RFE/RL. Riot police clashed late on Friday with hundreds of people near a police compound in Yerevan occupied by gunmen affiliated with an Armenian opposition group.
The violence unfolded amid the sound of gunshots and explosions coming from the compound located in the city’s southern Erebuni district. It was not immediately clear whether security forces were conducting a large-scale operation there.
Most of the protesters sympathetic to the gunmen unexpectedly tried to approach the building from the nearby Sari Tagh neighborhood. Using tear gas and stun grenades, the police charged towards them after the protest leaders ignored senior law-enforcement officers’ orders to walk back to the city center.
The chief of Yerevan’s police department, Ashot Karapetian, said that the rally is illegal and that gunshots fired around the compound are too dangerous for its participants.
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Some protesters as well as three RFE/RL journalists — Karlen Aslanian, Hovannes Movsisian and Garik Harutiunian — were attacked and beaten up by a large group of plainclothes men as they retreated towards downtown Yerevan. The men, who appeared to be police officers, were clearly aware that they are assaulting reporters.
“Are you filming?” one of them said before punching Movsisian, smashing his camera and tearing off his ID badge.
“I told them that I stopped filming but they kept hitting me,” Movsisian said by phone as he ran for safety and took cover in a local shop shortly before midnight.
“They are chasing us and trying to arrest everyone in sight,” he said, adding that he witnessed dozens of protesters injured and detained at the scene.
The two other RFE/RL reporters were also injured before fleeing to safety through another Sari Tagh street.