Senior lawmakers from the Hayastan and Pativ Unem alliances appealed to the U.S., French and British ambassadors and the head of the European Union Delegation in Armenia just hours after the Armenian police used force against protesters in the northern Tavush region trying to prevent the handover of adjacent border areas to Azerbaijan.
“Recent reports from several human rights organizations clearly highlight the increase in police violence, attempts to limit freedom of speech and the right to peaceful assembly, control of the judicial system, and widespread recourse to arrests,” they said in a joint letter. “Many activists and opposition politicians are now in prison on trumped-up charges.”
They said they want to discuss with the Western envoys their countries’ “tolerance” of these practices.
“We want to receive from them an answer to a very clear question: is the end result of ‘reform’ programs financed by them the establishment of a police state in Armenia?” Hayastan’s Artsvik Minasian told reporters.
“It seems that these [Western] representatives simply do not understand the situation created in Armenia or trust in fake news which these authorities and their satellites are trying to communicate to them,” he said.
The authorities deny using excessive force against the protesters. Three dozen of them were arrested early on Thursday from the epicenter of the protests in the Tavush village of Kirants.
Both the United States and the European Union have welcomed a controversial Armenian-Azerbaijan border delimitation deal that commits Armenia to making the territorial concessions to Azerbaijan opposed by many Tavush residents.
The Western powers have supported Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian and what they call democratic reforms implemented by his administration throughout his six-year rule. As recently as on April 28, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken praised Pashinian’s “vision for a prosperous, democratic, and independent future for Armenia.” Armenian opposition and other critics of Pashinian’s government have accused the West of turning a blind eye to its undemocratic practices for geopolitical reasons.