Thursday, 

Arrests Made After Anti-Pashinian Protests

        • Gayane Saribekian

Armenia - Riot police guarding the Office of the Prosecutor-General in Yerevan 
clash with protesters demanding the release of arrested residents of Syunik 
province, .

Law-enforcement authorities detained on Thursday several local government 
officials and other residents of Armenia’s Syunik province where Prime Minister 
Nikol Pashinian faced angry protests during an unexpected visit on Wednesday.

The state human rights ombudsman, Arman Tatoyan, suggested that at least two of 
them were mistreated in custody and accused Pashinian of issuing illegal orders 
to investigators.

The detainees included Mkhitar Zakarian, the mayor of the towns of Agarak and 
Meghri making up a single local community.

Scores of angry local residents insulted Pashinian and blamed him for Armenia’s 
defeat in last year’s war in Nagorno-Karabakh as he walked through the towns on 
Thursday morning. The prime minister was jeered by a group of other protesters 
when he headed to Syunik’s capital Kapan later in the day.

Meeting with senior law-enforcement officers there, Pashinian described the 
protests as a “violation of the law” and demanded “tough” reactions to them from 
the Armenian police and National Security Service (NSS). His press secretary 
claimed that the protests were organized by his political foes.

Tatoyan condemned the protesters for swearing at Pashinian. But the ombudsman 
also deplored Pashinian’s “unacceptable” remarks made during the Kapan meeting, 
saying that government officials have no right to order criminal investigations 
into “concrete individuals.”

Zakarian, the Meghri and Agarak mayor, was arrested after being taken to Yerevan 
early in the morning. His lawyer, Gayane Papoyan, said Armenia’s Investigative 
Committee suspects him of organizing the protests accompanied by what it regards 
as “hooliganism.”

“They can’t explain the basis of their suspicion,” Papoyan told reporters. She 
denied her client’s involvement in the protests.


Armenia - Meghri community head Mkhitar Zakarian.

The Investigative Committee did not comment on Zakarian’s arrest or say who else 
was taken into custody.

Zakarian and the elected heads of virtually all other Syunik communities 
demanded Pashinian’s resignation late last year.

Another detainee, Menua Hovsepian, is a deputy mayor of Goris, another Syunik 
town which Pashinian briefly visited on Wednesday. His legal status remained 
unclear as of Thursday evening.

A representative of Tatoyan’s office was allowed to talk to Hovsepian at a 
police station in Yerevan. In a statement, the ombudsman said Hovsepian claimed 
to have been beaten up and verbally abused by police officers. He said he will 
send an “appropriate letter” to the Office of the Prosecutor-General.

Tatoyan also decried the treatment of another Syunik detainee, Ararat 
Aghabekian. Lawyer Papoyan publicized a mobile phone video of law-enforcement 
officers bringing him to the Investigative Committee headquarters in Yerevan. It 
showed a handcuffed and visibly ill Aghabekian imploring them to call an 
ambulance and hospitalize him.

Aghabekian is a well-known resident of the Syunik village of Shurnukh run by his 
brother Hakob Arshakian. The latter said that police officers broke into his 
home overnight and took him away without any explanation.

“He didn’t participate in the protests. The guy was sick and lay in bed for the 
last ten days,” Arshakian told RFE/RL’s Armenian Service.

Tatoyan’s office also received reports of several other arrests made in Syunik. 
The ombudsman said that among these detainees are a member of Goris’s municipal 
council and a village administration chief.


Armenia - Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian visits a military base in Syunik, April 
21, 2021

Vahe Hakobian, a Syunik-linked businessman and politician critical of the 
Armenian government, claimed that the authorities made more than two dozen 
“illegal” arrests in response to the anti-Pashinian protests.

A deputy chief of the national police, Armen Fidanian, insisted, however, that 
only “two or three” men were taken in for interrogation. Fidanian denied that 
the investigation is illegally directed by Pashinian.

Armen Khachatrian, a pro-government lawmaker who accompanied the prime minister 
on the trip to Syunik, also denied any political persecution. “There is no 
question that what happened was hooliganism,” he said.

Opposition groups claimed the opposite, praising the Syunik protesters and 
condemning the arrests.

