Andranik Kocharian, the controversial chairman of the parliament committee on defense and security, raged at Hripsime Jebejian of the Tribune.am news service when she approached him together with other parliamentary correspondents on Thursday. Kocharian refused to take any questions from Jebejian, saying that he will only talk to the other reporters.
“You always hinder me. Stand over there,” Kocharian told Jebejian.
He said she must “clean your lips” when she demanded an explanation for his hostility.
“His behavior is incomprehensible for me,” Jebejian told RFE/RL’s Armenian Service. “I simply approached him with a microphone during the briefing. He immediately started isolating me from other journalists.”
Jebejian’s colleagues as well as Armenia’s leading media associations expressed outrage at the incident. Some of the journalists began collecting on Friday signatures in support of their calls for a parliamentary ethics inquiry into Kocharian, who is notorious for his frequent arguments with the press corps caused by his rude comments. They want the National Assembly to form an ad hoc ethics commission that would be empowered to not only investigate him but also ask the Constitution Court to oust him from the parliament.
Such a commission cannot be formed without the ruling Civil Contract party’s consent. The party led by Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian pointedly declined to react to Kocharian’s behavior. But two of its female parliamentarians offered their personal apologies to Jebejian.
Kocharian, who also represents Civil Contract, remained unrepentant about his conduct on Friday as he faced strong condemnation from opposition members of the parliament committee headed by him. He insisted that he said “nothing offensive” to the reporter.
“I just noted that only clean words must be uttered. What you see behind that [phrase] is your problem,” he told angry opposition lawmakers during a committee meeting.
One of those lawmakers, Gegham Manukian, appealed to the press corps, saying: “Boycott Andranik Kocharian. Boycott all those deputies who insult you.”
Zaruhi Hovannisian, a human rights activist, added her voice to the chorus of condemnations, saying that Jebejian was insulted not only for her professional activities but also her gender.
“It’s not the first time that Andranik Kocharian engaged in such behavior, especially against women,” said Hovannisian. She recalled his offensive comments about the parents of a female opposition politician made in 2019.
Such incidents, Hovannisian went on, are made possible by the fact that Armenian journalists have been operating in a more hostile environment ever sine the 2018 “velvet revolution” that brought Pashinian to power. Pashinian, who himself is a former journalist, has repeatedly branded media outlets critical of him as a “garbage dump.”
