Warning: This is a rush transcript generated automatically and may contain errors.
Asbed: As Armenia heads into elections, law enforcement appears to be moving with force against opposition critics while ignoring state-linked pressure, threats, and alleged abuse of administrative power. This also includes troubling new developments of using 25-day military training summons to dissuage and discourage Armenian citizens from coming to Armenia to vote. Hello everyone and welcome to Groong’s Spotlight on Silence episode. The Armenian Center for Political Rights has released a number of important reports recently.
The links of these reports are going to be in the show notes, so please check them out. Rafael Ishkhanyan, co-founder of the ACPR and a lawyer specializing in human rights, joins us. He coordinates the monitoring of peaceful assemblies at the Helsinki Committee of Armenia and is a member of the ODIHR Panel of Experts on Freedom of Assembly and Association. Welcome back to the Groong Podcast, Rafael.
Rafael: Hello, dear Asbed. Hello, Hovik. Nice to be here.
Hovik: Hello, Rafael. Let’s begin with the strange competence of Armenia’s law enforcement system. It seems to be able to find, record, and leak opposition-linked conversations with lightning speed and precision. But when reports point to possible government-side abuse, patronage or even pressure, the same system looks slow, quiet, careful or even completely non-existent.
The double standard is now part of the election environment. What does it say about state institutions when wiretapped opposition conversations become campaign material as it appears to be in this election?
Rafael: First of all, I think we have to look back how we came to this point because You know, all these eight years, the change of power, and we were talking about the consolidation of all the leverage within the hands of a single executive office, including, of course, the traditional ones which should be under that, that is the police, the National Security Service, the other bodies of law enforcement that are supposed to be independent. And that case, the Prosecutor’s Office, the Investigative Committee, Anti-Corruption Committee and every other kind of committee or law enforcement unit you can think of.
And all the chiefs and heads and deputies basically appointed by what would happen in a country with a single party system. One thing to keep in mind is when people are looking at Armenia and imagining a democratic country in a notion of this barbaric political habits. One should keep in mind that throughout the decades, and including now at the same time, the legislative body has been ruled by one party. The opposition never had any chance of vetoing anything.
That means, while appointing the said chiefs of the important law enforcement bodies, the one party does not have to consult with anyone. And it is, of course, not just a party. Inside the party there is absolutely no dissent or disagreement about anything when it comes to whatever the head of the party, that is, the prime minister, thinks. So having this party system which in a normal parliamentary country should have been that, you know, the executive is is answering before the Parliament, we have the opposite situation.
So just keeping this in mind, because the past years we’ve seen dismissal and appointment of very important positions in law enforcement, judiciary, which would basically be the guarantee of the non-abuse, etc., and all of them stemming from the decisions of one single party and basically one single person. Now we’re coming to the pre-election time. Of course, in pre-election campaign, when you open the website of the Anti-Corruption Committee, there’s absolutely nothing but wiretaps of some opposition-linked figures or alleged opposition figures or actual opposition figures in some cases.
Talking different, you know, very slang and street talk, which many times, of course, involves plausible, or let’s say, yeah, instances of bribery. However, at the same time, there were very, let’s say, the same plausibility at least attributed to some actions of the ruling party.
For instance, I recalled a statement by the Transparency International when they announced, put in the statement that the chief of the Bagratashen customs house gathered all the municipal leaders of Tavush and Lori regions and basically put them some task to somehow guarantee the victory of the Civil Contract party in exchange, of course, promising them something in return. There would be some career steps or whatever. From the legal perspective, this is absolutely the same as cash bribe, let’s say.
If you are trading, you know, giving promises of raising the office of certain person, this is the same as giving cash, it goes under the same article, it is the same crime. After this statement by a quite reputable organization, it would be logical to see at least several, at least the initiation of a criminal process, but to my knowledge there was none, and there was absolutely no wiretapping whatsoever about that. Again, there are some plausible instances that we can’t rule out that bribery happened.
Okay, if you look into, if you hear these wiretaps, a huge part of the recordings has nothing to do with what’s important for the criminal case. Also,
Hovik: Yeah, also given the, you know, we’ve seen in previous cases when the wiretaps have been at least selectively edited, right, to make it look worse, important context has been removed. How can we be certain that these wiretaps are actually accurate in this case? So that’s, I think, my point. And what happened to the presumption of innocence and confidentiality of evidence?
You’re right.
