There were also virtually no clashes between security forces and protesters marching through various parts of the city and briefly blocking roads.
The Armenian police made a record 414 arrests on Tuesday and detained a slightly smaller number of people on Wednesday while unblocking the streets. They said that nobody was arrested during similar protests organized by the country’s leading opposition groups on Thursday morning.
“There were arrests but not on the scale that we saw in the previous days,” said Ishkhan Saghatelian, an opposition leader.
Saghatelian linked the restraint shown by security forces to a meeting which he and several other opposition figures held with the chief of the national police, Vahe Ghazarian, late on Wednesday. They met as thousands of opposition demonstrators stood outside the police headquarters in the center of Yerevan.
Saghatelian told the crowd after the meeting that Ghazarian promised to investigate police officers accused by the Armenian opposition of using disproportionate force against protesters. One officer has already been suspended and a dozen others are also facing criminal proceedings, he cited the police chief as saying.
No policemen are understood to have been formally charged so far. One of them was caught on camera punching a protester two weeks ago.
By contrast, law-enforcement authorities have arrested more than a dozen opposition activists on charges stemming from the ongoing “civil disobedience” campaign. Most of them are accused of assaulting police officers or government supporters. The opposition rejects the accusations as politically motivated.
