Monday, November 1, 2021
Azeri-Controlled Road ‘Safe For Armenians’
November 01, 2021
• Naira Nalbandian
An Azerbaijani checkpoint set up at on the main road conneting Armeia to Iran,
September 14, 2021.
Armenians can safely use an Azerbaijani-controlled section of the main highway
that connects Armenia to Iran, a senior security official in Yerevan insisted on
Monday.
The 21-kilometer section is part of contested border areas along Armenia’s
Syunik province which were controversially handed over to Azerbaijan following
last year’s war in Nagorno-Karabakh.
Azerbaijani forces set up a checkpoint there on September 12 to tax Iranian
commercial trucks transporting cargo to and from Armenia. The move caused
serious disruptions in Armenian-Iranian trade operations and raised tensions in
Baku’s relations with Tehran.
Officials in Syunik accused Azerbaijani officers of bullying some Armenian
drivers and their passengers at the same section of the road that also connects
the Syunik towns of Goris and Kapan. Later in September, Russian and Armenian
border guards reportedly began escorting Armenian vehicles driving through it.
“It is safe,” said Aram Hakobian, a deputy head of Armenia’s National Security
Service (NSS). “I was there yesterday, it’s very safe.”
“True, representatives of the neighboring state [Azerbaijan] are standing there
but they don’t stop Armenian citizens,” he told reporters.
Commenting on incidents that are still periodically reported from the
Goris-Kapan highway, Hakobian said: “I have no such information.”
The Azerbaijani roadblock left the Armenian government scrambling to speed up
the reconstruction of an alternative Syunik highway bypassing the border area.
The government has assured senior Iranian officials that it will be essentially
completed by the end of November.
Armenians Ignore COVID-19 Mask Rule
November 01, 2021
• Marine Khachatrian
Armenia - Passengers on a commuter bus in Yerevan, March 12, 2021.
Few Armenians wore masks outdoors on Monday despite being legally required to do
so following a surge in coronavirus cases that have killed more than 1,000
people in the country of about 3 million over the past month.
The Armenian government decided to impose the rule, effective from October 1, in
a bid to contain the latest wave of infections. Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian
said the measure will make it easier for authorities to enforce mask wearing on
public transport and inside shops and other enclosed areas.
An RFE/RL correspondent saw very few people with face coverings in the center
and outskirts of Yerevan. Residents of other parts of Armenia have been even
more reluctant to put on masks throughout the pandemic.
There were also no police officers in sight fining people or warning them to
comply with the new legal requirement.
Critics questioned the effectiveness of the requirement in the absence of strict
enforcement of physical distancing rules in public areas.
Armenian bars, restaurants and other leisure and cultural facilities have
operated with few sanitary restrictions since the summer of 2020. Nor have the
authorities banned or restricted mass events in recent months.
Armenia - An official from the Food Safety Inspectorate inspects a grocery store
in Yerevan, September 3, 2021.
Davit Melik-Nubarian, a public health expert, said the government should shorten
the work hours of leisure venues and consider introducing a mandatory
coronavirus health pass for entry to them if it is to slow the spread of
COVID-19.
The Armenian Ministry of Health registered 55 more coronavirus-related deaths on
Sunday, raising the official death toll from the disease to 6,379. The figure
does not include almost 1,300 other infected people who the ministry says have
died as a result of other, chronic conditions.
Pashinian made clear last Thursday that the government has no plans to impose
lockdown restrictions. It will instead step up its vaccination campaign and push
for greater mask wearing, he said.
Nearly seven months after the launch of the campaign, less than 10 percent of
Armenia’s population has been fully vaccinated against the coronavirus, the
lowest immunization rate in wider Europe.
Armenia - A crowded cafe downtown Yerevan, May 14, 2020.
Vaccinations have accelerated over the past month after the authorities began
requiring all public and private sector employees to get inoculated or take
coronavirus tests twice a month at their own expense. But there are growing
complaints about poor and unsafe organization of the process mainly carried
inside state-run policlinics across the country.
Gohar Abrahamian, a Yerevan resident, feared contracting the coronavirus when
she stood in long waiting lines to get vaccinated late last week.
Abrahamian said she first waited at the entrance to a policlinic together with
about 40 other people, some of whom had possible COVID-19 symptoms and wanted to
see a doctor. Once inside the building, she had to join an even longer line of
citizens crammed into a narrow corridor and waiting outside a single vaccination
room.
“I kept looking around to see who is sneezing and who is not,” the woman told
RFE/RL’s Armenian Service. “Social distancing was out of the question in those
circumstances.”
New Gyumri Mayor Elected After Deal With Ruling Party
November 01, 2021
• Satenik Kaghzvantsian
Armenia - Vardges Samsonian attends a public discussion in Gyumri, October 15,
2019.
A leader of the political force that won the October 17 municipal election in
Gyumri became the mayor of Armenia’s second largest city on Monday after
striking a power-sharing deal with Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian’s party.
Gyumri has been run by Samvel Balasanian, a local businessman, for the last nine
years. Although Balasanian decided not to seek another term in office, a newly
created bloc bearing his name joined the mayoral race.
The Balasanian Bloc garnered 36.6 percent of the vote, earning it 14 seats in
the 33-member city council empowered to elect the mayor. In a serious setback
for Pashinian, the ruling Civil Contract party finished second with 11 seats.
The remaining eight seats were distributed among three opposition parties.
The new council elected Balasanian Bloc’s mayoral candidate, Vardges Samsonian,
by 24 votes to 8.
Samsonian, who previously headed a municipal agency providing utility services,
pledged to strive to turn Gyumri into a “well-maintained, green, tranquil,
consolidated, clean and developing city looking to its future with confidence.”
Armenia - The Mayor's Office in Gyumri.
He was backed by council members representing his bloc and Pashinian’s party in
line with a “memorandum of cooperation” signed by the two political forces on
Saturday.
A senior Civil Contract member who signed the deal said they agreed to share
“responsibility for governing the city” and pursue a “coordinated staffing
policy.” The deal entitles Civil Contract to naming Gyumri’s deputy mayors, she
said.
It was signed two days after two senior municipal officials affiliated with the
Balasanian Bloc were arrested by Armenia’s National Security Service on
corruption charges. The bloc did not publicly allege political reasons behind
the arrests.
Some Armenian outlets reported earlier in October that the Balasanian Bloc is
facing strong pressure from the central government to reach a power-sharing deal
with Pashinian’s party and even cede the post of mayor to it. Senior party
figures denied such pressure.
Civil Contract’s list of candidates in the Gyumri election was topped by
Hovannes Harutiunian, the governor of surrounding Shirak province. Harutiunian
is now widely expected to be sacked and replaced by a pro-government member of
the Armenian parliament, Nazeli Baghdasarian. The latter will be the fourth
provincial governor handpicked by Pashinian in the last three and a half years.
Armenia -- A street in the center of Gyumri, August 25, 2019.
The Balasanian Bloc would have still managed to install Samsonian as mayor had
it accepted a coalition proposal from the opposition Zartonk (Awakening) party
that controls four seats in the new Gyumri council. A representative of the
bloc, Sona Arakelian, said it chose to team up with the ruling party instead
because “the people of Gyumri gave the largest number of votes to these two
forces.”
Less than one-quarter of the city’s eligible voters went to the polls on October
17.
Samsonian also defended his bloc’s political choice criticized by opposition
groups. “By gaining an absolute majority [in the council] we will manage to
jointly address Gyumri’s problems even more rapidly,” the newly elected mayor
told reporters. “If we were not united, there would be a problem.”
Reprinted on ANN/Armenian News with permission from RFE/RL
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