year’s parliamentary elections.
Officer In Pashinian Motorcade Freed After Second Arrest
• Naira Bulghadarian
Armenia - Flowers, toys, and candles on a street in Yerevan where a pregnant
woman was hit and killed by a police car that led Prime Minister Nikol
Pashinian's motorcade, April 27, 2022.
A traffic police officer whose car hit and killed a young woman while escorting
Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian’s motorcade was released from custody early on
Friday hours after being arrested for the second time in two weeks.
The 29-year-old pregnant woman, Sona Mnatsakanian, was struck by a police SUV
while crossing a street in the center of Yerevan on April 26. The vehicle did
not stop after the collision that sparked more opposition calls for Pashinian’s
resignation. Its driver, Major Aram Navasardian, was arrested a few hours later.
Armenia’s Investigative Committee charged Navasardian with violating traffic
rules but released him shortly afterwards. The law-enforcement agency arrested
the policeman again on Thursday after a prosecutor ordered it to also charge him
with fleeing the scene and not helping the victim.
It went on to request a court permission to hold him in pre-trial detention. A
Yerevan court refused to sanction the arrest, however, forcing the investigators
to free Navasardian.
Navasardian denies the accusations leveled against him. His lawyer, Ruben
Baloyan, cited on Thursday a government directive allowing government motorcades
to move at up to 100 kilometers/hour in Yerevan.
Raffi Aslanian, a lawyer representing the victim’s family, dismissed the
argument. “In accordance with Armenia’s law on road safety, the driver was
obliged to stop at the scene of the accident and to take the victim to hospital
in his or somebody else’s car,” said Aslanian.
Pashinian’s limousine and the six other cars making up his motorcade also drove
past the dying woman and did not help her. The prime minister has still not
publicly commented on her death.
The deputy chief of Pashinian’s staff, Taron Chakhoyan, claimed on April 27 that
the motorcade would have caused a traffic jam and made it harder for an
ambulance to reach the victim had it stopped right after the crash.
Opposition figures and other government critics brushed aside that explanation.
Some of them blamed Pashinian for the unprecedented accident.
Pashinian Names New Vanadzor Mayor After Local Election Loss
Armenia - Arkadi Peleshian, a newly appointed deputy mayor of Vanadzor, at a
meeting in Vanadzor, November 21, 2017
Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian appointed an acting mayor of Armenia’s third
largest city of Vanadzor on Friday five months after the controversial arrest of
an opposition figure whose bloc effectively won a local election.
The new mayor, Arkadi Peleshian, has a history of violent behavior. An obscure
party led by him won less than 15 percent of the vote in the municipal election
held last December. It trailed Pashinian’s Civil Contract Party and former
Vanadzor Mayor Mamikon Aslanian’s bloc that got 25 percent and 39 percent
respectively.
Aslanian was thus well-placed to regain his post lost in October. But ten days
after the vote, he was arrested on corruption charges rejected by him as
politically motivated.
Later in December, Armenia’s Administrative Court blocked the first session of
Vanadzor’s new municipal council empowered to elect the mayor. It cited an
appeal against the election results lodged by another pro-government party that
fared poorly in the ballot.
The appeal was subsequently rejected by two other courts. The Bright Armenia
Party responded by appealing to the higher Court of Cassation.
The court has still not ruled on the appeal. Local and Yerevan-based opposition
figures have accused it of executing a government order to prevent Aslanian’s
reelection.
Armenia - Former Vanadzor Mayor Mamikon Aslanian at an election campaign meeting
with voters in Vanadzor, November 23, 2021.
Last month, Civil Contract hastily pushed through the Armenian parliament a bill
that empowered the prime minister to name acting heads of communities whose
newly elected councils fail to elect mayors within 20 days after local polls.
Opposition lawmakers said the main purpose of the bill is to allow Pashinian to
retain control over Vanadzor’s municipal administration despite his party’s
election defeat.
The ruling party and Peleshian’s HASK have acted in unison since the December
election.
Peleshian, 42, was a deputy mayor of Vanadzor until the vote. Law-enforcement
authorities have not commented on his possible involvement in the arrested
ex-mayor’s allegedly corrupt practices.
Peleshian cut a power-sharing deal with Aslanian in 2017 one year after being
briefly arrested on charges of beating up the head of the Armenian Evangelical
Church in Vanadzor. Armenia’s Investigative Committee said he assaulted the Rev.
Rafael Grigorian for “not supporting him” in the previous local election held in
2016.
Peleshian avoided trial and imprisonment at the time. Vanadzor’s new acting
mayor had previously been accused of starting a drunken fight inside a local
shop.
Reprinted on ANN/Armenian News with permission from RFE/RL
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