A recap of Pashinyan’s dubious claims and false statements

CivilNet has put together Armenia’s Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan's dubious claims and false statements over the last year.

1. Price of water

During the parliamentary election campaign of December 2018, Pashinyan announced that the tariff on drinking water would not increase during the next six years. "According to the previously signed agreement, in December, that is now, drinking water should have become more expensive in the whole republic, but we were able to work with Veolia Water, and agreed that there will be no increase in the price of drinking water in Armenia until 2024."

On November 30, 2021, however, the Public Services Regulatory Commission announced that from January 1, 2022, the tariff on drinking water will increase by 20 drams, from the current 180 to 200 drams.

2. Separation of business and politics

In June 2018, while presenting his government’s program, Pashinyan attached great importance to the separation of politics and business.

"The following conceptual issues […] the practical separation of politics and business are of key importance and will become a landmark for the government's activities," Pashinyan said.

Despite that, in the June 20, 2021 parliamentary elections, businessmen Khachatur Sukiasyan and Gurgen Arsenyan appeared on the list of Pashinyan’s Civil Contract party. Both were elected as parliament deputies.

**3. Changes in the defense budget **

During the June parliamentary election campaign, Pashinyan claimed that the defense budget had grown by almost 50 percent during his tenure.

"We have increased the defense budget by 48% - by 63 billion AMD, during 2018-2020."

In reality, military spending increased not by 48%, but by 27% in 2020. It increased from 238 to 303 billion AMD.

4. The Shushi Conundrum

One week after the end of the 44-day war, Pashinyan insisted that the war could have been avoided if the seven regions surrounding Karabakh and Shushi were handed over to Azerbaijan.

"Could we have avoided war? Yes, we could have, if we had agreed to hand over seven regions to Azerbaijan, and Shushi," he said.

Pashinyan’s claim was refuted by then-Foreign Ministry spokesperson Anna Naghdalyan. "At any given stage of the peace process, there was no question about giving up Shushi," she said.

Pashinyan was also refuted by Russian President Vladimir Putin who said that, "As for the city of Shushi, the issue of its surrender has never been raised […] this issue arose during [the 2020 Karabakh War], this crisis."

Later, Pashinyan himself admitted that previous peace processes did not mention the handing over of Shushi to Azerbaijan, but they mentioned the return of the Azerbaijanis to the city.

5. Use of the Iskander Missile System

In February 2021, Pashinyan made a scandalous statement about the use of the Iskander missile system during the 44-day war. "Why didn't the Iskander [missiles] explode, or only exploded at 10% capacity?"

Russia, which sold the Iskander to Armenia, replied to Pashinyan’s claim with the following statement․ “The Russian Federation’s Ministry of Defense got acquainted with the statement of the Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan with bewilderment and surprise that the "Iskander" missiles used by the Armenian armed forces in Nagorno Karabakh did not explode or exploded only by 10%. […] According to our objective and reliable information, […] none of these missile systems were used during the conflict in Nagorno-Karabakh. ”

After this announcement, Pashinyan took a step back. His spokesperson announced, "As a result of the juxtaposition of the available facts and data, the Prime Minister of Armenia came to the conclusion that he was not properly informed about this situation."

Later on, local investigators discovered that the Iskander had in fact been used during the 44-day war.

6. Status of Karabakh

In January 2021, Pashinyan published an article claiming that the Russian proposal for a solution to the Karabakh conflict did not mention the question of the region’s status.

“The now well-known Russian proposals, which were conceived in 2013 and finalized in 2015, provided for the return of the seven regions to Azerbaijan…, for the return of refugees, and for the deployment of Russian peacekeepers. The package of proposals has no mention of the status of Nagorno-Karabakh, it bypasses this issue,” Pashinyan wrote.

Former Russian co-chair of the Minsk Group Igor Popov disputed Pashinyan’s claim. "It is not right to claim that Russia has offered to return the seven regions [in exchange] for nothing, or forget about the status,” Popov said.

Armenian Foreign Minister Ara Ayvazyan agreed with Popov. “I definitely agree with Mr. Popov on the fact that the status of Artsakh was the most important principle for the settlement of the conflict.”

7. State borders are not determined by domestic laws

After the war, Pashinyan repeatedly insisted that the 2010 law on "Administrative Territorial Division" defined Armenia's state border with Azerbaijan.

During his visit to Sisian in December 2020, for example, he stated: "Today's borders, the description of the administrative borders of our communities were determined by the law on the administrative-territorial division of the Republic of Armenia, that law was adopted in 2010."

