Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan met on Monday with a group of residents of a border village in Armenia’s northern Tavush province that has been the epicenter of continuing protests against his decision to make territorial concessions to Azerbaijan.
The Armenian government did not immediately issue a statement on Pashinyan’s meeting with the mayor and a dozen other residents of the village of Kirants. The latter looked unhappy and were reluctant to talk to the press as they emerged from the government building. Some of them said only that they did not hear anything new from Pashinyan.
Gegham Nazarian, an opposition parliamentarian who spoke to them privately, likewise claimed afterwards that Pashinyan “said nothing new.”
“The residents were left in uncertainty and panic again,” Nazarian told reporters. “People are already thinking about the worst because none of the demands, requests or reasonable proposals made by the village of Kirants were accepted.”
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In his words, Pashinyan admitted that even his latest concessions to Baku will not guarantee the security of Kirants and nearby communities.
Kirants is one of the four Tavush villages adjacent to border areas that are due to be handed over to Azerbaijan as part of what the government calls the start of the demarcation of the Armenian- Azerbaijani border. Hundreds of villagers joined by other residents of Tavush and other parts of Armenia have been blocking a local section of a key national highway since April 20. Some of them clashed with riot police on Friday.
People, among them opposition politicians and activists, continued to briefly block roads in Yerevan and other parts of the country over the weekend and on Monday in a show of solidarity with the Kirants protesters led by Bishop Bagrat Galstanian, the head of the Tavush diocese of the Armenian Apostolic Church. In Gyumri, local antigovernment activists organized a car procession for the same purpose.
Meanwhile, law-enforcement authorities pressed criminal charges against six protesters arrested following violent incidents that happened last week.
Three of them reportedly clashed with the driver of a military vehicle that reportedly tried to ram into a crowd blocking another Tavush highway. Videos posted on social media showed the driver jumping onto the crowd from the roof of the SUV belonging to the Yerkrapah militia led by Sasun Mikaelian, a political ally of Pashinyan.
The driver was not prosecuted for his actions. The authorities indicted the three protesters instead, saying that they illegally stopped the vehicle and damaged its windscreen and one of the wheels.
The three other detainees were charged with “hooliganism” stemming from a separate incident that occurred in the provincial town of Noyemberian. Armenian opposition leaders reject the accusations as politically motivated, saying that the authorities are trying to stifle the protests.
