Independent MPs have addressed the parliamentary speaker with the request to set up an ethics committee to consider the statement that Nikol Pashinyan’s [Prime Minister of Armenia] brother-in-law Hrachya Hakobyan made about the residents of Syunik Province. This is what independent deputy of the National Assembly of Armenia Anna Grigoryan told reporters in parliament today.

Grigoryan clarified that Hakobyan has violated a number of laws and that there hasn’t been any response to this. She recalled that an ethics committee was set up when a representative of the opposition Prosperous Armenia faction made a disrespectful statement about the Armenian people and asked why an ethics committee can’t be set up now. “In essence, there are people whom the authorities prefer and don’t prefer in Syunik Province, and everything depends on the political views of a particular person,” she added.

After Pashinyan’s visit to Syunik Province, Hakobyan supported the rough treatment by law-enforcement authorities and declared the following: “Of course, they [the residents of Syunik Province who used swear words against Nikol Pashinyan] had to be apprehended by being humiliated.”