Former Artsakh Mayors also Arrested on “Politically-Motivated” Charges
YEREVAN (Azatutyun.am)—Police made nearly 300 arrests on Monday as Archbishop Bagrat Galstanyan and his supporters continued to demonstrate in Yerevan to demand Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan’s resignation.
The protesters were detained as they blocked streets in the city center in the morning to step up the pressure on Pashinyan. There were reports of similar blockages of highways outside the Armenian capital. The police used force to unblock them as well.
The chief of the national police, Aram Hovannisian, accused the protesters of “behaving like thugs” as he oversaw the crackdown in downtown Yerevan.
The Armenian Interior Ministry put the total number of detained protesters at 284 in the afternoon. A ministry spokesman said 278 of them have already been released without charge.
The detainees included two opposition lawmakers affiliated with the Armenian Revolutionary Federation party. Footage posted on social media showed members of a special police squad punching and swearing at one of them, Ashot Simonian, outside the ARF headquarters.
In a statement, Dashnaktsutyun accused the policemen of acting like “street hooligans” and demanded criminal proceedings against them. The Interior Ministry said it has launched an internal inquiry into the incident.
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Meanwhile, Galstanyan again marched through the city center together with a hundred supporters. He announced afterwards that they will head to a World War One memorial 50 kilometers west of Yerevan to spend the night there and celebrate the next morning the 106th anniversary of the establishment of a short-lived independent Armenian republic.
Official ceremonies to mark the public holiday called Republic Day have traditionally been held at the Sardarapat memorial. It was not clear whether Galstanyan planned to try prevent Pashinyan and other top state officials from visiting the site on Tuesday.
The outspoken archbishop of the Armenian Apostolic Church announced the latest “disobedience” actions on Sunday as he again rallied tens of thousands of supporters in Yerevan as part of his opposition-backed attempts to oust Pashinyan. The massive crowd backed his candidacy for the post of prime minister which appears to enjoy the backing of a wide range of opposition groups.
The 53-year-old archbishop accepted the “nomination,” saying that he has asked the supreme head of the church, Catholicos Garegin II, to “freeze my spiritual service.” Garegin’s office reported on Monday that Galstanyan has been relieved of his “ecclesiastical and administrative” duties while retaining his episcopal rank.
Galstanyan has until now headed the church diocese encompassing Armenia’s northern Tavush province. He emerged last month as the leader of angry protests in several local villages against Pashinyan’s controversial decision to cede adjacent border areas to Azerbaijan.
Pashinyan has claimed that the territorial concessions are necessary for preventing another war with Azerbaijan. His political foes and other critics dismiss the explanation, saying that the land handover will only create additional security risks for not only Tavush but Armenia as a whole.
Former Artsakh Mayors also Arrested on “Politically-Motivated” Charges
The exiled mayors of Stepanakert and another town in Nagorno-Karabakh were arrested and indicted in Yerevan over the weekend after signaling support for ongoing street protests against Pashinyan.
Armenia’s Investigative Committee charged them with fraud and forgery. It said that the Stepanakert mayor, Davit Sargsyan, brought four vehicles belonging to the municipal administration to Armenia during last September’s mass exodus of Karabakh’s population and then illegally registered them in the name of his friends and relatives.
The mayor of the northern Karabakh town of Martakert, Misha Gyurjyan, was charged with misappropriating one such car after fleeing the region’s together with over 100,000 other Karabakh Armenians. Yerevan courts remanded Gyurjyan and Sargsyan in custody on Sunday and Monday respectively.
Another Yerevan-based Karabakh mayor, Hayk Shamiryan, avoided pre-trial detention despite being charged with the same crimes last Thursday. Shamiryan, who ran the eastern Karabakh town of Askeran, was moved to house arrest on Friday.
All three men deny the accusations. Artak Beglaryan, a former Karabakh premier, also dismissed them as baseless.
“I am sure that these cases are politically motivated,” Beglaryan said, accusing Pashinyan’s government of trying to “intimidate and punish” Karabakh Armenians supporting Galstanyan.
Sargsian, Gyurjian and Shamirian were among exiled leaders and ordinary refugees from Karabakh who met with Galstanyan on May 21. The meeting was part of Galstanyan’s consultations with various groups and individuals aimed at ramping up momentum for his opposition-backed bid to oust Pashinyan.
Pashinyan’s political team seems concerned about Karabakh Armenians’ participation in the protests triggered by the Armenian premier’s decision to hand over several disputed border areas to Azerbaijan. Some of its surrogates have openly warned the refugees to stay away from the protests that resumed on Sunday.
Beglaryan insisted that the Armenian traffic police themselves told the three mayors early this year that they should change, with their local councils’ permission, ownership of their respective municipal cars in order to have them registered in Armenia.
“The police themselves directed and advised them to find such a solution and then accepted it and registered [the vehicles,]” Beglaryan told RFE/RL’s Armenian Service. “If there was such a problem they should not have registered in the first place.”
Beglaryan also argued that the Armenian authorities have no jurisdiction over Karabakh and cannot prosecute anyone in connection with crimes allegedly committed there.
“It’s not about Artsakh,” countered Gor Abrahamyan, the Investigative Committee spokesman. “It’s about criminal offenses committed by concrete people living in Armenia.”
Pashinyan publicly threatened to crack down on Samvel Shahramanyan, the Karabakh president now based in Yerevan, after the latter declared in March that the self-proclaimed Nagorno-Karabakh Republic continues to exist despite the Azerbaijani control over the region. Shahramanyan did not take part in the meeting with Galstanyan.