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.
At least 48 protesters, many of them university students, were charged with participating in “mass disturbances.” As of mid-October, 31 of them remained under arrest pending investigation.
Armenia -- Armenians take part in an anti-government protest in central Yerevan on September 24, 2023.
The fresh arrests were made over the weekend. All four men are natives of Nagorno-Karabakh facing the same charges. They include the 16-year-old Samvel Mirzoyan, who is suffering, according to his lawyer, from a heart problem.
The lawyer, Abgar Poghosian, said on Wednesday, said a Yerevan court cited witness tampering concerns when it remanded Mirzoyan in pre-trial custody. Poghosian laughed off that explanation, saying that police officers are the only witnesses in the case and that his teenage client could simply not influence their testimony.
“There is no doubt that this is a politically motivated case,” Poghosian told RFE/RL’s Armenian Service.
“They want to arrest as many people as possible and thus create an atmosphere of fear,” he said, echoing the Armenian opposition’s assessments of the arrests.
Opposition leaders have described the arrested protesters as political prisoners and demanded their immediate release. Two of them visited the latest detainees in custody.
Armenia -- A protester waves the Karabakh flag as riot police officers guard the Armenian government building in Yerevan, September 2, 2023.
Some human rights activists have also expressed concern over the mass arrests. One of them, Zaruhi Hovannisian, believes that the Armenian authorities’ reluctance to place the indicted protesters under house arrest testifies to the political character of these cases.
The Investigative Committee, which is in charge of the cases, denies any political motives behind them, saying that the detainees assaulted police officers and threw rocks and other objects at the government building.
Among the detainees is Tatev Virabian, a Karabakh-born mother of two who is prosecuted for not only allegedly hurling a bottle of water but also her Facebook post construed by the law-enforcement agency as a call for violent regime change. She strongly denies the accusations.
Virabian’s lawyer, Arsen Babayan, expressed concern about the young woman’s health, saying that she recently fainted in her prison cell.