2022 – Page 467 – Armenian Directory & News

CPJ: Armenia parliament passes bill allowing state bodies to revoke journalist accreditation

June 6, 2022March 12, 2026 Andranik Taslakhchian

May 31 2022

May 31, 2022 2:57 PM EDT

Stockholm, May 31, 2022 – Armenian President Vahagn Khachaturyan should refrain from ratifying legal amendments allowing state bodies to revoke journalists’ accreditation, the Committee to Protect Journalists said Tuesday.

On May 25, Armenia’s parliament approved the amendments to the country’s mass media law, according to news reports and an entry on the parliamentary website. Previously, only media outlets could revoke their journalists’ accreditation with state agencies, although amendments last December allowed agencies to deny accreditation.

According to media reports, local press freedom advocates fear that authorities could use the amendments to bar critical journalists from covering parliamentary sessions and other government events. The amendments will take effect when signed by the country’s president, according to Ashot Melikyan, head of the local press advocacy group Committee to Protect Freedom of _expression_, who spoke with CPJ by telephone.

“The recent amendments to journalist accreditation regulations are the latest example of Armenia’s departure from international standards in media legislation. Given the country’s highly polarized politics and potential for selective application, these amendments are concerning,” said Gulnoza Said, CPJ’s Europe and Central Asia program coordinator, in New York. “We urge President Khachaturyan to refrain from ratifying the amendments and call on authorities to work with local press freedom organizations to reform recent restrictive media laws.”

Under the new regulations, state bodies will be able to terminate journalists’ accreditation if they violate the body’s accreditation regulations or “rules of procedure” for a second time within a year after receiving a written warning for a previous violation.

The bill’s authors, two deputies with Armenia’s ruling Civil Contract party, have denied that the amendments restrict freedom of the press, stating in parliament that only the accreditation of a specific journalist can be revoked, not media outlets as a whole. They added that outlets would be able to replace any journalist whose accreditation was terminated and argued in parliament and in an explanatory note accompanying the bill that the change was necessitated by “numerous cases” of journalists threatening and insulting parliamentary deputies and “obstructing the activities of both deputies and other journalists.”

Melikyan told CPJ that while a small number of journalists have been guilty of inappropriate behavior, it was wrong to enact laws on this basis, as authorities could use the law as an “instrument of pressure” against the journalistic community. “Today, government organs might object to journalists’ behavior. Later it could be how journalists cover their work,” Melikyan said.

Journalists will be able to appeal decisions on denial and termination of accreditation through the courts, he added but said it remains to be seen how both state organs and the courts will apply the law in practice.

Melikyan described the amendments as the latest “link in the chain of regressive media bills” in Armenia. In July and October 2021, the country recriminalized insult and tripled existing fines for insult and defamation, while parliament banned journalists from entering the legislative chamber without advance permission and limited media interviews to a designated area, as CPJ documented.

CPJ emailed the Parliament of Armenia, the Office of the President, and the Office of the Prime Minister for comment but did not receive any replies.

https://cpj.org/2022/05/armenia-parliament-passes-bill-allowing-state-bodies-to-revoke-journalist-accreditation/

The ‘revolution of millionaires’ in Armenia is turning increasingly tense

June 6, 2022March 12, 2026 Hagop Kamalian

June 1 2022

A new protest movement over the fate of Nagorno-Karabakh has a lot in common with Armenia’s “old regime”

Knar Khudoyan

1 June 2022, 2.02pm

“The sultan wants to annihilate us / Arise, my child, I beseech you.”

These are the lyrics from a 19th century song that recalls Armenian militia fighting against the mass murders of Armenians in Ottoman Turkey. Today, the words have been dusted off and remixed to support Armenian protesters demanding the resignation of the country’s prime minister Nikol Pashinyan.

The protesters, waving the flags of Armenia and the disputed territory of Nagorno-Karabakh, follow a white pickup truck through Yerevan’s central streets, shouting “Armenia without Nikol”and “Nikol is a traitor”. Led by youthful protesters at the front, they often wear black T-shirts with crosses on them, serving as a reminder of camouflage fatigues worn by Armenian soldiers during fighting against Azerbaijan.

