ArmInfo.The relatives of the missing and captured servicemen spent the night in the street, near the building of the RA National Assembly. Arsen Ghukasyan, a relative of the missing serviceman, told reporters.
It should be reminded that yesterday, on December 7 in the evening, the relatives of missing persons gathered at the Government building, blocked the entrances to Republic Square and demanded a meeting with the Speaker of the Armenian Parliament Alen Simonyan. They were outraged by the statements of the head of the country's legislative body to the prisoners of war. Yesterday, the police tried to detain Ghukasyan, however, the rest of the protesters did not allow this.
And today, relatives of the missing and captured servicemen are holding a protest action in front of the National Assembly building. They demand that Alen Simonyan meet with them and answer for his statements that he considers their children to be deserters.
Ghukasyan said that they talked with several MPs. And naturally, the MPs from the ruling party are trying to justify Simonyan and assure that the Speaker of the parliament meant something completely different during his statements. "Let no one answer for him. He made a statement, so let him come here and answer for it. I need to tell him a lot," Ghukasyan said.
As ArmInfo previously reported, Speaker of the National Assembly of Armenia Alen Simonyan found himself in the center of yet another scandal the day before. This time, the reason was the statements made by the speaker of the parliament regarding the prisoners of war who have been held in Azerbaijani captivity for more than a year.
So, in the video spread on the Internet,, Simonyan, referring to the issue of prisoners of war, notes that he considers the prisoners of war to be already "non-existent." At the same time, he cites Israel as an example, allegedly when terrorists hijack a plane, in Tel Aviv they do not negotiate with terrorists, but destroy the plane. However, later, in the full version of the video, the meaning of Simonyan's words about prisoners of war acquires a slightly different context. Simonyan argues his words by the fact that prisoners of war should not become tools in the hands of Azerbaijan to receive political dividends. It is also noteworthy that the speaker of the Armenian parliament categorically assures that all captured servicemen are cowards who laid down their arms and fled from the battlefield, lost their way and ended up in captivity. These statements were made against the background of the lack of a final investigation into the 44-day war.