Epress.am News from Armenia
Two professors of the Shirak State University, Hovhannes Khorikyan and Gagik Hambaryan, were today fired unexpectedly by Republican rector Sahak Muradyan. In an interview with Epress.am, history professor Hovhannes Khorikyan alleged that the two were sacked for speaking out against “past and current atrocities committed by the rector.”
According to the official document, Sahakyan’s decision to terminate the professors was based on articles 113.1.6 (employee’s non‐performance or incomplete performance of duties) and 122.2 (loss of confidence toward the employee) of the Armenian Labor Code.
“I did not pick up the termination letter and only took a picture of it. I have been sacked unfairly and without any basis,” Khorikyan said.
Recall, Khorikyan had told us earlier that the rector had thrown away 15 tons of books from the university library, deeming them as 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 had claimed.
One day before the termination, Khorikyan told us today, the university was visited by the head of the Armenian Parliament’s Standing Committee on Science, Education, Culture, Youth and Sport Vardan Bostanjyan: “The rector was naturally absent; he always is when anything important happens. During the meeting, Bostanjyan agreed that our complaints were completely justified, that there had been violations of the university regulations and that the education quality of the university has been going down.”
The following day, Khorikyan added, the rector came and fired him and Hambaryan “to shop that he is still powerful.”
Note, Khorikyan went on a one-day hunger strike last February to, as he himself put it, invite the attention of the public to the atrocities committed by rector Sahak Minasyan.
Back in September 2017, Khorikyan and 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 professors claimed.