Epress.am News from Armenia
On Friday, April 15, Arusyak Ayvazyan, a Garni resident who participated in the villagers' recent protest actions against a construction project that envisages transfer of water from Azat River to several villages in Ararat province, was threatened by an anonymous caller that her son would be “taken to Karabakh.”
Speaking to Epress.am, Ayvazyan said that another Garni villager, Armen, received phone call from a person who claimed he was an employee of a travel agency and said that he “needed a taxi.”
“Armen found it suspicious that someone would call for a car from Garni when there are so many taxis in [Yerevan]. When [Armen] told me that someone named Karen had called him, we called this guy back, thinking that he could have been a journalist. I hung up the phone when I realized he was a stranger; however, he called back a few moments later and said; ‘Tell your son to get ready: we’re coming to take him to Karabakh to fight.’ I replied that he had no authority to say such things, and that appropriate authorities would have called if it were necessary. I told [the caller] he was a liar, after which he began to rain down ugly curses on me and even told Armen they'd 'meet soon.'”
The woman filed a police report immediately after the conversation; she claims the phone call from the stranger is somehow connected with the incident that occurred during the Garni villagers' April 13 protest action when the chairman of the Armenian State Water Resources Committee Aram Harutyunyan ripped the protesters' poster that demanded the resignation of Prime Minister Hovik Abrahamyan, in response to which a villager allegedly threatened to 'break the jaw” of the official.