Armenia has agreed to surrender territory it has controlled since the 1990s and has begun the process of drawing a new border in an effort to reach an elusive peace deal with Baku and avoid another bloody conflict.
After the collapse of the Soviet Union, these two South Caucasus countries have been in conflict for a long time over disputed territory, and primarily over Nagorno-Karabakh.
“I came here today because I want to leave a beautiful country for our children… We can’t continue to do this, keep giving away our lands,” 77-year-old Edikas Nikochosyan, one of the protest participants, told AFP news agency.
Demonstrators began marching towards the capital after protests six days ago in Armenia’s northeastern Tavush region, where the government agreed to hand over part of the territory.
Members of opposition parties and organizations representing refugees from Nagorno-Karabakh joined the thousands of people who gathered in front of the government building in Yerevan’s Republic Square.
Azerbaijan captured Nagorno-Karabakh last year in a surprise military operation that drove nearly all of the region’s 100,000 local Armenians to flee.
Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan has since agreed to hand over four Azerbaijani villages in the Tavush region that were captured by Armenian forces at the end of the last century.
According to him, this would be the first step towards a peace agreement with Baku and Yerevan would not cede any of its “sovereign” territory.
But the concession fueled weeks of protests, with protesters blocking major roads in an effort to force Pashinyan to reverse course.
“Nikol (Pashinyan) is plowing by exchanging our lands, making money. We must remove him from this post as soon as possible,” said seventy-year-old protester Norik Shahramanjan.
“I fought for Arcach until the end, but we lost it,” said Tigran Balasanyan, 43, after Armenian separatists named Nagorno-Karabakh, which the international community has recognized as part of Azerbaijan.
“I don’t want to lose Armenia either. We cannot allow a weak government to divide Armenia,” he said.
