Abazian, who also headed a state commission on missing persons, was sacked early on Wednesday following the NSS’s failure to swiftly arrest a billionaire businessman critical of Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian.
The several dozen parents and other relatives took to the streets of the Armenian capital shortly after the announcement of his removal. They fear that Abazian’s successor, who has not yet been named by Pashinian, will not try as hard to find out the whereabouts of their loved ones. They blocked Marshal Bagramian Avenue in the city center to demand Abazian’s reinstatement.
“Our experience of the last five years has shown that apart from Abazian and the NSS, nobody has dealt with the problem,” one of the protesters, Arsen Ghukasian, told reporters.
The protesters were not convinced by Pashinian’s public assurances that the change of the NSS chief “will change nothing” in Armenian government efforts to ascertain the soldiers’ fate. They only dropped their original demand. According to Ghukasian, they will now settle for a meeting with the acting NSS chief, Andranik Simonian.
The NSS declined to say whether Simonian is ready to talk to them. No government officials or pro-government lawmakers visited the protesters as of Thursday evening.
The families of missing soldiers staged similar protests in Yerevan in December. Abazian and other senior law-enforcement officials answered their questions at a lengthy meeting held in the Armenian parliament in January.
According to the Armenian authorities, 191 Armenian soldiers and civilians went missing during the 2020 war and remain unaccounted for. Some of their families still hope that their loved ones are alive.