According to the UN report, only last year, 5242 Armenians asked for political asylum in 44 European countries, while from Azerbaijan, which is less democratic and is considered to be a closed country, fewer people applied – 2617 people. Aravot.am asked the former foreign minister and leader of “Heritage” political part, Raffi Hovannisian, whether according to him, the Armenians are cheating the Europe, or this much Armenians suffer a political persecution in our country. He replied, “I assume that Azerbaijan more than Armenia is in need for this problem, but the fact that there is a trend, the immigration is continued and the applications for asylum are available, I know it. Both in the demographic sense, as well as in the sense of the circumstances generating emigration, these matters need to be resolved. We need to find ad-hoc solutions to make the number of these 5000 citizens unreal or does not grow.”
We were interested to know whether the Founding Parliament has ad-hoc solutions, for instance, the leader of the “100 Years Without regime” movement Zhirayr Sefilyan has declared a 24-hour rally near the “Erebuni” museum from April 24, so whether he is planning to attend the rally, Raffi Hovannisian replied, “I’m not aware of it. First, I see this rally for the first time. Should Mr. Sefilyan notify me, I will decide. But on April 24, the “Heritage” party will be at the Genocide Memorial without the banner and without a badge. We will be with our people and with our demands.” To our question of whether he still believes now that a regime change would happen and whether he believes in regime change, he replied, “How can you believe in the regime change? We believe in Armenia that will come, and the officials need to be changed for the realization of this Armenia”.
Hripsime JEBEJYAN
