On 28 January, three activists who are highly critical of Armenia’s current leadership were briefly detained in Yerevan in what they denounced as a government attempt to intimidate them, reported the Armenian Radio Free Europe. They were all set free without charge after spending several hours in police custody.
The Armenian police said two of the outspoken activists, Narek Malyan and Konstantin Ter-Nakalyan, were detained on suspicion of illegal arms possession. Another activist, Artur Danielyan, was stopped by policemen while driving his car and airing a live video address on Facebook. Danielyan said after his release later in the day that two of his associates were also forcibly taken to a police station. He said they were told that the police suspected them of possessing drugs.
Some opposition figures and other critics of the Armenian government condemned the detentions as arbitrary, saying the authorities are trying to stifle dissent in the country.
Danielyan and Ter-Nakalyan are the leaders of the nationalist Adekvad movement, while Malyan leads a separate group called Veto. Both groups rely heavily on social media in their campaigns against the government and Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan in particular. They also take a dim view of the 2018 “Velvet Revolution” that toppled Armenia’s former leadership and brought Pashinyan to power. Malyan also worked as an adviser to the former chief of the national police, Vladimir Gasparyan, before the revolution.
The Armenian branch of U.S. billionaire George Soros’s Open Society Foundation (OSF) was the main target of Adekvad and Veto activities so far, since both groups consider Pashinyan to have close ties with Soros.
The Carnegie Endowment scholar Paul Stronski considered the detention of the far-right activists related. “Today’s detention of leaders of far-right Adekvad political group & VETO NGO on suspicion of illegal weapons possession strikes me as related. [A] former Republican Party MP posted [a] FB video of [the] detention, [which is] an indication of support/ties to far-right thugs. [It] could also explain ruling My Step faction's push to take on organized crime, given long-standing ties between criminal groups, shady parts of [the] old regime, and a few old-regime holdovers. All of this again highlights deep polarization in Armenia, political system's fragility and lengths to which some Pashiniyan critics want to undermine him,” he tweeted.
The detentions came just a week after the Armenian parliament adopted the law aiming to fight organised crime groups and their leaders, known in the region as “thieves in law.” The law states that creating or leading a criminal subculture group in Armenia is a crime punishable by 5 to 10 years in prison and confiscation of assets. The definition of the group is broad and allows members to be arrested even if they have not committed an actual crime.
In September 2019, Danielyan announced that he plans to form a political party out of Adekvad (Caucasus Watch reported). Both movements were indirectly accused by Pashinyan of violent intentions in the country in June 2019.