Hundreds of opposition supporters rallied outside the prosecutors’ headquarters 
in Yerevan on Thursday evening to demand the immediate release of all detainees. 
They clashed with riot police guarding the building.

Syunik borders districts southwest of Karabakh which were mostly recaptured by 
Azerbaijan during the autumn war. As a result of a Russian-brokered ceasefire 
that stopped the war on November 10, Armenian army units and local militias 
completed in December their withdrawal from parts of those districts close to 
Kapan and other local communities.

Shurnukh was effectively divided into two parts as a result of the 
Armenian-Azerbaijani border delimitation that left many Syunik residents 
seriously concerned about their security.

The small village was the first stop of Pashinian’s unannounced regional tour 
which began late on Tuesday. The premier went into one or two Shurnukh houses 
and briefly talked to their residents. One of them said afterwards she told 
Pashinian that he is not welcome in her home.

Armenia’s former President Levon Ter-Petrosian on Thursday accused Pashinian of 
breaking into the woman’s home without permission, saying that was “the most 
disgusting moment of Pashinian’s Syunik expedition.”

“I would not like to see my country’s prime minister in a more humiliating 
situation,” Ter-Petrosian said in a short statement posted on ilur.am.



Biden Expected To Recognize Armenian Genocide

        • Lusine Musayelian
        • Astghik Bedevian

USA – President Joe Biden speaks to Department of Defense personnel at the 
Pentagon. Washington, February 10, 2021

U.S. President Joe Biden is expected to recognize the 1915 mass killings of 
Armenians in Ottoman Turkey as genocide, according to multiple Western media 
reports.

Citing three unnamed “sources familiar with the matter,” the Reuters news agency 
reported on Thursday that Biden will likely use the word “genocide” in his April 
24 statement on the 106th anniversary of the start of the massacres that left an 
estimated 1.5 million Armenians dead.

“My understanding is that he took the decision and will use the word genocide in 
his statement on Saturday,” said one of them.

CNN quoted, for its part, U.S. government sources as saying that Washington has 
already notified its Western allies about Biden’s intention to recognize the 
genocide.

Biden repeatedly pledged to do that when he ran for president. “The United 
States must reaffirm, once and for all, our record on the Armenian Genocide,” he 
said in a September 2019 letter to the Armenian Assembly of America.

Earlier this week more than 100 U.S. lawmakers led by Democratic Congressman 
Adam Schiff sent an open letter to Biden urging him to honor that pledge.

Armenian President Armen Sarkissian likewise called on Biden to “reaffirm your 
commitment to advance historical justice and prevent new genocides” in a letter 
released by his office on Thursday.

Foreign Minister Ara Ayvazian echoed Sarkissian’s appeal in comments to The New 
York Times. He said the U.S. president’s recognition of the Armenian genocide 
would send a strong “moral signal” to many countries.


U.S. - Armenian President Serzh Sarkisian (C), U.S. Vice President Joe Biden and 
other officials attend an ecumenical memorial service held at Washington 
National Cathedral on the centenary of the Armenian genocide, May 7, 2015.

The U.S. House of Representatives and Senate recognized the 1915 genocide in 
separate resolutions overwhelmingly passed in 2019.

Successive U.S. presidents have until now refrained from doing so for fear of 
antagonizing Turkey, a NATO ally vehemently denying any premeditated government 
effort to exterminate the Ottoman Empire’s Armenian population. Some of them, 
including Barack Obama and Donald Trump, used instead the Armenian phrase “Meds 
Yeghern” (Great Crime) in their April 24 statements.

According to U.S. officials interviewed by The New York Times, Biden is mindful 
of the risk of a further deterioration of U.S.-Turkish relations but seems 
determined to “further human rights” on the international stage.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan discussed the issue with his High 
Consultations Council on Thursday. “Our President has stated that they will 
continue to defend truths against the so-called Armenian genocide lie and those 
who support this slander with political motivations,” Erdogan’s office said.

Ian Bremmer, founder of the Eurasia Group research and consulting firm, told 
Reuters that Erdogan’s response to Biden's expected move will likely be limited.

"Erdogan is ... unlikely to provoke the U.S. with actions that could further 
undermine Turkey’s weak economy," he said.



