“The police used unlawful force against demonstrators on several occasions during the protests in April and May calling on the prime minister to resign,” Amnesty said in an annual report on human rights practices around the world.
“On 12 June, police and demonstrators clashed in the center of the capital, Yerevan, during protests against the border demarcation agreement,” added the report. “Some 101 individuals were injured, including 17 police officers, and 98 people were reportedly detained.”
The clashes broke out after thousands of people led by Archbishop Bagrat Galstanian gathered on a street outside the Armenian parliament building to demand Pashinian’s resignation. Security forces hurled dozens of stun grenades into the crowd, injuring at least 83 protesters and eight journalists.
They are believed to have used Zarya-3 grenades which are designed, according to their Russian manufacturer, to “temporarily suppress mental stability of armed criminals with acoustic and light effects.” The Armenian Ministry of Health added them to its list of authorized crowd control equipment only two weeks after the crackdown. Armenian opposition figures and civil society members maintain that the use of Zarya-3 was therefore illegal.
Human Rights Watch, another Western watchdog, likewise agued in a January 2025 report: “Armenian law did not, at that time, specifically provide a basis for use of the type of sonic grenades deployed on June 12.”
The day after the crackdown, Natalia Nozadze, Amnesty International’s South Caucasus researcher, urged the Armenian authorities to “immediately and impartially investigate what happened, including allegations that the police may have used unnecessary or excessive force.”
The latest Amnesty report points out that the authorities subsequently prosecuted at least 15 protesters accused of “hooliganism” but did not charge any law-enforcement officers.