Don’t renounce Sevan!’ – ARF youth protest outside government building

Members of ARF Youth Office are holding a protest outside the government building in Yerevan. They came with banners reading “Don’t renounce Sevan!” and other slogans.

Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev recently declared that “on old Russian imperial maps from the early 20th century, it is clearly visible that almost all toponyms on the territory of present-day Armenia are of Azerbaijani origin: there is no Lake Sevan, there is Lake Goycha. These maps were not drawn by us — they were made by Tsarist Russia, which at the time resettled Armenians from Iran and Eastern Anatolia into Karabakh to change the ethnic composition.” He added that the return of Azerbaijanis to Armenia “should not frighten the Armenian people.”