Saturday 29 March 2008

Armenian News - Dashnaks, Orinats Yerkir Defend Deal With Sarkisian


By Ruzanna Khachatrian


Two major Armenian parties that challenged Prime Minister Serzh
Sarkisian in the February 19 presidential election defended on Thursday
their decision to join a new coalition government to be formed by the
president-elect next month.

During the election campaign the presidential candidates of the Armenian
Revolutionary Federation (Dashnaktsutyun) and the Orinats Yerkir Party
strongly criticized and blamed the government for socioeconomic and
other problems facing the country. Orinats Yerkir's Artur Baghdasarian
was particularly scathing in attacking the government and Sarkisian in
particular.

According to Armen Rustamian, a Dashnaktsutyun leader, his party
eventually agreed to cut a new power-sharing deal with Sarkisian because
the latter committed himself to implementing sweeping political and
economic reforms. Rustamian pointed to ambitious goals which he,
Sarkisian, Baghdasarian and Prosperous Armenia Party leader Gagik
Tsarukian set in a joint declaration signed last week.

The four-party declaration called for the strengthening of the rule of
law, freedom of speech and human rights protection, a `substantial
increase in public trust in electoral processes,' and a `comprehensive
and effective fight against corruption.' Its signatories also pledged to
significantly boost living standards in Armenia through job creation and
improved business competition.

Rustamian also cited the need to meet what he called new security
challenges facing Armenia since the March 1 unrest in Yerevan. `A new
situation has emerged since March 1,' he told RFE/RL. `Security is now
the top priority. There are now threats to both internal and external
stability.'

Heghine Bisharian, the number two figure in the Orinats Yerkir
leadership, also defended Baghdasarian's decision to return to a
government in which his party was already represented from 2003-2006.
`You have to be in government in order to implement pre-election
programs,' she said.

Bisharian insisted that the vast majority of about 260,000 Armenians
who, according to official election results, voted for Baghdasarian
support the coalition accord. Rustamian was likewise confident that the
deal will not lose Dashnaktsutyun popular support. `Our voters have
reason to be particularly satisfied with our behavior because we have
followed the same line both during the pre-election period and now,' he
said.

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Internal Bleeding: Crisis has turned “Armenians” against “Karabakhis”
By Vahan Ishkhanyan
ArmeniaNow reporter
Published:
28 March, 2008
“For the first time in my life I did not say I am Karabakhtsi [Karabakh Armenian]. They asked me where I am from, I told from Abovyan,” ArmeniaNow photographer Anahit Hayrapetyan tells about how every photographer and journalist in the neighborhood of the Myaskinyan monument on March 1 was asked about their descent in a fierce search for Karabakhtsis.

Disinformation was spread that the troops that dispersed the sitting strike in the Liberty Square spoke the Karabakh dialect.
But it was not an occasional matter: it was the expression of xenophobia generated by LTP’s movement, whose number one enemy turned to be the Karabakhtsis.

The next day, March 2 a taxi driver crossing the damaged Mashtots avenue was showing me the shops explaining which belongs to whom, trying to justify the looting: ‘this is Lfik’s, this one belongs to a Karabakhtsi.’ Lfik is oligarch Samvel Alexanyan who is from Aparan [town in the North-West to Yerevan]. But what do the Karabakhtsis have to do with this? The driver continued – the Karabakhtsis have to be driven out.

On March 2 morning near the site of the fighting a man surveying the rubble saw soldiers on guard and said to no one in particular, but in their direction: “Karabakhi dogs”.
This is not a single case as it has become a common point of view during the last commotion.

The negative attitude toward the Karabakh Armenians appeared when the politicians from Karabakh who were brought by Ter-Petrosyan to solidify his power against the oppositional forces, overtook it and began using the fruits of the clan system Ter-Petrosyan had created. If the system is based on clans people protest against the clan in power. In former times the target of protests was the All-Armenian Movement and its leader, then those who forced Ter-Petrosyan’s resignation. The system remains the same; if tomorrow the Akhakalaktsi Armenians [Akhalkalak is the provincial center of the Javakhq region in Georgia, populated predominantly with Armenians] overtake the power they will get the use of it.

