Tag Archives: Armenia

Armenia imposes coronavirus lockdown

MARCH 26 (The Bulletin) — Armenia, the hardest hit country in the region by the coronavirus, has approved a series of stringent measures designed to slow the spread of the virus. All businesses, other than pharmacies and food shops, and outdoor activities have been banned unless necessary.

To support business, the government has said that it will provide grants of 150b dram ($306m).

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— This story was first published in issue 440 of the Central Asia & South Caucasus Bulletin

— Copyright the Central Asia & South Caucasus Bulletin 2020

COMMENT: Governments will be judged on how they deal with the coronavirus

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MARCH 26 (The Bulletin) — With the global impact and disruption of Covid-19 becoming apparent, it is time to see what the governments of Central Asia and the South Caucasus are made of. Their responses now will forge their reputations. They will be judged.

And, so far, reactions have been wildly different.

Turkmenistan and Tajikistan appear to be pretending that the Covid-19 pandemic is not happening. Neither country has reported cases and in Tajikistan people are being encouraged to continue with their lives as normal. Last weekend thousands of people gathered to celebrate the Persian New Year and President Emomali Rakhmon has barely broken with his official engagements. In Ashgabat, President Kurbanguly Berdymukhamedov has talked up herbal remedies to the pandemic.

Berdymukhamedov and Rakhmon may be the Central Asian versions of Nero. While Rome burnt for a week in 64AD, Emperor Nero fiddled, or at least that is the popular perception.

Elsewhere the reaction of governments to the Covid-19 pandemic has been more mainstream. Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Georgia and Armenia have all ordered lockdowns over their main cities and announced economic packages that will support business. Kyrgyzstan has applied to the IMF to help dampen its own Covid-19 epidemic which appears linked to people in the more religious and conservative south of the country returning home from the Hajj in Saudi Arabia.

In Azerbaijan, the approach has veered away from the orthodoxy, as it often does. Instead of offering the government grants and loans favoured by other countries to keep business running and to buy extra supplies and resources for its health service, Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev set up a special fund that would accept donations from companies, government agencies and the wealthy.

Never one to miss an opportunity to self-promote, top billing on the website currently goes to Aliyev and his wife, Mehriban, who is also the vice-president, for donating their salaries for 2020 to the fund. The website doesn’t say how large these donations were.

Covid-19 will shrink growth rates and possibly even economies across the region. The people of Central Asia and the South Caucasus are used to big, interventionist and, some would say, authoritarian government. Now these leaders have the opportunity to show their people that this power can be used to good effect in a national emergency.

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— This story was first published in issue 440 of the Central Asia & South Caucasus Bulletin

— Copyright the Central Asia & South Caucasus Bulletin 2020

Armenia reports 290 cases of the coronavirus

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MARCH 26 (The Bulletin) — Armenia has been the worst hit in the Central Asia and South Caucasus region with 290 confirmed cases. PM Nikol Pashinyan has ordered tough new measures to try to slow the spread of the virus, including movement restrictions. Officials said that the epicentre of the virus was a sewing factory in Yerevan.

Armenians have been told to stay inside. Cafes, restaurants and businesses have been closed.

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— This story was first published in issue 440 of the Central Asia & South Caucasus Bulletin

— Copyright the Central Asia & South Caucasus Bulletin 2020

Coronavirus spreads through Central Asia and South Caucasus

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YEREVAN/March 26 (The Bulletin) — The Covid-19 virus started to take a grip of the Central Asia and South Caucasus region with only Tajikistan and Turkmenistan not reporting any outbreaks.

Worst hit, by some margin, has been Armenia with 290 cases reported by March 26. Officials said that the source of the outbreak was a sewing factory in Yerevan and people arriving from Iran, which has had one of the worst outbreaks in the world.

From sounding blase about the impact of the coronavirus only two weeks ago, Armenian PM Nikol Pashinyan has now ordered a lockdown along the same lines as European countries, which is hitting businesses.

“Let’s look at the upcoming week as a unique opportunity to read, self-reflect and plan the future of the Armenian nation,” he said.

Neighbouring Georgia and Azerbaijan have also reported cases of the coronavirus, 77 cases and 80 cases each, but have taken different approaches to dealing with it. The Georgian government has imposed a lockdown in Tbilisi but in Azerbaijan the rules are more relaxed.

In Central Asia, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan have imposed lockdowns over their largest cities to try to contain the spread of the coronavirus, although Turkmen and Tajik officials have insisted, much to the amazement of many analysts, that they haven’t had any cases.

On March 21, Tajik towns hosted the traditional celebrations to mark the Persian new year Nowruz festival and Turkmen leader Kurbanguly Berdymukhamedov has talked up the medicinal benefits of various herbs against the coronavirus.

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— This story was first published in issue 440 of the Central Asia & South Caucasus Bulletin

— Copyright the Central Asia & South Caucasus Bulletin 2020

India wins $40m deal to supply Armenia with military radars

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MARCH 18 (The Bulletin) — India has won a $40m military supply deal to sell radars to Armenia, media reported. Media in India reported that the deal was signed on March 1 and boosts India’s military status in the region, normally considered Russia’s sphere of influence. India has been trying to boost its influence in the Central Asia and South Caucasus.

