It became known last night that Arayik Harutyunyan had sent his thugs to talk to local activist Yuri Musaelyan, whom they had brutally beaten in front of his children. Musaelyan himself soon went live on social media, describing what had happened and showing the marks of beating on his face. Well-known Armenian blogger Roman Baghdasaryan is outraged: “They tried to kill a critic of the authorities in ‘Artsakh’ (the quotation marks are editorial). The victim says that he was beaten by thugs from Arayik Harutyunyan’s group. Here we are, thinking that the ‘Artsakh’ authorities are thinking about the blockade… But they are busy beating up their own people… They tried to kill a man in front of a child—you are worse than fascists! Disgraceful!”
Theoretically, this is an internal “showdown” between Arayik Harutyunyan and his people. The arrival of Ruben Vardanyan has understandably aggravated the “intra-Khankendi” frictions: the Moscow “stool pigeon” is actively taking over the authority and the business of plundering the mines, which makes the local fat cats unhappy.
But much more importantly, whatever Arayik Harutyunyan’s inner circle is driven by, the beating of Yuri Mikayelyan clearly shows that the self-proclaimed criminal junta of Ruben Vardanyan and Arayik Harutyunyan has turned to open terror against the local population with the full connivance of the “peacekeepers”. These people are, in case anyone forgot, our citizens. And these actions of the criminal gang operating in Khankendi give Azerbaijan all grounds to intervene and restore order.
All the more so that we have both the rights and the tools for such intervention.
