[17-18 October 1987]
Reports of demonstrations in Yerevan and Clashes in Mountainous Karabagh
According to Associated Press reports published in the Boston Globe, Sunday, October 18, 3,000 Armenians demonstrated Saturday, October 17 in Yerevan demanding the authorities to close a chemical plant and the Metzamor nuclear power station because of their polluting effects on the environment.
The following day, Sunday, October 18, as reported in the Boston Globe of Monday, October 19, 1,000 Armenians participated in another demonstration calling for Armenian national rights in Karabagh.
According to Moscow-based sources, the Globe said, police tried to prevent the Saturday protest but took no action to stop it once the march was underway. Sergei Grigoryants, the editor of the Moscow-based Glasnost magazine, said he obtained his information from a telephone call from Soviet Armenia.
According to Grigoryants, the Globe said, the Sunday demonstration was interrupted by police officers who, swinging nightsticks and breaking placards which bore Gorbachev’s picture, dispersed the demonstrators.
News sources told Asbarez [the L.A. Armenian daily] that the Saturday demonstrators against the environmental danger were led by Armenian writers such as Silva Kaputikian, Zori Balayan and Maro Margarian and leaders from the National Survival organization. The march originated at the Opera Plaza after speakers, mainly intellectuals, addressed the crowd.
The Sunday demonstrations began across from the “Marshal Bagramian” metro stop. The demonstrators demanded the annexation of Nakhichevan and Mountainous Karabagh to Armenia, and carried placards to that effect. The police tried to physically prevent the march and after a few incidents, dispersed the demonstrators.
The same day, it was reported that clashes took place between Armenian and Tatar villagers in Chardakhlu, in the Karabagh region of Azerbaijan.
[Asbarez, October 24, 1987]
The Karabagh File, Documents and Facts, 1918-1988, First Edition, Cambridge Toronto 1988, by the ZORYAN INSTITUTE, edited by: Gerard J. LIBARIDIAN, pp. 88-89.