Rafael: So, yeah, first we had this experience with the criminal case of Bagrat Srbazan and his team that, yeah, they basically put a part of a conversation which had nothing to do with the planned protest that they had. and, of course, edited the way that people would perceive that they were planning something violent. In the end, it turned out there was just a friendly discussion about the capital punishment in general. That has nothing to do with the protests. It’s the same, of course, here.
We can’t be sure. In many instances, and when it comes to very specific people, for instance, the famous Artsakh commander and reconnaissance commander If you hear the part of his wiretap, there’s just one single episode when he, literally talking to one of his friends, says, of course you will have a place in the future military, something like that.
After that and before that is just a talk about some political ideas, how they perceive it and What comes out from this is there was a deliberate decision to put the whole conversation and of course with the title that this person violated criminal law, of course, without any concern about the the privacy or, in this case, presumption of innocence. You don’t know what happened in reality. If you are putting all the names, of course, with abbreviations, but it is absolutely understandable to anyone. If you see A.O. has been wiretapped and then you see the person with the same initials being arrested at the same time.
So this becomes something, of course, semantics.
Hovik: So, more about the Akanates Observer Mission, which is funded by Transparency International. I think this is the Bagratashen customs incident. According to the report, there were meetings allegedly held, both in the official premises and private venues, with participants being promised favorable treatment. How credible is their proof?
I haven’t reviewed it. Can you tell me more about this? And has there been any investigation about this?
Rafael: Well, I’m not aware of any investigation. As far as I tried to search on the web, I didn’t find any evidence that is a criminal case ongoing. Based on this statement about the credibility. So it is very detailed.
It is described in a lot of details. And I think Transparency International is not an organization that would just, you know, put words forward without having actual proof behind it. And I don’t know if they actually gave factual evidence to the law enforcement or not, or maybe their source, because of fears or any other reason, preferred to stay anonymous. But the details that are described here are very actual people that can be checked.
So these allegations can be verified or otherwise, you know, denied if there is a criminal investigation.
And it should have been the case because if there is this kind of, you know, this plausible information about the crime so for the general public of course they want to know what happened in the end is it if that’s not true so we have to know how to treat the statements from this organization because it matters if it’s true then we have to see the criminal behind the bars and if the authorities are keeping silent this leads to the second to the second situation that is there’s something happened there otherwise they would deny it very easily yeah
Hovik: Now, this may be a rhetorical question, but I’m going to ask it anyway. Is this an election campaign? Or is this some kind of an administrative machine mobilized for political survival? Can you find any semblance of fairness balance in how the government is approaching this?
Rafael: But I think, you know, Armenian elections are very often actually a struggle for survival. For one, during these 30 plus years of independence, we never witnessed change of power through elections. It never happened yet. Whenever, for some reason, it was a coup or it was a popular protest, someone came to power and then just cemented their power, legitimized their power through elections, and then kept it as far as there would be some transfer or there would be another protest whatsoever.
So this is one thing. Second, as I mentioned, this is basically a de facto one-party system. All the leverage belongs to one center of gravity, one center of political gravity. If someone was to compete in this election battle, this contest, it would be the same as a featherweight boxer who would step into a boxing ring with a heavyweight one.
Of course, if you somehow managed to defeat the opponent, probably you would be victorious, but how is that possible even? So the starting positions are not even equal. The other side already has a huge base of electorate. They have all the, you know, levers to manipulate the situation.
And when if you add on top that the traditional criticism, which was somehow keeping the power restrained in the past, is now virtually non- existent. The things that happened that the recent weeks, the prosecutions, the rhetoric and this new punishment of sending people to the army because they might vote for the opponent, this is something unheard. This was something unheard for decades, let’s say.
Asbed: Yeah, making service in the army a punishment is kind of an interesting thing. Rafael, the ACPR’s June 3 report on hate speech examines Arthur Osipyan’s case, which is a recent thing that went viral, actually. The report argues that the Investigative Committee treated this public questioning of Pashinyan as obstruction of an election campaign. But the report says that the video shows that Pashinyan agreed to answer Osipyan’s questions and that the exchange ended only when Pashinyan’s guards and supporters removed him.
We have some concerns here. Are investigative bodies informing the public, informing investigations, or are they helping frame critics as criminals during the campaign?
Rafael: When it comes to certain situations, of course, they’re doing the second. They’re just trying to find whichever, you know, legal Let’s say, I don’t know, article or argument would fit. And sometimes when they mismatch, they change it. For instance, before Osipyan’s case, there was another case.
