The same protesters gathered at the main entrance to Yerevan’s Yerablur Military Pantheon last September to try to prevent Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian from laying a wreath there on the occasion of Armenia’s Independence Day. They blame Pashinian for the deaths of their sons as well as at least 3,800 other Armenian soldiers killed in action.
Riot police violently dispersed the protesters shortly before senior officials led by Pashinian arrived at the military ceremony. At least 37 grief-stricken men and women were dragged away, forced into police vehicles and detained in dramatic scenes that caused uproar on social media.
Armenia - Police detain the mother of an Armenian soldier killed in the 2020 war in Nagorno-Karabakh at the Yerablur Military Pantheon, Yerevan, September 21, 2022.
Armenia’s leading civic organizations strongly condemned the use of force and demanded the resignation of Vahe Ghazarian, the then chief of the national police. Ghazarian retained his post before being promoted and appointed by Pashinian as interior minister in January.
While defending the use of force, Ghazarian ordered an internal inquiry into his officers’ actions at Yerablur. None of them has been fired or subjected to disciplinary action.
Despite formally recognizing most of the detained parents as “victims” of violence, Armenia’s Investigative Committee has likewise not indicted any of the policemen in a separate, criminal investigation launched after the Yerablur crackdown.
The angry parents decried this fact and demanded official explanations when they rallied outside the law-enforcement agency’s headquarters on Thursday evening. They also partly blocked traffic through a street adjacent to the building.
The protest continued through the night and on Friday morning. Its participants also condemned Investigative Committee’s refusal to meet with them.
Armenia - Armenian flags fly at Yerablur Military Pantheon by the graves of soldiers killed during the 2020 war in Nagorno-Karabakh, January 28, 2022.
“We have spent the night here,” said Gayane Hakobian, who lost her son Zhora Martirosian during the six-week war.
Hakobian said that riot police officers must be held accountable despite apologizing to her and other parents during a joint interrogation.
“We suffered more mental and moral injuries than physical ones,” she told journalists.
In a statement, the Investigative Committee rejected the protesters’ demands as “illegal” and defended its officials’ refusal to hold more face-to-face meetings with them. It claimed that some parents shouted insults and made other “emotional” statements when they were received by investigators last fall.
The protesters dismissed that explanation. As one of them put it, “They haven’t taken any investigative actions since our last meeting. They don’t come out [to meet the parents] simply because they have nothing to tell us.”