Wednesday, December 23, 2020
Another Armenian Mayor Prosecuted
December 23, 2020
Armenia -- The Investigative Committee building in Yerevan.
Law-enforcement authorities moved on Wednesday to arrest another Armenian town
mayor who has demanded Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian’s resignation and backed
protests against his rule.
The Investigative Committee asked an Armenian court to remand Manvel Paramazian
in pre-trial custody after charging him with kidnapping and violent assault.
Paramazian has run Kajaran, an industrial town in Armenia’s southeastern Syunik
province, since 2016. He was among the heads of more than a dozen local
communities who issued earlier this month statements condemning Pashinian’s
handling of the war with Azerbaijan and demanding his resignation. They accused
him of putting Syunik’s security at grave risk with Armenian troop withdrawals
completed over the weekend.
The mayors encouraged hundreds of local residents who blocked a regional highway
to disrupt Pashinian’s visit to Syunik on Monday. One of them, Arush Arushanian,
was detained hours before the protest.
A Yerevan court ordered the Investigative Committee to free Arushanian on
Tuesday. Nevertheless, the law-enforcement agency leveled a string of criminal
charges against the mayor of the town of Goris and asked for a court permission
to arrest him again. Arushanian rejected the accusations as politically
motivated.
Paramazian spoke to journalists when he arrived at the Investigative Committee
headquarters in Yerevan for an interrogation on Wednesday morning. The Kajaran
mayor again denounced Pashinian and demanded his resignation.
In a statement issued in the evening, the committee said Paramazian has been
charged with kidnapping and beating up, together with several other men, a
Kajaran resident who assaulted his father in April this year. It said five other
individuals were indicted earlier as part of the same criminal case.
Police arrested four of those men in May, sparking protests by hundreds of
Kajaran residents sympathetic to Paramazian. Investigators searched the mayor’s
home but did not prosecute him at the time.
Opposition Party Wants Another Russian Military Base In Armenia
December 23, 2020
• Karlen Aslanian
Armenia -- Edmon Marukian, the leader of the opposition Bright Armenia Party, at
a news conference in Yerevan, December 23, 2020.
Russia should set up a second military base in Armenia to guarantee the South
Caucasus country’s territorial integrity after the war in Nagorno-Karabakh, the
leader of a major Armenian opposition party said on Wednesday.
Edmon Marukian made a case for the deployment of Russian troops in Armenia’s
southeastern Syunik province bordering Iran as well as Azerbaijani districts
southwest of Karabakh.
Azerbaijani forces mostly recaptured two of those districts during the six-week
war stopped by a Russian-brokered ceasefire on November 10. Parts of the
Zangelan and Kubatli districts adjacent to Syunik remained under Armenian
control until last week.
Armenian army units and local militias completed their withdrawal from those
areas at the weekend amid angry protests staged by many local residents. The
latter say that they can no longer feel safe because Azerbaijani forces will now
be stationed dangerously close to their communities as well as a strategic
highway passing through the mountainous region.
“People have fears and I will dare to say those fears must be eliminated,”
Marukian told RFE/RL’s Armenian Service.
“The only way to to allay those fears and save Syunik from depopulation and
preserve the province as Armenia’s backbone now is to deploy a Russian military
base there,” he said.
Armenia -- Russian soldiers hold a military exercise at the Alagyaz shooting
range, September 24, 2020.
Russia currently has up to 5,000 troops mainly stationed along Armenia’s closed
border with Turkey. Marukian argued that their Soviet-era base headquartered in
Gyumri has successfully precluded Turkish “infringements” of his country’s
internationally recognized territory.
The Armenian-Turkish border is also protected by Russian border guards in
collaboration with their Armenian colleagues.
The Russian military and border guards have already set up several outposts in
Syunik over the past two months. The Armenian Defense Ministry said late last
week that the border guards will also patrol sections of the main regional
highway straddling the Soviet-era Armenian-Azerbaijani border.
