Tuesday,
Armenia Not Democracy, Says Ex-President
• Anush Mkrtchian
Armenia - Former President Serzh Sarkisian and his supporters visit the Komitas
Pantheon in Yerevan, March 25, 2022.
Former President Serzh Sarkisian on Tuesday brushed aside government claims that
Armenia became a democratic country after he was forced to resign during the
2018 “velvet revolution.”
“If this is democracy, then nobody needs it,” Sarkisian told reporters, citing
existential threats facing the country now.
“If there are more than 20 political prisoners now, if 150,000 people were
simply expelled from a part of our homeland [Nagorno-Karabakh], then what
democracy are you talking about?” he said.
Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian, who swept to power as a result of the 2018 mass
protests, again claimed to have turned Armenia into a democracy when he
addressed the European Parliament earlier in the day. He said his country “would
have lost its independence and sovereignty had it not been democratic.”
Opposition groups, including Sarkisian’s Republican Party (HHK) accuse him of
jailing political opponents, suppressing judicial independence and issuing
political orders to law-enforcement bodies. The ex-president faced similar
accusations when he governed Armenia from 2008-2018.
The “political prisoners” mentioned by him presumably include individuals
arrested and prosecuted during last month’s anti-government protests in Yerevan
sparked by the Azerbaijani military offensive in Nagorno-Karabakh. The
protesters accused Pashinian of selling out Karabakh and its ethnic Armenian
population that has fled the region. Sarkisian also held the Armenian premier
responsible for the fall of Karabakh.
Karabakh Leader ‘Forced To Dissolve Republic’
• Ruzanna Stepanian
Armenia - Ethnic Armenians who fled Nagorno-Karabakh embrace upon their arrival
in the Armenian border village of Kornidzor, September 26, 2023.
Nagorno-Karabakh’s president accepted Azerbaijan’s demands to dissolve all
Karabakh government bodies to allow the region’s ethnic Armenian population to
safely flee its homeland, exiled Karabakh officials in Yerevan said on Tuesday.
Samvel Shahramanian signed a corresponding decree on September 28 just over a
week after a Russian-brokered ceasefire that stopped an Azerbaijani military
offensive. Under the terms of that agreement, Karabakh disarmed and disbanded
its army, paving the way for the restoration of full Azerbaijani control over
the territory.
Shahramanian’s decree said that the self-proclaimed Nagorno-Karabakh Republic,
set up in September 1991, will cease to exist on January 1. Some prominent
Karabakh Armenians challenged the legality of the decree, raising more questions
about the circumstances in which it was signed.
Shahramanian, one of the last ethnic Armenians to leave the region, has avoided
any contact with the press since arriving in Armenia along with more than
100,000 Karabakh residents.
Hunan Tadevosian, the spokesman for the Karabakh interior ministry, said his
decree was demanded by Azerbaijan and Shahramanian signed it in order to “save
human lives.” “There was no other option,” Tadevosian told RFE/RL’s Armenian
Service.
Aram Harutiunian, a lawmaker representing Karabakh’s largest party, confirmed
that. He said Baku warned that Azerbaijani troops will enter Stepanakert if
Shahramanian rejects the “ultimatum.”
The decree in question has still not been publicized in full. Some Karabakh
politicians and public figures have said that it must be declared null and void
now that Karabakh has been almost fully depopulated. Several opposition figures
in Armenia have echoed their calls.
The Armenian government is unlikely to back them. Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian
pointedly declined to congratulate Shahramanian when he was elected president by
the Karabakh legislature in early September.
Pashinian Addresses EU Parliament, Blasts ‘Armenia’s Allies’
France - Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian addresses the European
Parliament in Strasbourg, .
Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian denounced Russian peacekeepers for not preventing
the fall of Nagorno-Karabakh and seemingly accused Russia of using Armenia’s
conflict with Azerbaijan to try to topple him in a speech delivered at the
European Parliament on Tuesday.
Pashinian addressed the European Parliament’s legislative body amid Yerevan's
deepening rift with Moscow, its longtime ally locked in a geopolitical standoff
with the West.
“Democracy in Armenia … continues to receive strong blows that follow an almost
exactly repeated scenario: foreign aggression, then the inaction of Armenia's
security allies, then attempts to use the war or the humanitarian situation or
external security threats to subvert Armenia's democracy and sovereignty by
inciting internal instability with hybrid techniques directed by external
forces,” he said.
Pashinian pointed to Azerbaijan’s September 19-20 military offensive in Karabakh
which caused a mass exodus of the region’s ethnic Armenian population and
sparked renewed anti-government protests in Yerevan.
“As hundreds of thousands of Armenians were fleeing from Nagorno-Karabakh to the
Republic of Armenia, our security allies not only did not help us but also made
public calls for regime change in Armenia,” he said. “But the people of Armenia
united for their own independence, sovereignty, democracy, and another
conspiracy against our state failed.”
Pashinian already implicitly accused Moscow of fomenting the angry street
protests against his rule in the immediate aftermath of the Azerbaijani assault.
Their organizers and participants blamed him for Baku’s takeover of Karabakh,
saying that he precipitated it with his recognition of Azerbaijani sovereignty
over the region.
Pashinian again sought to shift the blame to Moscow, saying that the Karabakh
Armenians fled their homeland due to the “inaction of the Russian peacekeeping
contingent.” President Vladimir Putin and other Russian officials have defended
the peacekeepers.
The Russian Foreign Ministry accused Pashinian late last month of seeking to
ruin Russian-Armenian relations and reorient his country towards the West.
Earlier in September, it deplored “a series of unfriendly steps” taken by
Yerevan.
Moscow has also been critical of Western efforts to broker an
Armenian-Azerbaijani peace deal, saying that their main purpose is to drive
Russia out of the South Caucasus. Putin offered last week to host fresh talks
between Pashinian and Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev.
Pashinian signaled on Tuesday that he still prefers the Western mediation and
hopes it will result in an Armenian-Azerbaijani peace treaty soon. He noted that
he and Aliyev are due to meet in Brussels together with EU head Charles Michel
later this year.
Pashinian further stated that he wants to deepen Armenia’s ties with the EU “as
much as the European Union finds it possible.”
Reposted on ANN/Armenian News with permission from RFE/RL
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