Friday, Pashinian Addresses U.S. ‘Summit For Democracy’ Armenia - Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian takes part in the virtual "Summit for Democracy" organized by U.S. President Joe Biden, December 9, 2021. Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian pledged to “consolidate democracy” in Armenia on Friday as he addressed a virtual global summit organized by U.S. President Joe Biden and strongly criticized by Russia. Pashinian was among the leaders of more than 100 countries invited to the two-day “Summit for Democracy” which is designed to promote democratic governance around the world in the face of rising authoritarianism. Opening the gathering on Thursday, Biden said global freedoms are under threat from autocrats seeking to expand power, export influence and justify repression. He called for renewed commitments to protect democracies against such threats. The White House has billed the summit as a way for the United States and like-minded allies to collaborate against authoritarianism, corruption, and human rights abuses. The summit has been sharply criticized by Armenia’s ally Russia, China as well as other countries such as NATO member Hungary that weren't invited. Ahead of the summit, the ambassadors to Washington from China and Russia wrote a joint essay in the conservative National Interest policy journal defending their own forms of government and accusing the United States of pursuing a “Cold War mentality” that will “stoke up ideological confrontation” in the world. “We are committed to the consolidation of democracy in Armenia through strengthening democratic institutions,” Pashinian said in his speech at the summit. “In our bid to consolidate our democracy, we are facing multiple challenges. The biggest challenge for us comes in the form of military threats to our security,” he added in a thinly veiled reference to the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. Pashinian also claimed that Armenians twice “chose democracy over authoritarianism” when they brought him to power in 2018 and reelected his party in snap general elections held in June this year. Armenia’s leading opposition groups challenged the official results of those elections in court. They regularly accuse Pashinian of ordering law-enforcement bodies to jail his political opponents on trumped-up charges, heightening government pressure on courts and trying to stifle dissent with controversial legislation. Pashinian and his allies deny that. There has also been controversy about the list of invitees to the democracy summit. Brazil's right-wing President Jair Bolsonaro was invited, while the leader of NATO member Turkey, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, was shunned. Armenian Opposition Lawmakers Set Free • Naira Bulghadarian Armenia - Doctor and opposition deputy Armen Charchian gestures to supporters after an appeals court's decision to allow his arrest, August 23, 2021 Three members of the Armenian parliament representing the main opposition Hayastan alliance were released from custody on Friday one day after the country’s Constitutional Court effectively declared their arrests illegal. The lawmakers -- Armen Charchian, Mkhitar Zakarian and Artur Sargsian -- were arrested this summer on different charges rejected by them as politically motivated. Hayastan repeatedly demanded their release from custody, citing an article of the Armenian constitution which stipulates that “a deputy may not be deprived of liberty without the consent of the National Assembly.” Prosecutors and leaders of the parliament’s pro-government majority said, however, that the lawmakers do not enjoy immunity from prosecution because they were indicted before formally taking up their parliament seats. Hayastan appealed to the Constitutional Court in September. In a ruling made public on Thursday, the court ruled that any citizen automatically gains immunity from prosecution after being elected to the National Assembly and cannot be arrested without the parliament’s consent. Armenia - Deputies from the opposition Hayastan bloc wear T-shirts emblazoned with pictures of arrested opposition figures during the inaugural session of the recently elected National Assembly, Yerevan, August 2, 2021. A judge presiding over Charchian’s ongoing trial responded to the ruling by ordering his release from jail. The prominent surgeon was greeted by family members and Hayastan activists as he walked free in the courtroom. Sargsian and Zakarian were set free without court orders. The Office of the Prosecutor-General acknowledged that they cannot be held in detention after the Constitutional Court’s decision. Aram Vartevanian, a lawyer and another parliamentarian from Hayastan, condemned the prosecutors’ earlier refusals to free his colleagues. “Imagine that Hayastan’s parliamentary group had no members skilled in jurisprudence and did not realize that it can appeal to the Constitutional Court on this issue,” Vartevanian told journalists. “The three deputies would have remained under arrest, Armen Charachian’s health condition would have continued to deteriorate and Armenia’s law-enforcement system would have approved that. This is the most despicable thing.” Despite their release, the opposition deputies were not cleared of the charges leveled against them. Armenia -- Meghri Mayor Mkhitar Zakarian speaks with journalists, September 21, 2019. Charchian, who headed Yerevan’s Izmirlian Medical Center, is prosecuted for allegedly pressuring his subordinates to vote in Armenia’s June 20 parliamentary elections. He was first arrested three days after the vote. The 61-year-old was released on bail at the start of his trial a month later. Armenia’s Court of Appeals sent him back to jail on August 23. Charchian reportedly suffered a heart attack the following day. Zakarian and Sargsian headed major communities in Syunik province. They were among elected local government officials who demanded Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian’s resignation following last year’s war in Nagorno-Karabakh. They were arrested on separate corruption charges shortly after the June elections won by Pashinian’s party. Armenia Prosecutes Freed POWs • Artak Khulian Armenia - The Investigative Committee building in Yerevan. Law-enforcement authorities have brought criminal charges against five of the ten Armenian soldiers who were freed and repatriated by Azerbaijan last week. Two of them were arrested on Friday. An Armenian court did not allow investigators to detain another serviceman. The Investigative Committee was understood to be seeking arrest warrants for the two other suspects as