November 16, 2020
Opposition protest at Yerevan’s Liberty Square on Nov. 11
Dear compatriots!
The authorities, which have taken the country on a defeatist path through an act of capitulation, continue to implement their treacherous agenda.
The government, which is in a state of apparent distress, is not only trying to divert the public’s attention from its treasonous actions, but is also laying the groundwork to ban opposition parties, by using autocratic means that violate the principles of the rule of law and democracy.
With the obvious intention of sowing negative perceptions in the people and shirking accountability for their own actions, a fiendish plot has been concocted claiming that members of certain opposition forces were plotting Pashinyan’s assassination. On November 14 the leader of the Homeland party, Major General Arthur Vanetsyan, was illegally arrested on that charge. Vahram Baghdasaryan, the former head of the Republican Party of Armenia parliamentary faction, Ashot Minasyan, a decorated colonel of the Armed Forces who was awarded the Combat Cross and who fought in three Artsakh wars and is the commander of the Sisian brigade, and Ashot Avagyan, a member of the same detachment and an ARF intellectual were also arrested on the same charges.
Illegal criminal persecutions are intensifying, as a result of which a large army of political prisoners is forming.
We have repeatedly emphasized that in our fight against the treasonous authorities that we are guided by the Constitution and rule of law, unlike the ruling party and the groups that support it. By projecting its sick behavior on its opponents, the government is making futile attempts to intimidate people without realizing that for every illegally imprisoned patriot, there are dozens of devoted activists waiting in the wings.
Dear compatriots, we call on you to raise your voice in defense of the political prisoners and to come together and immediately get rid of Pashinyan’s catastrophic regime through provisions laid out in the Constitution.
Our fight for the salvation of the homeland continues.
11/15/20
Political Council of 17 [Opposition] Parties
The announcement is open for others to join.