Arsen Kharatyan, Armenian journalist, the founder and editor-in-chief of an independent non-profit bilingual Georgian-Armenia media platform Aliq Media based in Tbilisi, and the former advisor to the Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan, was denied entry to Georgia on September 17, Report informs via Civil Georgia.
Kharatyan was held up for four hours and forced to go back to Europe with no explanation. From the late 1990s he has been part of different pro-democracy movements in Armenia, which played a crucial role in Armenia’s non-violent Velvet Revolution of 2018.
Kharatyan shared the story of his detention on Facebook. He noted that he was denied entry even though he had a ticket for a connecting flight from Tbilisi to Yerevan the next day, September 18. Kharatyan was told that under Georgian law he couldn’t be sent to his destination and had to be sent back from where he was flying to.
“All these are technicalities… the biggest problem here is the fact that no one has explained to me the reason why I was denied entry to Georgia, where I lived for over 5 years, created a media, co-founded various organizations, helped build bridges between Armenia-Georgia and so on,” noted Kharatyan in his post.