The Law on Administrative Territorial Division is about the internal divisions of the state, it regulates the issue of local self-government bodies, and does not clarify the borders with other countries.

Translated by Zara Poghosyan

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Five Armenian POWs return from Azerbaijan

_By Emilio Luciano Cricchio _

Five Armenian prisoners of war returned to Armenia from Azerbaijan on Tuesday evening local time, according to Sputnik Armenia. The prisoners, accompanied by former commander of the Russian peacekeeping forces in Karabakh Lieutenant General Rustam Muradov, arrived in Yerevan’s Erebuni Airport.

"Russia will continue to work to ensure compliance of the provisions of the trilateral agreement," reads a press release from the Russian peacekeeping mission in Karabakh. The statement refers to the November 10 Russia-brokered ceasefire, which stipulates that both sides must return all POWs.

The names of the released captives are: Mels Ambardanyan, Rafik Karapetyan, Jora Manukyan, Hovsep Manukyan and Sedrak Soghomonyan.

As of today, 113 Armenian POWs have returned from captivity in Azerbaijan. The exact number of prisoners remaining in Azerbaijan is unknown but human rights groups estimate that close to 200 more remain in captivity.

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Ստեփանակերտի Ավետիք Իսահակյանի անվան համար 10 հիմնական դպրոցի շենքը 44-օրյա պատերազմի ընթացքում մեծապես տուժել է։ Դպրոցի շենքի վրա ընկել է հինգ ռումբ։ Այդուհանդերձ, նոր ուսումնական տարում դպրոցը բացել է իր դռները աշակերտների համար։

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Shouting match in Armenia’s parliament underscores difficult path forward for legislative cooperation

By Mark Dovich

The outbreak of a shouting match on Wednesday between representatives of the ruling Civil Contract party and the opposition Armenia Alliance — less than two weeks into the new parliament’s term — has underlined the acrimonious relations between the government and the opposition, casting the prospect of future cooperation on critical legislation in serious doubt.

Armenia’s new parliament sat for the first time last week following snap elections in June, meant to resolve a monthslong political crisis over Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan’s handling of the September-November 2020 war with Azerbaijan in and around Karabakh, which resulted in a disastrous defeat for Armenia.

Pashinyan’s Civil Contract party retained its parliamentary majority in that vote, though it lost seats. The new National Assembly, as Armenia’s parliament is officially known, is composed of 71 Civil Contract lawmakers, 29 representatives of the Armenia Alliance, and 7 lawmakers from the I Have Honor Alliance. The vote was deemed “competitive and generally very well-managed” by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe.

Wednesday’s altercation in the legislative chamber began when Vice Speaker Ishkhan Saghatelyan, a leading representative of the Armenia Alliance and a former governor of the eastern Gegharkunik region, said that calling someone a “capitulator” and “land giver” constituted a political assessment and not a personal insult.

Saghatelyan was presumably referring to references by opposition politicians to Pashinyan as a “traitor” and “capitulator,” which have become common in the months since Armenia’s defeat in last year’s Karabakh war with Pashinyan at the helm.

Saghatelyan’s comment prompted Civil Contract lawmaker Narek Grigoryan to begin shouting that such a position was unacceptable. Opposition lawmakers then began yelling back at Grigoryan. The incident escalated such that Alen Simonyan, the head of the legislature, dispatched security staff to break up the quarrel. The shouting match lasted about 20 minutes — and was broadcast live despite attempts by security personnel and Simonyan himself to turn off reporters’ cameras.

Following the altercation, Simonyan gave a speech calling on opposition lawmakers to refrain from making personal insults toward elected officials. “I propose, out of respect for the citizens of Armenia, to consider that today we have exhausted the people’s patience,” he said. In addition, he personally appealed to lawmaker Seyran Ohanyan, who leads the Armenia Alliance bloc in parliament, to “close the page” on such insults.

For his part, Ohanyan called on representatives to “put aside what happened” at the National Assembly on Wednesday. Ohanyan previously served as Armenia’s Defense Minister (2008-2016) and is considered close to former presidents Robert Kocharyan and Serzh Sargsyan, both associated with the Republican Party. The April-May 2018 Velvet Revolution, led by Pashinyan, dislodged the Republican Party from power after decades of rule.

