Members of the Armenian Youth Federation Australia (AYF-AU) and the Armenian Students Association (ASA) staged a silent protest in front of the Embassy of Belarus in Canberra against the arrest of Russian-Israeli blogger,Alexander Lapshin.
[br]The Armenian National Committee of Australia (ANC-AU) released a statement announcing the action (click here), after condemning the government of Belarus for accepting Azerbaijans demand for Lapshin’s extradition facing charges of visiting the Republic of Nagorno Karabakh and reporting on injustices in Baku.
“The Armenian National Committee of Australia calls on the Australian government, or as well as all human rights and civil liberty organizations in Australia and internationally,to join us in condemning this blatant act of the Azerbaijani dictatorship in attempting to ‘export’ its repression of freedom of speech,” read the ANC-AU statement.
The Silent Protest featured around 20 young Armenian-Australians standing together while demonstrating the lack of free speech with taped mouths and an AYF-AU member depicting the arrested Lapshin. They held signs calling for ‘democracy over dictatorship’, or ‘expression not repression’ and calling on Belarus President Alexander Lukashenko to ‘not achieve Azerbaijan’s dirty work’.
Aram Tufenkjian of AYF-AU’s Central Executive during the protest stated that “Azerbaijan’s is one of the world’s biggest jailers of journalists,and that is the case again after Mr. Lapshin traveled to Nagorno-Karabakh.”
Source: tert.am