Monday,
Armenia Boycotts Another CSTO Meeting
• Shoghik Galstian
Russia - Flags of the member states of the Collective Security Treaty
Organization (CSTO) are displayed during a summit in Moscow, May 16, 2022.
Armenia will skip a session of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Collective
Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) on Tuesday one month after Prime Minister
Nikol Pashinian boycotted a summit of the leaders of ex-Soviet states making up
the Russian-led military alliance.
Parliament speaker Alen Simonian confirmed his decision not to attend it when he
spoke to reporters on Friday.
“Armenia’s sovereign territory was invaded by the armed forces of a third
country, and the CSTO did not even give a political assessment of that. Why
should we go there?” said Simonian.
The Armenian parliament’s press office said on Monday that other lawmakers will
also not fly to Moscow for the session.
Armenia officially requested military aid from its CSTO allies after
Azerbaijan’s offensive military operations launched along the
Armenian-Azerbaijani border in September 2022. It has since repeatedly accused
them of ignoring the request in breach of the CSTO’s statutes and declared
mission.
Armenia’s boycott of high-level CSTO meetings held in recent months raised
growing questions about its continued membership in the alliance. Simonian did
not rule out the possibility of its exit.
The CSTO Parliamentary Assembly is due to discuss, among other things, the
creation of a new joint air-defense system approved during the bloc’s November
22 summit in Minsk. Yerevan has still not clarified whether it will sign up to
that agreement.
Pro-government members of the Armenian parliament committee on defense and
security on Monday refused to comment on the issue. Another lawmaker from the
ruling Civil Contract party, Vagharshak Hakobian, said Armenia should look into
the new CSTO arrangement in a “very sober” manner.
“We are now in the process of very vigorously working on a peace treaty [with
Azerbaijan,] but security guarantees are extremely important to us,” said
Hakobian.
Russian President Vladimir Putin on Thursday suggested that Armenia is not
planning to quit the CSTO and attributed Yerevan’s boycott of the organization
to internal “processes” taking place in the country. By contrast, the Russian
Foreign Ministry earlier accused Pashinian of systematically “destroying”
Russian-Armenian relations.
NGOs Lament ‘Failure’ Of Armenian Police Reform
• Artak Khulian
Armenia - Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian inspects newly trained officers of the
Patrol Service in Vanadzor, April 16, 2022.
The Armenian government has failed to adequately reform the national police, the
leaders of two Western-funded civic groups claimed on Monday.
“In terms of values, I think that unfortunately the reforms have been a
failure,” Daniel Ioannisian of the Union of Informed Citizens (UIC) told
RFE/RL’s Armenian Service. “I’m saying this based on the events of the past
year. The reforms should have resulted in citizens starting to perceive the
police as a provider of services to the citizens, rather than a truncheon held
by the state. They have failed in this regard.”
Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian has repeatedly said that his administration is
successfully reforming the Armenian police and other law-enforcement bodies with
the help of the European Union and the United States. In particular, Pashinian
has touted the creation of the Patrol Service, a Western-funded police force
which was supposed to introduce Western practices in road policing, street
patrol and crowd control.
Both Ioannisian and Artur Sakunts, a veteran campaigner leading the Helsinki
Citizens’ Assembly (HCA), were critical of the Patrol Service’s track record,
saying that has even worsened lately. Sakunts claimed that there have been more
cases of its relatively well-paid officers physically and verbally abusing
ordinary Armenians and not enforcing traffic rules.
The first chief of the Patrol Service was sacked in February following a bizarre
traffic incident at Yerevan’s main square which sparked accusations of
incompetence directed at his officers.
“The reforms have not been completed or put on hold,” insisted Armen Mkrtchian,
a spokesman for the Armenian Interior Ministry. “They are a work in progress.
True, problems do arise, but we must get better by addressing those problems.”
“We are introducing new services, new approaches to education, selection of
personnel but … are also learning from our mistakes and shortcomings,” he said.
The reform process was coordinated by an ad hoc government body comprising not
only government and law-enforcement officials but also civil society members.
Ioannisian’s UIC, Sakunts’s HCA and another NGO pulled out of it in January in
protest against Pashinian’s decision to appoint Vahe Ghazarian as interior
minister. They claimed that Ghazarian, who is reportedly a childhood friend of
Pashinian’s, resisted reforms and tolerated corruption in his previous capacity
as chief of the Armenian police.
