Monday, August 1, 2022
Fighting Reported In Karabakh
• Nane Sahakian
ARMENIA -- An ethnic Armenian soldier stands guard flag atop a hill in
northwestern Karabakh, November 25, 2020
Nagorno-Karabakh’s military on Monday accused Azerbaijani forces of launching
attacks on its positions in the territory’s north and northwest.
The Karabakh Defense Army said that throughout the day its troops thwarted
Azerbaijani “attempts to cross the line of contact.”
“The Armenian side suffered no casualties,” it said in a statement issued in the
evening. “The situation remains tense.”
The statement added that Russian peacekeeping forces stationed in Karabakh
received “detailed information” about the situation on the frontlines.
A Karabakh lawmaker, Artur Harutiunian, told RFE/RL’s Armenian Service shortly
afterwards that the fighting has stopped for now. He also said that the
Azerbaijani army did not capture any Karabakh Armenian positions.
“Everything is under the control of our armed forces,” Davit Babayan, the
Karabakh foreign minister said, for his part.
Meanwhile, the Azerbaijani Defense Ministry categorically denied any ceasefire
violations in or around Karabakh.
Earlier in the evening, Arayik Harutiunian, the Karabakh president, held what
appeared to be an emergency meeting with the Defense Army commander, Kamo
Vartanian, and other security officials.
In what may have been a related development, Armenian Foreign Minister Ararat
Mirzoyan held a phone call with U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Karen
Donfried. An Armenian readout of the call made no explicit mention on the
reported escalation in Karabakh.
Donfried spoke with Mirzoyan and Azerbaijani Foreign Minister Jeyhun Bayramov on
July 17 the day after their direct talks held in Tbilisi. A week later, U.S.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken phoned the leaders of Armenia and Azerbaijan.
Blinken tweeted afterwards that he sees a “historic opportunity to achieve peace
in the region.”
Last Thursday, the Armenian side said that Azerbaijani forces opened fire at two
villages in Nagorno-Karabakh and Armenian army positions on Armenia’s border
with Azerbaijan. Baku denied that.
On Saturday, Azerbaijani Defense Minister Zakir Hasanov ordered his troops to be
ready to “prevent provocation attempts by the enemy with decisive measures.”
Some commentators in Yerevan suggested that Baku is preparing the ground for
another escalation in the conflict zone.
The situation along the Karabakh “line of contact” had been relatively calm
since March.
More Diaspora Activists Denied Entry To Armenia
• Artak Khulian
Armenia - Dutch Armenian activist Massis Abrahamian and his daughter Suneh speak
from Yerevan airport.
Two more Armenian Diaspora activists from Europe critical of Prime Minister
Nikol Pashinian have been barred from entering Armenia.
Massis Abrahamian, a leader of the pan-Armenian Dashnaktsutyun party’s branch in
the Netherlands, and his 23-year-old daughter Suneh arrived at Yerevan’s
Zvartnots airport on Monday and Sunday respectively. Immigration officers there
told them that they will be deported.
“Words cannot describe the disappointment and pain I feel for being denied my
homeland,” Suneh Abrahamian, who too is affiliated with Dashnaktsutyun, wrote on
Facebook before flying back to the Netherlands.
Her father was still at Zvartnots’s transit zone on Monday evening, awaiting a
return flight to Warsaw. He said he too was not given any reason for being
declared a persona non grata by the Armenian government.
The government declined to comment on the expulsions, referring all inquiries to
the National Security Service (NSS). The NSS did not respond to an RFE/RL
request for comment as of Monday evening.
Mourad Papazian, another Dashnaktsutyun activist and one of the leaders of
France’s large Armenian community, was similarly denied entry to Armenia two
weeks ago. The Coordination Council of Armenian Organizations of France (CCAF)
condemned the ban.
After an eight-day silence, Pashinian’s office said that Papazian was deported
because of organizing an angry demonstration against the Armenian prime
minister’s June 2021 visit to France. It said the protesters threw “various
objects” at Pashinian’s motorcade when it drove through Paris. The
French-Armenian leader denied any involvement in that protest.
France - Mourad Papazian, a leader of the French-Armenian community, speaks at
an Armenian genocide remembrance ceremony, April 24, 2022.
Massis Abrahamian suggested that he was not allowed to visit Armenia because of
being one of the organizers of protests that marred Pashinian’s May 2022 trip to
the Netherlands. Some of the Dutch-Armenian protesters chanted offensive slogans
against the prime minister.
Abrahamian stressed that the protests were sanctioned by Dutch authorities and
peaceful. “Every Diaspora Armenia will now be concerned about whether they will
be allowed to enter Armenia on their arrival,” he told RFE/RL’s Armenian Service
from the Yerevan airport.
Dashnaktsutyun’s organization in Armenia has been at the forefront of regular
rallies launched this spring by the country’s main opposition groups trying to
topple Pashinian. Not surprisingly, the party’s Yerevan-based leaders were quick
to condemn the latest expulsions of their Diaspora activists.
One of them, Artsvik Minasian, accused Pashinian of seeking to silence his vocal
critics in the worldwide Armenian Diaspora. “Even during Bolshevik rule there
were no crackdowns on such a scale,” he claimed.
Another Dashnaktsutyun leader, Ishkhan Saghatelian, linked the travel bans with
what he called a government crackdown on opposition activists and supporters in
Armenia. More than a dozen of them are currently under arrest, accused of
assaulting police officers and government supporters. The Armenian authorities
maintain that the accusations are not politically motivated.
“Nikol is trying to switch to authoritarian rule,” Saghatelian charged in a
Facebook post. “World history shows that at some point all populists turn into
dictators because they can no longer cling to power through fraud and deceit.”
Armenian Politician Barred From Entering Karabakh
• Nane Sahakian
Armenia - Raffi Hovannisian speaks at a news conference in Yerevan, 20 August
2018.
Raffi Hovannisian, a veteran politician critical of Armenia’s government, was
reportedly not allowed to enter Nagorno-Karabakh late on Sunday for unknown
reasons.
Hovannisian’s Zharangutyun (Heritage) party said Russian peacekeeping soldiers
manning a checkpoint in the Lachin corridor stopped him as he travelled to
Stepanakert to attend his grandson’s baptism.
“Showing him an order from their commander along with an accompanying photo, the
soldiers at the checkpoint did not give any clear reason or justification for
the refusal but confirmed that the ban could emanate from “the highest echelon’
of official Yerevan,” Zharangutyun said in a statement.
It said Karabakh’s leadership was “very surprised” by the entry ban and tried in
vain to have it lifted.
The statement quoted Hovannisian as seemingly blaming Armenian Prime Minister
Nikol Pashinian for the ban. The U.S.-born politician, who had served as
Armenia’s first foreign minister, pointed the finger at an unnamed “failed
leader who must quit along with his xenophobic neighbor for the sake of real
regional peace and security.”
The authorities in Yerevan and Stepanakert could not be reached for comment on
Monday morning. The pro-government news website civic.am quoted a spokesperson
for the National Security Service (NSS) as saying that Armenia’s government has
nothing to do with the travel ban.
Armenian opposition parliamentarians likewise blamed Pashinian when they were
barred from entering Karabakh in April on a visit which was as part of their
campaign against far-reaching Armenian concessions to Azerbaijan.
Pashinian and the Armenian Foreign Ministry put the blame on the Russian
peacekeepers, however, saying that their actions ran counter to the terms of the
Russian-brokered ceasefire that stopped the Armenian-Azerbaijani war in November
2020. Moscow rejected the criticism.
Reprinted on ANN/Armenian News with permission from RFE/RL
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