YEREVAN. – Avetis Avetisyan, Alek Poghosyan, and Misak Arakelyan—who are among those arrested during the events that occurred on November 5, 2013 in Armenia’s capital city Yerevan—declared a hunger strike since Wednesday.     

But they have not yet been moved to a separate cell, Avetisyan’s wife told Armenian News-NEWS.am.

They demand that the ban on their relatives’ visits be lifted and the psychological pressures and the persecutions against their families be ended.   

“The Justice Ministry informed that it is unaware of this hunger strike, whereas a person from the Ombudsman’s Office already visited them on this matter,” the woman added.    

The United National Initiative leader and activist Shant Harutyunyan who heads a nationalist party, and who had announced about starting a revolution, on November 5, 2013—and with close to several dozen supporters wearing Guy Fawkes “Anonymous masks”—had started a march toward the Presidential Palace, but the police had stopped the march.

As a result, there was a scuffle, and the police detained 38 activists, including Harutyunyan and his son. Subsequently, 20 of them, including Harutyunyan, were arrested, charges were laid against six of them and, consequently, they were incarcerated. As a result of the melee, sixteen people, including police officers and the Armenian News-NEWS.am reporter, were injured.

Shant Harutyunyan was charged with violence against a representative—i.e., the police—of the authorities, and on Friday he ended his sixteen-day hunger strike.