(Saturday, July 22)
“Hraparak” reports that Hrachya Harutiunian, an Armenian truck driver who caused a deadly traffic accident in Russia in 2013, has been handed over to Armenia to serve the rest of his almost 7-year prison sentence there. Harutiunian’s degrading treatment by Russian authorities after his arrest caused street protests in Yerevan at the time. “The Russian authorities drew some conclusions from those protests,” says the paper. “But the process of his extradition has taken longer than expected.”
“Aravot” comments on Armenian government plans to introduce fines for people dropping cigarette butts in the streets. The paper wonders how the fines will be enforced. “Will a police officer be monitoring every smoker, waiting until they finish smoking, and, depending on where they drop the cigarette butt, deciding whether or not to fine them?” it says. “But the idea itself is certainly good.” Accordingly, the paper hits out at political and civic activists who are already decrying the government plans.
“Hayots Ashkhar” continues to discuss the uproar that was caused by Russian State Duma speaker Vyacheslav Volodin’s calls for Armenia to adopt Russian as a second official language. “In recent days, so much has been said and written in our country about the incident that occurred at the meeting [in Moscow] between the heads of Russia’s and Armenia’s legislatures that one has the impression that nothing new can be said on the subject,” writes the paper. It downplays the significance of Volodin’s comments, saying that Moscow had also made similar suggestions to other member states of the Russian-led Eurasian Economic Union (EEU). The “artificial rumpus” caused by them in Armenia is therefore unjustified, it says.
“After all, the Armenian side officially responded [to Volodin] in an appropriate manner. Further discussions would have made sense only if there had been serious disagreements and different views [on the language issue] within Armenia,” argues “Hayots Ashkhar.”
Citing an Armenian lawyer, “Haykakan Zhamanak” says that of all 47 member states of the Council of Europe, the European Court of Human Rights has received the largest per-capita number of lawsuits from Armenia. The paper says the lawyer, Vahe Grigorian, believes that this fact speaks volumes about a lack of public trust in the Armenian judiciary.
(Tigran Avetisian)
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