The issue of the opposition’s use of insulting labels for Pashinyan has dominated parliamentary proceedings in recent weeks. During the previous parliament’s final session on July 30, lawmakers approved an amendment to the Criminal Code that would criminalize “grave insults.” Seventy-five out of 132 representatives voted in favor of the bill.

Vladimir Vardanyan, who introduced the amendment and at the time served as the chair of the legislature’s Standing Committee on State and Legal Affairs, said that the law was intended to tackle vulgarity and obscenity in Armenian politics and on Armenian social networking sites. “This bill is primarily aimed not so much at punishing individuals resorting to grave insults as having a preventive impact and eliminating insults from our society,” he said.

But opponents of the legislation have expressed concerns that the law may be used to stifle criticism of the government. Independent lawmaker Sofia Hovsepyan has noted that the opposition regularly criticizes the ruling Civil Contract party through insults, including by calling Pashinyan a “traitor” and “capitulator.”

Observers have criticized the new lawmakers for quarreling with each other, rather than working together to address Armenia’s many problems, not the least of which include ongoing border skirmishes with neighboring Azerbaijan.

Armenia’s male-dominated legislature has long been plagued with an epidemic of verbal abuse and physical violence, highlighting the fragile state of democracy in the post-Soviet republic.

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#reportsinenglish #armenia #armeniaalliance #civilcontract #fight #karabakhwar #nationalassembly #parliament #pashinyan #yelling

Armenia Drops 16 Places in Global Peace Index

By Emilio Luciano Cricchio

Armenia has dropped 16 places in the 2021 Global Peace Index, seeing the third largest decline this year after Sri Lanka and Liberia.

In the 2020 Global Peace Index, Armenia increased its rank by 15 places, landing on 99th place.

The Global Peace Index is an annual report by the Institute for Economics and Peace, a Sydney-based think-tank, which ranks the countries of the world based on levels of peacefulness.

The Second Karabakh War is cited as the cause for Armenia’s decline.

“The number of people killed in the conflict is disputed, but most estimates suggest that at least 4,000 Armenian troops were killed, with almost 3,000 Azerbaijani casualties, including over 500 Syrians fighting on the Azerbaijani side,” the report reads.

The index includes a number of factors in its methodology, including number of deaths during an armed conflict, political instability, terrorism, homicide levels, military expenditure, incarceration rates, number of refugees and IDPs, duration of conflicts, crime levels and many others.

In the 2020 report, Armenia and Azerbaijan saw the first and second largest improvements in terms of peacefulness globally.

The report cited improved relations between the two countries, the success of the ceasefire between 2017 and 2019, and the 2018 “velvet revolution” as reasons for the dramatic increase in 2020.

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Baku Continues Persecuting Talysh Activists Even After Victory: A Talk With a Talysh Blogger

“There is no opposition or civil society in Azerbaijan – they only exist by name”, Rahim Shaliyev, a Talysh activist and journalist says in an interview with CivilNet’s Stella Mehrabekyan. According to Shaliyev, Aliyev’s regime continues persecuting Talysh activists even after its victory in the Second Karabakh war.

Recently you have been posting about the arrest of Talysh blogger Aslan Gurbanov who was arrested by the State Security Service in July 2020. He has been sentenced to seven years in prison by a Baku court for ‘inciting national hatred,’ among other charges. In another case, Talysh singer Baloglan Ashrafov died of coronavirus on April 26. You noted that the Azerbaijani government has taken steps to prevent the news of his death from spreading. Does this all mean that even after the success in the Second Karabakh war the Azerbajani government continues to persecute Talysh people, especially those who speak up for their rights?

Such cases were also taking place beforehand. Following the removal of President Ayaz Mutallibov, all successive governments in Azerbaijan have either imprisoned or killed Talysh activists. In addition, they feel concerned whenever a topic related to the Talysh begins trending and they do their utmost to prevent it from spreading. The acceleration of the national awakening of the Talysh and certain regional developments are seriously unsettling for the current government. This is one reason. That is why they make any attempt to mitigate the consequences of any news or incident related to the Talysh. The imprisonment of Aslan Qurbanov is a warning to other such Talysh activists. They openly state this. According to my sources, Ilkin Rahimli, a member of the Internal Security Service, openly said to Aslan Qurbanov that “this is why we have arrested you – so it would be a lesson to other Talysh people.”

Just after the war it became known that prominent Talysh historian and activist Fakhraddin Abbaszade died in prison in Azerbaijan, where he was serving 16 years for treason. His family said they had been informed that Abbaszade took his own life in his cell. Talysh human rights activists called his death mysterious. What’s your take on this?

