JULY 22 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — Charismatic and enigmatic, Zhirayr Sefilyan, exists on the fringe of Armenia’s fractious political spectrum. He was virtually unknown outside Armenia until an armed group of his supporters captured a police station in southern Yerevan on July 17, killed a police commander and took several people hostage.
Clashes between anti-government protesters and police followed and now Sefilyan is spoken of in foreign ministries from Russia to the United States.
The slim 49-year-old has the air of a radical outsider. A Lebanese- Armenian, Sefilyan was a young army officer during the war that Azerbaijan and Armenia-backed forces fought in the early 1990s for control of the disputed region of Nagorno-Karabakh.
As an infantry commander, Sefilyan played a key role one of the greatest victories for the Armenia-backed rebels when they captured the city of Shusha.
This battle on May 8 1992 is fixed in Armenian lore, as the point when the war for Nagorno-Karabakh turned in their favour.
Until that point they had been on the backfoot.
After taking Shusha, despite being outnumbered and out-gunned, the Armenia-backed rebels scored a number of victories and rolled back the Azerbaijani forces until a UN-brokered ceasefire in 1994 ended the war.
Afterwards, Sefilyan led veteran groups and campaigned for better pensions, housing and rights. An intense man, his political views appeared to harden over the years and he drifted more and more towards the fringe of the political spectrum. His Founding Parliament movement calls for an overhaul of politics, accusing politicians of corruption. It has never taken part in an election and its support is estimated at a few thousand.
At the movement’s core is Sefilyan. He has now been arrested three times — in 2007, 2015 and in June 2016.
In June, police arrested Sefilyan for possessing illegal weapons. This arrest triggered the hostage-taking in Yerevan on July 17 and the subsequent clashes between protesters and police.
So far one policeman has been killed when armed men captured the police station and more than 50 people have been injured in clashes between police and demonstrators.
Sefilyan, the fringe radical, has now taken centre stage in Armenia’s politics.
ENDS
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(News report from Issue No. 290, published on July 22 2016)