Monday,
31 Armenians Under Arrest After Anti-Government Protests
• Naira Bulghadarian
ARMENIA -- Protesters gather near the government building, after Azerbaijan
launched a military operation in Nagorno-Karabakh, in Yerevan, September 19,
2023.
Thirty-one participants of recent anti-government protests in Yerevan, many of
them university students, remain in custody on what the Armenian opposition and
human rights activists regard as politically motivated charges.
The largely peaceful protests erupted spontaneously shortly after the
Azerbaijani army went on the offensive in Nagorno-Karabakh on September 19,
paving the way for the restoration of Baku’s full control over the
Armenian-populated territory. They demanded that Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian
resign because of his failure to prevent the fall of Karabakh. Some
demonstrators clashed with security forces outside the main government building
in Yerevan.
Opposition groups swiftly took over and stepped up the daily protests in the
following days in an attempt to topple Pashinian. Their “civil disobedience”
campaign fizzled out later in September.
Riot police detained hundreds of people during the demonstrations. The majority
of them were set free after spending several hours in police custody.
Still, according to Armenia’s Investigative Committee, 48 protesters were
charged with participating in “mass disturbances” and assaulting police
officers. Thirty-one of them are under arrest pending investigation, the
law-enforcement agency said at the weekend.
Armenia - Police detain a man during a protest against Azerbaijan's military
action in the Nagorno-Karabakh, Yerevan, September 22, 2023.
In an October 9 statement, the main opposition Hayastan bloc again rejected the
accusations and demanded the release of all detainees. Its senior members claim
that the authorities fabricated the criminal case to discourage angry Armenians
from participating in opposition rallies.
“These are all cases of political persecution,” agreed Arsen Babayan, an
opposition-linked lawyer representing three of the detainees. “They are
basically telling people that if they take part in rallies they could be
sentenced to between 4 and 8 years in prison.”
This is why, he told RFE/RL’s Armenian Service, the authorities are not keeping
the suspects under house arrest.
Zaruhi Hovannisian, a human rights activist, also criticized the detentions. She
said that just like their predecessors, Armenia’s current leaders are using
pre-trial arrest to “suppress suspects, influence their political views and
force them to renounce some actions.”
In Hovannisian’s, words 26 of the arrested protesters are held in Yerevan’s
Nubarashen prison, the largest in Armenia, and most of them are students.
U.S. Denies Warning Of Azeri Attack On Armenia
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken speaks to members of the media before
leaving Egypt, en route to Jordan, .
The U.S. State Department has denied a media report saying that Secretary of
State Antony Blinken has not ruled out the possibility that Azerbaijan will
invade Armenia in the coming weeks.
The U.S. news website Politico reported on Friday that Blinken made that clear
in an October 3 phone call with several pro-Armenian U.S. lawmakers. It cited
two unnamed “people familiar with the conversation.”
“The reporting in this article is inaccurate and in no way reflects what
Secretary Blinken said to lawmakers,” the State Department spokesman, Matthew
Miller, told Armenia’s Armenpress news agency on Sunday.
“The United States strongly supports Armenia’s sovereignty and territorial
integrity. We have stressed that any infringement of that sovereignty and
territorial integrity would bring serious consequences,” Miller said in written
comments.
Tigran Balayan, the Armenian ambassador to the European Union, similarly claimed
on October 8 that Azerbaijani forces could soon try to open an exterritorial
land corridor to Azerbaijan’s Nakhichevan exclave through Armenia’s southeastern
Syunik province. He said the West should impose sanctions on Baku to prevent
such an attack.
Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev regularly demands such a corridor. The
Azerbaijani takeover of Nagorno-Karabakh raised more fears in Yerevan that Baku
may act on its implicit threats of military action.
Syunik is the sole Armenian province bordering Iran. Tehran has repeatedly
warned against attempts to strip it of the common border and transport links
with Armenia.
Karabakh’s Death Toll Close To 500
• Ruzanna Stepanian
A photograph taken and released on September 25, 2023 by the Nagorno-Karabakh
Human Rights Ombudsman shows a fire at a fuel depot outside Stepanakert.
More than 220 residents of Nagorno-Karabakh were killed during last month’s
Azerbaijani military offensive and at least as many others died in the
subsequent explosion at a local fuel depot, a Karabakh official said over the
weekend.
Over 200 of them are Karabakh soldiers killed in action on September 19-20,
Hunan Tadevosian told RFE/RL’s Armenian Service in Yerevan. Two dozen other
victims of the hostilities are Karabakh civilians who died as a result of
Azerbaijani shelling of their communities.