I think a blogger, not very well known in a political arena, but however, he did some quite harsh remarks about Pashinyan, calling him to [unclear], to have some, you know, this manly conversation. So they actually They arrested him and detained him based on another hate speech law, spreading intolerance and inciting hatred or intolerance based on some protected characteristics. Later when it was, I don’t know, maybe they understood that it was just absurd, they changed it to hooliganism.
Sometimes this one can be stretched It cannot be, but they stretch it so much that you can basically label anything with that, because the term hooliganism now just doesn’t make any sense. They basically decriminalized insults, defamation, and the same things now are used as hooliganism. When it comes to Arthur Osipyan, of course, he is actually presented with three charges at the same time. So one, as you mentioned, obstruction of a political campaign, which doesn’t make any sense.
He asked politely, can I ask you questions, to which Pashinyan said, of course, dear. And then they started. He was all the time, the initiative was on Pashinyan. If he wanted, he could have left.
If he wanted, he could have… which eventually he did. That’s right.
Asbed: His supporters and bodyguards. Nobody was detaining anybody.
Rafael: It just doesn’t make sense. We didn’t even go very deep into that analyzing because there’s nothing to analyze. The second one is hooliganism. Again, this is the most stretched and most legally uncertain thing that ever exists in the Armenian legal framework.
And it’s used very inconsistently and because of that bloggers, journalists have been jailed and many critics have been charged while at the same time the same action has been done from the supporters or from the public officials themselves of course they’ve not been on that cases.
Well when it comes to the main one and this is actually happened the way that we were already working on the report on the systemic issue of the application of hate speech laws when Arthur Osipyan was arrested and charged with that and as I understand the main charge, and the other two are supplementary just to make the you know the to make it seem like that there’s you know he’s a very dangerous criminal charge with three counts or whatsoever What he did basically was charged for Facebook posts when he criticized Pashinyan and there were some, let’s say, rhetorical threats in it, which is a very common thing nowadays in Armenian politics and, you know, in other political discourse.
So they labeled it as hate speech. So that is what, there’s this thing, what we were working on before, and Osipyan just cemented this systemic issue. Hate speech law is about protecting vulnerable groups. That’s the idea of hate speech.
You cannot hate someone personally and say that it’s a hate speech. It is not. It’s just a personal animosity. If you hate someone because of their color, because of their religion, because of their minority status, that is something that makes them vulnerable at the same time, something that is an important part of their identity, then there is hate speech.
In Armenia, the only characteristic that’s been say in 99% cases, because there are very few exceptions, very few, is so-called political views, basically hate speech discriminating against political views of someone. You would imagine something that would happen, let’s say, in USSR against dissidents. Yes, there would be counter-revolutionaries who would be prosecuted. Maybe that would be the case.
But under the notion of political views, the law enforcement understands Pashinyan’s actions, whatever he does, and whatever you don’t like that he does, they consider that it’s a hate speech because you are discriminating against Nikol Pashinyan because of his political views. The absurdity, I cannot put it, but that’s why we needed 20 plus pages to try to, you know, openly detail it down.
Currently, yeah, I will see Ben and if there’s any other person that is behind bars because of this, they are all of course are politically motivated political prisoners for one the Court of Cassation set the precedent which cemented this approach that is currently this unlawful interpretation of hate speech laws is a systemic issue if there is another case that goes to court the court has to follow this logic because Court of Cassation said yes the political activity of a politician if your hate is based on that, that you don’t like what they do. That is hate speech. It doesn’t make sense.
Asbed: Rafael, we thought that Pashinyan’s language was extreme and constituted hate speech against Armenians. He invented terms like pseudo-elites of Artsakh, runaways, people who ran away while Armenian soldiers died and such. All of this coming together, would you define the Artsakh people, the Artsakhtsis in Armenia, as a vulnerable group?
Hovik: And also, if I can just add, I mean, this is not an isolated incident, right? Throughout this campaign, multiple Civil Contract officials during debates and other public speeches have used that language. Yes, absolutely.
Rafael: So they are a vulnerable group. They are targeted a lot. And just to get into one of the cases, if you remember the anonymous video when four or I don’t know how many people with masks, with guns, were threatening to kill Pashinyan or something.
Hovik: Allegedly.
Rafael: Let’s say, okay, there were actually people who really wanted to kill Prime Minister. Okay, this is a crime, and they have to be prosecuted. During the campaign, when Pashinyan was talking about this video, when he was referring to this video, he was not saying all the time, you know, the masked men with guns. He was not saying these terrorists, these unknown terrorists, or these ASALA terrorists, because they had the ASALA sign on there.
