Levon Zurabyan, Deputy Chairman of the Armenian National Congress (ANC), wrote:

“Aliyev’s OMON [riot police] in the Armenian Parliament: Seeing that the opposition remains unyielding in rejecting the ‘Aliyev-style’ Constitution, and that mass arrests and fabricated criminal cases have had no effect, Pashinyan has decided to break opposition MPs right inside the National Assembly through the use of brute physical force.

Rubinyan’s failure to call a recess, combined with the coordinated and clearly pre-planned actions of MPs from the ruling Civil Contract party, demonstrates that we are witnessing a special operation by Aliyev’s OMON inside the Armenian Parliament – an operation aimed at suppressing the opposition and securing the votes necessary for a constitutional referendum.

But the sheer scoundrelism of these people is setting new records.

Surrounded by the police, the NSS, investigative bodies, and the entire state apparatus at every level – and unlawfully using the levers of these institutions to carry out mass arrests of his opponents, prosecute them through fabricated cases, and, in some instances, even orchestrate extrajudicial physical reprisals – Pashinyan stoops to a level of thuggish, anti-state cynicism.

Listen here, man, even Artashes Geghamyan once thrashed you in parliament, and you swallowed it in total silence. Now, instead of condemning the violence in parliament, you hide behind your bodyguards and actually revel in the assault your own ‘Red Guards’ have launched against democratic freedoms.

And they certainly held their own quite firmly – a thousand times better than you ever could!”