Helsinki Citizens’ Assembly-Vanadzor

In the frame of discussion on the topic ″Constitutional Court crisis: will it be solved by terminating the powers of CC President and members?″ held in Media Center on February 6, 2020, Helsinki Citizens’ Assembly-Vanadzor Chairman Artur Sakunts touched upon former NSS Director A. Vanetsyan’s announcements regarding the RA civil society.  

Let us remind that during the closed meeting with chief editors of  print media, Vanetsyan mentioned that he was going to open ″Motherland″ development foundation, which would aim at supporting the role of civil society. According to Vanetsyan, this sector has been left open and ″the field is occupied by foreign-funded NGOs which, naturally, meet foreign interests″.  HCA Vanadzor Chairman Artur Sakunts mentioned, ″If Mr. Vanetsyan is planning to implement projects in Armenia together with Chechnya’s nefarious dictator, where people are made to publicly apologize for criticizing words regarding Kadirov, and if he thinks that he is going to try and form civil society with these values, then I am announcing right now that Vanetsyan is acting against the security of the state″.

He then continued, ″Mr. Vanetsyan has not probed into his arguments to the extent that he forgets to structure his wording logically. And he brings forth a very unique argument that it is acceptable even if it is sent from Europe, United States or Russia, as long as the sender’s nationality is Armenian. This is the first time I have heard, excuse my wording, such an illiterate speech, where the source of money and finance is determined by our ethnicity and not legality of the source of financial means. And if he thinks, that financial means from a corrupt state as RF can be considered legal, he also deals with the Criminal Code from the point of view of using money of criminal origin″. 

In the end, A. Sakunts stressed, ″We act exclusively based on the principles of RA as a democratic sovereign state governed by the rule of law, all the questions we raise are aimed at securing democratic, legal, sovereign and social state principles and concern human rights, the protection of which is undertaken by the Republic of Armenia″.

Photo by Media Center

Video  

Full video of the discussion