Prosecutors Appeal Against Kocharian’s Acquittal

        • Naira Bulghadarian

Armenia - Former President Robert Kocharian talks to his lawyers during his 
trial, Yerevan, April 2, 2021.

Prosecutors have appealed against an Armenian court’s decision to throw out coup 
charges brought against former President Robert Kocharian in connection with the 
2008 post-election violence in Yerevan.

Anna Danibekian, a Yerevan judge presiding over the two-year trial of Kocharian 
and three other former officials, announced the decision on April 6 ten days 
after the charges were declared unconstitutional by Armenia’s Constitutional 
Court.

The high court argued that they cannot be prosecuted for the alleged “overthrow 
of the constitutional order” because there was no such article in the country’s 
former Criminal Code which was in force during the events of March 2008.

In response to that ruling, Prosecutor-General Artur Davtian asked the 
Constitutional Court to also declare unconstitutional legal provisions that do 
not allow his office to alter the coup accusations leveled against the 
defendants.

Other prosecutors said the coup trial should therefore be suspended, rather than 
discontinued altogether, pending a Constitutional Court verdict on the appeal. 
Danibekian dismissed their arguments.

A spokeswoman for Armenia’s Office of the Prosecutor-General, Arevik 
Khachatrian, told RFE/RL’s Armenian Service on Thursday that the law-enforcement 
agency has asked the Court of Appeals to overturn Danibekian’s decision to clear 
Kocharian of the coup charges.

The judge also ruled on April 6 that Kocharian and his former chief of staff, 
Armen Gevorgian, will continue to stand trial only on bribery charges which they 
also strongly deny. She fully acquitted the two other defendants, retired 
Generals Yuri Khachaturov and Seyran Ohanian, who were prosecuted only in 
connection with the post-election unrest.



Azerbaijan Accused Of Truce Violations In Karabakh

        • Artak Khulian

Nagorno-Karabakh - Azerbaijani soldiers patrol at a checkpoint outside the town 
of Shushi on November 26, 2020.

Authorities in Nagorno-Karabakh on Thursday accused Azerbaijani troops of 
opening fire on local settlements in breach of a Russian-brokered ceasefire that 
stopped last year’s Armenian-Azerbaijani war.

Karabakh’s Armenian-backed Defense Army said that the ceasefire violations have 
intensified in recent days.

“While enemy forces previously mainly fired in the air, gunshots fired towards 
the Defense Army’s combat positions and civilian border settlements have now 
become more frequent,” it claimed in a statement.

It said the Azerbaijani army’s “provocative and aggressive actions” are aimed 
intimidating Karabakh’s ethnic Armenian population and undermining Russia’s 
peacekeeping mission in the disputed region launched right after the war.

“Any attempt to terrorize the people of Artsakh is doomed to fail,” read a 
separate statement released by the Karabakh foreign ministry.

It said that Azerbaijani troops targeted on Wednesday Stepanakert and two nearby 
villages located close to the Karabakh city of Shushi (Shusha) which was 
captured by them during the six-week war.

The gunfire reportedly damaged the roof of a Stepanakert house rented by a 
Karabakh Armenian man, Khachatur Munchian, and his family that fled Shushi 
during the fighting.

“The ceiling was also punctured and a bullet lay next to the hole,” Munchian 
told RFE/RL’s Armenian Service. He said the house is located just a few 
kilometers from the nearest Azerbaijani army position.

A spokesman for the Karabakh police said they are investigating the shooting 
incident and have alerted Russian peacekeepers about it.

Baku did not immediately respond to the reports. It accused Armenian troops 
instead of firing on Azerbaijani border guards from Armenia’s Syunik province 
bordering the Zangelan district recaptured by the Azerbaijani army during the 
war.

Armenia’s Defense Ministry dismissed the claim as an attempt to dodge 
responsibility for the ceasefire violations in Karabakh.

“The armed forces of both Armenia and Artsakh remain committed to the trilateral 
ceasefire agreement and call on Azerbaijan’s military-political leadership to do 
the same,” it said in a statement.

Armenian media quoted the mayor of Syunik’s capital Kapan, Gevorg Parsian, as 
saying that Armenian and Azerbaijani forces stationed in the area exchanged fire 
late on Wednesday.


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