YEREVAN, JUNE 22, ARMENPRESS. Human Rights Defender of Armenia Arman Tatoyan is in contact with his Georgian counterpart, Public Defender Nino Lomjaria over the ongoing rallies and Police operations in Tbilisi.

“My counterpart today informed me that according to their data there is an Armenian citizen among the arrested people. He will stay in administrative detention for 13 days for failure to obey the lawful order of the police officer. The personal contacts of the detainee’s relative have been transferred to us, and we will also be in touch with him”, the Armenian Ombudsman said.

He thanked his Georgian counterpart for the cooperation and effective joint work. “I wish to our Georgian friends that the current situation in the country will be solved quickly and peacefully”, Arman Tatoyan said.

Earlier the Armenian foreign ministry informed that there is an Armenian citizen among the people arrested in Georgia during the ongoing clashes. Armenian citizen Minas Minasyan, born in 1995, studies in Tbilisi.

“The Armenian Embassy in Georgia is constant contact with the Georgian law enforcement agencies, and the Embassy diplomats will soon visit Minas Minasyan”, the Embassy said.

On June 20, several thousand protesters converged on the parliament in downtown Tbilisi, demanding the resignation of the interior minister and the parliament’s speaker, and tried to storm the building. In response, police used tear gas, rubber bullets and water cannons to disperse the demonstrators. According to Georgian media, dozens were detained, 240 people suffered injuries.

The protests were sparked by an uproar over a Russian State Duma delegation’s participation in the 26th session of the Inter-parliamentary Assembly on Orthodoxy (IAO). On Thursday morning, IAO President Gavrilov opened the session in the Georgian parliament building. Opposition lawmakers were outraged by the fact that Gavrilov addressed the event’s participants from the parliament speaker’s seat. In protest, they did not allow the IAO session to continue.

Edited and translated by Aneta Harutyunyan