Monday,
Karabakh Halts Public Transport Due To Blockade
• Susan Badalian
Nagorno-Karabakh - People walk past a closed gas station in Askeran, July 18,
2023.
Nagorno-Karabakh’s public transport system will be brought to a complete halt on
Tuesday because of severe shortages of fuel caused by Azerbaijan’s continuing
blockade of the Armenian-populated region.
Karabakh authorities said on Monday that they have run out of scarce fuel
reserved from buses and minibuses. They already suspended earlier this month
public transport in Stepanakert and curtailed bus services with other Karabakh
towns and villages for the same reason.
The vast majority of vehicles in Karabakh are powered by natural gas which was
supplied from Armenia before being pressurized and sold at local gas stations.
Azerbaijan disrupted a steady flow of the gas shortly after blocking commercial
traffic through the Lachin corridor last December. A gas pipeline feeding
Karabakh was most recently unblocked for just a few hours on July 8.
Baku tightened the blockade on June 15, banning emergency relief supplies that
were carried out by Russian peacekeepers and the International Committee of the
Red Cross through the sole road connecting Karabakh to Armenia and the outside
world. The move aggravated the shortages of food, medicine and other essential
items experienced by the region’s population.
The fuel crisis not only disrupted travel but also complicated food supplies
inside Karabakh. Local farmers now have trouble taking their produce to markets,
and there are growing problems with the delivery of flour to bakeries.
Nagorno-Karabakh -- A banner in Stepanakert in July 2023.
“It is very difficult to get the flour here,” Lyudmila Mezhlumian, a bakery
worker in Stepanakert, told RFE/RL’s Armenian Service.
Armenian Foreign Minister Ararat Mirzoyan warned last week that Karabakh is now
“on the verge of starvation” as he urged stronger international pressure on
Azerbaijan. The United States, the European Union and Russia have repeatedly
called for an end to the Azerbaijani blockade. Baku has dismissed their appeals.
The humanitarian crisis is also affecting Karabakh’s struggling healthcare
system. The head of an intensive care unit at Karabakh’s main children’s
hospital said on Monday that it is increasingly hard for the parents of
seriously ill children living outside Stepanakert to transport them to the
facility.
Baku has frequently banned evacuations of Karabakh patients to hospitals in
Armenia carried out by only the ICRC during the blockade. It most recently
unblocked them last week after requiring those patients to be checked by
Azerbaijani medical personnel while passing through its checkpoint in the Lachin
corridor. The Karabakh premier, Gurgen Nersisian, said at the weekend that Red
Cross officials “somehow managed to convince” the Azerbaijani side not to film
“that process.”
Karabakh’s main security service said on Monday that local residents are
receiving Russian-language phone calls offering to help them safely “go to
Armenia via Baku.” It urged them to ignore the Azerbaijani “disinformation.”
Armenian FM Visits Iran
Iran - Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi meets Armenian Foreign Minister Ararat
Mirzoyan, Tehran, .
Foreign Minister Ararat Mirzoyan discussed with Iran’s leaders Armenia’s ongoing
peace talks with Azerbaijan and described the Islamic Republic as his country’s
“special partner” during a visit to Tehran on Monday.
The Armenian Foreign Ministry said Mirzoyan briefed Iranian President Ebrahim
Raisi on the “latest developments in the process of normalization of
Armenia-Azerbaijan relations” and reaffirmed the Armenian government’s position
on the “establishment of lasting peace in the South Caucasus.”
The issue also topped the agenda of his separate talks with Iranian Foreign
Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian held earlier in the day. Mirzoyan complained
about Azerbaijan’s continuing blockade of Nagorno-Karabakh’s only land link with
Armenia, saying that it is hampering a peace deal currently discussed by Baku
and Yerevan.
Iran’s official IRNA news agency reported that, Mohammad Jamshidi, a top aide to
Raisi quoted him as warning against U.S. involvement in Armenian-Azerbaijani
peace talks.
“These negotiations have to be carried out based on the interests of the [two]
nations and without political conspiracies involving America and the Zionist
regime [Israel,]” Raisi said, according to Jamshidi.
In recent months, the United States has been at the forefront of international
efforts to broker a comprehensive peace treaty between Baku and Yerevan.
Mirzoyan and his Azerbaijani counterpart Jeyhun Bayramov held two rounds of
intensive U.S.-mediated talks in May and June.
They are scheduled to meet in Moscow on Tuesday for fresh talks that will be
hosted by Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov. Russia has been very critical
of the U.S. peace efforts, saying that their main goal is to squeeze it out of
the region, rather than end the Karabakh conflict.
Raisi was also reported to reaffirm Tehran’s strong opposition to any
“geopolitical” border changes in the South Caucasus.
Iranian leaders have frequently made such statements in response to Azerbaijan’s
demands for an extraterritorial corridor to its Nakhichevan exclave that would
pass through Syunik, the sole Armenian province bordering Iran. They have warned
that the Islamic Republic would not tolerate attempts to strip it of the common
border and transport links with Armenia.
Mirzoyan praised Tehran’s stance on the “inviolability of our state borders”
during a joint news briefing with Amir-Abdollahian.
“For us, Iran has always been and remains and will continue to be a special
partner, including in overcoming the challenges in the current difficult
conditions,” he said.
