Friday, 


Authorities Accused Of Foul Play Before Referendum

        • Ruzanna Stepanian

Armenia -- Gevorg Gorgisian of the opposition Bright Armenia Party at a news 
conference in Yerevan, May 13, 2019.

An opposition leader accused the Armenian authorities on Friday of using their 
administrative resources to try to win the upcoming referendum on their drive to 
replace most members of the country’s Constitutional Court.

“We are already receiving reports from various provinces that their governors 
are summoning village mayors and forcing them to ensure that a ‘Yes’ vote wins 
in their villages,” claimed Gevorg Gorgisian, a leading member of the opposition 
Bright Armenia Party (LHK).

Gorgisian told RFE/RL’s Armenian service that the local community chiefs are 
told to “do everything” for that purpose. He refused, however, to name the 
“three or four provinces” whose governors are allegedly engaged in such foul 
play.

A senior representative of Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian’s My Step bloc 
dismissed the allegations, while challenging Gorgisian to substantiate them. 
“Such a thing is not possible,” said Vahagn Hovakimian.

“Let them show which governor or village mayor [is using administrative 
resources,]” added Hovakimian.

Armenia’s provincial and local community administrations are overseen by 
Minister for Local Government Suren Papikian. He is also the manager of My 
Step’s campaign for a “Yes” vote in the referendum scheduled for April 5.

Papikian insisted on Wednesday that the ruling political team will not use its 
government levers to secure around 650,000 votes needed for the adoption of 
constitutional amendments drafted by it.

“Let nobody, be it a city or village mayor, do the authorities such a 
disservice,” he told a news conference. “We don’t need that.”

“I hope that after making that appeal Mr. Papikian is not issuing other, 
confidential instructions to governors,” Gorgisian said in this regard.

Armenia’s former authorities routinely pressured public sector employees and 
exploited their administrative resources otherwise to win elections and 
referendums marred by fraud allegations.




EU Envoy Hopeful About Visa Liberalization Talks With Armenia

        • Anush Mkrtchian

Armenia -- European Union Ambassador Andrea Wiktorin speaks at a conference on 
judicial reform in Yerevan, September 27, 2019.

A senior European Union diplomat has expressed hope that the EU will start 
“soon” formal negotiations with Armenia on lifting its visa requirements for 
Armenian citizens.

EU leaders pledged to launch a “visa liberalization dialogue” with Yerevan at 
their Eastern Partnership summit with Armenia and five other former Soviet 
republics held in Brussels more than two years ago. The pledge followed the 
signing of a Comprehensive and Enhanced Partnership Agreement (CEPA) between the 
EU and Armenia.

Both the current and former Armenian governments have since pressed the 
27-nation bloc to set a date for the start of the dialogue.

Andrea Wiktorin, the head of the EU Delegation in Armenia, said late on Thursday 
that the European Commission acknowledges the Armenian authorities’ 
implementation of a 2013 agreement on “readmission” of Armenian illegal migrants 
seeking asylum in Europe.

“The Commission sees a possibility of starting such a dialogue,” she told 
RFE/RL’s Armenian service. “But this is a decision that has to be made by all EU 
member states. We hope that we will soon reach the point where the member states 
agree to start the dialogue.”

Wiktorin cautioned at the same time that “several” European countries still have 
concerns about the large number of Armenian asylum seekers on their soil. “The 
challenge is to convince these EU member states,” she said.

Citing the “example of other countries,” the diplomat also said that visa 
liberalization dialogue could take “years” of preparation.

Tens of thousands of Armenians have emigrated to Europe for mainly economic 
reasons since the early 1990s. Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian stated in 
September that the number of such migrants has fallen considerably since the 
2018 “Velvet Revolution” that brought him to power.

Pashinian cited official EU statistics showing that there were 1,815 first-time 
Armenian asylum applicants in the EU in the first half of 2019, down from 2,475 
in the same period of 2018. The number of Armenia asylum seeks stood at 3,250 in 
the first half of 2017.




Tsarukian’s Party Avoids Cooperation With Referendum ‘No’ Campaign

        • Ruzanna Stepanian

Armenia -- Gagik Tsarukian and other deputies from his Prosperous Armenia Party 
attend a parliament session in Yerevan, July 9, 2019.

Businessman Gagik Tsarukian’s Prosperous Armenia Party (BHK) appears to have 
refused to cooperate lawyers campaigning for a “no” vote in the upcoming 
referendum on a government proposal to oust most Constitutional Court judges.

