Tuesday,
Opposition Bloc Again Condemns ‘Political’ Arrests
• Marine Khachatrian
Armenia - Former President Robert Kocharian (R) and senior members of his
Hayastan alliance, Vahe Hakobian (L) and Ishkhan Saghatelian, at an election
campaign rally in Yerevan, June 9, 2021.
Former President Robert Kocharian's Hayastan alliance on Tuesday strongly
condemned the arrests of four heads of local communities affiliated with it,
saying that the Armenian authorities are trying to suppress the country’s
leading opposition force.
Senior members of the bloc dismissed as politically motivated criminal charges
brought against the officials running towns and villages in Armenia’s
southeastern Syunik province.
Two of those mayors, Manvel Paramazian and Mkhitar Zakarian, were elected to the
parliament on the Hayastan ticket in the snap elections held on June 20.
Paramazian, who runs the industrial town of Kajaran, was arrested last week on
charges of vote buying and fraud while Zakarian is accused of illegally
arranging the privatization of a plot of land in his community comprising two
other Syunik towns and surrounding villages. Zakarian resigned as community head
three days before being taken into custody on Monday.
The two other arrested persons ran villages close to the town of Goris.
Law-enforcement authorities claim that financial aid allocated by them to local
residents amounted to vote bribes.
All four officials deny the accusations. Armenia’s human rights ombudsman, Arman
Tatoyan, said on Tuesday that he has sent a fact-finding team to Syunik to look
into allegations that law-enforcement bodies are using threats to clinch false
incriminating testimonies against the village chiefs.
“We believe that this is political persecution, political repression and
political terror,” said Vahe Hakobian, a former Syunik governor whose Resurgent
Armenia party set up the Hayastan bloc together with Kocharian and the Armenian
Revolutionary Federation (Dashnaktsutyun).
“Political persecutions are continuing and we will fight against them by all
means to prevent them from breaking up our people’s resistance and isolating our
supporters with trumped-up accusations,” Dashnaktsutyun’s Ishkhan Saghatelian
said for his part.
“If it were up to Nikol [Pashinian] he would arrest all 270,000 citizens who
voted for us,” Saghatelian told a joint news conference with Hakobian. “It’s
evident that they will try to continue the repressions but … they don’t realize
that this will not subdue us or stop our struggle.”
During the election campaign Pashinian pledged to wage “political vendettas”
against village and town mayors supporting the opposition.
One of the prime minister’s close associates, Minister of Territorial
Administration and Infrastructures Suren Papikian, denied on Tuesday that the
accusations leveled against the arrested Syunik officials are politically
motivated.
Papikian, who oversee local administrations, also said: “There can be no
repressions because only the people can carry out repressions, make decisions.
The people made their decision on June 20.”
Iranians Stuck In COVID-19 Vaccination Lines In Armenia
• Satenik Hayrapetian
Armenia - Iranians wait in a line outside a mobile vaccination center in
Yerevan, .
Hundreds of Iranians visiting Armenia to get vaccinated against COVID-19
continued to spend nights on streets in Yerevan on Tuesday waiting in long lines
that formed around outdoor vaccination centers.
They are keen to get free shots offered to not only Armenian citizens and
residents but also foreign visitors. The mostly young people say that in Iran
priority is given to elderly citizens and that they have to wait for inoculation
for weeks and even months.
The influx began about two weeks, resulting in long lines at state policlinics
and other vaccination centers across the Armenian capital. This led the Armenian
Ministry of Health to restrict non-resident foreigners’ access to those
facilities on July 8.
Foreigners who do not have Armenian residency permits have since been able to
get vaccinated only at mobile sites set up in shopping malls and two major
streets in downtown Yerevan. Each of those sites is allowed to inoculate no more
than 50 foreign visitors a day.
Another restriction that will take effect on Thursday will make only those
foreigners who have spent at least 10 days in Armenia eligible for a coronavirus
vaccine.
The queues have been particularly long outside one such facility opened on
Northern Avenue, the city’s main pedestrian boulevard. Hundreds of Iranian
nationals have spent several nights there.
Most of them refused to be interviewed on camera on Tuesday. Those who agreed to
talk to RFE/RL’s Armenian Service criticized the restrictions imposed by the
Armenian authorities.