Now a month old, the protests began when two opposition parties, led by former presidents Robert Kocharyan and Serzh Sargsyan, left parliament and took to the streets on 27 April in protest at Pashinyan’s ongoing peace negotiations with Azerbaijan and opening the border with Turkey.

Protest leaders have repeatedly warned the Armenian public that Pashinyan, if not overthrown, will concede Karabakh Armenians’ right to self-determination in the negotiations with Azerbaijan, and that Turkey could refuse to recognise the Armenian Genocide as part of the ‘normalisation’ talks with Armenia.

Pashinyan appeared to raise the possibility of concessions over Nagorno-Karabakh in April, saying that “today the international community tells us again: ‘Lower your benchmark on the status of Nagorno-Karabakh a little’.” Yet protest leaders have not offered an alternative for Armenia’s foreign policy, instead leaving these questions to the temporary government which will follow if their campaign succeeds.

Anthropologist Aghasi Tadevosyan told openDemocracy the current protest movement is the most aggressive he has seen in the country – but is also identified with the country’s “old guard” and their cronies, leading some to dub it ‘the revolution of millionaires’.

“People surely have concerns about the fate of Karabakh, but the fear of ‘return of the old’ is bigger,” Tadevosyan said.

In their attempt to force him out of power, protesters have used the civil disobedience tactics of Pashinyan himself, who came to power in the 2018 Velvet Revolution.

Four years ago, opposition MP Pashinyan organised a city-wide campaign of blocking transport and roads in Yerevan, which eventually helped him dislodge Sargsyan from power. But since Armenia’s defeat in the 2020 Karabakh War, Pashinyan’s government has come under fire for its weakness in handling the conflict. In response to the defeat by Azerbaijan, hundreds of people demonstrated in central Yerevan over the government’s failures, even breaking into parliament buildings.

This time, protesters’ efforts at blocking traffic are sporadic and have not paralysed the city like in 2018. Rather, the protesters have created traffic problems in the gentrified city centre with few alternative roads to the suburbs.

But after a month of protests, why has it proved unsuccessful? According to independent observers, the daily average number of participants is around 3,000-5,000, while protesters claim the rally gets about 50,000 attendees daily and is growing.

On the street, several protesters explained the protests’ lack of popularity by virtue of the Armenian people not being “awake”, and therefore unaware of the danger that Pashinyan poses to the country.

“The uneducated part of society, unfortunately, is very large and they get cheated by [Pashinyan’s] propaganda machine,” said lawyer Taguhi Hovhannisyan, who I spoke to near a rally outside the president’s residence, in Yerevan on 25 May.

When I asked Hovhannisyan about the role of former presidents Sargsyan and Kocharyan – leading representatives of the country’s old system of power, the Republican Party – in the protest campaign, she said she was not against them.

“This is not about individuals,” said Hovhannisyan, as protesters stop to perform a national dance – and a man hangs a flag of Nagorno-Karabakh to the front gate of the presidential residence. “The return of the old regime is not as bad as losing our republic to Turkey’s expansion.”

On some days, the city police have detained between 200 and 400 protesters on charges of disobeying a lawful order from an officer, public swearing or hooliganism. Most detainees have been released within hours.

“This is the first ever protest where differing opinions are not only not welcome, but might encounter verbal or even physical violence. People are genuinely afraid”

“Nikol doesn’t think about the nation, only about human rights,” Artashes Hakobyan complained, suggesting ‘human rights’ are a foreign concept to Armenia. Hakobyan is a member of the Armenian Revolutionary Federation, one of the country’s oldest political parties, which has previously cooperated with the Republican Party.

“If the border with Turkey opens, it will kill the Armenian economy,” said Artashes, arguing against Pashinyan’s negotiations with Turkey to open the border. “Turkish employers will surely offer a higher salary, and Armenian labourers will prefer to work for them. It’s the law of the market.”

The protesters have also focused on surrounding the buildings of state institutions, including the country’s Foreign Ministry on 24 May – as announced by Ishkhan Saghatelyan, an MP from the Armenian Revolutionary Federation. As Saghatelyan put it, this location was chosen in order “to prevent [the Foreign Ministry] from working against Armenia’s national interests”.

