Monday,
Families Of Missing Soldiers Want Separate Commission To Deal With MIAs
• Artak Khulian
Parents of missing Armenian soldiers in front of the government building in
Yerevan,
Families of Armenian servicemen who went missing in action (MIA) during last
year’s war in Nagorno-Karabakh have urged acting Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian
to set up a separate commission to deal with the matter.
A group of missing soldiers’ parents said they made the suggestion at their
meeting with Pashinian in his office on Monday.
The premier’s office did not release any statement on the meeting by late
afternoon. But the missing soldiers’ parents said Pashinian had welcomed the
idea.
“I demanded it and said, Mr. Prime Minister, let’s create a commission. He
[Pashinian] said it was a great idea and that they would create one,” said Edik
Arevshatian, whose son was deployed in a Nagorno-Karabakh district captured by
Azerbaijani armed forces in October and has been missing since.
A DNA test has confirmed that Arevshatian’s son was among the dead, but the
father claims he has gathered information suggesting that his son could still be
alive and could be among Armenian captives in Azerbaijan.
“There can be no such thing… These children will come back. I will prove it by
all means… Let’s create a commission, we will understand then who is to blame
for it,” he said.
According to official data, the number of Armenian servicemen missing after the
44-day war is 230. There are 142 unidentified bodies in morgue refrigerators in
the towns of Metsamor, Martuni, Abovian, as well as in Yerevan. Some parents
have also undergone DNA tests but still await answers.
The parents of MIAs say they are not satisfied with the work of the government.
“I do not see any results. If someone does something and there is no result, it
means they do their work wrong. This work must be reviewed to understand where
mistakes, omissions have been made to correct them and get a result,” said
Yeghishe Zakunts, a missing soldier’s father.
According to the latest data of the Ministry of Health, so far 3,777 bodies and
remains have been subjected to forensic examinations; 106 bodies and remains are
still being identified. Many of the samples have been examined several times,
but these examinations have failed to identify the persons.
The ministry has told RFE/RL’s Armenian Service that negotiations are being
conducted with some foreign expert organizations to send damaged samples to them
for examination.
Pashinian Aide ‘Regrets’ Lack Of Support From Yerevan Mayor
• Marine Khachatrian
• Harry Tamrazian
Yerevan Mayor Hayk Marutian
A senior member of Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian’s administration has
effectively confirmed differences between the current ruling party and Yerevan
Mayor Hayk Marutian that opposition media have speculated on for months.
In an interview with RFE/RL’s Armenian Service (Azatutyun) on Sunday, Arayik
Harutiunian, chief advisor to the prime minister, denied, however, any ongoing
discussions about the future of the mayor.
“It is very much regretful that Mr. Marutian showed such an attitude before the
elections, since the mayor, who was nominated by the Civil Contract party and My
Step Alliance [of Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian], did not express his public
support for Civil Contract during the election campaign. I regret this, because
the votes due to which Mr. Marutian became the mayor of Yerevan, was largely for
the political party that will now form the government for the second time,”
Harutiunian said.
The senior official said that no discussions were currently underway regarding
the mayor, but added that members of the ruling party had the same attitude in
this matter.
“We should understand how to act in such a situation in order to make decisions
on this issue within our party, but so that the city and city authorities do not
suffer from it,” Harutiunian added.
Harutiunian’s remarks sparked fresh speculations about Marutian’s possible
resignation.
Marutian, a popular actor and producer who supported Pashinian during the 2018
‘Velvet Revolution’ and was elected mayor of Yerevan later that year in an
election where the pro-Pashinian alliance scored a landslide victory, would not
comment publicly on various media speculations in recent months and weeks about
his disillusionment with politics and plans to quit.
After the June 20 snap parliamentary elections in which the Pashinian party
retained its majority in the National Assembly a number of media reports
suggested that the government planned a change of the mayor of Yerevan –
Armenia’s capital and largest city with a population of about a million people.
In a Facebook post in the wake of the elections addressed rather to the
opposition chief of the prime minister’s staff Arsen Torosian called on elected
community leaders that had supported other political parties and alliances to
take note of the Pashinian party’s landslide victory and decide on whether they
wanted to continue in office or resign.
The post has sparked criticism from the opposition that also claims that
pressure has been put on some local elected officials, including mayors, to
resign.
Several weeks before the early elections Marutian, a member of the Civil
Contract party, publicly hinted that he would remain politically neutral during
the elections. “I am not interested in elections, I am busy doing my work,” he
said in May.
But during the June 22 session of the Yerevan Council of Elders, which is a
municipal assembly of elected representatives, Marutian congratulated the
citizens on “holding free and transparent elections.”
Hakob Karapetian, a spokesperson for the Yerevan Mayor’s Office, told RFE/RL’s
Armenian Service (Azatutyun) on Monday that Marutian has no intentions to resign.
“The mayor of Yerevan, together with his team, actively continues to work,
continues to implement the mandate given to him by the people of Yerevan in
September 2018. The mandate was given by the people of Yerevan for a period of
five years,” Karapetian stressed.
Izabella Abgarian, a member of Yerevan’s Council of Elders who quit the ruling
My Step faction last November, said she did not like what Harutiunian said about
Marutian in an interview with RFE/RL’s Armenian Service.
“Because it is not an internal party issue, they simply ought to respect the
vote of the people,” she said.
“The mayor was elected by the people of Yerevan. Let’s not forget about the
independence of local government bodies. Our list of candidates was headed by
Hayk Marutian, not Nikol Pashinian, and people in Yerevan voted for Hayk
Marutian and his program, which he is implementing. And I think it will be
unfair to the people of Yerevan if the party makes a party decision,” she added.
