A video released by billionaire Samvel Karapetian’s Strong Armenia bloc suggests that a group of its supporters were confronted by several men while campaigning for the elections in a village just south of Yerevan. The men were apparently led by Arsen Harutiunian, a member of the local council affiliated with the ruling Civil Contract party.

Harutiunian hit and injured one of the Karapetian supporters, a young man named Davit. Another, female supporter can be heard crying, “I’m pregnant, why are you hitting me?”

“As you can see in the footage, our campaign was obstructed and they are the ones who attacked us,” Hrayr Gevorgian, a local Strong Armenia activist, told RFE/RL’s Armenian Service.

Harutiunian denied attacking the youngster despite video evidence to the contrary. He claimed that he only “tried to get him into the car” as Davit “wouldn’t obey, said bad words and didn’t behave well.” Accordingly, the ruling party member blamed the opposition campaigners for the incident.

When asked how he thinks they provoked it, he said: “They raised their voices even louder when they saw our car.”

Karapetian’s bloc, widely regarded as Civil Contract party’s number one election challenger, strongly condemned the violence and demanded that those responsible for it be brought to justice. Armenia’s Investigative Committee said it has launched a criminal investigation into collective assault, hooliganism and obstruction of election campaign. But it did not charge anyone as of Wednesday evening. Harutiunian was not even questioned by investigators.

Later on Tuesday, a supporter of the opposition Hayastan alliance was beaten up in the northwestern town of Artik. A short video posted on social media showed a group of local Civil Contract activists ganging up on the man, Hakob Harutiunian. The latter said that he was first attacked by one of those activists, Sipan Grigorian, who accused him of having looked inappropriate at his family.

“I was about to push him back when he punched me,” he said, adding that dozens of other men poured out of a nearby Civil Contract office to join in what he sees as a politically motivated beating.

Harutiunian made headlines in March after approaching and criticizing Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian during the latter’s visit to Artik. Pashinian reacted furiously to the criticism.

Grigorian, whose mother is running for the Armenian parliament on the Civil Contract ticket, could not be reached for comment. Ruling party leaders in Artik and the surrounding Shirak province did not answer phone calls from RFE/RL’s Armenian Service.

Ishkhan Saghatelian, a leading member of Hayastan, deplored Civil Contract’s failure to condemn the violence. He also accused law-enforcement authorities of a cover-up.

“If the same thing had been done by an oppositionist, they would have been immediately locked up together with their family members and supporters,” said Saghatelian.

Zhanna Aleksanian, a veteran human rights campaigner, linked the violent incidents to Pashinian’s pre-election “hate speech” against the top opposition leaders. The premier publicly pledged to “take out” them on May 18. The Investigative Committee has refused to even launch a formal inquiry into that pledge.

“Madam Prosecutor-General [Anna Vartapetian,] prevent these acts of violence with your decisions,” said Aleksanian. “If you do nothing, this situation will escalate and lead to unpredictable consequences.”

No members or supporters of Pashinian’s party are known to have been prosecuted on election-related charges to date. The authorities have instead indicted hundreds of oppositionists. The vast majority of them are Strong Armenia members and supporters facing vote-buying charges strongly denied by Karapetian’s bloc.

Artur Osipian, an exiled activist from Nagorno-Karabakh, was arrested on May 18 a few hours after asking Pashinian tough questions and criticizing his policies on Karabakh. Pashinian responded by shouting insults and threats directed at “Karabakh pseudo-elites.”

Osipian remains in detention on charges of disrupting public order and obstructing Civil Contract’s election campaign. He has been on hunger strike in a Yerevan prison for more than two weeks.

Another man was arrested on May 15 for tearing down a campaign poster of Pashinian. He was taken to a psychiatric clinic in Yerevan the next day and found dead there hours later. The authorities said that he committed suicide.