Another line of criticism comes from opposition figures and other detractors of
Pashinian. They blame the police as well as the current government for
considerable annual increases in Armenia’s crime rate registered since the 2018
“velvet revolution.”
Those have been driven in large measure by soaring drug trafficking cases in the
country. Ghazarian said in October that the number of drug-related crimes
recorded by the Armenian police more than doubled in the first nine months of
this year.
Government Seeks To ‘Diversify’ Armenia’s Foreign Trade
Armenia - Economy Minister Vahan Kerobian, July 7, 2022.
Economy Minister Vahan Kerobian said on Monday that his government is trying to
“diversify” Armenia’s foreign trade while expecting continued growth of its
import and export operations with Russia.
According government statistics, Armenia’s trade with the other members of the
Russian-led Eurasian Economic Union (EEU) soared by 41 percent, to $5.7 billion,
in the first ten months of this year. Russia accounted for over 95 percent of
that figure and 35 percent of the South Caucasus nation’s overall commercial
exchange, compared with the European Union’s 15 percent share in it.
Russian-Armenian trade has increased dramatically since the EU and other Western
powers imposed sweeping sanctions on Moscow over its invasion of Ukraine.
Armenian entrepreneurs have taken advantage of the sanctions, re-exporting
Western-manufactured cars, consumer electronics and other goods to Russia. This
explains why Armenian exports to Russia tripled in 2022 and nearly doubled to
$2.6 billion in January-September 2023.
Meeting with members of the Armenian parliament committee on regional and
Eurasian integration, Kerobian said that the upward trend will continue in the
years to come.
“The government is taking steps to diversify external economic activity,” he
told the lawmakers. “In particular, by stepping up commercial exchange in no
less important directions.”
The minister did not shed light on those steps or specify the countries with
which the government hopes to deepen commercial ties.
Armenia’s trade with Russia has been soaring despite a deepening rift between
the two longtime allies. Citing food safety concerns, a Russian government
agency blocked the import of many food products from Armenia for more than a
week last month. The Rosselkhoznadzor agricultural watchdog alleged a sharp
increase in the presence of “harmful quarantined organisms” in them.
Observers believe that Moscow thus underlined its strong economic leverage
against Armenia to warn Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian against further
reorienting the country towards the West.
Russia has long been the main export market for Armenian agricultural products,
prepared foodstuffs and alcoholic drinks. Their exports totaled roughly $960
million in January-October 2023.
Armenian Government Critic Convicted Posthumously
Armenia - Entertainment producer and government critic Armen Grigorian.
A vocal critic of Armenia’s government who died during his trial last year was
posthumously found of guilty of hate speech on Monday.
Armen Grigorian, a well-known entertainment producer, was arrested and indicted
in May 2022 in connection with a 2021 video in which he made disparaging
comments about residents of two Armenian regions sympathetic to the government.
The National Security Service accused him of offending their “national dignity.”
Grigorian, who for years harshly criticized Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian,
rejected the accusations as politically motivated. Opposition figures and other
government critics also denounced the criminal proceedings launched against him.
Grigorian, 56, collapsed in the courtroom in July 2022 as his lawyer petitioned
the presiding judge to release him from custody. He was pronounced dead moments
later.
The then human rights ombudswoman, Kristine Grigorian (no relation to Armen),
expressed outrage at the antigovernment activist’s death, saying that he clearly
did not receive adequate medical care in prison. None of the judges or
law-enforcement officials responsible for his detention were fired or subjected
to disciplinary action afterwards.
“Defendant Armen Grigorian's guilt in committing this act has been proven,”
Mnatsakan Martirosian, a controversial judge presiding over his trial, said in
his verdict in the case.
The late defendant’s lawyer, Ruben Melikian, said in he will “definitely” appeal
against the guilty verdict.
No government loyalists in Armenia are known to have been prosecuted on such
charges to date. Several members of the ruling Civil Contract avoided
prosecution this fall after verbally attacking ethnic Armenian refugees from
Nagorno-Karabakh taking part in anti-government rallies in Yerevan. One of them,
a village mayor, said such refugees must be stripped of government aid while
another urged the Armenian authorities to deport them from the country.
Reposted on ANN/Armenian News with permission from RFE/RL
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