Friday,
Armenian Journalist’s Assets Frozen After Corruption Report
• Naira Bulghadarian
Armenia - Former Deputy Prime Minister Tigran Avinian attends a session of
Yerevan's municipal assembly, September 23, 2022.
A court in Yerevan has frozen assets of an Armenian newspaper and one of its
journalists who has accused a leading political ally of Prime Minister Nikol
Pashinian of illicit enrichment.
In a video report posted on the 168 Zham newspaper’s website this month, the
journalist, Davit Sargsian, described Yerevan’s Deputy Mayor Tigran Avinian as a
“nouveau riche” whose family has been “steadily getting richer” ever since
Pashinian came to power in 2018. It detailed the family’s allegedly extensive
business interests developed in the last five years.
The reported claimed, in particular, that Avinian’s mother bought an expensive
apartment in central Yerevan before becoming recently a co-owner of two firms
and a 9-hectare plot of land in southern Armavir province.
Avinian, who will be the ruling Civil Contract’s candidate in upcoming mayoral
elections in the Armenian capital, took the newspaper to court. He is seeking an
unprecedentedly hefty compensation for the “slanderous” report which he claims
damaged his “business reputation.”
Acting on Avinian’s demand, the court decided earlier this week to freeze 18
million drams ($46,000) worth of assets belonging to 168 Zham and Sargsian
personally pending its verdict in the case. The sum is huge by Armenian media
standards.
Avinian, who also served as Armenia’s deputy prime minister from 2018-2021,
defended the legal action when he spoke to reporters on Thursday.
“I can only advise media outlets to bear in mind before slandering anyone, lying
about anyone that they can face such proceedings,” he said. “But I am otherwise
not an enemy of the media.”
The 34-year-old politician did not specify which parts of the 5-minute video
authored by Sargsian and posted on 168.am are untrue.
“Avinian’s real aim is to inflict significant material damage on me and thereby
silence me,” Sargsian countered in a Facebook post.
The journalist, who is highly critical of the Armenian government, insisted that
he simply shared with viewers credible information that was earlier reported by
other media outlets and not refuted by Avinian.
Press freedom groups also criticized the lawsuit, saying that no Armenian media
outlets or journalists have risked such heavy fines before.
“We are seeing a typical case of an official trying to muzzle and punish a media
outlet,” said Shushan Doydoyan of the Yerevan-based Center for Freedom of
Information. She noted that Avinian did not demand that the paper retract its
corruption claims before he filed the lawsuit.
Armenia - A screenshot from an Aravot.am report on expensive property
acquisitions by senior Armenian officials, March 15, 2023.
Pro-opposition and independent publications increasingly accuse members of
Pashinian’s entourage of enriching themselves or their cronies and breaking
their anti-corruption promises given during the 2018 “velvet revolution.”
Last month, hackers hijacked the YouTube channel of another newspaper, Aravot,
as it was about to publish a video report detailing expensive property
acquisitions by several senior government officials and pro-government lawmakers.
Earlier this year, Pashinian blamed such reports for a drop in Armenia’s
position in an annual corruption survey conducted by Transparency International.
He publicly urged senior officials to sue media outlets “falsely” accusing them
of illicit enrichment.
In 2021, the Armenian parliament controlled by Pashinian’s party tripled maximum
legal fines set for defamation.
Yerevan Vague On Azeri Control Of Karabakh
• Astghik Bedevian
U.S. - U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken hosts talks between the Armenian
and Azerbaijani foreign ministers, Arlington, May 1, 2023.
The Armenian government on Friday pointedly declined to clarify whether it is
ready to explicitly recognize Azerbaijani sovereignty over Nagorno-Karabakh as a
result of ongoing peace talks with Baku.
In April 2022, Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian signaled readiness to “lower the
bar” on Karabakh’s status acceptable to Armenia and also stopped asserting the
Karabakh Armenians’ right to self-determination in his public statements.
