Wednesday, April 5, 2023
Civic Groups Also Demand Action Against Armenian Speaker
• Astghik Bedevian
Armenia - Parliament speaker Alen Simonian (right) and his deputy Ruben Rubinian
talk during a session of the National Assembly, Yerevan, September 8, 2022.
Several Armenian nongovernmental organizations called on Wednesday for a
parliamentary ethics investigation into speaker Alen Simonian accused of
spitting at a heckler in Yerevan.
One of them, the Union of Informed Citizens (UIC), demanded separately that
prosecutors open a “hooliganism” case against him. In a “crime report” submitted
to the Office of the Prosecutor-General, the UIC said they should also
investigate the legality of a brief detention of Garen Megerdichian, an
opposition activist who branded Simonian a “traitor.”
The Canadian-Armenian activist claimed that Simonian ordered his bodyguards to
overpower him and then spat in his face after he shouted the insult in downtown
Yerevan on Sunday. Simonian did not deny spitting at Megerdichian. He said he
was gravely insulted and responded accordingly.
Armenian opposition leaders strongly condemned Simonian. Former President Levon
Ter-Petrosian said on Tuesday that he must be ousted for his “unforgivable deed.”
The civic groups added their voice to the condemnations. They said the Armenian
parliament must set up an ad hoc ethics commission to look into its
controversial speaker’s behavior and consider taking other action against him.
“They [the ruling Civil Contract party] like to repeat that they were
democratically elected, that the people gave them a vote of confidence,” said
Sona Ayvazian of the Armenian branch of Transparency International. “Surely the
people did not give them a mandate to spit at citizens.”
Civil Contract holds the majority of parliament seats and can therefore block an
ethics probe if it is initiated by opposition deputies.
Vahagn Aleksanian, a senior Civil Contract lawmaker, did not exclude that the
party led by Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian will discuss the NGOs’ demand. But
he defended Simonian and complained that the civil society has not condemned
“death threats” to the government which he said have been voiced by some
opposition groups.
Vigen Khachatrian, another deputy representing the ruling party, disapproved of
Simonian’s behavior while rejecting demands for the speaker’s dismissal.
“I don’t think that this is a matter of resignation,” he said. “I think that
there should be a friendly assessment [by the Civil Contract leadership] to the
effect that this should not happen again.”
In Aleksanian’s words, the party’s governing board did not discuss the scandal
during a meeting chaired by Pashinian late on Tuesday.
Armenia’s Crime Rate Keeps Rising
Armenia - Prosecutors attend a meeting with Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian,
Yerevan, July 1, 2022.
The number of various crimes officially recorded in Armenia soared by more than
24 percent last year, continuing an upward trend which critics blame on the
current Armenian authorities.
The Armenian police and other law-enforcement agencies registered a total of
37,612 criminal offenses in 2022.
According to a report released by the Office of the Prosecutor-General this
week, “serious and particularly serious crimes” accounted for about 16 percent
of them. This includes 58 premeditated murders, which were slightly down from
2021. Forty-five of them were solved, said the prosecutors.
Their report shows that Armenia crime rate was primarily pushed up by an almost
30 percent surge in “crimes of moderate severity.”
Drug trafficking cases presumably fall under this category. Their total number
nearly doubled to 1,717 in 2022, highlighting a growing problem in a country not
accustomed to widespread drug abuse.
The sharp rise in such cases is widely blamed on increasingly accessible
synthetic drugs mainly sold through the internet and, in particular, the social
media platform Telegram. Links to Telegram channels selling such drugs can now
be seen painted on residential buildings and other public areas across Yerevan.
The alarming trend has prompted serious concern from not only opposition
politicians but also pro-government lawmakers. The latter criticized the police
for not preventing it when they met with Interior Minister Vahe Ghazarian in
late February.
Armenian law-enforcement authorities have reported considerable annual increases
in the overall crime rate since the 2018 “velvet revolution.” Critics claim that
the country is not as safe as it used to be because its current government is
softer on crime than the previous ones.
Karabakh Residents Barred From Returning Home
• Ruzanna Stepanian
Nagorno-Karabakh - Russian peacekeepers are seen deployed at a section of the
Lachin corridor blocked by Azerbaijan, December 26, 2022.
Azerbaijani government-backed protesters blocking Nagorno-Karabakh’s land link
with the outside world have not allowed Russian peacekeepers to escort 27
Karabakh civilians stranded in Armenia back to Stepanakert.
A convoy of cars carrying them reportedly had to return to the Armenian town of
Goris on Tuesday night after spending five hours at the blocked section of the
sole road connecting Karabakh to Armenia.
Karabakh’s human rights ombudsman and eyewitnesses said some Azerbaijanis broke
into one of those vehicles and intimidated their mostly female passengers. Three
Karabakh Armenian women felt and unwell and passed out as a result, according to
them.
Karine Aghajanian, another passenger, confirmed reports that an Azerbaijani
ambulance transported them to a hospital in Stepanakert.
“The Russians wanted to transport them in their vehicles but the Azerbaijanis
didn’t allowed them to do that … That is why we agreed to let them do that,”
Aghajanian told RFE/RL’s Armenian Service on Wednesday.
“It’s not that they provided medical aid, the incident happened because of
them,” she said, speaking from Goris.
Harutiunian also accused the Azerbaijanis of trying to provoke Karabakh Armenian
men travelling in the convoy. “Thank God, our men … restrained themselves for
the sake of the women,” she said.
The Azerbaijani government widely publicized the transfer of the three women to
the Stepanakert hospital. But it didn’t comment on the other Karabakh residents’
failure to return home almost four months after the start of the Azerbaijani
blockade.
Karabakh’s leadership strongly condemned the Azerbaijani protesters for
“terrorizing” the civilians during the five-hour standoff. It renewed its calls
for the international community to help end the “illegal blockade” that has left
hundreds of Karabakh residents stranded in Armenia and led to serious shortages
of food, medicine and other essential items in the Armenian-populated region.
The United States, the European Union and Russia have repeatedly urged
Azerbaijan to unblock traffic through the Lachin corridor in line with the
Russian-brokered ceasefire that stopped the 2020 Armenian-Azerbaijani war. Baku
has rejected those appeals, saying that the “environmental” protesters are right
to demand an end to “illegal” mining in Karabakh.
The Azerbaijani side has allowed only convoys of the Russian peacekeepers and
the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) to periodically pass through
the road. The ICRC has evacuated dozens of critically ill patients from Karabakh
to Armenia.
Reposted on ANN/Armenian News with permission from RFE/RL
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