YEREVAN (Azatutyun.am) — Riot police fired stun grenades outside the Armenian parliament on Wednesday, June 13, as they clashed with protesters continuing to demand Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan’s resignation.
The protest leader, Archbishop Bagrat Galstanyan, rallied thousands of supporters on a street in Yerevan adjacent to the parliament building where Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan and members of his government answered questions from lawmakers amid unprecedented security measures taken in and around chamber.
Addressing the crowd before the session, Galstanyan demanded that Pashinyan meet him to discuss “the terms of his peaceful departure.” He again accused Pashinyan of misrule and “surrender of the homeland,” urging the protesters to prevent him from leaving the building.
“The man who failed the state must not be able to freely go to work, cynically ignore the pain caused to our people because of him,” declared Galstanyan. He repeatedly urged more people to join the protests in the following hours.
Pashinyan rejected the demands for his resignation and lambasted Armenia’s opposition groups supporting the protest movement sparked by his territorial concessions to Azerbaijan.
The protesters did not manage to surround the vast compound guarded by scores of police officers from across Armenia as well as armed officers of the National Security Service. Galstanyan. At least 60 of them were detained by the police before tensions at the protest site rose dramatically in the evening.
