Friday,
Pashinian Addresses U.S. ‘Summit For Democracy’
Armenia - Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian takes part in the virtual "Summit for
Democracy" organized by U.S. President Joe Biden, December 9, 2021.
Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian pledged to “consolidate democracy” in Armenia on
Friday as he addressed a virtual global summit organized by U.S. President Joe
Biden and strongly criticized by Russia.
Pashinian was among the leaders of more than 100 countries invited to the
two-day “Summit for Democracy” which is designed to promote democratic
governance around the world in the face of rising authoritarianism.
Opening the gathering on Thursday, Biden said global freedoms are under threat
from autocrats seeking to expand power, export influence and justify repression.
He called for renewed commitments to protect democracies against such threats.
The White House has billed the summit as a way for the United States and
like-minded allies to collaborate against authoritarianism, corruption, and
human rights abuses.
The summit has been sharply criticized by Armenia’s ally Russia, China as well
as other countries such as NATO member Hungary that weren't invited. Ahead of
the summit, the ambassadors to Washington from China and Russia wrote a joint
essay in the conservative National Interest policy journal defending their own
forms of government and accusing the United States of pursuing a “Cold War
mentality” that will “stoke up ideological confrontation” in the world.
“We are committed to the consolidation of democracy in Armenia through
strengthening democratic institutions,” Pashinian said in his speech at the
summit.
“In our bid to consolidate our democracy, we are facing multiple challenges. The
biggest challenge for us comes in the form of military threats to our security,”
he added in a thinly veiled reference to the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict.
Pashinian also claimed that Armenians twice “chose democracy over
authoritarianism” when they brought him to power in 2018 and reelected his party
in snap general elections held in June this year.
Armenia’s leading opposition groups challenged the official results of those
elections in court. They regularly accuse Pashinian of ordering law-enforcement
bodies to jail his political opponents on trumped-up charges, heightening
government pressure on courts and trying to stifle dissent with controversial
legislation. Pashinian and his allies deny that.
There has also been controversy about the list of invitees to the democracy
summit. Brazil's right-wing President Jair Bolsonaro was invited, while the
leader of NATO member Turkey, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, was shunned.
Armenian Opposition Lawmakers Set Free
• Naira Bulghadarian
Armenia - Doctor and opposition deputy Armen Charchian gestures to supporters
after an appeals court's decision to allow his arrest, August 23, 2021
Three members of the Armenian parliament representing the main opposition
Hayastan alliance were released from custody on Friday one day after the
country’s Constitutional Court effectively declared their arrests illegal.
The lawmakers -- Armen Charchian, Mkhitar Zakarian and Artur Sargsian -- were
arrested this summer on different charges rejected by them as politically
motivated.
Hayastan repeatedly demanded their release from custody, citing an article of
the Armenian constitution which stipulates that “a deputy may not be deprived of
liberty without the consent of the National Assembly.”
Prosecutors and leaders of the parliament’s pro-government majority said,
however, that the lawmakers do not enjoy immunity from prosecution because they
were indicted before formally taking up their parliament seats. Hayastan
appealed to the Constitutional Court in September.
In a ruling made public on Thursday, the court ruled that any citizen
automatically gains immunity from prosecution after being elected to the
National Assembly and cannot be arrested without the parliament’s consent.
Armenia - Deputies from the opposition Hayastan bloc wear T-shirts emblazoned
with pictures of arrested opposition figures during the inaugural session of the
recently elected National Assembly, Yerevan, August 2, 2021.
A judge presiding over Charchian’s ongoing trial responded to the ruling by
ordering his release from jail. The prominent surgeon was greeted by family
members and Hayastan activists as he walked free in the courtroom.
Sargsian and Zakarian were set free without court orders. The Office of the
Prosecutor-General acknowledged that they cannot be held in detention after the
Constitutional Court’s decision.
Aram Vartevanian, a lawyer and another parliamentarian from Hayastan, condemned
the prosecutors’ earlier refusals to free his colleagues.
“Imagine that Hayastan’s parliamentary group had no members skilled in
jurisprudence and did not realize that it can appeal to the Constitutional Court
on this issue,” Vartevanian told journalists. “The three deputies would have
remained under arrest, Armen Charachian’s health condition would have continued
to deteriorate and Armenia’s law-enforcement system would have approved that.
This is the most despicable thing.”
Despite their release, the opposition deputies were not cleared of the charges
leveled against them.
Armenia -- Meghri Mayor Mkhitar Zakarian speaks with journalists, September 21,
2019.
Charchian, who headed Yerevan’s Izmirlian Medical Center, is prosecuted for
allegedly pressuring his subordinates to vote in Armenia’s June 20 parliamentary
elections. He was first arrested three days after the vote.
The 61-year-old was released on bail at the start of his trial a month later.
Armenia’s Court of Appeals sent him back to jail on August 23. Charchian
reportedly suffered a heart attack the following day.
Zakarian and Sargsian headed major communities in Syunik province. They were
among elected local government officials who demanded Prime Minister Nikol
Pashinian’s resignation following last year’s war in Nagorno-Karabakh. They were
arrested on separate corruption charges shortly after the June elections won by
Pashinian’s party.
Armenia Prosecutes Freed POWs
• Artak Khulian
Armenia - The Investigative Committee building in Yerevan.
Law-enforcement authorities have brought criminal charges against five of the
ten Armenian soldiers who were freed and repatriated by Azerbaijan last week.
Two of them were arrested on Friday. An Armenian court did not allow
investigators to detain another serviceman.
The Investigative Committee was understood to be seeking arrest warrants for the
two other suspects as well. They too were charged with a “violation of rules for
performing military service” that resulted in “severe consequences.”