“The Armenian government had promised that all tourists can be vaccinated here,”
complained one woman who identified herself as Shohre. “I’m now having a serious
problem: they vaccinate no more than 50 people a day and I don’t know when it
will be my turn.”
“We have been registered and I’m 400th on the waiting list,” she said. “I suffer
from a heart disease and the coronavirus could be fatal for me. I will try to
spend another night here. Maybe I will get my turn.”
An Iranian man, who has spent two nights on the street, worried that he may not
make it to the front of the line by Tuesday evening despite being 20th on the
list. “If I don’t get a vaccine today it will mean that they pay bribes to cut
the line,” claimed the 30-year-old Puya, who arrived in Armenia with five other
compatriots.
Armenian Health Minister Anahit Avanesian visited the Northern Avenue site later
in the day. “This demonstrates just how desirable and important the vaccination
is,” she said, pointing to the long queue contrasting with many Armenians’
mistrust of coronavirus jabs.
Armenia - People line up at an open-air coronavirus vaccination site in Yerevan,
May 7, 2021.
According to the Ministry of Health, only about 112,000 people in Armenia making
up less than 4 percent of the country’s population received one or two doses of
vaccines as of Tuesday morning. The ministry did not specify how many of them
are non-resident foreigners.
“In the last 20 days we have had a sharp increase in the daily number of
inoculations,” Avanesian told reporters. “I’m talking about figures relating to
our citizens.”
Economy Minister Vahan Kerobian controversially touted the influx of Iranians
over the weekend, saying that Armenia should cash in on this and other forms of
“medical tourism.” Critics countered that the number of vaccine doses acquired
by the Armenian government so far is enough to vaccinate only a small percentage
of the country’s own population.
Avanesian insisted in this regard that the government is not using its
vaccination campaign to attract more tourists.
Minister Looks Forward To EU Funding For Armenian Road Project
• Satenik Kaghzvantsian
Armenia -- Workers refurbish a road in Syunik region in 2010.
Minister of Territorial Administration and Infrastructures Suren Papikian hailed
on Tuesday the European Union’s pledge to provide up to 600 million euros ($715
million) in funding for the Armenian government’s plans to upgrade major
national highways.
Papikian said the promised grants and loans would be used for rebuilding roads
in Armenia’s mountainous Syunik province leading to neighboring Iran.
The transport project is one of the European Commission’s five “flagship
initiatives” for the South Caucasus country announced last week. They are worth
a combined 1.6 billion euros and need to be approved by the EU’s 27 member
states.
“The EU will use various instruments to support the implementation of this
flagship in cooperation with the [international finance institutions]: grants,
loans, guarantees, blending,” EU’s executive body said in a statement. It gave
no details of the project.
Papikian said the money would be used for the planned reconstruction of Syunik
highways stretching about 200 kilometers towards the Iranian border. The
roadwork involving the construction of several mountain tunnels and bridges
would cost an estimated $1.5 billion in funding, he told reporters.
“The European Union has promised the assistance and we now need to understand
how, through what mechanisms and channels [it will be provided] before
proceeding accordingly,” Papikian went on.
The minister stressed that the Armenian government, whose annual budget is worth
less than $4 billion, would press ahead with the ambitious project with or
without EU funding.
“We must do everything to call an international tender in August,” he said. “Now
our task is to ascertain the financing sources so that the process can be
accelerated.”
Armenia -- Iranian Minister of Roads and Urban Development Mohammad Eslami
visits Yerevan, May 24, 2021
Iran has also expressed readiness to help upgrade the Syunik roads. Iranian
Minister of Roads and Urban Development Mohammad Eslami discussed the matter
with Papikian and other Armenian officials when he visited Yerevan in May.
The two sides agreed to set up a joint working group that will explore Iranian
companies’ possible participation in the planned roadwork. The group held its
first session in Tehran late last month and is scheduled to meet in Yerevan on
August 15.
Syunik borders not only Iran but also Azerbaijan and its Nakhichevan exclave.
Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev threatened earlier this year to forcibly open
a “corridor” connecting Nakhichevan to the rest of Azerbaijan. Yerevan strongly
condemned the threat.
Visiting Yerevan later in May, Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Zarif
reiterated that the territorial integrity of Armenia and other regional states
is a “red line” for the Islamic Republic.
Reprinted on ANN/Armenian News with permission from RFE/RL
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