According to a statement released by Ara Toranian, publisher of Nouvelles d'Arménie Magazine in Paris, Schanth Voskeritchian, a leader of the Renaissance Arménienne group in France, was not allowed entry into Armenia after debarking from a flight at Yerevan’s Zvartnots Airport early this morning.

The statement reads:

Schanth Voskeritchian, one of the main figures of "Rebirth of Armenia", was arrested Thursday night on arrival at the airport in Yerevan and Friday morning expelled to France.

The political group animates by the French citizen of Armenian origin, further displayed his sympathies for the Founder Parliament organization – a radical opposition movement in Armenia struggling for human rights.

For this reason, he organized a number of conferences and several rallies in front of the Armenian Embassy. Its aims are fully democratic and peaceful. This measure of expulsion, arbitrary and discriminatory in nature, therefore seems to proceed from the crime of expressing a different opinion. It violates agreements with France on the mobility of its nationals. Moreover, it’s a violation by the Armenian authorities regarding freedom of thinking of the Diaspora and the Armenian community in France: perhaps it will now pay allegiance to power up for the right to tread the land of Armenia? In this year of the centenary of the genocide, the system, with this measure, sends a very bad signal to the different communities and offers a poor reflection of its conception of patriotism and freedom of expression. 

Ara Toranian

Publisher of Nouvelles d'Arménie Magazine