LTP turned the negative attitude toward the Karabakh Armenians into hatred, declaring the authorities Tatar-Mongols and saying: “Because of these two, 15,000 people have moved from Karabakh to Armenia, mainly Yerevan, within the last ten years. Each of them has been given a position. It did not suffice, and now it’s the sphere of business given to them (it’s unclear who has checked the figures).”
Enmity was the main weapon of the leader for five months, when he stated the only mistake of the years of his rule was bringing the two politicians from Karabakh, the only thing he apologized for (he even defended the clan system he created by saying the 1995 Constitution was better than the amendments adopted in 2005); he declared all the deficiencies in Armenia originated in 1998, he refuted there were election frauds and state robbery before that, presenting the years of his rule as ideal times. For a protesting crowd the words of the charismatic leader were unquestionable and undisputed truth.

Explaining the problems of the state with persons alone and blaming those persons in deadly sins (perpetrating the October 27 assassinations to cede Meghri), he inspired faith in the mass. They believed ‘go till the end’, and also made keeping power a matter of personal security for Sargsyan and Kocharyan.

LTP and his supporters increased the number of their voters by growing the hostile rhetoric of the campaign. LTP stated Serzh and Robert have served the Turks with servility for a long time. On the other side he called traitors and scum all those who did not join him and instead of opening cracks among the authorities, as he said, created deep breach of enmity in the society: if the leader calls somebody a traitor the mass is ready to destroy. (In the newspaper “168 Hours” singer Shushan Petrosyan told with horror she received letters that called her a traitor for supporting Serzh Sargsyan and threatened to kill her children; she said she did not take her son to school for two weeks because in fear of the threats. And the post-election demonstrations that passed by Vazgen Manukyan’s office scanned ‘Vazgen – a traitor!’, because their leader had stated so.)

However, a primary target remained the Karabakis, in a way that drew comparison ethnic fascism in the 20s-30s in Weimar Germany, where corruption, oligarchy, depreciation, monopolization of economy were blamed on the Jews. (The Constitution adopted in the Weimar Republic in 1919 resembled much the 1995 Constitution adopted in Armenia, where the strong centralized presidential system did not allow for society’s participation in decision-making and facilitated to the oligarchy and the monopolized economy that brought the Nazis to power as a solution to the crisis).

The anti-Karabakhi prejudice reached its climax during the post-voting rallies in February, when a professor in Opera Square [the Liberty Square, the Theater Square] underlining their Karabakhi descent publicized the names of those rectors of universities who have to be punished amid the ardent shouts of the mass. And another speaker stated: “The Armenians in this square are thrice more in number that the Karabakh citizens. Long live the Armenians!”
Armenians of non-Karabakhi descent began writing in blogs as a means of protest calling themselves Karabakhis as Turks called themselves Armenians after Dink’s assassination.

The 5 month-long political trainings resulted on March 1 taking the form of the Molotov cocktails and metal bars. The mass attacked the police shouting: ‘Turks, Karabakhis go away!’ They say the spirit of the Armenian people was broken that day; but if something was broken then maybe that was the spirit of xenophobia.

Unlike Germany, where xenophobia was targeted against an external element, the ‘other’ for Levon is his native – xenophobia aimed against part of a mono-ethnic nation. Just like nationalism searches for enemies for crises among other ethnicities, similarly the ‘pragmatists’ radically denying national projects, search for an enemy to blame the crisis on, inside the nation. A poet woman, renowned intellectual inspired by the hatred of hundreds of thousands says Karabakhis are unable to run a state (LTP openly hinted on giving back Karabakh stating Karabakh is not a Kosovo and is unable to reach independence; he told in an interview Armenia has to restitute the damage caused to Azerbaijan). Thus, LTP supporters appearing in the name of liberalism became enemies of self-determination simply because those self-determined belong to their own ethnic group and because helping them ‘makes the country’s conditions hard.’