He never even mentioned the word ASALA once. All the time he was saying people talking Karabakh accent. It seems like this was the only characteristic that he took from this video. Let’s imagine if those terrorists, let’s call them terrorists, if they actually exist, they are terrorists.
If they would speak Gyumri dialect, what do you think? Would Pashinyan say those Gyumri dialect-speaking, no, he was not saying that, he was saying accent, which is not actually, but still, this also, yeah, this is also derogatory. Would he choose to say, the Gyumri accent-speaking guys, the Gyumri accent-speaking, no, of course not. And when someone would say, let’s say, a critic of what I’m saying now would say, well, you know, they are always referring to the elites, that is, to the ones that were responsible for bad things.
They’re not referring to ordinary Karabakh citizens. Well, anyone can just spend five, ten minutes on Google and find the most famous racist people When they’re talking about migrants, let’s say, yeah? They’re not saying all. They’re also saying the ones that are taking our jobs, you know?
Or the ones that are stabbing our children. You see what I’m getting into. This so-called disclaimer is just for, as a disclaimer is, just, yeah, note, this speech doesn’t refer to everyone with this, but everyone perceives it this way.
There were cases recently in a school or kindergarten, I’m not sure, that an Artsakh kid was treated very badly and been called a Turk or Azeri or something and the instances like this happen latently a lot many people don’t want to talk about that openly without disclosing their anonymity but this is something that happens it is something that is being fueled if your political elite and they are current political elite however whatever we think about that they talk is of course going to be spread this is one thing that when The court that I mentioned about this hate speech laws about the precedent, and they’re referring to Council of Europe recommendation about hate speech.
Part of this recommendation says countering it mostly should be done through education, through culture, through disseminating tolerance, and first of all, from public offices, from those that have power in the country. But now we are seeing the complete opposite. They are the ones that are spreading internal hatred on people of the same nationality based on a different origin from Artsakh because of their dialect, because of some perceived historical events.
Hovik: Yeah, we were talking with Aregа Hovsepyan and she said that most Artsakhtsis haven’t even been able to convert their passports to vote. So there are about 20-30,000 Artsakhtsis. Just for our listeners who may not be familiar with the situation, what is the political value? I mean, it seems abhorrent to think about it because it’s hate speech.
What is the political value of stigmatizing this population of Armenians from Artsakh? Is it perhaps to discourage them from voting? I’m not sure. What do you think?
Or is it to encourage the other segment of the population to vote based on hate?
Rafael: Both, but probably initially to make them abstain from voting or make them impossible to vote because the obtaining of citizenship, the procedure was going quite, you know, normal. speed before some period ago, and then it started to slow down a lot. And then basically now the thousands are waiting, and there is just no logical explanation why it’s being so delayed. Actually, this has been addressed by not only the local human rights defenders. The OSCE/ODIHR also addressed that in the statement about the preliminary assessment.
So this is actually one of the tools to keep them to deprive them of the voting right, at least during this election. However, you’re right, the whole rhetoric also might mobilize other people based on hate, because we know that hate has a very great force of mobilization. But interestingly, just today, the government also announced a different program, that they’re going to, if I was mistaken, to pardon part of the debt of people from Karabakh, from Artsakh that they had before and cannot pay for. So this is, you know, this is the same logic when first you are punching and then giving a candy with the other hand.
So, of course, the old logic behind that is make the people abstain, those who would not vote for you for sure. And if there are some who are not decisive yet, first of all, scare them a bit as much as you can, because scared people are then easily manipulated and then present them with the candy. Now maybe some will abstain and those who go there, now there may be some that will vote for you.
Hovik: yeah yeah I can see how someone in such a vulnerable state could say okay well what what is my vote going to count at least I might get part of my debt forgiven um but it’s it’s sad nevertheless let’s move uh to that same report from June 3rd where you talk about I believe uh this issue um Articles 329 and maybe you already mentioned it, but I want to go in more detail. Articles 329 and 330 are the ones being used for this purpose. And you say that they have distorted interpretation and they’re not being used for their original purpose. Can you tell us more about these articles?
What are they and how are they being distorted? Sure.
Rafael: So they are very similar of what they are designed to serve on. So one of them, 329, criminalizes incitement to hatred in many ways. Just let’s call it incitement to hatred. The second one criminalizes the public calls for violence.
This is not the whole offense. This is not the whole offense yet. Only incitement of hatred or cause for violence if that is motivated by hate or intolerance against certain protected characteristic. That is, if I make a public call for violence against certain person, individual, without animus, a random person, like me, the same color, the same everything, let’s say, okay, there’s no hate inside.
