Armenian protests: Thousands rally against energy price hike

[Bosonic]

Source: BBC

Thousands of people in the Armenian capital Yerevan have taken part in renewed protests against rising electricity prices.

At least 6,000 made a second attempt to march to the presidential residence on Tuesday evening, reports said. Earlier, riot police with water cannon had dispersed a similar march and arrested about 200 demonstrators.

Protesters are opposing a decision to increase electricity prices for households by 17-22% from 1 August.

Armenia's electricity network is owned by a Russian company, which says the rise is necessary because of a fall in the value of the national currency, the BBC's South Caucasus correspondent Rayhan Demytrie says.

Read more: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-33238070

[heaven05]

1. 1%, always gouging

wish our union of out of joint fiefdoms had enough people willing to stand up and say, "no more". Guess it just hasn't become bad enough here, yet.

[Igel]

2. There's more to it than that.

Armenia is a non-Russian bastion of the "Russian World."

Whenever Putin needs to look good, there's some disturbance along the Armenian/Azerbaijan border. One of Stalin's little gifts to the world, Nagorno-Karabakh.

Armenia gets hit by rising electricity prices? It'll help keep the price of energy a bit lower in Russia and increase Russian state profits, hit by sanctions because of the Crimean annexation/occupation and what's doing in the Donbas. At the same time, it'll reinforce the place of Armenia in the Russian World because this is obviously the West's fault. It'll increase pressure on Armenia to argue in the court of public opinion (with kangaroos, wallabies, and the rest of the Australian marsupial population) against EU/NATO/US sanctions on Russia.

It may also be a nice way of locating unreliable elements in the Armenian population. Maybe enticing some advocate of a colored revolution in to provide even more grist for the PR mill that is the face of current agitprop. Or maybe even just a way of claiming there already is one, and that appropriate measures are needed to avoid the fate of places like Ukraine, Georgia, Poland, the Czech lands, and others that fell from the glorious grace and superiority that was the USSR.

[heaven05]

4. wow

thank you

[bemildred]

3. ‘Electric Yerevan’ protesters dig in as tensions flare in Armenia

Yerevan (Armenia): Hundreds of demonstrators in the Armenian capital ignored police calls to disperse on Wednesday, digging in for a new day of protests against electricity price hikes and police violence.

Braving sweltering heat in Yerevan, some 600 protesters — mainly young people — vowed to keep up the pressure on President Serzh Sarkisian’s government until it reverses a decision to raise electricity tariffs for households.

Public anger has mounted over a move by a Russian-owned company to hike power prices by more than 16 per cent from August 1 in the poor ex-Soviet country of 3.2 million, which has already been badly hit by the economic crisis in Russia.

The protests started on Friday and gained momentum after hundreds of riot police moved in early Tuesday to forcefully break up a rally using water cannons, in the most serious confrontation between protesters and police in the past few years.

http://gulfnews.com/news/europe/electric-yerevan-protesters-dig-in-as-tensions-flare-in-armenia-1.1540315