Two days later, protesters gathered outside a central government building where Pashinyan was hosting the president of Montenegro. The protesters were making loud noises with plastic whistles. A woman in her 60s complained about the noise, after which she claims she was verbally abused by young male protesters. She refused to be named for the article, calling the protesters “dangerous people”. Instead, she shouted back that “Nikol did not concede any land in Karabakh.”

“That contract was signed years ago by Serzh [Sargsyan]. Serzh is a Turk himself, and Kocharyan is an Azeri. This is a fight for power, not for Karabakh,” she cried.

Anthropologist Aghasi Tadevosyan, who has studied civil movements and their folklore in Armenia since 1988, says this level of hostility and violence is new to the country’s protest culture.

“This is the first ever protest where differing opinions are not only not welcome, but might encounter verbal or even physical violence. People are genuinely afraid,” Tadevosyan said, saying that the current protest movement had “elements of terror”.

As an example, Tadevosyan pointed to an incident on 8 May in the northern city of Gyumri, where a video shows a group of protesters assaulting and beating several elderly men at a bus stop who refused to join them. Seven people were indicted on charges of hooliganism.

Tadevosyan notes he also received threats of “revenge” on a Facebook post, after posting that he disliked the 19th century military music anthem that has been adopted by the protesters.

“People perceive this crowd as a bunch of gangsters and looters of public wealth. They don’t believe that their patriotic narrative is sincere”

On Monday, protesters declared their intention to approach every government minister to get their commitment in rejecting Nagorno-Karabakh becoming part of Azerbaijan. To reach ministers, protesters gathered outside a central government building in Yerevan – with the police responding by detaining dozens of people inside and outside the office. This was the most violent clash so far, in which four people including two police officers were hospitalised. Law enforcement has started an investigation into the “mass riots” with eight people having been arrested so far.

Beyond the level of aggression, Tadevosyan also points out a potential class element to the protest movement – which is led by former leading members Armenia’s Republican Party, which was removed from power in the 2018 revolution. He says he’s seen people with “expensive clothes and expensive cars” in the protest leadership, a hark back to “old regime” rule when a “privileged social class” had “sanction to subordinate others through violence”.

“People perceive this crowd as a bunch of gangsters and looters of public wealth,” Tadevosyan said. “They don’t believe that their patriotic narrative is sincere, and so don’t think it’s worth their time engaging with them. People have started calling this ‘a revolution of millionaires’, a phrase which sums up their attitude.”

On the other side, loyal supporters of Pashinyan are also prone to labelling their political opponents “looters”, “drug addicts” and “Turks” (the latter a slur synonymous to ‘enemy’ in light of the Armenian Genocide).

Yet in contrast to both sides’ tendency to insults, Tadevosyan says that “the majority of the population is left out of this tension.”

“People just want to live their life. People’s appreciation of every second of life has increased after the [2020] war,” he said.

Julia Grigoryan, a teacher I meet in central Yerevan as it hosts evening protests, points out that despite the fact she has worked for 30 years, she “still lives in a rented house” while people like “[former president Robert] Kocharyan” are extraordinarily wealthy.

“We tried to open our own company in the 2000s, and faced racketeering. We didn’t forget that,” Julia recalls.

Despite the fact the route of her evening stroll has been disrupted by the protests, Julia is not too bothered. She believes the protests will die out soon.

“You don’t save Karabakh in Yerevan,” Julia said. “They just want to provoke a clash. But this won’t happen. We won’t be provoked.”

‘Disproportionate force’ from Armenian police as clashes with protesters continue

June 6, 2022March 12, 2026 Maral Chavushian

June 1 2022

1 June 2022

ByAni Avetisyan

Photo via Armenia Alliance Facebook page.

Grigoryan emphasised that in a number of cases ‘the physical force used by police officers during the apprehension of persons’ was ‘obviously disproportionate’ and that there were documented cases in which ‘brutal physical force’ was used against those who had already been restrained by the police.

During the May 30 protest, protesters attempted to force their way inside a government administration building. In the ensuing clashes over a dozen people were injured, and some were hospitalized, including police officers.

