‘Without Regime’ Campaign in Gyumri: Radical opposition group’s rall

‘Without Regime’ Campaign in Gyumri: Radical opposition group’s rally
in ‘second city’ accompanied with incidents

NEWS | 29.03.15 | 13:03

Levon Barseghyan’s photo

An opposition member was stabbed during a weekend rally in Armenia’s
second largest city of Gyumri organized by a group seeking regime
change.

Hrach Mirzoyan, an activist of the Founding Parliament group, was
hospitalized shortly after an unknown knife-wielding man inflicted
wounds on him on Saturday. Doctors said the injuries were not
life-threatening.

Also, a group of young men pelted eggs at participants of the small
rally in Gyumri’s Theater Square. They ran away after police
intervention.

The Founding Parliament is known to be pursuing a “Centenary Without
the Regime” campaign and controversially plans to launch an
anti-government push on April 24 when Armenians in Armenia and around
the world will be commemorating the 100th anniversary of the Armenian
Genocide in Ottoman Turkey.

The group led by Lebanese-born Karabakh war veteran Jirair Sefilian
had made it clear that its actions were not intended to overshadow the
commemoration events and would start after activists visited the
Tsitsernakaberd Memorial to pay their respects to the victims of the
1915 Genocide.

Representatives of the parliamentary opposition parties on Friday,
however, said they would not join the nonstop protests planned by the
Founding Parliament.

One of the forces, the Armenian Revolutionary Federation
(Dashnaktsutyun), denounced the hard-line opposition movement for
timing the start of its campaign to coincide with the commemoration of
the 100th anniversary of the Armenian Genocide.

Dashnaktsutyun’s parliamentary leader Armen Rustamyan even called for
“preventive” measures against leaders of the extra-parliamentary
group. “What if they organize an explosion? Shouldn’t they be caught?”
he told reporters.

Addressing supporters at the Gyumri rally, Sefilian again criticized
the mainstream opposition forces. “The people, the forces that say
that one should prepare for 2017 [parliamentary] or 2018
[presidential] elections are hardly any different from the current
regime,” he said.

Vahram Baghdasaryan, the leader of the ruling Republican Party of
Armenia’s parliamentary faction, said during the Friday press briefing
that the Armenian public will itself give its estimation to the
statements and actions of Founding Parliament members that he said
could not even be called political figures.

The opposition group’s rallies held in Yerevan and other parts of the
country so far have not attracted large crowds.

Earlier this month, the Founding Parliament cancelled a rally planned
in Gyumri, alleging that local government loyalists had been plotting
a “provocation” against them. In late January, the radical opposition
group attempted to take its campaign to Nagorno-Karabakh but met with
a violent response from local security forces.

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress