Armenian Protestors, Police in Violent Clashes as Standoff Continues

YEREVAN – Demonstrators clashed with police late Wednesday as thousands turned out in the Armenian capital Yerevan to support an armed militant group that seized a city police station on July 17

The police attacked the demonstrators at just after 10:00 PM with tear gas and stun grenades after the crowd attempted to break through a police cordon and deliver food to the besieged militants. The melee left dozens injured, including at least 25 police officers, according to the Armenia’s Health Ministry.

The ministry said most of the injuries were from the effects of the tear gas and concussions caused by repeated body blows from police truncheons.

At least 13 people were taken to a Yerevan hospital, each with varying degrees of injury, RFE/RL reported.

According to reports, the chairman of Armenia’s Socialist Party Movses Shaverdyan received several serious injuries to the head.

Eyewitnesses said the clashes began after the demonstrators began hurling rocks at the security services, after which the police used stun grenades to disperse the crowd. A group of officers reportedly detached from the rest and chased some demonstrators.

Running street battles between demonstrators and police have continued through late Thursday night as civilian crowds have armed themselves with stones and iron pipes and built barricades in front of the heavily armed riot police.

Parliamentarian Nikol Pashinyan, who was present when the clashes began, said plain-clothed provocateurs from the National Security Services (NSS) – Armenia’s secret police – were responsible for provoking the situation on the ground.

Pashinyan’s claim came on the heels of claims by the leader of the militants inside the station, Varujan Avetisyan, who said Russia’s feared special-forces ALPHA team had been deployed to Yerevan to assist the NSS in cracking down on the protests.

The protests were sparked by a growing degree of national support for a fringe group of anti-government veterans from the 1988-1994 Nagorno-Karabakh War known as the Founding Parliament Movement.

The group took over the Erebuni police station in the early morning hours of July 17,  killing a police officer in the process and wounded six others.

The group said the raid on the district police station was a response to the arrest of prominent opposition activist and former Karabakh commander Jirayir Sefilyan.

The militants continue to hold at least four police officials hostage, including Armenia’s Deputy Police Chief Vartan Yeghiazaryan and Yerevan’s Deputy Chief Valery Osipyan.

Avetisyan has demanded that Sefilyan, the leader of the Founding Parliament movement, be released and that the charges against him for illegal weapons possession be dropped.

The militants have also demanded that Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan resign immediately.

The Founding Parliament Movement has been deeply critical of Sargsyan’s handling of the two-decade-old frozen conflict in Nagorno-Karabakh, including his conduct during the most recent flare-up of in April.

More than twenty years after a ceasefire ended a bloody war between Christian Armenia and Muslim Azerbaijan – both former Soviet republics – over the ethnic Armenian enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh, a brief four-day conflict erupted in early April that claimed hundreds of lives and wounded up to 3,000 others.

Ethnic Armenian forces were forced to relinquish up to 2,000 hectares of territory to Azeri forces as a result of the fighting. Many opposition parties in Armenia blame Sargsyan for having done little to shore up the Armenian defenses along the contact line or order a counter-offensive before agreeing to a new ceasefire.

The fact that all of the gunmen inside of the police station are Karabakh War veterans has played well with the Armenian public, most of who sympathize with their stridently anti-government sentiments and sharp criticism of Sargsyan over the situation in Nagorno-Karabakh.

Yerevan’s police force had already broken up a gathering of opposition members on the city’s central Freedom Square and detained up to 400 people on Monday night. Armenia’s human rights ombudsman later confirmed that 50 people had been arrested for publicly demonstrating for the armed group.

The tense situation in the Armenian capital caught the attention of both Russia – Armenia’s closest ally – and the US.

Speaking to state-run news agency RIA Novosti on Monday, Russian President Vladimir Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov said, ”The emergence of this type of unrest so near our borders causes great concern. It certainly makes us monitor the situation closely.”

A spokesperson for the US State Department said the White House strongly condemns the attack but urged Armenian authorities to show restraint when dealing with the gunmen.

By Karen Tovmasyan and Nicholas Waller