The Azerbaijani Defense Ministry has acknowledged over 200 combat deaths among
its military personnel involved in the operation. Its troops greatly outnumbered
and outgunned Karabakh’s small army that received no military support from
Armenia. Karabakh’s leadership agreed to disband the Defense Army in return for
Baku stopping the assault and allowing the region’s ethnic Armenian population
to flee to Armenia.
The exodus began amid chaotic scenes blamed for the September 25 explosion at
the gasoline depot outside Stepanakert. With fuel in extremely short supply in
Karabakh even before the Azerbaijani attack, hundreds of cars converged on the
facility to fuel up and proceed to Armenia.
Tadevosian said the powerful blast and a fire sparked by it killed at least 220
people and left 50 others missing. About 150 bodies were burned beyond
recognition, he said, adding that DNA tests are being carried out in Yerevan to
identify them.
Hundreds of other Karabakh Armenians were injured by the blast. Tadevosian said
Karabakh authorities that are now exiled in Armenia continue to believe that it
was most likely the result of human negligence, rather than a deliberate attack.
The authorities failed to organize an orderly distribution of the fuel stored in
the depot because of panic caused by fears that Azerbaijani troops could enter
Stepanakert at any moment, he said.
“People were desperate to get out [of Karabakh] as soon as possible and save
their families,” added the spokesman for the Karabakh interior ministry.
Aliyev Visits Depopulated Karabakh
Azerbaijan's President Ilham Aliyev raises the state flag in Nagorno-Karabakh
capital city Stepanakert, .
Azerbaijan’s President Ilham Aliyev visited Nagorno-Karabakh and raised
Azerbaijani flags there on Sunday as Baku completed the takeover of the region
as a result of last month’s military offensive that caused a mass exodus of its
ethnic Armenian population.
Aliyev described the restoration of full Azerbaijani control over Karabakh as a
“historic event” in a televised address to the nation delivered outside the main
government building in Stepanakert.
“We got our lands back, restored our territorial integrity and at the same time
restored our dignity,” he said after hoisting an Azerbaijani flag there.
Aliyev’s visit to Stepanakert and other practically empty Karabakh towns was
clearly timed to coincide with the 20th anniversary of the start of his
presidency inherited from his late father Heydar. He declared that he has
achieved his “number one objective.”
“This victory will remain forever in our history,” added Aliyev.
The Azerbaijani army launched the large-scale offensive on September 19. After
more than 24 hours of fierce fighting, which left at least 400 soldiers from
both sides dead, Karabakh’s leadership agreed to disband and disarm its armed
forces. The latter were greatly outnumbered and outgunned by advancing
Azerbaijani troops in the absence of any military support from Armenia.
Russia, which has about 2,000 peacekeeping soldiers stationed in Karabakh, did
not try to prevent or stop the assault. The Karabakh Armenians regarded the
peacekeepers as their man security guarantee after the 2020 Armenian-Azerbaijani
war.
At least 100,000 of them fled to Armenia later in September. According to exiled
Karabakh officials in Yerevan, only several dozen mostly sick, disabled and
elderly Armenians remain in the region.
Armenia’s government says the exodus is the result of “ethnic cleansing”
perpetrated by Azerbaijan. Baku has denied responsibility for the almost
complete depopulation of Karabakh and pledged to protect the rights of local
residents willing to live under Azerbaijani rule.
Armenians Also Evacuated From Israel
• Anush Mkrtchian
Israel - Armenians check in for an evacuation flight to Yerevan at Tel Aviv's
Ben Gurion Airport, .
A first group of 149 people was evacuated from Israel to Armenia on Monday on a
special flight organized by the Armenian government.
The chartered flight landed at Yerevan’s Zvartnots airport just over a week
after Hamas launched its surprise attack from the Gaza Strip, reigniting the
conflict in the Middle East.
The evacuees included not only Armenian nationals but also ethnic Armenian
citizens of Israel and other foreign countries.
“I live and work here, it’s my children who live there [in Israel],” one of
them, a middle-aged woman from Yerevan, told RFE/RL’s Armenian Service at
Zvartnots. “I was always going to come back. I went there for a few days.”
“I worked at a university there on a one-year contract,” said another, younger
woman. “It’s not clear what is going to happen there next. Things may escalate,
get even worse. That is why returning to Armenia is a safer option.”
The Armenian Embassy in Tel Aviv began registering people for the first
repatriation flight last week. The Foreign Ministry in Yerevan indicated later
on Monday that it could arrange more flights if necessary.
“We can also inform that as of now there have been no reports of Armenian
citizens or ethnic Armenians being among victims of the hostilities,” the
ministry said in a statement.
Other countries have also evacuated their citizens from Israel due to the
escalating conflict.
Reposted on ANN/Armenian News with permission from RFE/RL
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