YEREVAN. – The demonstrators, led by opposition Civil Contract Party member and National Assembly (NA) of Armenia “Way Out” (Yelk) Faction head Nikol Pashinyan, on Monday clashed—near a police station—with a police chain that was attempting to stop the protesters’ march in capital city Yerevan.
The demonstrators, however, broke through the police chain and continued their march in downtown Yerevan.
“Don’t close our way because we’re going to open [it],” Pashinyan stated. “Don’t close because this is our homeland.”
As reported earlier, Nikol Pashinyan on Sunday had called on people to block Yerevan’s bridges, streets, and subway on Monday.
On March 31, the Civil Contract Party, led by Pashinyan, had started a protest march through several towns of Armenia—and whose objective is to prevent the third term in office by ex-President Serzh Sargsyan; but this time as the next likely Prime Minister—and which concluded on April 13, with a rally at Liberty Square in downtown Yerevan, and then with a round-the-clock sit-in at France Square.
Also, the protesters had announced that they plan to block the NA building as well as the houses of the ruling Republican Party of Armenia (RPA) MPs on Tuesday, so as not to enable them to take part in the next PM’s election at the special parliamentary session on that day, and during which the RPA will nominate Sargsyan as candidate for the next PM.
- Pashinyan: If parliament session is somewhere else, we will take Yerevan under our control (PHOTOS)
- Opposition demonstrators block several downtown Yerevan streets (PHOTOS)
- Opposition protesters block Baghramyan Avenue in Yerevan, police form human chain
- Armenia Police urge opposition leader MP, supporters to refrain from unlawful actions
