Man Detained After Confronting Pro-Government Lawmaker
• Astghik Bedevian
RFE/RL Armenian Service
A young man has been detained in Armenia on suspicion of hooliganism after confronting a pro-government lawmaker on a bus in Yerevan.
The incident happened on Tuesday and its video was published by the man himself. He was later identified as Samvel Vardanian, an apparent government critic who had also been briefly detained before for allegedly calling Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian a traitor upon seeing him in the street.
The video shot by Vardanian shows him confronting Hakob Aslanian, a member of the parliamentary faction of Pashinian’s ruling Civil Contract party, on a bus and calling him an “anti-Armenian scumbag.”
“How dare you appear in public, you scumbag?” Vardanian is heard saying to Aslanian on the video before a quarrel begins during which both men exchange strong words and apparently slightly push each other.
The incident took place in front of other passengers who are heard trying to calm down the quarreling men.
Vardanian was later detained by police on suspicion of hooliganism.
Talking to reporters in parliament on Tuesday, Aslanian claimed that the man who confronted him on the bus was clearly acting “deliberately.”
“I was going to get off the bus when he blocked my way,” he said, denying that it was a case of “free speech”, as Vardanian claimed in interviews with different media before his detention.
Aslanian said he would not have taken the matter to the police had Vardanian not published the video of the incident on social media.
Meanwhile, opposition lawmaker Arman Ghazarian, who said he had contacted Vardanian, said that the man had told him about violence being used against him while he was being escorted to a detention center last night.
Citing Vardanian, Ghazarian said that the violence effectively took place in front of police officers who at one moment stopped the car and went out “for personal matters.” Then, he said citing Vardanian’s account of the events, a group of four or five masked men came to beat the young man, while the police officers did not intervene.
“His [Vardanian’s] right wrist was swollen, that’s all I’ve seen. He may have had other injuries as well under his clothes, but I couldn’t see it. It wasn’t within my jurisdiction,” the opposition lawmaker said.
He said that the young man had told him he had been “too scared” to tell the administration of the detention center about violence used against him as those who beat him had allegedly “threatened to repeat the beating if he told anyone about it.”
The police have not officially reported any information on the alleged violence against Vardanian. RFE/RL’s Armenian Service could not verify the claim independently.
The Investigative Committee said that along with making insulting remarks in public transport, threatening member of parliament Aslanian, and grossly violating the public order, Vardanian also made expressions “spreading hostility towards a political force in a public place.”
