The Executive Body of the Republican Party of Armenia has issued the following statement:

“The authorities have extended the state of emergency in Armenia amid the growing coronavirus pandemic in the country and the deepening crisis in the healthcare, social and economic sectors and are only serving this to ensure political persecutions under the legal veil.

In this situation, fundamental human rights and freedoms are being restricted and violated, starting from the right to freedom of expression and ending with the rights to freedom of assemblies and freedom of movement.

The obsession to extend the term of their own authoritarian power has become overriding for the authorities, not the future of the people and state, and evidence of this is the recent wave of political persecutions.

Armenia is now in not only a pandemic, but also a political crisis.

Taking into consideration the aforementioned circumstances, the Republican Party of Armenia:

-strictly condemns the dictatorial working style that continues to this day that keeps state, political and public figures under repression of the state;

-states that, by doing this, the authorities are dealing a blow to the security of Armenia and Artsakh and making the two countries vulnerable to external threats;

-reaffirms that the only non-turbulent way out of this situation is the resignation of the impotent government of Nikol Pashinyan and ensuring of active and professional transitional governance (through consolidation of the potential of the nation) in order to help the country get out of the crisis until snap parliamentary elections;

-urges the diplomatic missions accredited to Armenia and international human rights organizations to give a proper evaluation of the crisis in Armenia, particularly in the context of the international commitments that the country has assumed in the field of democracy;

-considers it its duty to do everything possible to inform the international partners of the Republican Party of Armenia about this declaration.”