Armenianow, Yerevan, 10 Dec 2008 – Armenia’s opposition forces marched through central Yerevan and staged a number of other events on Wednesday, Dec. 10, International Day of Human Rights Protection, to bring attention to the situation of those they view as political prisoners in Armenia.
Armenian authorities have all along denied the presence of political prisoners in the country, saying that the opposition supporters and politicians now in custody are prosecuted for their criminal deeds.
Speaking on the occasion of the Day, Armenia’s Ombudsman Armen Harutyunyan expressed a hope that human rights protection will eventually become the paramount state and national value in Armenia.
The day also saw the release of opposition figure Vardan Malkhasyan following his serving a two-year jail term after conviction under Article 301 of Armenia’s Criminal Code, “calling for a violent overthrow of the constitutional order.”
The opposition has viewed Malkhasyan, a prominent Karabakh war veteran opposing territorial concessions to Azerbaijan, as a political prisoner. Its activists welcomed the war veteran right at the doors of the prison outside Yerevan. Malkhasyan stated that from “a prison with walls he had gone out into a prison without walls.” He also sounded determined to continue his struggle, supporting the opposition movement of former president Levon Ter-Petrosyan.
“This government has stolen the right of the Armenian people to speak freely, to think freely and live freely,” he charged.
From Vardashen the opposition headed for the area in downtown Yerevan that became a scene of the bloody suppression of post-election street demonstrations of the opposition. Opposition activists and supporters laid flowers at the monument to Alexander Myasnikyan and lit candles there in memory of the ten people who lost their lives in the March 1 clashes.
The next stop for the demonstration was in nearby Sakharov Square where the wives and daughters of “political prisoners” were on a sitting strike.
Melissa Brown, the American wife of Alexander Arzumanyan, the Ter-Petrosyan election campaign manager who is currently in pretrial detention on a coup charge, said the venue was chosen for a reason.
“Andrey Sakharov, who was a political prisoner in Soviet times, is a hero and leader for today’s political prisoners. Who could have imagined that 20 years after becoming independent we would have more than 70 political prisoners in the country?” Brown said.
Karapet Rubinyan, a senior member of the “Committee for Political Prisoners and Victims of Political Persecutions” slammed the “disgracefully intolerable” human rights situation in Armenia. He said he hoped the organized events would be a wakeup call for the civil society and a warning for the authorities.
Amalia Kostanyan, the head of the Armenian affiliate of leading anti-graft watchdog Transparency International, linked protection of human rights with corruption issues.
“Corruption is both the consequence and cause of human rights violations,” Kostanyan said. “We cannot fight corruption while we still have political prisoners, while the security of journalists and opposition activists is not ensured.”
In the afternoon, opposition activists, who were detained in the wake of the March 1 events but eventually released from jail, held a demonstration in front of the Prosecutor-General’s Office heavily guarded by police.
Opposition supporters marching from Northern Avenue, a traditional place of opposition gatherings, joined the demonstrators and later together proceeded with their march toward central Republic Square.
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