23 June, 2015: protesters in Yerevan gather together in protest at electricity tariff rises. (c) Asatur Esayants / RIA Novosti. All rights reserved.22 June marked the one year anniversary of the beginning of the Electric Yerevan movement in Armenia, which led to weeks of protest and street occupation against the electricity fee hikes.
Over the past five years, civil society activism has grown in Armenia. But in the wake of the recent resumption of fighting between Armenia and Azerbaijan in April 2016, street activism appears to be on the wane. The problems and issues that brought people into the streets and squares, including corruption, the absence of rule of law, and the unfettered power and impunity of oligarchs, remain.
The campaign to stop copper mining in Teghut, which is led by the Save Teghut Civic Initiative (STCI), is the largest and longest running anti-mining campaign in the country (2007-present). Civil society resistance against mining began in 2007 and, as I argue in a recently published piece, the movement against mining in Armenia has always been more than just about the environment — it is and has been a movement against the politics of plunder that has become the norm in Armenia’s post-Soviet reality.