Marukian’s Bright Armenia Party (LHK) is one of the two opposition groups
represented in the Armenian parliament. The LHK was until recently reputed to be
a pro-Western party. Its U.S.-educated leader has criticized Armenia’s
membership in Russian-led military and trade blocs in the past.
Marukian visited Moscow last week on what his aides described as a private trip.
He denied on Wednesday any connection between the trip and his calls for
stronger Russian military presence in Armenia.
Dozens Of Karabakh Civilians ‘Still Missing’
December 23, 2020
• Marine Khachatrian
NAGORNO-KARABAKH -- A fragment of a Smerch rocket sticks out of the ground near
the town of Martuni, October 26, 2020
About 40 civilian residents of Nagorno-Karabakh remain unaccounted for more than
one month after a Russian-brokered ceasefire agreement stopped the
Armenian-Azerbaijani war, a senior official in Stepanakert said on Wednesday.
“According to various reports, it is very likely that some of these 40 people
have also been killed,” Artak Beglarian, Karabakh’s human rights ombudsman, told
a news conference. “The information will be updated.”
Beglarian said he hopes that most of these missing persons are held captive in
Azerbaijan or are hiding in areas seized by the Azerbaijani army during the war
and will return home soon.
Azerbaijan has so far confirmed the deaths of two Karabakh Armenians held in
Azerbaijani captivity. Both elderly civilians lived in Karabakh villages
currently controlled by Baku.
The ceasefire agreement which took effect on November 10 requires the warring
sides to release all prisoners of war and civilians held by them. Armenia and
Azerbaijan exchanged the first groups of such prisoners on December 14. They
included 14 ethnic Armenian civilians.
Echoing statements by Armenian officials, Beglarian claimed that Baku is still
holding dozens of other prisoners and refusing to acknowledge this fact which he
said is corroborated by amateur videos posted on Azerbaijani social media
accounts.
Beglarian said the missing persons do not include 21 other Karabakh residents
who his office believes were captured and killed by Azerbaijani forces. The
bodies of the vast majority of these victims have already returned by
Azerbaijani authorities or recovered otherwise, he added.
Earlier this month, Britain’s The Guardian daily examined gruesome videos that
show men in Azerbaijani army uniforms beheading two elderly men recognized by
their Karabakh Armenian relatives and neighbors.
“The ethnic Armenian men were non-combatants, people in their respective
villages said,” the paper wrote on December 15.
“The villagers’ testimony in interviews with the Guardian corroborates
identifications by a human rights ombudsman for the Armenian-backed local
government [Artak Beglarian] and two prominent Armenian human rights lawyers
preparing a criminal case relating to the murders,” it said.
EU Approves More Coronavirus Aid To Armenia
December 23, 2020
The European Union announced on Wednesday 24 million euros ($29 million) in
additional financial assistance designed to help Armenia cope with the
coronavirus pandemic and its severe socioeconomic consequences.
The EU Delegation in Yerevan said the aid will support the Armenian government’s
“healthcare and anti-crisis measures for vulnerable groups and businesses
affected by COVID-19.”
“We have already disbursed around Euro 60 million this year in direct
grant-based budget support to Armenia to tackle COVID-19 and more is yet to
come,” the head of the delegation, Andrea Wiktorin, said in a statement. “Our
assistance is expected to help implement important economic reforms, preserve
jobs and small businesses and promote inclusive growth in Armenia.”
The statement also quoted Armenian Deputy Prime Minister Mher Grigorian as
saying that it “will greatly contribute to Armenia’s recovery from the pandemic.”
The latest allocation is part of a 92 million-euro coronavirus-related aid
package for Armenia approved by the EU in April.
The pandemic has hit the country of about 3 million hard, with 155,440
coronavirus cases and at least 2,691 deaths officially confirmed so far. The
Armenian Ministry of Health reported on Wednesday morning the deaths of 20 more
people infected with the disease.
The pandemic is also the main reason why the Armenian economy is projected to
shrink by more than 7 percent this year after three consecutive years of robust
growth.
Reprinted on ANN/Armenian News with permission from RFE/RL
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