The largely peaceful protests erupted spontaneously shortly after the Azerbaijani army went on the offensive in Nagorno-Karabakh on September 19, paving the way for the restoration of Baku’s full control over the Armenian-populated territory. They demanded that Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian resign because of his failure to prevent the fall of Karabakh. Some demonstrators clashed with security forces outside the main government building in Yerevan.
Opposition groups swiftly took over and stepped up the daily protests in the following days in an attempt to topple Pashinian. Their “civil disobedience” campaign fizzled out later in September.
Riot police detained hundreds of people during the demonstrations. The majority of them were set free after spending several hours in police custody.
Still, according to Armenia’s Investigative Committee, 48 protesters were charged with participating in “mass disturbances” and assaulting police officers. Thirty-one of them are under arrest pending investigation, the law-enforcement agency said at the weekend.
In an October 9 statement, the main opposition Hayastan bloc again rejected the accusations and demanded the release of all detainees. Its senior members claim that the authorities fabricated the criminal case to discourage angry Armenians from participating in opposition rallies.
“These are all cases of political persecution,” agreed Arsen Babayan, an opposition-linked lawyer representing three of the detainees. “They are basically telling people that if they take part in rallies they could be sentenced to between 4 and 8 years in prison.”
This is why, he told RFE/RL’s Armenian Service, the authorities are not keeping the suspects under house arrest.
Zaruhi Hovannisian, a human rights activist, also criticized the detentions. She said that just like their predecessors, Armenia’s current leaders are using pre-trial arrest to “suppress suspects, influence their political views and force them to renounce some actions.”
In Hovannisian’s, words 26 of the arrested protesters are held in Yerevan’s Nubarashen prison, the largest in Armenia, and most of them are students.