(Yerevan) Thousands of Armenians organized a new rally against Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian on Thursday, the day after clashes between anti-government demonstrators and the police which left more than 100 injured.
Protests have been taking place in Yerevan since April, when authorities agreed to return to rival Azerbaijan territories that Armenia had controlled since the 1990s.
Around 4,000 people gathered in front of the Parliament building in Yerevan for a rally led by Archbishop Bagrat Galstanian, an AFP journalist noted.
“The authorities are guilty of leading this country into disaster,” Mr. Galstanian told the crowd.
“We showed yesterday that we are not afraid and that our movement will persist,” he added, promising to force Mr. Pashinian to resign.
The police intervened after some demonstrators tried to cross a police cordon, according to an AFP journalist present at the scene.
The Interior Ministry said 98 protesters were arrested for disobeying police orders, adding that six officers were among the injured.
Mr. Galstanian temporarily left his clerical post to run for prime minister, although he is ineligible because of his dual Armenian-Canadian citizenship.
With opposition parties lacking enough seats to launch impeachment proceedings, Mr. Pashinian’s power has remained unshakeable until now.
Last month, Armenia returned to Azerbaijan four border villages that it had seized decades earlier and which Mr. Pashinian defended as part of efforts to secure peace with Azerbaijan.
The area returned by Armenia is strategic for this landlocked country, because it controls sections of a vital highway to Georgia.
Armenian residents of neighboring towns say the measure cuts them off from the rest of the country and accuse Mr. Pashinian of ceding territory without getting anything in return.
Armenia and Azerbaijan have fought two wars over control of the Nagorno-Karabakh region, an Armenian enclave within Azerbaijan.
The first, in the 1990s, was won by Armenia.
Azerbaijan then regained control of part of this region in the fall of 2020, before reconquering the entirety after a lightning offensive in September 2023, driving out the Armenian separatists who had ruled it for three decades.
