Taguhi Tovmasyan, an MP from the opposition With Honor faction and chair of the parliament’s Standing Committee on Protection of Human Rights and Public Affairs, accused the incumbent Armenian authorities of cracking down on dissidents attending opposition rallies. Her full statement is provided below.
"The authorities punish people with alternative political views for expressing an opinion different from the authorities in order to restrain their participation in anti-government rallies.
Armenian citizens H. Ohanyan and A. Ghazaryan being Chief Specialists of the Revenue Collection, Property Management and Advertising Department of the Vanadzor Municipality were relieved of their positions on May 5 "based on the sharing of videos and photos proving their participation in the rally on Facebook."
I have sent relevant letters to the ambassadors of the USA, EU, Russia, France to Armenia as well as the head of the CoE Office in Armenia. I informed them that under the law "On Public Service", public servants are obliged to maintain political restraint and neutrality, but participation in a rally after the job should not be considered absolutely illegal. Besides, in Armenia the obligation to maintain political neutrality is applied mainly to the public servants with oppositional views, while those supporting the authorities with similar actions are not subject to relative punishment.
This is nothing but discrimination against citizens conditioned by their political views, which is prohibited by Article 29 of the Armenian Constitution.
I presented one more example of human rights violation. On May 5, on the fone of the active peaceful protests of thousands of Armenians, a work discussion in the Standing Committee on Defense and Security of the National Assembly was held, in which Committee Chairman Andranik Kocharyan called on the Ministry of Defense to take the list of participants of the peaceful protests from the police to involve those avoiding three-month training turn-outs and compulsory military service in three-month training turn-outs.
Actually, it turns out that the authorities punish people with alternative political views for expressing an opinion different from the authorities in order to restrain their participation in anti-government rallies. I requested them to hold such unfair approaches at the center of their attention and publicly respond to such cases of human rights violations, putting Armenia out of democracy."