Wednesday, June 23, 2021 Prominent Armenian Doctor Arrested For ‘Electoral Offence’ June 23, 2021 • Naira Bulghadarian • Susan Badalian Armenia - Armen Charchian, director of the Izmirlian Medical Center. A prominent surgeon running a hospital in Yerevan and supporting an Armenian opposition group was arrested again on Wednesday on charges of pressuring his subordinates to participate in the June 20 parliamentary elections. Professor Armen Charchian, the director of the Izmirlian Medical Center, was first detained last Friday after a non-governmental organization publicized a leaked audio recording of his meeting with hospital personnel. Charchian, who ran for the parliament on the opposition Hayastan bloc’s ticket, can be heard telling them that they must vote in the snap elections. “After the elections I will take voter lists and see who went to the polls and who didn’t,” he warns. A Yerevan court freed Charchian from custody on Saturday before he was formally charged under a Criminal Code article carrying between four and seven years in prison. The court allowed the Special Investigative Service (SIS) on Wednesday to arrest and hold him in detention pending investigation. A lawyer for Charchian, Erik Andreasian, said he will appeal against the decision. “Mr. Charchian is subjected to political persecution,” he told reporters. Hayastan, which is led by former President Robert Kocharian, has also condemned the criminal proceedings as politically motivated. Speaking after a court hearing on Tuesday, Charchian insisted that he did not coerce the medics to participate in the elections and vote for Hayastan. He also denied threatening to fire them. Charchian claimed that he only warned his staffers that they should no longer count on their and their relatives’ preferential medical treatment at the Izmirlian Medical Center if they do not heed his appeal. Prosecutors maintain, however, that his remarks amounted to election-related pressure and coercion prohibited by Armenian law. In the leaked audio, Charchian also stresses the fact that the Armenian Apostolic Church, which owns the hospital, does not want Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian to stay in power. “I’m not telling you to vote for this or that candidate. The position of the Mother See [of the church] is that one must not vote for the current authorities,” he says. The office of Catholicos Garegin II, the supreme head of the church, deplored Charchian’s first detention and demanded his release. It did not immediately react to the last court decision. According Armenia’s Office of the Prosecutor-General, law-enforcement authorities have so far brought election-related criminal charges against 16 individuals, among them 7 election candidates. Virtually all of them are opposition members and supporters accused of trying to buy votes. They are mostly affiliated with the Pativ Unem alliance co-headed by former President Serzh Sarkisian and former National Security Service Director Artur Vanetsian. “If their guilt is proven during the investigations in a credible manner I will accept those results,” Vanetsian said on Wednesday. “If the opposite is proven I will say this is another case of the authorities persecuting us.” No government officials and loyalists are known to have been arrested or indicted so far. The Pativ Unem and Hayastan blocs claim that public sector employees openly supporting them have been harassed and even fired by government officials in the run-up to the elections. They have also accused central and provincial government bodies of forcing their employees to attend the ruling Civil Contract party’s rallies. Pro-Opposition Village Chief ‘Beaten Up For Refusing To Resign’ June 23, 2021 • Karine Simonian Armenia - Aram Khachatrian, the governor of Lori province, May 1, 2021 The mayor of a large village in Armenia’s northern Lori province supporting the main opposition Hayastan alliance claimed to have been beaten up on Tuesday after rejecting the provincial governor’s demands to step down. Arsen Titanian said on Wednesday that Lori Governor Aram Khachatrian told him to tender his resignation during a tense meeting held in the provincial capital Vanadzor. He said he was assaulted by about a dozen other men moments after leaving Khachatrian’s office in the provincial administration building. Titanian said he suffered several injuries to his face and head. “I have a headache right now,” he told RFE/RL’s Armenian Service by phone. It also emerged that unknown individuals broke overnight into a shop in the village of Odzun belonging to Titanian’s sister and stole cigarettes and other products kept there. The intruders smashed the shop’s door. Police officers from the nearby town of Alaverdi arrived at the crime scene on Wednesday. They said they will look into a possible connection between the robbery and the alleged assault on the long-serving village chief. Governor Khachatrian, who is affiliated with Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian’s Civil Contract party, admitted summoning Titanian to his office but denied demanding his resignation or ordering his beating. “We may have raised our voices but that was not a reason for complaining to the police,” he told RFE/RL’s Armenian Service. The alleged assault was first reported by Hayastan representatives late on Tuesday. They said Titanian was threatened and pressured by the governor