Unlike in Germany, where the one who created a non-democratic system and the one who appropriated it were different people, LTP was both the creator of the system and the betrayer of those who get use of it; that is, he is two in one, he wants to oust a clan to replace it with another, but never change the system he has authored.

Those who want to take the power are in the list of detained, 80 percent of them belong either to the All-Armenian Movement or are former officials from Republic party. And a wanted businessman Khachik Sukiasyan used to be the favorite oligarch in times of Levon’s rule, who, despite not being deprived of his incomes, had partially ceded his position to Gagik Tsarukyan. Many of the detained and other supporters of Levon have accumulated millions while in power and have not been punished, because they were replaced by people who equally get use of the system.

LTP was a version of the acting authorities ambushed behind the status of opposition, who having stated he is a tool to change the power turned the mob filled with hatred into a tool to provide the comeback of the old clans to power. Having cited the ‘Let there be no other sacrifice but me’, he sacrificed others, safe in his castle himself, with the coming threat hanging in the air ordered the demonstrators to stay and called for arms and resistance through his comrade-in-arms Pashinyan to hang another deadly sin to the authorities – shooting on people.

The system in ambush manifested itself not in words, but in deeds as it distributed bribes to voters and commissions and resorted to violence on election day equally with the authorities (a week ago head of LTP’s Ani headquarters was sentenced to 7 years in prison for beating Serzh’s representative). And LTP who declared himself a president elect in the first run even before the ballot boxes were opened, revealed the fight to follow would not be for justice, confusing the growing mass.

Experiencing the barbarism in history is not the most secure way to understand it, but is more efficient than the history textbooks, when you understand how the image of the enemy is created because of crises and injustice.

The times of slaughtering one’s own people have passed, but the possibility of persecutions and losses still remains and it is predictable, LTP would begin a hunt for ‘traitors’ and thousands of Karabakis would become deprived of homeland and would wonder to the country that would not accept them with pleasure if the region is returned.

And the danger remains: two days ago a neighbor to an acquaintance of mine refused to allow a nurse to give her an injection because the nurse appeared to be of Karabakh descent.
As long as Armenia of the 1995 Constitution (as the Weimar one) has not been reformed, as long as the clan, corrupt and oligarchic system persists, the energy of hatred and zeal to destroy the ‘enemy’ still threatens the country and the threat of war with Azerbaijan grows in parallel.

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Human Rights Watch

Armenia: Lift Ban on Peaceful Protest

Opposition Demonstrators Detained Under New Restrictions

(New York, March 27, 2008) – The Armenian government should lift new restrictions on freedom of assembly and cease detaining opposition supporters participating in peaceful protests, Human Rights Watch said today.

On March 25 and 26, 2008 police detained at least 60 opposition supporters in Yerevan who were peacefully demonstrating against restrictions imposed last week on public assemblies following violent clashes on March 1 between police and opposition protesters. All were released after several hours in detention, but on March 27, another 21 opposition supporters were detained and their fate remains unknown.

“The Armenian government should allow peaceful demonstrations, not ban them,” said Holly Cartner, Europe and Central Asia director at Human Rights Watch. “The new restrictions effectively punish peaceful demonstrators for the violence that took place on March 1.”

The Armenian National Assembly passed amendments on March 18 which allow for extensive restrictions on public gatherings following “disturbances leading to the loss of human life.” The wording is a clear reference to the events of March 1, when violence erupted between security forces and protesters after police had earlier used force to disperse demonstrators protesting alleged fraud during the February 19 presidential elections. At least eight people were killed and more than 130 injured. The restrictions on public assembly are indefinite, remaining in place until the completion of an investigation into alleged crimes committed during the disturbance.

