By Naira Bughadarian, Gayane Saribekian and Artak Khulian
YEREVAN (Azatutyun) — Twenty-seven supporters of Archbishop Bagrat Galstanyan were set free on Monday, June 3, three days after being arrested during an anti-government demonstration in Yerevan that ended in scuffles with riot police.
They and hundreds of other demonstrators demanding Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan’s resignation rallied outside the Armenian Foreign Ministry to demand a meeting with Foreign Minister Ararat Mirzoyan or other senior diplomats. Galstanyan said the ministry must explain its failure to respond to “humiliating” anti-Armenian statements made by Azerbaijan’s leaders.
Tensions at the scene rose after the top diplomats refused to receive Galstanyan and opposition lawmakers accompanying him, with security forces trying to push the crowd back from the ministry building. The protesters resisted, jostling with the policemen. Twenty-eight of them, including two other clergymen, were detained as a result.
One of them, Deacon Daniel Grevorgyan, was injured in the melee and taken to the hospital from a police station hours later. He said officers of a special police insulted and beat him before arresting him.
“They hit wherever they could,” Grevorgyan told reporters outside the Yerevan headquarters of Armenia’s Investigative Committee picketed by Galstanyan and his supporters on Monday morning. The protest leader demanded that the committee free the 27 other protesters remaining in detention and risking criminal charges.