I just don’t want, don’t like this person and want them to be, you know, harmed. There’s no public call for violence in the sense of this article. If I do that because of the skin color of that person, because of the religion, because of the sexual orientation, other minority status, now we can talk about the article 330. Or if it’s not a call for violence, it’s an incitement to hatred.
Based on the same characteristics, now we have 329. So these two are what’s called hate speech laws, criminalized hate speech laws. What’s interesting is one of them has already existed for five years, that is the public calls for violence. The other one was added with a new criminal code.
It’s three years, I think, already. And I was reading the report by Pink Armenia, the organization which mostly is occupied with the rights of LGBT people, and they did monitoring and they found not a single criminal case that made it into the court. Imagine when you talk about the hate speech laws in some country and its application. Of course, first thing would come in mind is probably there would be a lot of cases against people, you know, motivated by the hate against those people because of sexual orientation.
Hovik: And Armenia is not known to be the most liberal country in terms of sexual orientation, right? It’s a very traditional country. Yeah, absolutely.
Rafael: And there is hate speech. There is a lot of hate speech. They should be criminalized, actually, but there is not. But they never initiate, or if they initiate, they don’t take it to court whatsoever.
So there’s no one being sentenced based on these articles because of hate speech against LGBT people, let’s put it. What it is used for is to protect the public officials, mostly and almost exclusively the ruling party officials. And Nikol Pashinyan has the lion’s share of all these criminal cases, these hate speech laws. And so how do they have to do it?
Because it sounds absurd from initially, because it’s hate speech. It has to be protected, it should be protecting vulnerable groups. And there are many vulnerable groups in Armenia, of course, national minorities, Artsakh people from refugee status, LGBT people and anyone. But they use it to protect the party officials and public office holders, starting from prime minister to the other ministers.
That is the most known, I’d say the most privileged ones and how they do it and how the distortion works is when there’s the list of the characteristics, it says like color, religion, racial characteristics whatsoever, religious, political, or other views. And they say, oh yeah, there it is, political views. Okay, let’s just, you know, let’s interpret it in that way, that whatever the politician is doing, that is what their political views are.
Asbed: So you are saying that they are treating political views as a protected characteristic?
Rafael: They are not only viewing that this way, they are interpreting political views as the same thing as political conduct or political activity.
Asbed: Rafael, what are the protected categories or characteristics in Armenia? Here, for example, we have five or six categories in the United States, which would be age, sex, etc., color, skin, religion. But what are they in Armenia?
Rafael: It depends on the interpretation. Basically, Armenian legal framework, the Constitution, has a reference to the human rights documents that we signed. It’s the Article 81, if someone is interested. And it says that basic human rights should be interpreted related in the light of the practice of bodies, international bodies, operating on the basis of these human rights documents.
That is, we have an open-ended list. It says color, religion, origin, religious political views, and other personal or group characteristics. So if you look into the Constitution, if you look into that, and if you look The fact that the Court of Cassation, which has the right to set precedent, what they did, they basically interpreted that in the light of the Council of Europe recommendation of 2022 about hate speech, combating hate speech. So we have to go there.
Look what it says. It says, of course, vulnerable characteristics should be protected in the first place. The minority status, sexual orientation, migrant status or similar status, et cetera, et cetera. So these should be considered the ones that are not listed there, but are put in the open list.
Even if you go and try to interpret it legalistically, let’s say, political views is not the same as the belonging to some party or having this kind of conduct. There is a separate criminal article if someone does threats, actual real threats against someone, because of their political activity. This is a separate offense. It’s not a grave felony, let’s say.
The same article has another aggravating circumstance. When it becomes a hate crime, that is, if you do that based on both the activity of a politician and also their color, let’s say, or their minority status or their sex, their gender and whatsoever. So these two should be different, but they are interpreting political activity as a protected characteristic, as political views, basically equalizing the Prime Minister’s political activities are equalized to characteristics such as the color of a person, such as the religion of a person, such as the origin, etc. You see what it takes.
Asbed: Right. In the report, I think you mentioned a case, Hakob Grigoryan’s case, I believe. Would you tell us a little bit about that?
Rafael: Yes, so this was the case that is currently the basis of this precedent, that now the court interpretations should be referred to. So Mr. Grigoryan was a history teacher, and the story is that he was during, I think in 2022, in a history class with seventh grade, when he was asked about Artsakh War. He did several harsh remarks about Pashinyan, that they have to be executed, basically, in a public square, something similar.
