Karabakh activists representing the refugees say that such insults are part of a deliberate campaign of hate speech orchestrated by the Armenian government. Pashinian and members of his political team have faced such accusations ever since the 2023 exodus of Karabakh’s ethnic Armenian population resulting from an Azerbaijani military offensive. Their loyalists have attacked Karabakh Armenians for participating in anti-government demonstrations in Yerevan.
The activists, who officially do not represent Karabakh’s exiled leadership, say that the smear campaign intensified dramatically after they rallied thousands of refugees in March this year to demand that the government stop discriminating against them, champion their right to safely return to their homeland on the international stage and keep up housing allowances paid to many of them. They picketed the headquarters of Armenia’s Office of the Prosecutor-General in April in protest.
Government loyalists continued their anti-Karabakh rhetoric, however. One of them, a Facebook user identifying himself as Arsen Arshakian, claimed that 30 percent of the refugees have emigrated from Armenia and congratulated fellow Pashinian supporters on that.
“God willing, you’ll never come back,” he wrote.
Another, female government supporter declared that residents of Armenia should have blocked a border checkpoint to stop the Karabakh refugees from entering the country in September 2023. The woman has regularly made such hateful statements on a pro-government website.
Roman Yeritsian, a Karabakh-born lawyer, petitioned Armenia’s Investigative Committee and prosecutors to launch criminal proceedings against the two individuals. Both law-enforcement bodies refused to do that, saying that the statements in question may be offensive but do not amount to hate speech. A Yerevan court of first instance upheld those rebuffs.
Yeritsian appealed against those rulings. The Court of Appeals overturned them this week. It said the Investigative Committee must open criminal cases in connection with the apparent promotion of “hatred, discrimination, hostility based on racial, national, ethnic, political or other circumstances.”
“The Prosecutor's Office would do well to go after those who incite internal hostility and hatred, who regularly target one or another segment of the Armenian people, especially the people of Artsakh,” Artak Beglarian, a former Karabakh premier and human rights ombudsman, told RFE/RL’s Armenian Service on Thursday.
Beglarian said that the prosecutors and the Investigative Committee have been reluctant to crack down on such rhetoric which he believes is whipped up by the country’s political leadership. In his words, in April alone Karabakh activists filed relevant complaints against seven individuals and only two of them were formally placed under investigation.
One of those persons is Roman Baghdasarian, a controversial pro-government blogger. He made a disparaging post about Karabakh Armenians who have received government aid and called for the families of former Karabakh officials who “stole Armenia’s money for 35 years” to be stripped of such aid. The Investigative Committee declined to say on Thursday whether he is facing any criminal charges.
