The head of the Strong Armenia opposition faction, Narek Karapetyan, during his first speech at Monday’s session of the National Assembly, touched upon the main challenges facing Armenia.

He proposed adopting an “anti-Safarov law,” which, in his opinion, will enable both ensuring peace and preserving Armenia’s demographic security.

Ramil Safarov is an Azerbaijani military man who in 2004 had axed Armenian army officer Gurgen Margaryan to death in Budapest, where both were attending English courses within the framework of a NATO program. Safarov had inflicted 16 blows with an axe on the sleeping Margaryan. A Hungarian court had sentenced him to life imprisonment, but in 2012 he was extradited to Azerbaijan, where he was released immediately and made a national hero, and is still considered a hero.

“Many of our colleagues were saying: ‘Why are you exacerbating the situation around this matter?’ Okay, let’s not exacerbate. We have a proposal: this issue can be resolved with just one law. Let’s adopt a bill according to which Azerbaijani citizens will not be able to stay in Armenia for more than 10 days, and will also not have the right to acquire real estate or land in the territory of our country. With this, we will close the matter once and for all,” Karapetyan noted.

The opposition MP added that a similar restriction applies to Armenian citizens in Turkey, which is why Armenian nationals do not have the right to buy land there.

Karapetyan stressed that the peace treaty with Azerbaijan is of key importance both for the development of Armenia and for the return of Armenians illegally held in the prisons of Baku, the Azerbaijani capital.

“However, at the same time, the possible risks must also be taken into account, not allowing the formation of a demographic presence of Azerbaijanis in Armenia,” the opposition lawmaker added.

According to the head of the Strong Armenia opposition faction, the Azerbaijani minister of education and science recently stated that the issue of “the return of Azerbaijanis to Western Azerbaijan” is of fundamental importance in the formation of a new national identity.

And as per the Armenian opposition MP, the adoption of an “anti-Safarov law” is of particular importance in this regard.