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Armenian Ruling Party Member Not Prosecuted For Death Threats
• Susan Badalian
• Satenik Kaghzvantsian
Armenia - Civil Contract party member Suren Torosian.
A local government official affiliated with Armenia’s ruling Civil Contract
party is prosecuted for assaulting a fellow villager but is not yet facing
charges stemming from his recent threats to “shoot” Prime Minister Nikol
Pashinian’s detractors.
Suren Torosian, who is in charge of utility services in Aragatsavan, a large
village 80 kilometers northwest of Yerevan, sparked an angry demonstration there
on June 7 after allegedly spraying a local man with tear gas and repeatedly
hitting him with a stick during an argument. Armen Sahakian, the 24-year-old
man, suffered a head injury and received urgent treatment in hospital.
Dozens of other Aragatsavan residents blocked a highway leading to Yerevan to
demand Torosian’s arrest and prosecution. They were especially furious with the
fact that Sahakian was assaulted despite suffering from serious chronic diseases.
“Is this the rule of law created by Civil Contract?” one of the protesters told
RFE/RL’s Armenian Service.
Torosian was promptly detained and charged with assault only to be set free
hours later. Armenia’s Investigative Committee said the assault charge leveled
against him is not serious enough to warrant his pre-trial arrest.
Armenia -- Aragatsavan resident Armen Sahakian, June 8, 2023.
The incident drew media attention to the content of Torosian’s Facebook page
and, in particular, an angry video message posted by the official there this
month. In that message, the ruling party member lashes out at Pashinian’s vocal
critics, saying that he “will have their ears cut off” and “kick them in the
face.”
“If we force a couple of such types to lie down and drag them along the ground,
everything will get fixed … I will shoot them in the forehead,” he says.
Torosian, who got his current job after the 2018 “velvet revolution” that
brought Pashinian to power, goes on to urge the heads of regional divisions of
Armenia’s police and National Security Service to “drag” the prime minister’s
detractors out of their homes.
A spokesman for the Investigative Committee said on Monday the law-enforcement
agency has not opened a criminal case in connection with the death threats
because it has not received a formal “crime report.”
For its part, the Office of the Prosecutor-General told RFE/RL’s Armenian
Service that it will comment on legal consequences of the threats only in
response to a written inquiry.
Armenia - Suren Torosian airs a video message on Facebook.
Civil Contract has still not reacted to its member’s public calls for violence.
The governor of Aragatsotn province encompassing Aragatsavan, who is also
affiliated with Pashinian’s party, on Monday criticized those calls and pledged
to initiate a “discussion” of Torosian’s conduct. “His words weren’t normal, in
my view,” said Sergei Movsisian.
Torosian also revealed in the same scandalous video that he recently gave a ride
to an 8-year-old boy who turned out to be a refugee from Nagorno-Karabakh. He
said he stopped his car on a highway outside Aragatsavan and ordered the boy to
“get out” after the latter said that his family fled Karabakh because “traitor
Nikol gave away our lands.”
Torosian then pledged to “deal with” the boy’s parents working in the public
sector of another rural community. “We will throw such people out of the
sector,” he said.
Armenian Church Again Warns Against ‘Humiliating’ Peace Deal
Armenia - Members of the Armenian Apostolic Church's Supreme Spiritual Council
pose for a photo after a meeting in Echmiadzin, June 8, 2023.
The Armenian Apostolic Church has again denounced Prime Minister Nikol
Pashinian’s policy on the conflict with Azerbaijan and said Armenia must again
champion Nagorno-Karabakh’s right to self-determination.
The church expressed serious concern over the “difficult situation created in
the country's life” in a weekend statement on a regular session of its Supreme
Spiritual Council (SSC) chaired by Catholicos Garegin II.
“It was emphasized [during the meeting] that the authorities of Armenia should
renounce actions that violate the dignity of the nation and oppose the
humiliating ambitions and demands of foreign enemies with realistic and
exclusively pro-Armenian positions, resolutely defending the non-negotiable
right of the people of Artsakh to self-determination,” it said.
“The SSC expressed its support to the people and authorities of Artsakh, noting
also that the just right of the people of Artsakh to live freely and
independently will find protection in all national frameworks,” added the
statement.
The SSC held another, emergency meeting late last month. It joined Karabakh’s
leadership and the Armenian opposition in condemning Pashinian for his readiness
to sign a peace deal recognizing Karabakh as part of Azerbaijan. It said that
the restoration of Azerbaijan rule would leave the Karabakh Armenians facing a
“new genocide and loss of the homeland.”
The church also openly criticized the Armenian government’s Karabakh policy last
fall. Garegin authorized an Armenian archbishop to address an opposition rally
in Yerevan that warned Pashinian against recognizing Azerbaijani sovereignty
over Karabakh.
Tensions between the ancient church and Pashinian have deepened further since
then. Last month, the prime minister accused the church of meddling in politics,
prompting a scathing response from Garegin’s office.
Baku, Yerevan Make Conflicting Statements On Transport Links
• Ruzanna Stepanian
Armenia - Russian border guards stationed in Syunik province are inspected by
Russian Ambassador Sergei Kopyrkin, May 24, 2022.
Despite major progress reported during their most recent talks, senior Armenian
and Azerbaijani officials made over the weekend conflicting statements on the
practical modalities of planned transport links between their countries.
Azerbaijan’s Deputy Prime Minister Shahin Mustafayev said that in line with the
Russian-brokered agreement that stopped the 2020 war in Nagorno-Karabakh Russian
border guards will oversee “unfettered” commercial traffic between Azerbaijan
and its Nakhichevan exclave through Armenia’s Syunik province. He told report.az
that Baku, Yerevan and Moscow are now working out “technical details” of this
arrangement.
The office of Armenian Deputy Prime Minister Mher Grigorian countered, however,
that he and Mustafayev reached no such agreement during their negotiations,
including a June 2 meeting in Moscow. Citing Article 9 of the ceasefire
agreement, it said that the planned road and rail links will be under full
Armenian control.
The clause in question stipulates that the Russian border guards stationed in
Armenia will “control” the transit of people, vehicles and goods between
Nakhichevan and the rest of Azerbaijan.
The Sputnik news agency quoted Russia’s Deputy Prime Minister Alexei Overchuk as
saying in this regard on Friday that Moscow and Baku are not questioning
Armenian sovereignty over those transit routes. Asked about the possible role of
the Russian border guards, he said that it depends on the Armenian side.
The issue topped the agenda of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s trilateral
meeting with Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian and Azerbaijani President
Ilham Aliyev held in Moscow on May 25.
Mustafayev, Grigorian and Overchuk met in the Russian capital on June 2 to try
to settle what Putin called “purely technical” issues hampering the opening of
the Armenian-Azerbaijani border to commercial traffic. According to an Armenian
government statement, they made “substantial progress” on the functioning of the
railway leading to Nakhichevan.
Reposted on ANN/Armenian News with permission from RFE/RL
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