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8 February 2017

Trend

A protest action is being held in front of the Embassy of Belarus in Yerevan, Armenia, against Minsk’s decision to extradite blogger Alexander Lapshin to Baku, aysor.am news website reports.

Armenian MPs are also taking part in the protest action, according to the website.

MP Nikol Pashinyan has tried to pass a statement to the Belarusian envoy which suggested him to leave the territory of Armenia in the shortest time possible.

Alexander Lapshin is a citizen of several countries and has had a criminal conspiracy with Armenians living in the occupied Azerbaijani territories. He also illegally visited these territories.

Lapshin is accused of violating Azerbaijani laws on state border in April 2011 and October 2012. In order to promote the illegal regime created in the Azerbaijani territories occupied by Armenia, Lapshin presented Azerbaijan’s Nagorno-Karabakh as an “independent state” on his social media account, and supporting the “independence” of the unrecognized regime he made public incitements aimed at violating Azerbaijan’s territorial integrity on April 6 and June 29, 2016.

The conflict between the two South Caucasus countries began in 1988 when Armenia made territorial claims against Azerbaijan. As a result of the ensuing war, in 1992 Armenian armed forces occupied 20 percent of Azerbaijan, including the Nagorno-Karabakh region and seven surrounding districts. The 1994 ceasefire agreement was followed by peace negotiations.

Armenia has not yet implemented four UN Security Council resolutions on withdrawal of its armed forces from the Nagorno-Karabakh and the surrounding districts.