because of having backed Hayastan in the June 20 parliamentary elections. The office of Armenia’s human rights ombudsman, Arman Tatoyan, said shortly afterwards that it contacted Titanian and was told that he is reporting the incident to police. It pledged to “send a note” to the Office of the Prosecutor-General the following morning. A spokesman for Prosecutor-General Artur Davtian said, meanwhile, that he has already ordered a formal criminal investigation into the alleged beating. With a population of more than 5,000, Odzun is one of the country’s largest rural communities. Titanian has run the village since 2008. The 51-year-old mayor made clear that he still intends to complete his fourth term in office next year. He admitted being a Hayastan supporter but insisted that he did not campaign for the opposition bloc led by former President Robert Kocharian in the run-up to the elections won by Pashinian’s party. Several local residents interviewed by RFE/RL’s Armenian Service said Titanian never pressured them to vote for Hayastan. “We voted for our preferred man on our own,” said one woman. Civil Contract won 2,230 votes in Odzun, compared with only 376 votes cast for Kocharian’s bloc. A spokesman for Hayastan, Aram Vardevanian, claimed that many other local community heads supporting the bloc have also come under strong government pressure to resign in the wake of the elections. “If the authorities do not put an end to this practice they will trigger a new political crisis,” he warned in a statement. Hayastan finished second in the snap polls, according to official vote results rejected by it as fraudulent. Many of the local officials affiliated with it run towns and villages in southeastern Syunik province. They demanded Pashinian’s resignation shortly after Armenia’s defeat in the autumn war with Azerbaijan. At least three of them were prosecuted on different charges in the following months. Some Pashinian associates demanded the resignation of the pro-opposition Syunik mayors immediately after Civil Contract’s election victory. Kocharian predicted on Tuesday morning that the authorities will crack down on these and other mayors allied to him in the coming weeks. During the 12-day election campaign Pashinian pledged to wage “political vendettas” against local government officials linked to the opposition. Opposition Bloc ‘Undecided’ On Parliament Seats June 23, 2021 • Sargis Harutyunyan Armenia -- Former NSS chief Artur Vanetsian (L) and former President Serzh Sarkisian at the official ceremony of the establishment of their Pativ Unem alliance, May 15, 2021. An opposition alliance co-headed by former President Serzh Sarkisian and Artur Vanetsian said on Wednesday that it has not yet decided whether to take up its parliament seats won in the weekend elections described by it as fraudulent. According to the official election results, the Pativ Unem alliance finished a distant third with 5.23 percent of the vote. It should get 7 parliament seats despite failing to clear a 7 percent vote threshold to enter the National Assembly. Under the Armenian constitution, at least three political forces must be represented in the parliament. Both Pativ Unem and former President Robert Kocharian’s Hayastan bloc, the official runner-up in the snap elections, have accused the authorities of rigging the vote to keep Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian in power. Pashinian and his Civil Contract party deny the accusations. Kocharian said on Tuesday that Hayastan will likely accept its 29 parliament seats despite planning to ask the Constitutional Court to overturn the election results. Vanetsian said Pativ Unem is also intent on appealing to the court but has not yet made a final decision on a parliament boycott demanded by some opposition supporters. “Right now we are collecting [evidence of] all violations that occurred during the elections and considering appealing to the Constitutional Court with other forces,” he told a news conference. “Only after the Constitutional Court’s decision will we make a decision on whether or not we accept the election results … and whether or not we will go to the parliament.” “If the alliance decides to take up its mandates I will not leave my team alone and will go to the parliament so that we continue our struggle,” said the former director of Armenia’s National Security Service. Vanetsian implied he personally thinks that Pativ Unem should join the new parliament. “The parliament will operate even if don’t take our mandates,” he said. Pativ Unem was formed one month before the June 20 elections by Vanetsian’s Fatherland party and Sarkisian’s former ruling Republican Party (HHK). Both parties were key members of a coalition of opposition forces which tried to force Pashinian to resign over his handling of the autumn war in Nagorno-Karabakh. Vanetsian, 42, was appointed as head of the NSS immediately the 2018 “Velvet Revolution” that toppled Sarkisian and brought Pashinian to power. He quickly became an influential member of Pashinian’s entourage, overseeing high-profile corruption investigations into former government officials and Sarkisian’s relatives. He fell out with Pashinian and resigned in September 2019. Reprinted on ANN/Armenian News with permission from RFE/RL Copyright (c) 2021 Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty, Inc. 1201 Connecticut Ave., N.W. Washington DC 20036.