Reporters Covering Armenian Parliamentary Elections Attacked by Ruling Party Activists

RFE/RL’s Armenian service (Azatutyun.am) reports that its correspondent, Sisak gabrielyan, was attacked today by government loyalists in Yerevan while covering Armenia’s ongoing parliamentary elections.

The incident occurred after Gabrielyan noticed that many voters in Yerevan’s Kond neighborhood are visiting a local campaign office of the ruling Republican Party of Armenia (RPA) just before going into a nearby polling station and casting ballots there. Some of them had cash in their hands as they left the office.

“Several young people operating the office denied giving vote bribes to local residents when Gabrielyan went in and asked them for comment. They claimed that they are ‘paying wages.’ Gabrielyan saw long lists of people placed on the office desk. The lists contained their passport numbers, addresses and signatures,” Azatutyun writes.

A young RPA activist soon forced Gabrielyan to leave the office, after insisting that the journalist was “hampering our work” and “not letting us pay people’s wages.” He claimed that the money is paid to RPA “campaign workers.” Other RPA loyalists then forcibly took away Gabrielyan’s mobile phone, which was filming the conversation, and hit the reporter in the face in the process.

Another, female reporter for Araratnews.am was attacked by a group of angry women outside the RPA office in Kond when she started filming people visiting it.