Anti-Russian hysteria in Armenia: FSB border guards under attack

The Union of Informed Citizens NGO applied to the Agency for Personal Data Protection of the Armenian Ministry of Justice with a demand to block the access of the FSB border troops to the Armenian Border Electronic Management System (BEMS).

This public organisation claims that "a foreign state has illegal access to personal data of hundreds of thousands of Armenians", Caliber.Az reports, citing Armenian media.

The Union states that using access to the BEMS, the FSB units of the Russian Federation organised "kidnapping of a person on the territory of Armenia, which also means that no person on the territory of Armenia is safe from illegal actions of the Russian law enforcement agencies as long as they have access to the BEMS". According to the Armenian organisation, the access of the FSB to the BEMS has no legal basis.

In addition, the Union of Informed Citizens' appeal says that in 2016, pro-Russian groups published data on citizens and vehicles crossing Armenia's border crossings.

"According to the investigations published in the media, there are reasonable suspicions that the leak was organised by the border guards of the Russian Federal Security Service," the organisation said.