According to another Iranian news agency, Mehr, the Armenian minister assured
Raisi that Armenia “will never become a platform for anti-Iranian actions” and
remains committed to deepening Armenian-Iranian ties.
Armenia’s Ruling Party Accused Of Electoral Foul Play
• Naira Bulghadarian
Armenia - Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian speaks at a congress of his Civil
Contract party, Yerevan, October 29, 2022.
An Armenian civic group has accused Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian’s Civil
Contract party and local government officials affiliated with it of abusing
their administrative resources to facilitate the party’s victory in forthcoming
municipal elections in Yerevan.
In an extensive investigative report released late last week, the Union of
Informed Citizens (UIC) said that the administration of a major local community
comprising the town of Spitak and surrounding villages is drawing up lists of
its Yerevan-based natives promising to vote for Civil Contract and its mayoral
candidate, Tigran Avinian, in the elections slated for September. It said the
process is overseen by Gevorg Papoyan, the ruling party’s deputy chairman.
The accusations are based on recorded phone calls between local officials and an
UIC activist posing as an aide to Papoyan. The audio of those conversations was
posted on the group’s fact-checking website.
Spitak’s deputy mayor, Hovik Hovhannisian, and six village chiefs can be heard
saying that they already have or will soon have such lists. Hovannisian says
that he personally spoke to 30 relatives and other Spitak-born residents of
Yerevan and that 23 of them assured him that they will vote for Pashinian’s
party.
In his words, Spitak officials explain to such voters “just how bad thing will
be for them” if Civil Contract loses the polls. They hope to earn the party
1,000 votes in this way, he says, adding that Spitak Mayor Kajayr Nikoghosian is
“100 percent” involved in the effort.
Armenia - Gevorg Papoyan.
Papoyan rejected the UIC report as slanderous and said he will file a defamation
suit against the Western-funded organization. Speaking to RFE/RL’s Armenian
Service at the weekend, the Civil Contract vice-chairman denied issuing
election-related instructions to the authorities in Spitak or any other
community. He said at the same time that the local officials are affiliated with
Pashinian’s party and have a right to campaign for its election victory.
The UIC leader, Daniel Ioannisian, countered that the officials admitted
ordering their subordinates to participate in that campaign. “If this is not a
case of abuse of administrative resources, then what is?” he said.
Armenia’s Office of the Prosecutor-General on Monday pledged to look into the
UIC allegations after being asked by RFE/RL’s Armenian Service to comment on it.
It is not clear why the prosecutors did not do that right after the release of
the report.
Ioannisian noted that such election-related practices were widespread under
Armenia’s former governments and that Pashinian for years decried them.
Pashinian and his political team claim to have eliminated electoral fraud in the
country after coming to power in 2018. The prime minister regularly states that
power finally “belongs to the people.”
His political opponents dispute the claim. They expressed serious concern over
the freedom and fairness of future Armenian elections after Pashinian installed
last October a longtime ally, Vahagn Hovakimian, as chairman of the Central
Election Commission. Hovakimian was a senior member of Civil Contract until the
appointment.
Opposition Lawmaker Sues Over Loss Of Parliament Post
• Artak Khulian
Armenia - Taguhi Tovmasian speaks druring a news conference in Yerevan, October
10, 2022.
An opposition lawmaker has asked a court in Yerevan to reinstate her as
chairwoman of the Armenian parliament’s standing committee on human rights.
The parliament’s pro-government majority voted to oust Taguhi Tovmasian on July
11 on the grounds that she did not attend most meetings of the parliament’s
leadership. It also claimed that Tovmasian did not stop “hate speech” when her
committee discussed on April 4 candidacies for the then vacant post of Armenia’s
human rights ombudsman.
Edgar Ghazarian, the opposition candidate for the post, enraged pro-government
deputies with his claim that the 2018 “velvet revolution” that brought Pashinian
to power was in fact a “Turkish-Azerbaijani revolution.” They shouted abuse and
threats at Ghazarian during the meeting chaired by Tovmasian.
Tovmasian, who is affiliated with the opposition Pativ Unem bloc, maintains that
that she did nothing wrong on April 4. She has also argued that the
parliamentary statutes did not require her to attend meetings of the National
Assembly’s Council consisting of speaker Alen Simonian, his deputies as well as
the committee chairpersons.
Tovmasian told reporters on Monday that she wants the court to invalidate her
ouster condemned by Pativ Unem and the other parliamentary opposition force, the
Hayastan alliance. She said it was “illegal” also because the parliament debated
it in her absence. Tovmasian said she had notified the parliament in advance
that she cannot attend the session because of being on sick leave.
“They can’t silence me by removing me from the post of the committee
chairperson,” added the former journalist and newspaper editor.
Prior to her dismissal, Tovmasian was the last remaining opposition head of a
parliament committee. Hayastan’s Ishkhan Saghatelian and Vahe Hakobian were
ousted as deputy speaker and chairman of the parliament committee on economic
affairs respectively in July 2022 after weeks of anti-government protests
organized by Hayastan and Pativ Unem. Another Hayastan deputy, Armen Gevorgian,
immediately resigned as chairman of a committee on “Eurasian integration” in
protest.
Reposted on ANN/Armenian News with permission from RFE/RL
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