Anti-Development Protest Gets Heated in Armenia

17 Feb­ru­ary 2012

Police used force on Fri­day against more than a dozen envi­ron­men­tal activists who were camped in a pub­lic park in down­town Yere­van to protest against the con­struc­tion of sev­er­al shops there.

The Yere­van munic­i­pal­i­ty autho­rized the con­struc­tion after order­ing the shop own­ers to relo­cate their busi­ness­es from large kiosks that stood on a major street in the city cen­ter until last month. They were dis­man­tled along with hun­dreds of side­walk kiosks across the Armen­ian cap­i­tal.

Envi­ron­ment pro­tec­tion and oth­er civic groups con­demned the choice of a new loca­tion for the shops, say­ing that it would inflict fur­ther dam­age on Yerevan’s green areas that have shrunk sig­nif­i­cant­ly over the past decade. They also say that the munic­i­pal admin­is­tra­tion failed to fol­low all legal pro­ce­dures before issu­ing the con­struc­tion per­mit.

Dozens of most­ly young activists have staged dai­ly sit-ins in the park since Mon­day, pre­vent­ing the con­struc­tion from going ahead. Their rep­re­sen­ta­tives met with Yere­van May­or Taron Markar­i­an ear­li­er this week to demand that he scrap the con­tro­ver­sial deci­sion. Markar­i­an reject­ed the demand.

Eye­wit­ness­es said riot police pushed a group of pro­test­ers away from the con­struc­tion site to allow work­ers to resume their work on Fri­day morn­ing. The site was cor­doned off by police offi­cers as the activists con­tin­ued to demon­strate near­by.

The pro­test­ers stood in the way of a heavy truck car­ry­ing con­crete for the builders. The truck dri­ver had to turn away and leave the scene after two young men lay on the ground in front of the vehi­cle.

The chief of Yerevan’s police depart­ment, Ners­es Nazar­i­an, arrived at the scene in the after­noon to urge the pro­test­ers not to inter­fere with the shop con­struc­tion. The head of the municipality’s legal depart­ment, Zaven Arake­lian, also addressed them, show­ing copies of doc­u­ments pur­port­ed­ly prov­ing the legal­i­ty of the con­struc­tion.

“All those deci­sions were made in breach of the law,” said Sona Ayvaz­ian, an anti-cor­rup­tion cam­paign­er also tak­ing part in the protest. “There­fore, they can­not be deemed legal.”

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