Every evening since a three-week state of emergency was lifted on March 21, several hundred opposition activists and supporters have been organizing what they call “public walks” on Northern Avenue, a pedestrian street in the capital’s downtown. They quietly protest against the government’s new restrictions on assembly. At these “public walks,” people walk around, chat with one another, sit on public benches, and play chess or read books. On March 25, police began detaining dozens of those participating in the “public walks.”

The new amendments violate Armenia’s obligation to respect peaceful assembly. The European Convention on Human Rights, to which Armenia is a party, guarantees freedom of assembly, and governments may not place unreasonable restrictions on this right. The European Court of Human Rights has described the right to assemble peacefully as “one of the foundations of a democratic society” and has made clear on a number of occasions that individuals cannot lose their right to peaceful assembly as a result of punishable acts committed by others in the course of a demonstration.

Authorities have used the changes to the law to deny at least six requests from opposition parties to hold demonstrations at Freedom Square in downtown Yerevan. The government justifies the denials by claiming that participants in the March 1 violence may seek to participate in future demonstrations as well.

Human Rights Watch spoke with four opposition supporters detained on March 26. One said: “I was sitting on a bench on Northern Avenue and reading a book, when two uniformed police officers approached me, asking me to go with them. When I asked why, they advised me not to ask questions and to just follow them if I wanted to avoid problems. I obeyed. There were others who did not obey this command, and the police twisted their arms behind their backs and stuffed them into a car.”

Opposition supporters were taken to the Kentron police station, photographed and asked for their names and addresses. Two hours later, they were transferred to Yerevan district police stations near their homes. After several hours, detainees were taken individually to the police department chief for a brief interrogation and then released. No official charges were brought against any of the detainees.

Police officials told Larisa Alaverdian, the former Ombudsperson of Armenia and now an opposition parliamentarian from the opposition Heritage Party, that the detentions of people participating in the “public walks” are done in order to question suspected opposition party activists as part of the criminal investigation into the March 1 events. However, one released detainee told Human Rights Watch that the police chief was trying to talk him out of participating in the “public walks” on Northern Avenue.

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"RETURN TO STALINISM"
A1+
28 March, 2008

A number of NGOs have made a statement headlined "Armenia 2008:
Return to Stalinism" which runs:

"Democratic reforms in Armenia resulted in sowing state terror. In the
wake of the lifting of state of emergency the Armenian authorities
unleashed a new wave of violence and intimidations. Having adopted
Soviet KGB methods, the Armenian police and National Security Services
subject unprotected people to organised repressions.

Without any grounding or explanation, citizens are detained in broad
daylight and forcibly taken to police stations, thus any occasional
person passing by may fall a victim to suchlike violence. Only
afterwards in the police station is their identity revealed, their
participation in the March 1 rally clarified. People are subjected
to psychological pressure and intimidation.

The scale of such violence increases day by day. The Armenian
authorities arbitrarily violate constitutional rights and fundamental
freedoms of the people.

We, the undersigned, urge to immediately cease terror against the
people of Armenia

1."Youth for Democracy" NGO

2.Transparency International Anti-corruption Center NGO

3."Asparez" Journalists' Club

4. "Krtutyan Asparez" NGO

5 Helsinki Citizens' Assembly Armenian Committee NGO

6 Helsinki Citizens' Assembly Vanadzor Office

7. "Huys" NGO

8. "We Plus" NGO

9. "Victims of State Needs" NGO

10. "Sksela" Youth Movement.

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ARMENIA WILL SHIFT TO SUMMER TIME ON MARCH 30
armradio.am
28.03.2008 15:20

The night of March 30 (the last Sunday of March) at 2 a.m. the pointers
of the clock should be drawn an hour forward, marking the start of
"summer time."

RA Deputy Minister of Trade and Economic Development Garnik Badalyan
told Armenpress that the "summer time" was created artificially to
make more efficient use of the sunny days and ease the overload of
the energy sphere.

The real working time in our republic is the "winter time," which
comes into force on the last Sunday of October.

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