The charges leveled against Aragats Akhoyan, a former parliament deputy, stem from a short message which he reportedly posted on his currently deactivated Facebook page in June. According to the Investigative Committee, Akhoyan urged supporters to draw up a list of people who must be “swatted” after Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian is removed from power. He did not name anyone.
Akhoyan’s lawyer Gor Vartanian emphasized this fact when he spoke to RFE/RL’s Armenian Service. He claimed that his client made an “abstract statement” and did not call for the murder of any concrete individual.
“He called for violence motivated by his political views,” insisted Gor Abrahamian, a spokesman for the Investigative Committee.
The law-enforcement agency launched late last week criminal proceedings against Avetik Ishkhanian, a veteran human rights activist and harsh critic of Pashinian, sparking uproar from opposition and public figures. It claimed that a recent Facebook post by Ishkhanian contained calls for violence. But it has not indicted him so far.
The committee also brought relevant criminal charges against seven other persons who attended or encouraged anti-government protests in Yerevan sparked by Azerbaijan’s September 19-20 military offensive in Nagorno-Karabakh. They include Tatev Virabian, a Karabakh Armenian mother of two. She is due to be moved to house arrest later this month.
Vartan Harutiunian, another prominent human rights campaigner, believes that these criminal cases are at best examples of selective justice. Harutiunian noted that Pashinian has repeatedly threatened his political opponents with violence but has never been prosecuted for that.
The premier brandished a hammer during his election campaign rallies in 2021, threatening to “throw on the ground” and “bang against the wall” opposition supporters who would try to topple him. He similarly threatened to make them “eat asphalt and leak curb stones” during campaigning for the recent municipal elections in Yerevan.
Harutiunian said that Pashinian made “much more serious calls for violence” than his jailed detractors because he is in a position to act on them.
Gevorg Papoyan, a parliament deputy from the ruling Civil Contract, countered that Pashinian never threatened to kill anyone. The premier, he said, simply warned of legitimate arrests, using a “description spiced up in an artistic style.”