ArmInfo.Prosecutor General of Armenia Anna Vardapetyan today in parliament touched upon the question of whether there is a punishment for spitting in a person's face. "One of the journalists asked me a question during a briefing on Friday. Sorry, I'll have to quote it verbatim, can I spit? "No, you can't spit," I explained to the journalist," the prosecutor said.
As the head of the supervisory authority pointed out, not everything is criminally punishable. "But are we really a society with which we must speak only in the language of the Criminal Code?" Vardapetyan said. She also assured that the law enforcement system will open a case if there is evidence of a crime, will take the necessary actions if there are grounds, initiate criminal prosecution and send the case to court, "no matter who and what it concerns."
Earlier, in a conversation with journalists, Anna Vardapetyan answered a question that spitting in itself is not a crime. "To qualify hooliganism as a crime, it is important that there is a gross violation of public order. Now you cannot come to terms with what I said, because for you hooliganism is an everyday concept of state," she noted. When asked if a citizen could spit in the face of an official, she replied: "No, they can't."
A year earlier, a young member of the ARF called NA Speaker Alen Simonyan a traitor, after which, according to him, Simonyan's bodyguards twisted his arms, and the NA Speaker spat in his face. The first president of Armenia called the incident a "national disgrace," suggesting that the ruling political force initiate the issue of Alen Simonyan's resignation. Instead of resigning, Simonyan apologized on social networks for spitting in the face of a citizen who called him a traitor.