The 61 lawyers critical of the Armenian government have been registered by the 
Central Election Commission as the sole “No” side in the referendum campaign. 
The official status allows them to have free airtime on state television and 
appoint two of the seven members of each precinct-level election commission that 
will be formed for the April 5 vote.

They thus need to recruit over 4,000 people ready to join those commissions, a 
difficult task for the mostly Yerevan-based lawyers.

Last week, the No campaign appealed to the BHK and three other major opposition 
parties to help fill its quotas with their members and supporters. The Bright 
Armenia (LHK), Republican and Dashnaktsutyun parties replied that their licensed 
members are free to take up the commission seats despite their calls for a 
boycott of what they describe as an unconstitutional referendum.

Ruben Melikian, a “No” campaign coordinator, told RFE/RL’s Armenian service on 
Friday that the BHK has turned down its proposal.

A senior BHK representative, Arman Abovian, explained that Tsarukian’s party 
will not “officially” dispatch its members to the precinct commissions. But he 
would not say whether they can join the commissions in an unofficial capacity.

The BHK, which has the second largest group in the Armenian parliament, has been 
more cautious than the three other parties in opposing the controversial 
constitutional changes which Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian’s political team has 
put on the referendum.

This stance has fuelled speculation that Tsarukian does not want to antagonize 
Pashinian for fear of a government crackdown on his businesses. Aides to the 
tycoon deny that.




Armenian AIDS Clinic Staff Quit In Protest

        • Susan Badalian

Armenia -- Protesting employees of the Republican Center for the Prevention of 
AIDS talk to reporters outside the main government building in Yerevan, February 
27, 2020.

The work of Armenia’s sole medical center specializing in the treatment of HIV 
and AIDS was disrupted on Friday as 80 percent of its employees resigned in 
protest against the government’s decision to merge it with another clinic.

The Armenian Ministry of Health, which initiated the decision earlier this year, 
says that the Republican Center for the Prevention of AIDS must be incorporated 
into a Yerevan hospital which treats other infectious diseases, including the 
flu and similar viruses.

Health Minister Arsen Torosian insisted earlier in February that Armenia no 
longer needs a specialized HIV/AIDS clinic and that it now makes more sense to 
have all infectious diseases treated by a single medical institution. “The fight 
against AIDS must be integrated into the overall healthcare system,” he said.

The affected HIV/AIDS medics strongly disagree, saying the dissolution of their 
center, which has detected up to 450 cases of HIV annually in Armenia, would 
break up what they describe as a well-functioning system of preventing, tracking 
and treating the immunodeficiency disease.

“In three, four or five years from now we will have … an uncontrolled epidemic,” 
Arshak Papoyan, who heads one of the center’s divisions, claimed on Friday.

The government’s decision also sparked protests by many of the HIV-positive 
Armenians who receive free antiretroviral drugs and counseling at the center. 
Earlier this week, about 150 of them signed a joint letter to Prime Minister 
Nikol Pashinian urging him to reverse it.


The HIV/AIDS patients are particularly worried about Torosian’s intention to 
“decentralize” services provided by the Republican Center. That includes 
transferring the distribution of antiretroviral drugs from the center to regular 
policlinics across the country. According to Torosian, this will destigmatize 
HIV and AIDS and get people suffering from it out of social “isolation.”

HIV carriers counter that any breach of the confidentiality guaranteed by the 
center would only worsen discrimination encountered by them and the stigma 
associated with their disease. “None of us will go to a policlinic or the Nork 
hospital [in Yerevan,]” one of them told RFE/RL’s Armenian service.

On Wednesday, Torosian fired the center’s longtime director, Samvel Grigorian, 
for his refusal to help implement the controversial merger. Just hours later, 
Grigorian’s deputy, Aram Hakobian, was briefly detained by police for allegedly 
refusing to hand the clinic’s official seal to Artur Berberian, its acting 
director appointed by the minister.

It emerged on Friday at least 86 of the 108 people working at the center have 
tendered their resignations in response to the government’s failure to meet 
their demand.

“The conditions that have been created by various Ministry of Health officials 
make our continued work impossible,” Hakobian told RFE/RL’s Armenian service.

“It’s not about an individual, it’s about preserving a system,” said another 
senior HIV/AIDS medic, Janetta Petrosian.

Berberian deplored the mass resignations of the center’s staff. He warned that 
their “inactivity” could be deemed a criminal offense.


Reprinted on ANN/Armenian News with permission from RFE/RL
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