Yerevan /Mediamax/. Nubar Afeyan, entrepreneur and philanthropist, co-founder and chairman of the Board of Directors of Moderna, expressed hope that international players will not stand by and will speak up against the arrest of former State Minister of Artsakh Ruben Vardanyan by the Azerbaijani authorities.

“It is indeed extremely personal and painful situation. I have worked with Ruben Vardanyan for 23 years across dozens of humanitarian and philanthropic projects in Armenia. Ruben out of utter desperation for the fate of his people moved to Karabakh, what we call Artsakh, last fall to help the people living there regain their dignity and try to offer some resistance to the pressure they were under. For doing that, over a three-month period as the state minister, he stayed there after he ceased being state minister and was doing humanitarian projects on the ground helping people cope with the circumstances,” Noubar Afeyan said in interview with CNN anchor Christiane Amanpour.

Commenting on the charges initiated against Ruben Vardanyan, Noubar Afeyan said that “they have no factual basis.”

“I think that Ruben represents, in fact, a symbol of all Armenians. And for them to be able to arrest him, make a show of that activity and then charge him, is something that is meant to create psychological torture to really ten million Armenians around the world. I really hope that international powers do not stand by because all this types of things do is encourage more and more of this types of injustice with impunity, and I think we really need to speak up against that,” chairman of Moderna’s Board of Directors said.