We live in a world where it is impossible to predict what may happen to us tomorrow. That is especially true in today’s Armenia — and above all for citizens, public figures, election candidates, journalists, and bloggers who oppose Pashinyan’s policies. Thousands of citizens are under the watch of Pashinyan’s “law enforcement” agencies, and no one is immune from wiretapping, searches, arrests, or criminal cases stitched together under various — as young people today would say, random — charges.
They may also, acting on instructions from Yerevan and under the pretext of “neutralizing hybrid threats,” block access to one social media platform or another. Whether those sending complaints and tip-offs to these platforms are the National Security Service or “pro-European” NGOs will become clear after a change of power.
…I watched blogger Artak Avetisyan’s video and even used artificial intelligence to find out the meaning of “kutok,” a word repeatedly used by the author that was unfamiliar to me. Needless to say, I find that kind of language completely unacceptable and repulsive. For more than 30 years, I have fought for a public environment in which no one speaks about anyone else in such a manner.
But the case the authorities are stitching together against Artak is simply absurd, because what he said has nothing to do with the “statements aimed at inciting and promoting hatred, discrimination, intolerance, and hostility” of which he is accused. That article can be attached to virtually any text if investigators and prosecutors have no understanding of what it means to “incite” or “promote.”
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In Armenia, we have true champions of hate-mongering against one group or another (“looters,” “former regime figures,” “Russian slaves,” and so on). And if the vocabulary used by this blogger is considered criminally punishable, then Nikol Pashinyan and a number of other Civil Contract members should long ago have been sentenced to several years in prison.
Aram ABRAHAMYAN
Image generated using artificial intelligence
