By Mark Dovich
Hundreds of residents from the border village of Kirants in Armenia’s northeastern Tavush region and supporters are marching to Yerevan, as opposition to a border delimitation agreement reached with Azerbaijan last month continues to grow.
That first-of-its-kind deal to delimit, or legally define, a section of the border between Tavush and Azerbaijan’s northwestern Gazakh district is expected to involve Yerevan handing over to Baku four abandoned villages along the border. That prospect has prompted concern in Kirants and other nearby communities that people may be forced from their homes if Azerbaijan takes control of pieces of land that in some cases are located just tens of meters away.
As Kirants resident Andranik Nazaryan told CivilNet last month, the border would come close to the village’s newly built school, and parts of the local cemetery may even fall under Azerbaijani control. Meanwhile, former resident Gevorg Simonyan said his parents’ home lies on what would be the other side of the border and would presumably be lost.
The convoy, led by Archbishop Bagrat Galstanyan, who heads the Armenian church’s Tavush diocese, began the 100-mile journey on Saturday and is set to arrive in Yerevan by Thursday. The protesters, who have dubbed themselves “Tavush for the Homeland,” are demanding an immediate halt to all border delimitation work.
“This is a very natural movement that was born out of the recent, illegal processes of delimitation and demarcation in Tavush. We have no other method or way to express our disagreement, because this is not just an issue for small villages in Tavush, but for the entire country,” Galstanyan told CivilNet Monday on the road in Armenia’s eastern Gegharkunik region. He has led the church in Tavush since 2015 and previously served as the head of the church in Canada.
The march comes on the heels of weeks of localized protests in Kirants and other parts of Tavush, where scores of residents blocked one of Armenia’s main highways in an attempt to disrupt the delimitation process.
Read more: Azerbaijan border delimitation deal sparks protests in Armenia
The demonstrators’ decision to head to Yerevan came after law enforcement last week cut off outside access to Kirants and cracked down on the protests, briefly detaining nearly three dozen people. As of Monday, the road to Kirants has been reopened, though police have reportedly maintained a heavy presence in the area.
The march has attracted broad support from Armenia’s political opposition, which put forward a bill last week meant to prevent the government from handing over land to Azerbaijan. The ruling Civil Contract party, which has baselessly accused Galstanyan of working as a Russian spy, handily defeated that proposal.
The Tavush protesters’ methods echo a march to Yerevan in 2018 by Nikol Pashinyan, at the time an opposition lawmaker. That protest helped spark the revolution that catapulted Pashinyan to the prime minister’s office later that year.
Despite those parallels, Alen Simonyan, Armenia’s parliament speaker and a close ally to Pashinyan, has dismissed the possibility the marchers may attract enough popular support to threaten the government.
“In Armenia, a change in government is possible only through parliamentary elections,” Simonyan told reporters Monday.
With additional reporting by Paul Vartan Sookiasian
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