(Mirror Spectator) A mere few months after an Azeri attack blindsided Nagorno Karabagh and Armenia, resulting in 92 deaths and hundreds of injuries, a two-week hostage standoff took place, leaving three dead and dozens injured.
The situation is contained for now. The 31 members of the Daredevils of Sassoun, an armed opposition group, who had seized a police station in Yerevan and taken hostages, had demanded the resignation of President Serzh Sargsyan and the release of Zhirayr Sefilian, a Lebanese-born Armenian oppositionist who had won distinction in the Karabagh War in the 1990s.
“We surrender, as we don’t want bloodshed,” the group’s spokesperson Varuzhan Avetisyan announced when the group surrendered last week.
The message the group sent out to the public was clear: a call for “civil disobedience,” sparked by their takeover. And people keep on rallying in quest for a change, despite fears of arrest, suppression and reprisals. […]
Dr. Sergey Minasyan, a political scientist and deputy director of the Caucasus Institute, a policy think tank aimed at involving young people in the political system, believes that Armenia’s “hybrid, semi-authoritarian” political system cannot remain the same after the crisis.
“It might either lead to a change of authorities and revolutionary processes or the authorities will go down the authoritarian path, even against their will,” he said. […]
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