Daniel Ioannisyan, Programs Coordinator at the Union of Informed Citizens, an Armenia-based democracy watchdog, drew attention to the ‘apparent criminal actions’ of the crowd trying to storm the government administration, saying that the police might be allowed to ‘take special measures’ to stop the protesters, though only ‘within proportion’.

While over 100 people were briefly detained by police during the incident, eight were arrested and remain in police custory. They may be facing criminal charges.

Since the protests began a month ago, 25 criminal cases have been launched by Armenia’s Investigative Committee concerning ‘unlawful actions’ by the police.

https://oc-media.org/disproportionate-force-from-armenian-police-as-clashes-with-protesters-continue/

Vitebsk Oblast, Armenia set to intensify cooperation

June 6, 2022March 12, 2026 Nahapetian Samvel

Belarus – June 1 2022

VITEBSK, 1 June (BelTA) – Vitebsk Oblast and Armenia will intensify cooperation in all areas, from science to trade to culture, Vitebsk Oblast Governor Aleksandr Subbotin said as he met with Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of Armenia to Belarus Razmik Khumaryan, BelTA has learned.

The governor noted that it is extremely important to build and maintain contacts with other countries, especially given the difficult economic situation. “Cultural exchange, communication, and commercial projects are important. We will attach great importance to every area of our cooperation – from science to trade to culture,” Aleksandr Subbotin said.

Razmik Khumaryan, in turn, recalled that two Armenian regions have cooperation agreements with Vitebsk Oblast. “The COVID-19 was a major setback for our cooperation. Thus, we need to make up for it and step up efforts to implement these agreements. These documents have to do with cooperation in the economic, humanitarian, educational fields, etc. We will overcome all difficulties, our friendship will grow stronger,” the ambassador said.

The trade between Vitebsk Oblast and Armenia exceeded $1.6 million in January-March. Almost all of it was the export of goods. Vitebsk Oblast supplies meat and dairy products (it accounts for more than 71%), special purpose vehicles, medicines, and carpets, and imports fire detectors. In total, Vitebsk Oblast is home to eight companies with Armenian capital.

Putin holds phone conversation with Armenia’s Pashinyan

June 6, 2022March 12, 2026 Kanayan Tamar

CGTN, China

June 1 2022

Russian President Vladimir Putin held a telephone conversation with Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan on Wednesday, discussing trilateral agreements on Karabakh, the Kremlin press service said.

Putin and Pashinyan also spoke of the close cooperation between Russia and Armenia in accordance with the principles of strategic partnership and alliance.

Armenian President Meets Georgian Leaders in Tbilisi

June 6, 2022March 12, 2026 Hovhannisian John

Civil Georgia

June 1 2022

01/06/2022 – 01:51

Armenian President Vahagn Khachaturyan has made his first bilateral visit abroad after taking office in March to Tbilisi, where he met Georgian counterpart Salome Zurabishvili, Prime Minister Irakli Garibashvili and Parliament Speaker Shalva Papuashvili.

The two Presidents on May 30 discussed the prospects to develop relations between the two countries, including in transport, communications and information technology, the Armenian Presidential administration reported. They also talked about security issues in the South Caucasus.

In a joint press briefing after the conversation, President Zurabishvili asserted that the South Caucasus “faces new challenges and opportunities. ”

“The ongoing Russian aggression in Ukraine is a new challenge for everyone, as it violates all international norms and principles on which international order and the global security architecture are built,” she said.

The Georgian President also highlighted the “dire” situation in Russian-occupied Abkhazia and Tskhinvali Region/South Ossetia, adding that “the neglect of sovereignty and gross human rights abuses continue and intensify.”

But she said that “new opportunities for European integration for our country and for the Eastern Partnership region represent a very great chance.”

Also, President Zurabishvili stressed the role of the EU in talks between Yerevan and Baku, going on to assert that “the outcome of these negotiations lays the establishment of full peace in the region, economic development and all the new plans that affect the region and give it great prospects for the future.”

In the briefing, the Armenian President stressed that Yerevan puts “a great emphasis” on bolstering ties with Tbilisi, and stressed the importance of the recently frequent reciprocal visits of Georgian and Armenian officials.