well. They too were charged with a “violation of rules for performing military service” that resulted in “severe consequences.” The ten soldiers were taken prisoner during the November 16 fighting on the Armenian-Azerbaijani border which left at least 13 troops from both sides dead. The Armenian military said it also lost two border posts in what Yerevan condemned as an Azerbaijani incursion into Armenian territory. The Investigative Committee already arrested two other soldiers in connection with the territorial loss later in November. The law-enforcement agency indicted the five soldiers, freed by Baku on December 4, amid a scandal sparked by parliament speaker Alen Simonian’s disparaging comments about Armenian POWs. Simonian was caught on camera saying during a recent trip to Paris that many of them “laid down their weapons and ran away” during fighting with Azerbaijani forces. In a secretly filmed video publicized on Tuesday, he claimed that their relatives have not protested lately because they realize that the soldiers are deserters. Many of those relatives responded by staging angry protests in Yerevan and Gyumri. Simonian, who is a senior member of Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian’s Civil Contract party, met with some of them on Wednesday. Opposition leaders and civic activists also strongly condemned Simonian and demanded his resignation. By contrast, neither Pashinian nor other any member of his political team publicly criticized or disavowed the speaker’s controversial comments. The prime minister said on Wednesday that law-enforcement authorities must investigate circumstances in which Armenian soldiers were captured by Azerbaijani troops. Eduard Aghajanian, a senior pro-government lawmaker, denied on Friday any connection between those political statements and the charges brought against the five former POWs. Former Defense Minister Seyran Ohanian, who leads the parliamentary group of the main opposition Hayastan alliance, acknowledged the need for thorough investigations into such instances. “But I believe that … it is the people who created conditions for that captivity in the first place who must first and foremost bear responsibility,” Ohanian said, referring to Armenia’s political leadership. Court Upholds Guilty Verdict In 2016 Attack On Armenian Police • Robert Zargarian Armenia - Gunmen occupying a police station in Yerevan, 23July2016. Armenia’s Court of Appeals on Friday upheld lengthy prison sentences handed down to key members of an armed anti-government group that seized a police base in Yerevan in July 2016. The nine defendants and two dozen other gunmen stormed the base to demand that then President Serzh Sarkisian free Zhirayr Sefilian, the jailed leader of their radical opposition movement, and step down. The gunmen, who took police officers and medical personnel hostage, laid down their weapons after a two-week standoff with security forces which left three police officers dead. All but two members of the armed group called Sasna Tsrer were released from custody shortly after Sarkisian was toppled in the 2018 “Velvet Revolution” led by Nikol Pashinian. Armenia - Relatives of police officers killed in a standoff with opposition gunmen attend a remembrance ceremony in Yerevan, 28Sep2016. The two other members remained behind bars because of facing murder charges denied by them. One of them, Armen Bilian, was set free in February this year when a Yerevan court acquitted him of killing one of the three policemen following a high-profile trial of the nine former gunmen. The Court of Appeals accepted prosecutors’ demand to overturn the acquittal and sentence Bilian to 25 years in prison. He was arrested again in the courtroom. The court upheld a 25-year-old prison sentence for Smbat Barseghian, another defendant convicted of killing the two other policemen. The prosecutors sought a life imprisonment for him. The court also rejected appeals filed by the seven other Sasna Tsrer members whom the lower court sentenced to between 6 and 8 years in prison. Unlike Bilian, they will remain free pending an appeal to the higher Court of Cassation and its decision on the case. Armenia - Varuzhan Avetisian (L), the leader an armed opposition group that seized a police station in July 2016, at the start of his trial in Yerevan, 8Jun2017. Varuzhan Avetisian, the Sasna Tsrer leader who got a 7-year jail term, has repeatedly defended the armed attack on the police facility located in Yerevan’s southern Erebuni district. Avetisian and the other defendants deny the charges leveled against them. The 2016 attack was condemned by the United States and the European Union. “We abhor the actions of Sasna Tsrer and others who use violence or who threaten to harm others to serve their political agenda,” Richard Mills, the then U.S. ambassador to Armenia, said in 2018. Fighting Continues On Armenian-Azeri Border Armenia - An Armenian soldier stands guard on the border with Azerbaijan, November 12, 2021 Fighting appeared to have intensified on the Armenian-Azerbaijani border on Friday, with the Armenian military accusing Azerbaijani forces of attacking some of its positions. The Defense Ministry in Yerevan said they suffered casualties while being repelled from the outposts located at a border section in eastern Armenia. One Armenian soldier was killed and several others wounded in the gunfight, it said. “The exchange of gunfire stopped as of 2:30 pm [local time,]” the ministry added in a statement. The Azerbaijani Defense Ministry said, meanwhile, that Armenian army units again fired on its troops deployed in the Kelbajar district bordering Armenia’s eastern Gegharkunik province. It did not immediately report casualties within its own ranks. Armlur.am quoted a local government official in Gegharkunik as saying that the epicenter of the fighting was near the Armenian border village of Sotk. “They [Azerbaijani troops] tried to advance in the Sotk section but failed,” Hakob Avetian told the publication. Armenian and Azerbaijani forces exchanged fire in the mountainous area on Wednesday and Thursday, blaming each other for the truce violations. One Azerbaijani soldier was reportedly killed and two Armenian servicemen wounded in those skirmishes. The fighting broke out two weeks after Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian and Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev met in Sochi for talks hosted by Russian President Vladimir Putin. The three leaders announced that they agreed to speed up preparations for demarcating the border between the two South Caucasus states. 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.