The ten soldiers were taken prisoner during the November 16 fighting on the
Armenian-Azerbaijani border which left at least 13 troops from both sides dead.
The Armenian military said it also lost two border posts in what Yerevan
condemned as an Azerbaijani incursion into Armenian territory.
The Investigative Committee already arrested two other soldiers in connection
with the territorial loss later in November.
The law-enforcement agency indicted the five soldiers, freed by Baku on December
4, amid a scandal sparked by parliament speaker Alen Simonian’s disparaging
comments about Armenian POWs.
Simonian was caught on camera saying during a recent trip to Paris that many of
them “laid down their weapons and ran away” during fighting with Azerbaijani
forces. In a secretly filmed video publicized on Tuesday, he claimed that their
relatives have not protested lately because they realize that the soldiers are
deserters.
Many of those relatives responded by staging angry protests in Yerevan and
Gyumri. Simonian, who is a senior member of Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian’s
Civil Contract party, met with some of them on Wednesday.
Opposition leaders and civic activists also strongly condemned Simonian and
demanded his resignation.
By contrast, neither Pashinian nor other any member of his political team
publicly criticized or disavowed the speaker’s controversial comments. The prime
minister said on Wednesday that law-enforcement authorities must investigate
circumstances in which Armenian soldiers were captured by Azerbaijani troops.
Eduard Aghajanian, a senior pro-government lawmaker, denied on Friday any
connection between those political statements and the charges brought against
the five former POWs.
Former Defense Minister Seyran Ohanian, who leads the parliamentary group of the
main opposition Hayastan alliance, acknowledged the need for thorough
investigations into such instances.
“But I believe that … it is the people who created conditions for that captivity
in the first place who must first and foremost bear responsibility,” Ohanian
said, referring to Armenia’s political leadership.
Court Upholds Guilty Verdict In 2016 Attack On Armenian Police
• Robert Zargarian
Armenia - Gunmen occupying a police station in Yerevan, 23July2016.
Armenia’s Court of Appeals on Friday upheld lengthy prison sentences handed down
to key members of an armed anti-government group that seized a police base in
Yerevan in July 2016.
The nine defendants and two dozen other gunmen stormed the base to demand that
then President Serzh Sarkisian free Zhirayr Sefilian, the jailed leader of their
radical opposition movement, and step down.
The gunmen, who took police officers and medical personnel hostage, laid down
their weapons after a two-week standoff with security forces which left three
police officers dead.
All but two members of the armed group called Sasna Tsrer were released from
custody shortly after Sarkisian was toppled in the 2018 “Velvet Revolution” led
by Nikol Pashinian.
Armenia - Relatives of police officers killed in a standoff with opposition
gunmen attend a remembrance ceremony in Yerevan, 28Sep2016.
The two other members remained behind bars because of facing murder charges
denied by them. One of them, Armen Bilian, was set free in February this year
when a Yerevan court acquitted him of killing one of the three policemen
following a high-profile trial of the nine former gunmen.
The Court of Appeals accepted prosecutors’ demand to overturn the acquittal and
sentence Bilian to 25 years in prison. He was arrested again in the courtroom.
The court upheld a 25-year-old prison sentence for Smbat Barseghian, another
defendant convicted of killing the two other policemen. The prosecutors sought a
life imprisonment for him.
The court also rejected appeals filed by the seven other Sasna Tsrer members
whom the lower court sentenced to between 6 and 8 years in prison. Unlike
Bilian, they will remain free pending an appeal to the higher Court of Cassation
and its decision on the case.
Armenia - Varuzhan Avetisian (L), the leader an armed opposition group that
seized a police station in July 2016, at the start of his trial in Yerevan,
8Jun2017.
Varuzhan Avetisian, the Sasna Tsrer leader who got a 7-year jail term, has
repeatedly defended the armed attack on the police facility located in Yerevan’s
southern Erebuni district. Avetisian and the other defendants deny the charges
leveled against them.
The 2016 attack was condemned by the United States and the European Union. “We
abhor the actions of Sasna Tsrer and others who use violence or who threaten to
harm others to serve their political agenda,” Richard Mills, the then U.S.
ambassador to Armenia, said in 2018.
Fighting Continues On Armenian-Azeri Border
Armenia - An Armenian soldier stands guard on the border with Azerbaijan,
November 12, 2021
Fighting appeared to have intensified on the Armenian-Azerbaijani border on
Friday, with the Armenian military accusing Azerbaijani forces of attacking some
of its positions.
The Defense Ministry in Yerevan said they suffered casualties while being
repelled from the outposts located at a border section in eastern Armenia. One
Armenian soldier was killed and several others wounded in the gunfight, it said.
“The exchange of gunfire stopped as of 2:30 pm [local time,]” the ministry added
in a statement.
The Azerbaijani Defense Ministry said, meanwhile, that Armenian army units again
fired on its troops deployed in the Kelbajar district bordering Armenia’s
eastern Gegharkunik province. It did not immediately report casualties within
its own ranks.
Armlur.am quoted a local government official in Gegharkunik as saying that the
epicenter of the fighting was near the Armenian border village of Sotk. “They
[Azerbaijani troops] tried to advance in the Sotk section but failed,” Hakob
Avetian told the publication.
Armenian and Azerbaijani forces exchanged fire in the mountainous area on
Wednesday and Thursday, blaming each other for the truce violations. One
Azerbaijani soldier was reportedly killed and two Armenian servicemen wounded in
those skirmishes.
The fighting broke out two weeks after Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian
and Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev met in Sochi for talks hosted by Russian
President Vladimir Putin. The three leaders announced that they agreed to speed
up preparations for demarcating the border between the two South Caucasus states.
Reprinted on ANN/Armenian News with permission from RFE/RL
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