Relatives of Armenian soldiers who died in the 2020 Artsakh war have been holding a sit-in since yesterday in front of the Investigative Committee (IC) office in Yerevan demanding to know why policemen who forcibly removed people who had gathered at Yerevan’s Yerablur Military Pantheon to protest the arrival of Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan last September haven’t been prosecuted.

Pashinyan visited the cemetery on September 21, 2022 to mark the 31st anniversary Armenia’s independence and to lay flowers at the graves of fallen Armenian soldiers and politicians.

After Pashinyan left, the protesters, mostly relatives of soldiers who died in the 2020 Artsakh war and those still missing, removed the flowers Pashinyan had placed at a memorial commemorating Armenia’s war dead.

Vahid Sahakyan, one of the protesters, told Hetq the relatives had given the Investigative Committee twenty-four hours to respond.

No IC official has yet met with the protesters.

Yerevan police have blocked the road leading to the protest site.

Update: The Investigative Committee, in a statement released today, claimed that the protesters had rejected a proposal to submit their questions in writing, following accepted procedure, and have refused to attend meetings designed to investigate what took place last September.