Monday, August 1, 2022 Fighting Reported In Karabakh • Nane Sahakian ARMENIA -- An ethnic Armenian soldier stands guard flag atop a hill in northwestern Karabakh, November 25, 2020 Nagorno-Karabakh’s military on Monday accused Azerbaijani forces of launching attacks on its positions in the territory’s north and northwest. The Karabakh Defense Army said that throughout the day its troops thwarted Azerbaijani “attempts to cross the line of contact.” “The Armenian side suffered no casualties,” it said in a statement issued in the evening. “The situation remains tense.” The statement added that Russian peacekeeping forces stationed in Karabakh received “detailed information” about the situation on the frontlines. A Karabakh lawmaker, Artur Harutiunian, told RFE/RL’s Armenian Service shortly afterwards that the fighting has stopped for now. He also said that the Azerbaijani army did not capture any Karabakh Armenian positions. “Everything is under the control of our armed forces,” Davit Babayan, the Karabakh foreign minister said, for his part. Meanwhile, the Azerbaijani Defense Ministry categorically denied any ceasefire violations in or around Karabakh. Earlier in the evening, Arayik Harutiunian, the Karabakh president, held what appeared to be an emergency meeting with the Defense Army commander, Kamo Vartanian, and other security officials. In what may have been a related development, Armenian Foreign Minister Ararat Mirzoyan held a phone call with U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Karen Donfried. An Armenian readout of the call made no explicit mention on the reported escalation in Karabakh. Donfried spoke with Mirzoyan and Azerbaijani Foreign Minister Jeyhun Bayramov on July 17 the day after their direct talks held in Tbilisi. A week later, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken phoned the leaders of Armenia and Azerbaijan. Blinken tweeted afterwards that he sees a “historic opportunity to achieve peace in the region.” Last Thursday, the Armenian side said that Azerbaijani forces opened fire at two villages in Nagorno-Karabakh and Armenian army positions on Armenia’s border with Azerbaijan. Baku denied that. On Saturday, Azerbaijani Defense Minister Zakir Hasanov ordered his troops to be ready to “prevent provocation attempts by the enemy with decisive measures.” Some commentators in Yerevan suggested that Baku is preparing the ground for another escalation in the conflict zone. The situation along the Karabakh “line of contact” had been relatively calm since March. More Diaspora Activists Denied Entry To Armenia • Artak Khulian Armenia - Dutch Armenian activist Massis Abrahamian and his daughter Suneh speak from Yerevan airport. Two more Armenian Diaspora activists from Europe critical of Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian have been barred from entering Armenia. Massis Abrahamian, a leader of the pan-Armenian Dashnaktsutyun party’s branch in the Netherlands, and his 23-year-old daughter Suneh arrived at Yerevan’s Zvartnots airport on Monday and Sunday respectively. Immigration officers there told them that they will be deported. “Words cannot describe the disappointment and pain I feel for being denied my homeland,” Suneh Abrahamian, who too is affiliated with Dashnaktsutyun, wrote on Facebook before flying back to the Netherlands. Her father was still at Zvartnots’s transit zone on Monday evening, awaiting a return flight to Warsaw. He said he too was not given any reason for being declared a persona non grata by the Armenian government. The government declined to comment on the expulsions, referring all inquiries to the National Security Service (NSS). The NSS did not respond to an RFE/RL request for comment as of Monday evening. Mourad Papazian, another Dashnaktsutyun activist and one of the leaders of France’s large Armenian community, was similarly denied entry to Armenia two weeks ago. The Coordination Council of Armenian Organizations of France (CCAF) condemned the ban. After an eight-day silence, Pashinian’s office said that Papazian was deported because of organizing an angry demonstration against the Armenian prime minister’s June 2021 visit to France. It said the protesters threw “various objects” at Pashinian’s motorcade when it drove through Paris. The French-Armenian leader denied any involvement in that protest. France - Mourad Papazian, a leader of the French-Armenian community, speaks at an Armenian genocide remembrance ceremony, April 24, 2022. Massis Abrahamian suggested that he was not allowed to visit Armenia because of being one of the organizers of protests that marred Pashinian’s May 2022 trip to the Netherlands. Some of the Dutch-Armenian protesters chanted offensive slogans against the prime minister. Abrahamian stressed that the protests were sanctioned by Dutch authorities and peaceful. “Every Diaspora Armenia will now be concerned about whether they will be allowed to enter Armenia on their arrival,” he told RFE/RL’s Armenian Service from the Yerevan airport. Dashnaktsutyun’s organization in Armenia has been at the forefront of regular rallies launched this spring by the country’s main opposition groups trying to topple Pashinian. Not surprisingly, the party’s Yerevan-based leaders were quick to condemn the latest expulsions of their Diaspora activists. One of them, Artsvik Minasian, accused Pashinian of seeking to silence his vocal critics in the worldwide Armenian Diaspora. “Even during Bolshevik rule there were no crackdowns on such a scale,” he claimed. Another Dashnaktsutyun leader, Ishkhan Saghatelian, linked the travel bans with what he called a government crackdown on opposition activists and supporters in Armenia. More than a dozen of them are currently under arrest, accused of assaulting police officers and government supporters. The Armenian authorities maintain that the accusations are not politically motivated. “Nikol is trying to switch to authoritarian rule,” Saghatelian charged in a Facebook post. “World history shows that at some point all populists turn into dictators because they can no longer cling to power through fraud and deceit.” Armenian Politician Barred From Entering Karabakh • Nane Sahakian Armenia - Raffi Hovannisian speaks at a news conference in Yerevan, 20 August 2018. Raffi Hovannisian, a veteran politician critical of Armenia’s government, was reportedly not allowed to enter Nagorno-Karabakh late on Sunday for unknown reasons. Hovannisian’s Zharangutyun (Heritage) party said Russian peacekeeping soldiers manning a checkpoint in the Lachin corridor stopped him as he travelled to Stepanakert to attend his grandson’s baptism. “Showing him an order from their commander along with an accompanying photo, the soldiers at the checkpoint did not give any clear reason or justification for the refusal but confirmed that the ban could emanate from “the highest echelon’ of official Yerevan,” Zharangutyun said in a statement. It said Karabakh’s leadership was “very surprised” by the entry ban and tried in vain to have it lifted. The statement quoted Hovannisian as seemingly blaming Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian for the ban. The U.S.-born politician, who had served as Armenia’s first foreign minister, pointed the finger at an unnamed “failed leader who must quit along with his xenophobic neighbor for the sake of real regional peace and security.” The authorities in Yerevan and Stepanakert could not be reached for comment on Monday morning. The pro-government news website civic.am quoted a spokesperson for the National Security Service (NSS) as saying that Armenia’s government has nothing to do with the travel ban. Armenian opposition parliamentarians likewise blamed Pashinian when they were barred from entering Karabakh in April on a visit which was as part of their campaign against far-reaching Armenian concessions to Azerbaijan. Pashinian and the Armenian Foreign Ministry put the blame on the Russian peacekeepers, however, saying that their actions ran counter to the terms of the Russian-brokered ceasefire that stopped the Armenian-Azerbaijani war in November 2020. Moscow rejected the criticism. Reprinted on ANN/Armenian News with permission from RFE/RL Copyright (c) 2022 Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty, Inc. 1201 Connecticut Ave., N.W. Washington DC 20036.