On July 15, the Regional Center for Democracy and Security (RCDS) submitted a letter to the Heads of Diplomatic Missions of the European Union Member States, other Schengen Area countries, the United Kingdom, the United States, and Canada accredited to Armenia, calling for targeted sanctions, including visa restrictions, against individuals who have systematically promoted hate speech against refugees forcibly displaced from Nagorno-Karabakh.
The letter identifies five individuals—Roman Baghdasaryan, Aram Avetisyan, Anita Harutyunyan, Tatul Asilyan, and Ara Nersisyan—whose public statements and online activity, documented by RCDS between March and June 2026, included dehumanizing rhetoric, collective stigmatization, accusations of disloyalty, and calls for the social exclusion of refugees.
RCDS notes that these individuals were selected from a broader body of documented cases because of the particularly extreme nature of their rhetoric, their public reach, and the role they have played in amplifying hostility toward the displaced population.
The letter argues that, given the continued failure of domestic institutions to ensure accountability, targeted measures by international partners would help deter the promotion of hatred and discrimination in an environment of impunity. It also includes links to RCDS’s monthly monitoring reports covering March through June 2026, which document hate speech incidents, the actors involved, source materials, and institutional responses.
RCDS continues to monitor hate speech and discriminatory narratives in Armenia and advocates for the protection, equal treatment, and democratic inclusion of refugees forcibly displaced from Nagorno-Karabakh.