More than 200 people were arrested Tuesday, May 3 in several cities of Armenia during opposition demonstrations which accuse Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian of wanting to abandon the separatist enclave of Nagorny Karabakh to Azerbaijan.
Read alsoArmenia: Protests continue against Prime Minister
The Armenian Interior Ministry said in a statement that 206 protesters were arrested in Yerevan and several provincial towns where protesters tried to block traffic on the streets, demanding that Pashinian resign. Demonstrations bringing together thousands of people at the call of the opposition have continued since Sunday to demand the resignation of the Prime Minister. These are the largest anti-government protests since the September elections.
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“Nikol must leave, he will leave”
“Panichian is a traitor and the ongoing, growing street protests will force him to step down.said Deputy Speaker of Parliament and opposition leader Ichkhan Sagatelian. The latter announced a demonstration Tuesday evening in Place de France in the center of Yerevan where thousands of people have already gathered on Sunday and Monday to denounce the complacent policy, according to the opposition, of Nikol Pashinian vis-à-vis the Azerbaijan regarding Nagorny Karabakh.
“Nikol must leave, he will leave, because he is a symbol of defeat and Armenia has no future with such a leaderexclaims one of the demonstrators, Sergei Hovhannissian, a 57-year-old blacksmith. “He is ready to abandon Karabakh for which we shed our blood“, he is indignant with AFP. Nagorny Karabakh, which the two countries have been fighting over for thirty years, was the stake in 2020 of a six-week war which left more than 6,500 dead before a ceasefire negotiated by Russia.
Read alsoKarabakh: thousands demonstrate in Armenia against concessions to Azerbaijan
As part of this agreement, Armenia ceded whole swaths of territory it had controlled since a first victorious war in the early 1990s and a Russian peacekeeping force is deployed in Nagorny Karabakh. In April, Armenia’s prime minister told parliament that “the international community calls on Armenia to reduce its demands on Nagorny Karabakh“, remarks that the opposition denounced as revealing a desire to cede all of this territory to Azerbaijan
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