Elaborating on discussions about cooperation in transport and communication, President Khachaturyan said the sides had talked about projects such as the Persian Gulf-International Transport corridors.

On May 31, the Georgian PM and Armenian President had a conversation about security in the South Caucasus, as well as bolstering bilateral ties in energy, transport and trade, the Georgian Government Administration’s press service reported.

In the meeting, PM Garibashvili also brought up his Peaceful Neighborhood Initiative, a proposed platform for confidence-building in the South Caucasus with the participation of Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, the U.S., and the EU.

Also on May 31, Parliament Speaker Shalva Papuashvili and President Khachaturyan touched upon current developments in the South Caucasus and discussed steps taken to establish regional peace and stability, the Parliament’s press service reported.

The Armenian President’s administration said that the sides highlighted both countries’ interest in establishing long-term, stable peace in the region.

Armenia’s Central Bank May Develop a Regulatory Framework for Crypto

June 6, 2022March 12, 2026 Babken Chilingarian

ihodl.com

June 1 2022

Armenia’s Central Bank May Develop a Regulatory Framework for Crypto

José Rodríguez

The State Revenue Committee of Armenia has submitted to the country’s central bank a request to develop a regulatory framework to regulate the cryptocurrency sector, a local publication has reported citing the statements by the head of the department, Rustam Badasyan.

According to him, the number of shady transactions with digital assets is growing due to the lack of clear regulation.

He has added: “There is already experience of both tax evasion and money laundering using cryptocurrencies.”

Rustam has also said that a cryptocurrency legislation would make it possible to investigate crimes related to the circulation of cryptocurrencies.

Armenian SRC asks Central Bank to develop and enforce cryptocurrency legislation

June 6, 2022March 12, 2026 Anna Tamamian

Armenia – June 1 2022

Armenian SRC asks Central Bank to develop and enforce cryptocurrency legislation
01.06.2022 16:10

YEREVAN, June 1. /ARKA/. Armenia’s State Revenue Committee (SRC) has formally asked the Central Bank to regulate the digital asset industry by enforcing a cryptocurrency legislation, SRC head Rustam Badasyan said today.

He said the lack of legislation hinders combating criminal activities and enables shady transactions.

‘We already have had some cases when cryptocurrencies were used to avoid taxes and launder money,” he said during parliamentary hearings on the execution of the state budget last year.

Badasyan also said that an investigation was launched into provision of a large sum of cash in exchange for the purchase of cryptocurrency, but it has not yielded any results because of the lack of relevant legislation.

Earlier, Seyran Sargsyan, the Executive Director of the Union of Banks of Armenia, stated that financial institutions in Armenia do not regard cryptocurrencies as legal tender and do not service such assets.

According to him, issues like identification of clients dealing with e-currency, as well as transparency and other related problems connected with money laundering, need to be regulated.

According to the World Economic Forum, there are 18,142 cryptocurrencies, 460 crypto-exchanges and the marked cap of cryptocurrecmies amounts to about $2 trillion. Every 24 hours, $91 billion worth of cryptos are traded, most of them Bitcoin or Ethereum.

Analysts have warned that the industry is so large it could have macroeconomic consequences if mismanaged. They says piecemeal approaches to cryptocurrency regulation must be replaced by a globally coordinated framework.-0-

Armenian minister describes 8.5% inflation as ‘fantastically good’

June 6, 2022March 12, 2026 Christine Harutyunian

Armenia – June 1 2022

Armenian minister describes 8.5% inflation as ‘fantastically good’
01.06.2022 18:58

YEREVAN, June 1. /ARKA/. Armenia’s Economy Minister Vahan Kerobyan on Wednesday described the 12-month inflation of 8.5% in late April 2022 as a ‘fantastically good result’ against the backdrop of skyrocketing prices across the globe.

However, speaking to reporters, the minister agreed that the inflation in Armenia is visible to the naked eye.

According to the National Statistical Committee (NSC), the 12-month consumer inflation in April 2022 amounted to 8.4%. Kerobyan said earlier that the country’s economy would grow this year by 7 percent.

