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.