History Professor in Shirak Goes on Hunger Strike to Fight Rector’s ‘Atrocities’

Hovhannes Khorikyan, a history and philosophy professor at the Shirak State University, has started an open-ended hunger strike to, as he himself puts it, invite the attention of the public to the atrocities committed by rector Sahak Minasyan. The latter, incidentally, has affiliations with Armenia’s ruling Republican Party and held the post of the head of the Local Department of Education in Shirak Province for 20 years before being appointed the university’s rector.

Back in September 2017, Khorikyan and another employee of the university, Kachik Hambaryan, wrote an open letter to president Serzh Sargsyan, in which they “described in detail how Minasyan is ruining the university.”

“Not only the educational process is utterly disrupted but in his first year as rector, [Minasyan] has also managed to squander the entire budget of the university – around 500 million drams,” the professor says.

According to Khorikyan, the rector has gone so far as to throw away 15 tons of books from the library, deeming them to be harmful to health without having arranged a proper expert examination. “He did this to simply empty the bookshelves and subsequently open a bookstore at the university,” the professor claims.

The university’s faculty of social sciences and law is scheduled to elect a dean on February 12; according to the institution’s regulations, a dean is to be elected and appointed by the board of a corresponding faculty. “However, our rector, who thinks he is above the law, has arbitrarily and capriciously moved the election to the executive board of the university, which he will be able to tamper with. The university rules and regulations are nothing but a piece of paper to him.”

The professors have appealed to minister of education and science Levon Mkrtchyan with a request to interfere and cancel the election of the faculty dean by the executive board.

Note, following the September open letter, the relevant education ministry committee carried out a probe into the  professors’ allegations and, according to Khorikyan, “they were able to confirm that our complaints were fully  justified but took no further measures to address them.”