“The naked eye should see record high inflation not only in Armenia, but around the world. In the U.S., inflation has exceeded 8%, the highest over the last 50-60 years. The situation is similar in Europe. That is to say, this is not a purely Armenian phenomenon, but a global one. It is a fantastically good result to have 8.5% inflation in Armenia in such an environment,” said Kerobyan.

However, he said, this does not mean that the authorities in Armenia are happy with this result.

“The government’s work is aimed at ensuring that the additional economic result is distributed to people so that it is felt by everyone. It can’t be done in one step, and the government is very restrained and cautious in increasing its current spending,” he said.

The minister added that the amount of current expenses in the budget increases sharply, for example, in a year they may grow by 300 billion drams ‘and all these sums are usually directed to solving social problems, first of all”, Kerobyan said.

According to NSC, Armenia’s economic activity index (EAI) in the first 4 months of 2022 registered a 9.4% year-on-year growth.

Armenian government’s growth projection for 2022 is 7%, and the inflation is set at 4% (± 1.5%). Earlier, the Central Bank revised its growth forecast for 2022 1.6% from an earlier projection of 5.3%. -0-

GRETA publishes its third report on Armenia

June 6, 2022March 12, 2026 Emil Lazarian

May 31 2022

STRASBOURG 31 MAY 2022

The Council of Europe’s Group of Experts on Action against Trafficking in Human Beings (GRETA) published a new report today on Armenia focusing on human trafficking victims’ access to justice and effective remedies. GRETA acknowledges improvements in the legislative and policy framework but asks the authorities to strengthen the provision of information to victims, improve access to legal aid and psychological assistance, facilitate access to compensation from the perpetrators, as well as to effectively investigate offences of human trafficking for all forms of exploitation and promote reintegration of victims.

Since the previous evaluation in 2017, Armenia has continued to develop its anti-trafficking legislative and policy framework: in 2021 a new Criminal Code and a new Criminal Procedure Code were adopted and amendments to the Labour Code were being prepared.

GRETA urges the authorities to ensure that access to legal assistance is guaranteed as soon as there are reasonable grounds for believing that a person is a victim of human trafficking and before the person concerned has to decide whether on co-operating with the authorities in a criminal investigation.

During the reporting period no trafficking victim has received compensation from the perpetrators either through criminal or civil proceedings. GRETA urges the Armenian authorities to take vigorous measures to guarantee effective access to compensation for trafficking victims, including by making full use of the legislation on the freezing and forfeiture of offenders’ assets. At the same time GRETA welcomes the provision of lump-sum compensation of some 450 EUR by the State to 20 trafficking victims since 2017.

GRETA welcomes the existence of specialised entities for combating human trafficking within the Police and the Investigative Committee. However, it notes that between January 2017 and September 2021, a total of 69 criminal investigations were conducted into human trafficking cases but only 13 cases were brought to trial and just six persons were convicted for trafficking. GRETA urges the Armenian authorities to ensure that human trafficking offences for all forms of exploitation are proactively and promptly investigated, making use of special investigation techniques and financial investigations.

The report also examines progress made on the implementation of previous GRETA recommendations on selected topics. GRETA urges the Armenian authorities to continue reinforcing the capacity and skills of all relevant officials to detect and investigate cases of trafficking for labour exploitation. Further, the authorities should strengthen efforts to prevent child trafficking among vulnerable groups (children in rural areas and children placed in child-care institutions), and pay more attention to the link between child trafficking and the use of information and communication technologies. Finally, to ensure economic and social integration of victims of trafficking, GRETA urges the authorities to take additional steps to ensure the provision of long-term assistance, as well as to strengthen effective access to the labour marker for them through vocational training and job placement.

The total number of victims of trafficking identified in the period 2017-2021 in Armenia was 68. Two thirds of identified victims were women and girls. The prevailing form of exploitation was sexual exploitation, followed by labour exploitation and forced begging. Almost all identified victims were Armenian nationals exploited inside Armenia. The real number of trafficking victims is probably higher, the report says, as self-identification by trafficking victims occurs only rarely due to the lack of awareness of their rights, stigma, the feeling of shame and distrust vis-à-vis the authorities.