RFE/RL – Dozens More Oppositionists Arrested Ahead Of Armenian Elections

Billionaire Samvel Karapetian’s Strong Armenia alliance and the Hayastan bloc led by former President Robert Kocharian said the fresh arrests are part of Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian’s efforts to boost his electoral chances.

The Investigative Committee raided in the morning as many 50 nationwide campaign offices of Strong Armenia, which is widely regarded as the ruling Civil Contract party’s number one election challenger. It made 25 arrests as part of a criminal case opened against Aleksan Aleksanian, an aide to Karapetian who was arrested on vote-buying charges on Tuesday.

According to the committee, since last September Aleksanian has hired some 1,400 people to work for a non-governmental organization that formed the backbone of Karapetian’s opposition movement. It claims that they were paid to attend the movement’s rallies under the guise of their wages. Both Aleksanian and Strong Armenia reject the accusations as politically motivated.

Tigran Hayrapetian, a lawyer representing them, argued that it would not have made sense for Aleksanian to bribe so many campaigners for ten consecutive months.

“People have been working [for Karapetian’s movement] since September, meaning they have worked for 10 months and have received a [monthly] salary of 200,000 drams ($540) each in a manner defined by the law,” said Hayrapetian.

“We and our supporters are not afraid of the repressions,” Strong Armenia spokeswoman Marianna Ghahramanian told RFE/RL’s Armenian Service.

The bloc’s leaders made similar defiant statements when they addressed tens of thousands of supporters during a campaign rally in Yerevan’s central Republic Square on Wednesday evening. It was one of the biggest rallies held in Armenia since the 2018 “velvet revolution.”

Dozens and possibly hundreds of other Strong Armenia members or supporters have been arrested in recent months on charges of giving or taking vote bribes. The authorities have opened a smaller number of such criminal cases against Kocharian’s Hayastan and the other opposition heavyweight, businessman Gagik Tsarukian’s Prosperous Armenia Party (BHK).

Another law-enforcement agency, the Anti-Corruption Committee (ACC), on Thursday searched Hayastan’s campaign offices in Gyumri and detained two persons working there. It did not comment on the raids in the next few hours.

“They have confiscated the office computers and several documents,” said Hovik Petrosian, a Gyumri-based oppositionist running for the Armenian parliament on the Hayastan ticket.

Hovannes Khudoyan, a Hayastan lawyer, expressed confidence that the continuing arrests and searches will not influence the election results in Pashinian’s favor. The bloc’s leaders claimed, for their part, that Pashinian is desperate to prevent his party’s defeat with such actions.

No Civil Contract members or supporters have been prosecuted on election-related charges to date. Pashinian party is increasingly accused by the opposition and some media outlets of illegally forcing public sector employees to attend its rallies and pledge to vote for it. It denies the accusations.

On Wednesday, at least two Strong Armenia and Hayastan supporters were assaulted by government loyalists in separate incidents caught on camera. Nobody was arrested or charged in connection with the violence.

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