Emin Yeritsian, the head of the Union of Communities of Armenia, meanwhile,
stressed that the issue of the mayor of Yerevan should in any case be decided by
the Council of Elders. “No one from the outside can make changes unless it is
decided by the Council of Elders,” he said.
Armenia, Azerbaijan Accuse Each Other Of Border Shooting
Armenian soldiers taking up positions on the border with Azerbaijan, May 17,
2021.
Armenia and Azerbaijan have accused each other of opening fire at eastern and
north-eastern sections of their border amid a continuing standoff between their
troops since incidents in May.
On Monday, Armenia’s Ministry of Defense denied accusations from Azerbaijan that
Armenian servicemen opened fire at Azerbaijani army positions in the
northeastern Tavush province in an incident that Baku claims happened late on
June 27.
“This is another disinformation. The Armenian Armed Forces did not fire a single
shot towards the Azerbaijani positions,” the Armenian Ministry of Defense said
in a statement.
Earlier, Armenia denied Azerbaijan’s claims that its armed forces located in the
eastern Gegharkunik province fired at Azerbaijani military positions. Moreover,
Armenia accused Azerbaijan’s armed forces of firing indiscriminately towards the
positions of its troops in the region.
The latest incidents come amid continuing discussions about the deployment of
Russian troops in Gegharkunik to prevent a further escalation of the situation
at the restive border between Armenia and Azerbaijan.
Under acting Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian’s decision, an Armenian government
delegation is currently in Moscow to negotiate the issue of the expansion of
Russia’s military base in Armenia.
Russian border-guards were already deployed at different sections of the
Armenian-Azerbaijani border in the southern Syunik province after last year’s
war in Nagorno-Karabakh in which Baku recaptured several districts around the
Armenian-populated region to restore its land border with Armenia in the south.
Armenia says Azerbaijani troops crossed several sections of the border on May
12-14 and advanced a few kilometers into Syunik and Gegharkunik, part of which
borders on the Kelbajar district that was also retaken by Azerbaijan following
the 44-day war.
At least one Armenian soldier has been killed in a border shooting incident
since then. Dozens of soldiers on both sides were injured in reported brawls
between the two opposing sides in which no firearms were used.
International partners of Armenia and Azerbaijan have urged both sides to
disengage their troops and get down to delimitating and demarcating their
borders to avoid any further escalation.
Armenia’s acting Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian indicated in late May that he
was ready to sign a Russian-brokered deal to set up a committee for the purpose
on condition that Azerbaijan withdraws its troops from what Yerevan says is
sovereign Armenian territory.
Pashinian made that statement several days after Armenia formally appealed to
the Russian-led Collective Security Treaty Organization to hold consultations on
its border dispute with Azerbaijan.
Armenian Election Body Rejects Opposition Demands To Annul June 20 Vote Results
• Gayane Saribekian
• Harry Tamrazian
Armenia- A session of the Central Electoral Commission,27June, 2021
Armenia’s Central Electoral Commission has officially summed up the results of
the June 20 snap parliamentary elections, reaffirming the landslide victory
scored by acting Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian’s Civil Contract party and
rejecting opposition demands for annulling the results.
According to the final results published on Sunday, Pashinian’s party received
53.91 percent of the votes, while the Hayastan Alliance of former President
Robert Kocharian and the Pativ Unem Alliance affiliated with former President
Serzh Sarkisian got 21.9 percent and 5.22 percent of the vote, respectively.
While not clearing the 7-percent threshold set for alliances to enter
parliament, Pativ Unem has been allowed to be represented in the next parliament
as the force that finished third in the race.
According to the Central Electoral Commission, the results will translate into
71 seats in parliament for Civil Contract, while Hayastan and Pativ Unem will
control 29 and 7 mandates in the 107-seat National Assembly.
The alliances of the two former presidents as well as the Zartonk
National-Christian Party, which did not clear the 5-percent threshold for
political parties, had applied to the Central Electoral Commission with a demand
to declare the election results invalid.
Presenting their grievances, the opposition groups claimed that the alleged
violations had a significant impact on the vote results.
They, in particular, claimed that Pashinian violated the constitution by
continuing to act as prime minister after May 10 when the Armenian parliament
was dissolved. They also referred to the alleged use of administrative resources
by the ruling party, Pashinian’s “hate speech” and “calls for violence” during
the election campaign, prosecutions against opposition members and other alleged
violations on election day that they claimed had an impact on the outcome of the
vote.
The Central Electoral Commission rejected the demands of the opposition groups,
reaffirming the results of the vote.
The Kocharian-led Hayastan Alliance has said it will challenge the election
results in the Constitutional Court.
Both opposition alliances say they have not yet made their final decision on
whether they will pick the mandates.
International observers gave largely a positive assessment of the Armenian
authorities’ handling of the parliamentary elections in their statements that
followed the June 20 vote.
In an interview with RFE/RL’s Armenian Service late last week, Eoghan Murphy,
head of the OSCE/ODIHR election observation mission in Armenia, said that
incidents observed by them during Armenia’s snap parliamentary elections did not
impact the validity of their results.
“It was a competitive election. People could campaign freely, candidates were
able to go and organize events and they organized events. But also the voters
had choice in the number of parties running and voters were able to attend
events if they wanted to attend events. And when it came to election day, people
were able to go out and vote in a well-managed process where they could cast
their vote, and that vote would be both respected and reflected in the overall
results,” Murphy said.
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.