Letter of protest from Artsakh to police chief
President of "European Movement of Artsakh" NGO Hayk Khanumyan has sent a letter sounding the alarm of pressures against him. He has been living and working in Artsakh and has been undertaking several initiatives for the past two years.
"However, the authorities view enterprising people, especially efforts with the youth as hostile and a challenge," says Hayk Khanumyan.
He says the authorities have been pressuring him and his close ones.
"The Artsakh authorities have started to engage Armenia's officials as well, particularly RA Chief of Police Alik Sargsyan. On June 15, the latter called my father, Ruben Khanumyan, who was deputy head of the investigative department of Tavush province and advised him to "discipline" his son by making him move from Stepanakert to Yerevan. What especially made him break into a frenzy was my position against the Madrid Principles and the meeting in Kazan. He also offered several jobs such as a job at the Interpol Armenia Office, knowing that I have studied in France just as long as I moved to Yerevan. After I rejected and expressed willingness to continue my job, the chief of police called my father to Yerevan and demanded that he file for resignation when he could have worked for 10 more years.
Taking my father's job is a great lever for pressure against me because he was the one providing me with money to survive after I lost all job opportunities in Artsakh. My father refused to file for resignation, but was forced to be sent to pension on July 23," writes Hayk.
"Azerbaijan used to lead a policy on driving Armenians out of Artsakh and cleaning Artsakh of Armenians, and the Soviet PAK did that in the last years of the USSR. Evidence of that was the "Ring" Operation under General Safanov's leadership. It turns out that there are people like Safanov in Armenia, including Alik Sargsyan and the Artsakh officials that appeal to him," as stated in the letter.
Khanumyan suggests doing everything possible to demand chief of police Alik Sargsyan's resignation. "The police chief's most humiliating step could become a "good precedent" for forces aimed at driving Armenians out of Artsakh."
"At the same time, I ask for active steps to carry out multifaceted programs in Artsakh, starting from alternative education to civil activism," as stated in the letter of the President of the "European Movement of Artsakh" NGO addressed to Armenia's civil society.