I don’t want to repeat that, but basically, yes, quite harsh and quite, let’s say, violent remarks about them. Someone recorded it and then put it on Facebook and it started to circle. He was charged with public calls for violence. Public calls for violence in seventh grade.
Based on what? If you look into the formulation, he said, disagreeing with the political opinions of Nikol Pashinyan and his activities, motivated by his own political opinions, he made public calls for violence. We’re supposed to criticize politicians if we don’t talk about their activity. This is actually the This is the thing that you have can criticize and this is what why the politicians have higher threshold of criticism of tolerable criticism.
Basically, this is inverted. Now this higher threshold is now lower threshold. You can, maybe you can criticize very harshly a doctor because of their conduct, because medical activity is not yet considered as a protected characteristic. But if you say the same about a politician or a public office holder, that would be basically a hate crime.
That would be qualified as such.
Hovik: Grigoryan was acquitted, right? Is that the case? And what is exactly the precedent that it set? What was the reason for his acquittal?
Rafael: Well, he was not acquitted. He was found guilty and paid fine. He was not imprisoned. Then Court of Appeal acquitted him.
Then Court of Cassation reversed the ruling to the initial one, that is conviction. And this became the precedent. You can go to the website of the Court of Cassation. They proudly announced that now they have a case.
And later on, the public calls for violence, the cases based on those charges should be interpreted in this light. That is interpreted against human rights standards.
Hovik: Yeah. So let’s go from talking about hate speech that Pashinyan’s critics are accused of to hate speech, actual hate speech being conducted by the government. You had an urgent statement on May 19 about this. And in your report you talk about double standards.
And your report basically says that Pashinyan threatened opposition figures during the campaign, including Robert Kocharyan, Serzh Sargsyan, Samvel Karapetyan, and Gagik Tsarukyan. Linked them to that video of the infamous video of the masked people threatening Pashinyan. He actually said that he would want to, you know, I’m just quoting him, he said he would kill them, he would kill his political opponents. And your report also quotes Pashinyan saying that he would make them kneel, finish them off, etc, etc.
Very stark contrast, right? Why are opposition activists detained for crude, maybe hyperbolic speech, but Pashinyan is able to make these threats without any consequence? I mean, I understand that it’s a very authoritarian system. Are you getting any sympathy or any attention about this from international bodies?
Has there been any appeals sent to international organizations for the behavior of Armenian leaders? And what is the practice and what is the result of that? Well,
Rafael: at least ACPR, us, we sent all these statements to the relevant international bodies that have any mandate in human rights. I can’t say about the response. At the time, maybe there’s also some restraint about the elections, and there are some geopolitical concerns. I don’t want to get into that a lot, but of course that’s what I’m saying.
Now the restraints are lower, of course. What is allowed, let’s say, for the current power to say was not allowed before. For one, Pashinyan’s remarks, let’s divide into two parts. On the remarks against his political opponents, most of it, we have to apply the standard to both sides. it is not hate speech either.
Because most of it is fueled by personal animosity of his political rivals. This is a personal, individually directed, let’s say, hate. Let’s say whatever. So this is not hate speech per se, and should not be qualified as such.
This is what we are trying to get to people. However, there is difference between what the prime minister says of a country with one party in power, with all the law enforcement doing whatever he says, and when he says any threats, and this is different when you compare it to a single activist that uses this kind of language. So these threats from the prime minister can, and we have seen such examples, Last year when he threatened Samvel Karapetyan after his remarks about supporting the church with these insulting words and whatever. Just a few hours later the law enforcement gathered around his house and he was arrested.
So we see that his threats are becoming reality. It doesn’t mean necessarily they’re going to kill them somewhere and throw their bodies, but they’re going to be and it’s very likely It’s very plausible that illegal interference might happen because the Prime Minister said that. So this is what raises the risk when the threats are voiced by someone holding high public office. On the other hand, when we are talking about an individual activist, or let’s take Osipyan, for example, because we have this case before our eyes.
He’s still on hunger strike at the moment. More than two weeks, I think. He doesn’t have any political or governmental leverage whatsoever. If you wanted to hurt Prime Minister, he had 10 full minutes to do that, standing in front of him.
He didn’t even want to make a handshake with him. That is trying to rule out any kind of physical conduct. You see, this guy is behind bars in a hunger strike. The other one is running for the third term.
Yeah, and I think we covered hate speech part because when it comes to his remarks about Artsakh Armenians, at least in an example that I mentioned about this video when he was always noting the accent that is the dialect, not the other, you know, being armed or whatever, being a terrorist or whatever. This is classical hate speech because it’s based on a protected characteristic. It’s motivated by a protected characteristic.
