Border residents overnight on highway to protest Armenia’s

PanARMENIAN.Net - Residents of Kirants continue to express outrage over the Armenian government’s decision to cede part of the border village in Armenia’s northern Tavush province to Azerbaijan. They spent the night on a highway connecting the country to neighboring Georgia.

The area is one of four border territories which Yerevan has controversially agreed to give up as part of what it calls a demarcation of local sections of the Armenian-Azerbaijani border. Unlike several other Tavush villages affected by the territorial concession, Kirants would lose not only agricultural land but also some of its houses and a key bridge connecting it to the rest of the country. This is why it has been the epicenter of protests in Tavush against the planned land handover.

The demarcation process in and around Kirants was suspended on May 7 as the protest leader, Archbishop Bagrat Galstanyan, and his supporters marched to Yerevan to demand Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan’s resignation. Pashinyan’s government announced its resumption on Wednesday night following another border protocol signed by deputy prime ministers of the two South Caucasus states. It said Baku will gain control of the four areas, including “the most sensitive Kirants section,” even though “some details there still require further clarification.”

A hundred or so angry residents of Kirants gathered on Thursday, May 16 to express outrage at the announcement. They said the government has not addressed their concerns or accepted any of their proposals regarding the handover.

“The Azerbaijani border will cut through the village,” one of them told reporters, according to RFE/RL’s Armenian service. “Many village house and land holdings will fall under Azerbaijani control.”

The protesters dismissed a government pledge to compensate those villagers who will lose their properties as a result of the controversial border demarcation. “I don’t want their compensation,” said one woman.

The protesters also rejected a government offer to meet with their representatives in Ijevan, the administrative center of Tavush, before blocking the nearby highway leading to the Georgian border. They demanded that government officials visit Kirants and talk to them in the presence of journalists.

In Yerevan, Pashinyan described as a “great success” the border deal with Azerbaijan based on the Armenian territorial concessions.