Although the building has housed the representation since the early 1990s, its ownership was formalized only in 2017. Armenia’s Office of the Prosecutor-General asked the court of first instance to invalidate it in a lawsuit filed a year ago.
Pashinian had earlier repeatedly lambasted Karabakh Armenian leaders for continuing to present themselves as a government in exile and threatened to crack down on them. He again lashed out at them on May 18 when he bitterly argued with a Karabakh activist during an election campaign engagement in Yerevan. The activist, Artur Osipian, who has long challenged the former authorities in Stepanakert, was arrested after the incident during which Pashinian shouted insults and threats also addressed to “Karabakh pseudo-elites.”
“Don't you dare to say that there is a Karabakh National Assembly or a government in Armenia. I’ll root out all of you,” the premier cried.
The court ruling on the building was announced this week. Ashot Danielian, Karabakh’s parliament speaker and acting president, condemned it, saying that the Armenian authorities have taken “another shameful, illegal and immoral step against the Republic of Artsakh and its people.”
“They made the decision based on clear political considerations,” Artak Beglarian, a former Karabakh premier who now campaigns for the rights of Karabakh refugees in Armenia, told RFE/RL’s Armenian Service on Friday.
“They want to destroy everything related to Artsakh, and through that, to put our identity and memory under attack,” he said, accusing Pashinian of coordinating his actions with Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev.
Lawyers representing the Karabakh leaders will appeal against the court ruling. They say that they have not yet received eviction orders from relevant authorities.
In the meantime, Karabakh activists and other refugees continue to periodically gather outside the building to voice their grievances and discuss their socioeconomic problems, notably a lack of decent housing. Their leaders have pledged to keep fighting for their right to return to their homeland despite the Armenian government’s refusal to raise it on the international stage. Pashinian has repeatedly said that the refugees should stop hoping to return to Karabakh and should “settle down” in Armenia instead.