The killing of Abbaszade by the Azerbaijani government is a clear issue. However, what worried me most is that during his imprisonment and following his killing, civil society activists in Azerbaijan either openly or discreetly supported this atrocity committed by the government. There were even some students from this group who took lessons from Abbaszade when he was working at the Baku State University. I genuinely cannot understand how someone who has been educated by a teacher can support and even be glad about their imprisonment and killing. The worst part is that these individuals are the most well-known human rights lawyers, journalists and social activists in Azerbaijan.

The character of the Azerbaijani government is very clear. Ordinary people live under constant propaganda and so we can give them the benefit of the doubt. However, the reactions we saw from activists who have been educated at the world’s leading universities regarding the Talysh issue and the killings of Armenian civilians during the war has forced us to create a separate Talysh civil society. This is because there is no room for compromise with the Azerbaijani government and civil society, apart from a number of exceptions. It is impossible to imagine a decent future with such people. They are not only the cause of the misery of the Talysh people but also the Azerbaijani people as a whole.

During the war and afterwards there were many reports of young Talysh men participating in the war, “defending,” as it was said, their motherland. It’s a well-known fact that the Azerbaijani government refuses to disclose the number of its military casualties. As someone who is outside Azerbaijan and closely follows the life of Talysh people, do you have any data or information regarding the casualties among your people?

Even if the Azerbaijani government releases the names and numbers of people who died in the war, they do not show the region from which those people went. We are nevertheless making our own calculations. We have found that around 600 soldiers from the Talysh region died in the war. According to official statistics, approximately 3,000 Azerbaijani citizens died in the war. We are still carrying out research on this matter and this number will likely rise. There are names that do not appear in the list. Around 5% of the Azerbaijani population lives in the Talysh region, however the number of soldier deaths in the war from that region surpasses 20%. There are certain details that affirm this fact. For example, there are 13 families living in the small Talysh village of Dico in Lerik, but 3 individuals died in the war from this village. Moreover, in a televised report prepared by a Turkish propaganda channel (tv100), the reporter unknowingly reported that a larger proportion of soldiers were taken to war from the Lerik and Astara regions. It is possible to conceal the facts, but such nuances eventually come to the surface.

The war had a huge psychological impact on the societies of Armenia, Azerbaijan and Artsakh. There is much talk about the end of the war and the necessity of starting a peaceful life and co-existence in the region between Armenian and Azerbaijani people. What’s your impression? Is Azerbaijani society ready for peaceful co-existence with Armenians?

I believe that the Azerbaijani and Armenian people will be able to live together. However, there is a need to develop civil society and governance in Azerbaijan so that it gives importance to human rights and democracy. Georgia and Armenia have overcome that phase. The second condition is the removal of Turkey’s influence over Azerbaijan. Turkey overtly exploits the Azerbaijani people with its political romanticism in order to benefit its own interests. I would say that this has already irritated a fair number of Azerbaijanis. The Talysh people can have a strategic role in both matters since the Talysh have never been involved in bloody ethnic conflicts with another nation. This gives them the opportunity to create a bridge between Armenians and Azerbaijanis. Furthermore, once Talysh national issues begin to trend, this may open the way for the removal of far-right and religious ideologies from Turkey, such as pan-Turkism, Turanism and Jihadism. The current Azerbaijani government and Turkish intelligence services understand this very well. This is one reason why war propaganda was more prominent in the Talysh region than other parts of the country. Nevertheless, we have no intention of being enemies with Azerbaijanis, Armenians or any other people. War is not a solution and, in the end, a general consensus must be reached. I am certain that, despite the obstacles, the Talysh people will participate in the peace process.

Let’s talk about civil society, human rights defenders and opposition in Azerbaijan. Have they undergone any transformations in recent months? How do you assess their activities during and after the war? What was their response to opening the Military Trophy Park in Baku?

There is no opposition or civil society in Azerbaijan – they only exist by name. Of course, there are exceptions. Young people raised on leftist ideals give hope. However, far-right ideals held strong among the majority of activists during the war. The funny thing is that some of these people continue to work in human rights organizations and are interested in peace projects after the war. I think that if Anton Chekhov could see this situation he would have written even more ironic stories. As for the military trophy park – this is clearly the product of a racist ideology. This cannot be a source of pride and it is a historic insult to the Azerbaijani people.

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