Market Owners Threaten Yerevan Vendors: ‘Don’t You Dare Go to a Protest’

“Monday morning at 10 am, there’s going to be an even bigger rally,” said a Yerevan retailer, speaking to Epress.am, one among many gathered in front of the government building today protesting the increased fees on imported goods.

“We’re going to organize it, let everyone know, there’ll be lots of people that day, that day, all the markets will shut down, no one will have anything to fear, they’ll come,” said one of the vendors.

According to the demonstrators, all those whom they’ve approached — state bodies, ministries — on the issue of the fees of importing goods having doubled nearly overnight have said they’re unaware that that happened.

“But today I called the Turkish company Karlen Tour, which is one of the largest [shipping] companies, which is engaged in importing goods into Armenia from Turkey, they told me that it’s $8 [per 1kg of imported goods], but yesterday that Karlen said on TV that there’s no such thing. They’re doing that so people don’t come out and complain… but it can’t go on like this,” said a few protestors.

Retailers described how the owners of all the markets in Yerevan said if anyone came out onto the streets to protest, they’ll be deprived of a stall.

“The owners of Malatia and Rossia [markets] are scaring us, they’re saying, take your papers, throw them out, don’t you dare go to a protest. How much can you scare people, what country is that that they’re scaring us. This isn’t just the vendors’ problem, people are going to come to the market and they’ll see that prices have increased, because it costs us twice as much to bring [goods],” said one woman.

“They’re [forcing] Armenians to emigrate, it’s a ‘white massacre’, they’re doing it so people won’t have a source of income, they’ll leave here [Armenia], these people are barely making money for food, that too won’t be, but how shall we live, they want us to live, give everything to them, to the oligarchs, so they can go around how they want. What’s there to be afraid of, why are people afraid, tomorrow, if they’re afraid today, they’ll come and snatch their houses from their hands,” said a number of demonstrators.