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— This story was first published in issue 440 of the Central Asia & South Caucasus Bulletin

— Copyright the Central Asia & South Caucasus Bulletin 2020

Iran criticises Armenian plan to set up embassy in Israel

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MARCH 16 (The Bulletin) — Even though it is wracked by the spread of the coronavirus, Iran’s government still found time to criticise a neighbour’s move to strengthen diplomatic ties with its arch-enemy, Israel. Armenia had said last year that it wants to open its first embassy in Tel Aviv. According to Iranian press reports, Hossein Amir Abdollahian, a senior foreign policy adviser to the Iranian Parliament speaker, criticised this decision. For Armenia, what Iran thinks about its various policy moves is important as the two neighbours have struck up a friendship over the past few years.

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— This story was first published in issue 440 of the Central Asia & South Caucasus Bulletin

— Copyright the Central Asia & South Caucasus Bulletin 2020

Azerbaijan, Armenia and Georgia report coronavirus infections

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TBILISI/March 2 2020 (The Bulletin) — Georgia, Azerbaijan and Armenia all declared their first cases of the coronavirus Covid-19 and closed their borders with Iran, a hotbed of the disease.

In Central Asia, governments blocked entry to countries that they considered high-risk and cut flights to China in a desperate attempt to keep out the coronavirus that has spread around the world from its origin in the city of Wuhan.

All the confirmed cases of Covid-19 in the South Caucasus appear to have been linked with Iran. Borders between Iran and Armenia and Azerbaijan have become increasingly porous over the past few years as trade and relations improved.

Governments in the South Caucasus appealed to the public not to panic. In an Instagram message, Georgian President Salome Zurabishvili stood on a commuter bus wearing a facemask. She appeared to be the only person wearing a mask.

“Let’s spread #SafetynotFear!” she wrote. “We need to show people that safety means remaining calm and being responsible.”

In Armenia, PM Nikol Pashinyan was more dismissive of the threat from the virus, saying that flu was a bigger killer. He also said that the health services were on top of the situation in Armenia, although there was a “shortage of masks”.

Central Asian countries have not reported any cases of the coronavirus, although analysts said that this may be because officials were not keen on reporting them or that health officials had failed to spot them.

And governments continued to try to incubate against the disease. Kazakhstan cut the number of flights to China and South Korea and stopped issuing visas to Chinese.

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— This story was first published in issue 438 of the Central Asia & South Caucasus Bulletin

— Copyright the Central Asia & South Caucasus Bulletin 2020

Lydian says court backs it in dispute with government

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FEB. 27 2020 (The Bulletin) — Toronto-based Lydian International said that a court in Armenia had dismissed eight of 10 criticisms of its operations at the Amulsar gold mine in the south of the country, including that it had mined illegally and that protected and near-extinct animal species had been found on its site. Lydian has been stopped since June 2018 from accessing the mine by protesters who have blocked the access road. They have complained that Lydian’s operations were ruining the environment, a standpoint that the Armenian mining inspection body agreed with in August 2018. Lydian said the rulings were politically motivated at the time.

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— This story was first published in issue 438 of the Central Asia & South Caucasus Bulletin

— Copyright the Central Asia & South Caucasus Bulletin 2020

Top Armenian judge sues Pashinyan for defamation

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FEB. 27 2020 (The Bulletin) — One of the most senior judges in Armenia, Hrayr Tovmasyan, who is head of the Constitutional Court, said that he had filed a defamation lawsuit against Armenian PM Nikol Pashinyan. The lawsuit is just the latest twist in the fight between the Constitutional Court judges and Mr Pashinyan. He has accused them of undermining reforms that a revolution in 2018 swept in and has ordered them to resign, which they have refused. A referendum in April will potentially give Mr Pashinyan the power to sack the judges.
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— This story was first published in issue 438 of the Central Asia & South Caucasus Bulletin

— Copyright the Central Asia & South Caucasus Bulletin 2020

Former Armenian president Sargsyan goes on trial for corruption

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YEREVAN/Feb. 25 2020 (The Bulletin) – A court in Yerevan started hearing the corruption trial of Serzh Sargsyan, Armenia’s president for 10 years and, until he was overthrown in a revolution in April 2018, the most powerful man in the country.

Wearing his trademark dark suit and dark shirt, but no tie, Mr Sargsyan, 65, walked into the court to face charges of stealing 489m drams ($1m) during a government scheme in 2013 to subsidise diesel fuel. He has denied the charges and said that they are politically motivated.

Outside the court, he had briefly addressed his supporters through a loudspeaker.

“There are still judges in Armenia for whom justice is above everything,” he said.

He then referenced Nagorno-Karabakh, the mountainous region wedged between Azerbaijan and Armenia that is disputed between the two neighbours. A war that lasted until 1994 killed thousands of people and handed an Armenia-backed militia control of the region.

Mr Sarsgyan, a native of Nagorno-Karabakh and a veteran of the war, referenced the dispute to undermine the credibility of Nikol Pashinyan, Armenia’s PM. Mr Pashinyan has been accused of being soft on the issue and for coming up second in a rare debate on Nagorno-Karabakh at the Munich Security Conference in February.

A row between the two men has become increasingly personal and Mr Sargsyan has said that he is being prosecuted out of personal spite from Mr Pashinyan.

Since Mr Pashinyan became PM after a revolution in 2018, overthrowing Mr Sargsyan, several senior members of former governments have gone on trial for corruption. This has included Mr Sargsyan’s predecessor as president Robert Kocharyan, and several members of his government. It was thought that Mr Sargsyan would escape charges because he had resigned, opting not to use the army to confront protesters. This appeared to change at the end of last year after he spoke out against the government.

Mr Pashinyan has countered by saying that he is honour-bound to carry through the principles of the revolution which means persecuting those suspected of corruption.

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— This story was first published in issue 438 of the Central Asia & South Caucasus Bulletin