Pashinian made clear last month that his administration unequivocally recognizes
Azerbaijan’s territorial integrity and is ready to sign an Armenian-Azerbaijani
peace treaty that would commit the two South Caucasus states to recognizing each
other’s Soviet-era borders.
Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev demanded, meanwhile, that Armenia go farther
and officially declare that “Karabakh is Azerbaijan.”
Pashinian said last week that Baku is now not ready to even grant Karabakh an
autonomous status.
Responding to questions sent by RFE/RL’s Armenian Service, Armenia’s Foreign
Ministry did not say whether this means Yerevan has already agreed to the
restoration of Azerbaijani control over Karabakh. It said only that Yerevan
continues to insist on “discussion between Baku and Stepanakert on the rights
and security guarantees of Nagorno-Karabakh’s population.”
Nagorno-Karabakh - Protesters hold a giant Armenian flag as they attend a rally
in Stepanakert, December 25, 2022.
“Addressing the issues of the Nagorno-Karabakh people’s rights and security is
very important for establishing a lasting peace and stability in the region,”
the ministry said in a written reply. It did not specify whether Pashinian’s
government believes this can be done under Azerbaijani rule.
Pashinian has publicly encouraged Karabakh’s leaders to negotiate with
Azerbaijan while accusing Baku of planning to commit genocide in the
Armenian-populated region.
The authorities in Stepanakert as well as the Armenian opposition have
repeatedly denounced Pashinian’s public pronouncements on the conflict with
Azerbaijan. In a joint statement issued on April 19, the five political groups
represented in the Karabakh parliament again accused him of undermining the
Karabakh Armenians’ right to self-determination which was for decades supported
by international mediators.
The Armenian and Azerbaijani foreign ministers made what the U.S. State
Department described as “tangible progress” towards the bilateral peace deal
during marathon talks held outside Washington last week. Aliyev and Pashinian
are expected to try to build on that progress when they meet in Brussels this
Sunday.
U.S. Calls For Armenian-Azeri Troop Disengagement
U.S. -- State Department spokesman Vedant Patel speaks during a daily press
briefing in Washington, September 6, 2022.
The United States has called on Armenia and Azerbaijan to withdraw their troops
from the Armenian-Azerbaijani border after fresh fighting between them.
A U.S. State Department spokesman, Vedant Patel, said late on Thursday that the
violence “undermines the progress made” by the two sides during recent peace
talks, notably last week’s meetings between their foreign ministers held outside
Washington.
Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian and Azerbaijan President Ilham Aliyev
are scheduled meet to Brussels this Sunday in a bid to build on that progress.
“We call on the leaders of both of these countries that when they convene in
Brussels on [May] 14th to a – that these two parties agree to distance their
forces along the border, as discussed by Secretary [of State Antony] Blinken
during their participation of these negotiations that we hosted here in
Washington, D.C., at the beginning of May,” Patel told a news briefing.
Pashinian accused Baku of trying to derail the peace process shortly after the
fighting involving artillery fire erupted near the Armenian border village of
Sotk on Thursday morning, leaving one Azerbaijani soldier dead and four Armenian
servicemen wounded.
Each side accused the other of shelling its military positions in the
mountainous area. The intensity of the clashes decreased in the following hours,
and no major truce violations were reported on the night from Thursday to Friday.
The Defense Ministry in Yerevan said that two more Armenian soldiers were
wounded on Friday morning in an Azerbaijani drone attack on their position
outside Sotk. It said that the situation at that section of the volatile border
was “relatively stable” in the immediate aftermath of the incident.
The Armenian government has consistently advocated the idea of troop
disengagement, also backed by the European Union, for the last two years. Baku
does not support it.
Reposted on ANN/Armenian News with permission from RFE/RL
Copyright (c) 2023 Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty, Inc.
1201 Connecticut Ave., N.W. Washington DC 20036.