Armenia
The Armenian government has revived the Amulsar gold mining project, which was shut down by protesters in 2018. Armenia granted Lydian Canada Ventures a license to develop a massive gold deposit in the Vayots Dzor province in 2016. The project was halted after environmental activists shut down roads leading to Amulsar in June 2018 shortly after the Velvet Revolution. Economy Minister Vahan Kerobyan said on Wednesday that the Armenian government, in partnership with Lydian and the Kazakhstan-based Eurasian Development Bank, would raise $250 million to finish construction of the gold mine. Kerobyan said Lydian would pay between 30 and 40 billion AMD ($75-100 million) in taxes each year. He also said the mine would raise Armenia’s GDP by one percent.
Azerbaijan
Azerbaijan’s President Ilham Aliyev has blamed Iran for the attack on the Azerbaijani embassy in Tehran on January 27. The chief of security was killed and two security guards injured after a gunman broke into the embassy. “Those who sent the terrorist, those representatives of the Iranian establishment who did this brutal act against Azerbaijan, must be brought to justice,” Aliyev said on February 17. Azerbaijani officials had previously linked the attack to a “recent anti-Azerbaijan campaign against our country in Iran.” Iran’s Foreign Ministry spokesperson responded on February 19 to avoid “politicization” of the attack. Azerbaijan-Iran relations have been deteriorating recently, in part due to Iran’s support for Armenia in its ongoing conflict with Azerbaijan.
Azerbaijani police arrested five activists who held a protest on Monday calling for the release of political prisoner Bakhtiyar Hajiyev. Hajiyev has been imprisoned since December 9 on charges of hooliganism. Two members of the Democracy 1918 movement have been placed in custody for 30 days, while three independent activists were released shortly after their detention. Hajiyev escalated his ongoing hunger strike on February 16 and stopped drinking water for five days. The US-based Helsinki Commission has called Hajiyev’s imprisonment a “gross injustice and sharp violation of basic human rights obligations.”
Georgia
The ruling Georgian Dream party announced its support on Tuesday for the controversial foreign agent bill. The proposed legislation would require non-governmental organizations and media outlets that receive more than 20-percent of their funding from abroad to register as “agents of foreign influence,” or pay a penalty of up to $9,400. Critics have compared the bill to Russia’s foreign agent law. Over 280 civil society and media groups released a joint statement on Tuesday condemning “the attempt to adopt this Russian law” as an attack on free civil society organizations and critical media. Georgian President Salome Zurabishvili has also opposed the bill, stating it would take Georgia further away from its “European future” and “closer to the vicious model of Russia.”
Lillian Avedian
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