ARMENIA PRESSURES OPPONENTS, ARRESTS 30 FOR RIOTS
By Hasmik Lazarian
Reuters
March 4 2008
UK
YEREVAN, March 4 (Reuters) – Armenian police have arrested 30
opposition activists for starting a riot which killed eight people,
the Prosecutor-General said on Tuesday, in a clampdown on opponents
during a state of emergency.
The ex-Soviet state’s top military commander also said he needed the
emergency laws to ensure stability but opposition leaders accused
the authorities of abusing their powers.
"Thirty people have been detained for provoking mass disturbances on
March 1, not obeying the police and violent actions against policemen,"
the Prosecutor-General’s office said in a statement.
Police had already arrested a handful of prominent opposition figures
— for allegedly plotting a coup or hoarding firearms — during daily
mass demonstrations against a Feb. 19 presidential election.
The protesters accuse Prime Minister Serzh Sarksyan of rigging an
election last month in which he officially won 53 percent of the
vote and his main rival, former president Levon Ter-Petrosyan, won
21.5 percent.
Armenia’s current President and Sarksyan’s ally, Robert Kocharyan,
ordered the army onto the streets of Yerevan and imposed emergency
laws during riots on Saturday — the worst civil violence since
Armenia’s independence from the Soviet Union in 1991.
Now armed soldiers loiter on Yerevan’s street corners and armoured
personnel carriers stand in the main square imposing the military’s
control and ready to counter any demonstrators.
"The situation in Yerevan is fully under control," General Seyran
Ohanyan, the chief of Armenia’s general military staff, told a news
conference.
"If it’s needed, we’ll help police to guarantee public order."
Armenia is an ancient Christian state on the fringes of the Caucasus,
an unstable transit route for oil between the Caspian Sea and Europe.
Envoys from Europe, the United States and the Vatican have flown to
Armenia since the state of emergency to talk to the government and
opposition leaders who say the laws are an abuse of the authorities’
powers.
"This is a terror which goes to a different level," Arman Musinyan,
Ter-Petrosyan’s spokesman said.
Also on Tuesday parliament discussed stripping four opposition members
of parliament, accused of provoking violence, of their immunity from
prosecution. (Additional reporting and writing by Margarita Antidze
and James Kilner in Yerevan; Editing by Charles Dick)