Commenting on the measure, the press office of Armenia’s parliament said on Wednesday that some of the additional 120 cameras were placed in the building’s basement and storage rooms while others replaced older cameras installed over a decade ago. It insisted that this was done for solely security reasons.
“I counted six cameras in one small corridor, but I’m not sure I saw all of them,” said Taguhi Tovmasian, an opposition parliamentarian.
Tovmasian expressed serious concern over the “unprecedented” measure and brushed aside her pro-government colleagues’ periodical references to a 1999 terrorist attack on the parliament that left eight senior officials dead.
“Many years have passed since that day,” she told RFE/RL’s Armenian Service. “There were multiple parliaments formed after that and none of them operated in the kind of atmosphere of fear that has been created by the current authorities. They are scared of everything and everyone.”
Tovmasian was particularly concerned that the cameras may be used for recording National Assembly members’ and staffers’ sensitive conversations and movements. The parliamentary press office said in this regard that although the cameras have audio capabilities they only record images. Opposition deputies were unconvinced by these assurances.
One of them, Artur Khachatrian, argued that an allegedly doctored footage of last April’s violent argument between two of his colleagues representing rival political forces was leaked to a newspaper belonging to Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian’s family.
Deputies from Pashinian’s Civil Contract party dismissed the opposition concerns. As one of them, Alkhas Ghazarian, put it, “This is done for everyone. This is what democracy is all about.”
Security in and around the Armenian parliament compound was further tightened after the ruling party’s victory in the June 2021 snap elections. In particular, scores of officers of the State Protection Service (SPS), an agency tasked with providing bodyguards to Armenia’s top officials, were deployed inside the chamber.
On a number of occasions, the parliament’s pro-government leadership ordered SPS officers clad in camouflage uniforms to use force against opposition deputies. One of those deputies, Gegham Manukian, was dragged away from the parliament podium as he lambasted a Civil Contract colleague in October 2021.
Manukian was accused of breaching “ethnical rules” during his speech. The two opposition blocs represented in the parliament charged, for their part, that Pashinian’s administration has illegally restricted free speech on the parliament floor for the first time in Armenia’s post-Soviet history.