It might not be qualified as a call for violence per se, but it is at least that the Article 329 is tailored for specifically this kind of situations when someone spreads or incites hatred based on, in this case, on the origin of a person. Rafael,
Asbed: we earlier mentioned the issue of using military service as a tool, but that was because there were rumors that Armenian authorities were exploiting military service or mandatory military training as a punishment. We were a little uneasy about that whole issue, but it does look like the grab bag of illicit tools and methods used by Pashinyan to discourage opposition voters appears to be expanding. Today, your ACPR released a statement, an urgent statement, saying that Armenian authorities are using military service as punishment.
And your report cites government officials making threats to send Armenian citizens who came from Russia to one-month or two-month training military camps. The ACPR then points to a video showing military police checking passports at border crossings, and serving notices to male Armenian passport holders arriving from Russia. Are these 25-day training camps now being used as an election tool, essentially?
Rafael: Yes. Just a quick explanation because the training camp This phrase doesn’t say anything. In Armenian it would be “varzhakan havak”. We had a very tough time trying to translate it because even the Armenian one doesn’t represent what it actually is.
So what it is, it’s a supplementary military service for the reservists.
Hovik: Same as the ordinary one. You can be sent to combat duty? Yes, yes.
Rafael: This is mostly for combat duty. I also had my three months before, three years ago. What this basically is, well, I don’t want to get into the details, but it involves combat duty written in the law so there’s no governmental secret whatsoever. It’s a normal ordinary military service well, on paper.
This is a topic of different discussion what it is in reality, but this is not the case. So this is different from mandatory military service. When males turn 18 and their health condition is fine, if they are not studying in one of the universities that would provide for some period of deferment, they are supposed to go to military service. It was two years now before the elections, they made it one and a half.
However, this is equal for everyone. If you are a male and you are 18, Put aside the health issues or education, you’re supposed to go to the service. Okay, we got it. And from the human rights perspective, this is okay.
This is normal because it’s acknowledged, let’s say at least. You can look at Article 4 of the European Convention of Human Rights. It specifically discusses this issue saying it should not be considered as a forced labor. However, the supplementary duty in Armenia or what we call training camps This is not obligatory for everyone.
This can be decided. This is who should be participating there. The Defense Ministry would decide, and they have discretion, whom to call, whom to summon for this training camp. Basically, again, the comparison.
You turn 18, you are summoned. After you finish it, you are in the reserve, you can be summoned. So you see the difference. And the standards based on what you can be summoned, they’re none.
They don’t exist. There’s no standard. There’s no rotation. There’s no lottery.
There’s nothing. They can decide, let’s say, to summon me three times in a row while not summoning my neighbor. And they might not summon my neighbor at all during his life.
Asbed: So what’s the appropriate safeguard? Is it legal? There’s none.
Rafael: There’s absolutely no safeguard against that. The safeguard would have been, well, we are trying to find, let’s say, a volunteer to start a strategic litigation. I don’t want to go into details more, but because the law should be changed, you know, to change the law, you need the parliament. The parliament MPs were the ones that were threatening the peaceful protesters with this and later admitting that, yeah, they sent the opposition protesters for combat duty and they’re going to do that again.
So We don’t have this option to change the law. The other situation, the other way around, it should be to challenge it in local courts. Well, as we’ve seen in the case of hate speech laws, some others, now even the legal system, the judicial system, doesn’t serve its purpose when it comes to very specific human rights violations. So maybe the only way in this situation would be to take the case to the European Court of Human Rights and challenge it on the basis of Article 4 and Article 14, that is prohibition of discrimination and forced labor, not prescribed by law, because it doesn’t meet the quality of law principle.
It’s not sufficiently clear. It doesn’t have standards of applicability that would rule out any discrimination. So with this tool in hand, they are doing it and I haven’t seen any criticism about that from any international organization to this day, even though we covered the whole issue in 2024 in a comprehensive report.
Hovik: Yeah, they threatened the protesters and they sent the protesters to military service. Yes, they did.
Rafael: They admitted on public TV that they did that.
Hovik: Is that now appearing to happen also for the elections? Can you tell us more about that?
Rafael: So there’s this thing. I don’t want to go into this political aspect or the geopolitical aspect because you know what is this hybridology currently is a new science here. Basically, there are bigger countries. These are not my words, I have to refer.
I’m not the author, but I like it a lot. So we have basically global powers that have their favorites in Armenia. Okay. And there might be some interference.
