The openMovements series invites leading social scientists to share their research results and perspectives on contemporary social struggles.
Screen shot: scenes at Yerevan Municipal councillors' meeting, February 13, 2018.As the world watches the latest incidences of sexual assault and abuse being exposed through the #Metoo campaign, in Armenia violence against women appears to be the socially accepted norm.
On 13 February shocking scenes unfolded at a Yerevan Municipal meeting when two female city councillors, wearing surgical gloves and masks, brought a jar of polluted sewer water to the council meeting. Councillors Marina Khachatryan and Sona Aghekayan, of the Yerkir Tsirani party, brought the glass jars full of sewer water to the council session to highlight the situation of residents in Yerevan’s Nubarashen district. They felt compelled to take such an extreme measure because complaints of the area’s residents protesting that sewage from Nubarashen prison had been seeping into their neighbourhood had been repeatedly ignored.
