The incidents took place in two villages in Armenia’s northern Lori province close to Karapetian’s hometown of Tashir. Videos posted on social media showed scores of his supporters waving flags and chanting “Samvel Prime Minister!” during a Civil Contract procession led by Defense Minister Suren Papikian. Papikian can be seen urging them to “open the road” before telling police to take action against the “hooligans” and promising to teach their leaders a “political lesson.”
Armenia’s Investigative Committee reported ten arrests in the following hours. It accused the Karapetian supporters of deliberately trying to disrupt the ruling party’s campaign rallies. It claimed that they blocked a road with cars in one of the villages and “turned on loud music” and assaulted Civil Contract campaigners in the other.
The law-enforcement agency told RFE/RL’s Armenian Service on Monday that six of the suspects have been remanded in pretrial custody and another moved to house arrest. The status of the three other detainees remained unclear.
Meanwhile, Karapetian’s Strong Armenia bloc condemned the arrests and demanded the immediate release of the ten persons. The gatherings of Strong Armenia supporters coincided with the Civil Contract rallies, it said, accusing the ruling party of a staging a pre-planned “provocation.” A senior member of the bloc, Gohar Meloyan, released a short video that seemingly showed a group of Civil Contract members charging towards Karapetian supporters demonstrating on a roadside.
Karapetian’s bloc is widely regarded as the most popular of the opposition groups running in Armenia’s June 7 parliamentary elections. Dozens of its members or supporters have been arrested in recent weeks mostly on vote-buying charges denied by the bloc.
Meloyan put at around 300 the total number of such individuals prosecuted or briefly detained by police. She insisted that Strong Armenia remains undaunted by the crackdown.