Longtime Armenian political activist Shant Harutyunyan has decided to form a new political party that will field candidates in the snap parliamentary elections scheduled for June.

Harutyunyan, in a Facebook post today, said that he needed 300 supporters to register for the new National Unity Initiative party.

A court in Armenia shut down Harutyunyan’s Tseghakron party in 2004.

In November 2013, Harutyunyan and others were arrested in Yerevan for organizing a march in Yerevan entitled “The Revolution of Values”.

38 protesters were arrested on that day when they set off fireworks as they made their way from Liberty Square to the Presidential Palace. Fourteen of the 38 were formally arrested on charges of hooliganism, and twelve were found guilty.

Harutyunyan was sentenced to six years imprisonment and freed in 2018 under a general amnesty.