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    Categories: 2023

RFE/RL Armenian Report – 05/12/2023

                                        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
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