Armen Martirosian, the owner of the Antares publishing house, ran into the protesters on his way to a business meeting. Videos of the incident showed some of them hitting, shoving and verbally abusing him.
“Some people in the crowd probably recognized me,” Martirosian told RFE/RL’s Armenian Service. “They started shouting Antares, calling me a Turk, swearing.”
The Armenian police said on Thursday that they are investigating the incident. It was not clear whether anyone was questioned or detained by investigators.
Martirosian said that riot police officers escorting the crowd did not protect him against the violence. He said that the police had also failed to act on threats received by him in the past.
The publisher suggested that the main reason for the assault was one of his social media posts made shortly after Armenia’s defeat in the 2020 war with Azerbaijan. He criticized at the time Armenian occupation of districts around Nagorno-Karabakh retaken by Baku as a result of the six-week war. He stood by the criticism on Thursday.
“Being in the territory of Kubatli (one of those districts) is not the same thing as being in the territory of Artsakh (Karabakh),” Martirosian said. “There is a big difference between them.”
The Yerevan rally marred by the attack on Martirosian was part of the Armenian opposition’s preparations for mass protests against the government. Opposition leaders say they want to topple Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian in order to prevent further concessions to Azerbaijan planned by him.