Arsen Kharatyan, Armenian journalist, the founder and editor-in-chief of an independent non-profit bilingual Georgian-Armenia media platform Aliq Media based in Tbilisi, and the former advisor to the Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan, was denied entry to Georgia on September 17, he was held up for 4 hours and forced to go back to Europe with no explanation. From the late 1990s he has been part of different pro-democracy movements in Armenia, which played a crucial role in Armenia’s non-violent Velvet Revolution of 2018.
Kharatyan shared the story of his detention on his social media. He noted that he was denied entry even though he had a ticket for a connecting flight from Tbilisi to Yerevan the next day, September 18. He was told that under Georgian law he couldn’t be sent to his destination and had to be sent back from where he was flying to.
“All these are technicalities… the biggest problem here is the fact that no one has explained to me the reason why I was denied entry to Georgia, where I lived for over 5 years, created a media, co-founded various organizations, helped build bridges between Armenia-Georgia and so on,” noted Kharatyan in his post.
Kharatyan has been detained for hours at airports before. On 11 September, he was stopped for two hours after his flight from Yerevan to Tbilisi. He was handed a document denying him entry, and under the reason for the denial it was written: “Other cases provided for by Georgian legislation”. Eventually, however, he was allowed to enter the country.
“By now I have no doubt that this entry denial a.k.a. deportation is political, which ultimately means that current Georgian authorities are either afraid of people like me or have patrons from Moscow or Baku telling them to “clear up the space” before the elections,” stressed Kharatyan in his recent post.
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