The Coalition to Stop Violence Against Women in Armenia is demanding that Suren (Surik) Khachatryan, governor of the southern Armenian marz (province) of Syunik, be immediately sacked for assaulting a woman.<\/p>\n
“The governor publicly slapping businesswoman Silva Hambardzumyan<\/strong><\/span><\/a><\/span> at Armenia Marriott Hotel Yerevan in November did not even receive public condemnation by our government. And recently, during his visit to Qajaran, Surik Khachatryan threatened eco-activist Mariam Sukhudyan<\/strong><\/span><\/a><\/span>. This would be unacceptable in any civilized society. When a man, especially a government official displays such violent behavior and the government does not at least condemn it or punish it, it is a message to all that violence against women is condoned and an accepted practice in Armenia,” reads the statement issued by the group.<\/p>\n The Coalition notes that such acts reinforce a culture of violence and encourages violence towards women, “which is so rampant among Armenian families.”<\/p>\n “We ask that the governor be sacked for such uncivilized behavior,” conclude authors of the statement who ask members of the public to sign the petition demanding Khachatryan’s dismissal at http:\/\/www.change.org\/petitions\/-117<\/strong><\/span><\/a><\/span>.<\/p>\n Over a hundred people have already signed the petition, which was launched yesterday evening.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The Coalition is demanding that Suren (Surik) Khachatryan, governor of the province of Syunik, be immediately sacked for assaulting a woman.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":149987,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tstyn_error":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/150012"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=150012"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/150012\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/149987"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=150012"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=150012"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=150012"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}