Yeah, of course. It’s always like that. Sure. So now, certain people are talking about 100,000 Armenians from Russia that are coming to Armenia in organized manner, taking bribes to vote for the opposition.
Just put it aside if it’s true or not, if there is any fact or not, at least one of such claims have been debunked. There are some that might be plausible. I mean, this is not something that you can rule out. It’s logical, yeah.
Because if someone wants to bribe, if you do that in a different country, it’s harder to track. But come on, in that case, how can we be sure if no one is being bribed in Turkey or in Europe or in the US or in any other country?
Hovik: So essentially, just to spell it out, For citizens arriving from Russia because of this hybrid threat, military police officers are going to the airport and greeting them and checking their papers? Is that correct? Yes, yes.
Rafael: And also applying illegal punishment.
Hovik: And summoning them to military service. So that hasn’t been proven? What is the evidence for that?
Rafael: The evidence is… The evidence is that they are admitting that they are doing that. I’m not only referring to the Minister of Economy, which said, asked about this, that what to think about this 100,000 Armenians coming from Russia. He said, very good, very good, because we are sure most of them will vote for us.
That is for the Civil Contract party. Okay. He said 65%. Yeah.
And then he said for the other 30,000, 40,000, we will send them to training camps to combat duty for one or two months. If that’s true, how they’re going to find out who’s voting for whom? And if they find out, basically, they are admitting that they are doing political prosecution against people by applying on them a punishment that is not prescribed by law. That is an exile, military exile.
That’s how we can call it. Yes. And then, okay, this is a minister of economy. Let’s put him aside.
The Deputy Chief of Staff to the Prime Minister, Taron Chakhoyan, has often been associated with managing the PR campaign for the Prime Minister. He said the same thing yesterday or two days ago already. I can cite the core quote saying, I’ve been asked and I’ve seen this whole noise about should they be sent to training camps? Of course they should be.
If they’re taking bribes and coming from Russia to vote here, they also should respect their responsibilities and serve in the army. And yes, they will be sent for a 25-day combat duty. Can you think about this again? Put aside the presumption of innocence.
There’s no such thing anymore. If they’re coming from Russia in groups, so they took some bribes. It’s not that it’s more convenient to come in groups, maybe. Okay, so we have the best law enforcement that can wiretap anyone everywhere, but we can’t really find if they took any bribe or not.
So we’re left only one thing. I’m just making this sarcastic, of course. So we’re not left with any other option but to apply unconventional extrajudicial punishment, that is okay. Exile them to military duty.
This is what they are admitting, literally.
Asbed: Well, if we’re going to use a little bit of sarcasm, I’m expecting Armenia to have an army of 100,000. Which means that Pashinyan is going to apologize and beg Aliyev not to take that offensively.
Hovik: In seriousness, this is a very troubling development and a discussion, but at the same time very interesting and important to elucidate. I hope that those in the, you know, if you have contacts who are into human rights and journalism about this, you can share Rafael Ishkhanyan’s reports and their ACPR reports. Yeah, well, the organization that you represent and you co-founded. So we will link those reports in the show notes.
Rafael jan, I want to thank you very much for your participation. And we look forward to talking to you in the future again.
Asbed: Thanks for joining us, Rafael. It was a pleasure for me. Thank you.
Hovik: Thanks. Thanks.
Asbed: That’s our show, troubling as it is. Episode was recorded on June 4th, 2026, three days before elections. We’ve been talking with Rafael Ishkhanyan. He’s a lawyer specializing in human rights, particularly freedom of assembly and expression.
He coordinates the monitoring of peaceful assemblies at the Helsinki Committee of Armenia and is a member of the ODIHR Panel of Experts on Freedom of Assembly and Association. In 2023, together with colleagues, he co-founded the Armenian Center for Political Rights, the ACPR. This is a watchdog organization focusing on detecting, responding to and preventing political persecution and safeguarding political rights. We’ll put all the links in the show notes, podcasts.groong.org slash episode number.
Look them up. Thank you.
Hovik: Yeah, definitely. And this may be our last episode before the election. So I want to repeat our call to please, if you’re an Armenian citizen, to go out and vote. And if you know any Armenian citizens, to please go out and to convince them to go and vote. and make their voice be heard, regardless of their political leanings.
I can’t think of a more consequential time for Armenians than these elections, so it’s really important that everyone votes. All right, I’m Hovik Manucharyan.
Asbed: And I’m Asbed Bedrossian. We’ll talk to you soon.
Hovik: Bye-bye.