Armen Hovasapyan writes: “It’s been more than fifty days that Armen Ashotyan continues to be under illegal detention.

To be honest, with each passing day, it is harder to look at all this as just another political event. When it comes to your friend, you experience everything differently, because what you see is not just press headlines, but a person who is being tried to be punished not for what he did, but for what he said, for his beliefs and exclusively for his political stance.

Anyone following Armen’s case has long understood that talking about a legal dispute here is ridiculous.

His name appeared in a story with which he had nothing to do with, but that was never the main issue, it seems. The main goal is different: to keep him behind bars as long as political expediency will allow.

In fact, this is one of the cases when detention becomes not a judicial measure, but a message to all those who dare to criticize those who usurped the power, disagree or wage a political struggle against them.

Moreover, the saddest thing is that they are trying to present all this as justice. But it is clear to every reasonable Armenian that justice begins where the political order ends.

I believe that Armen will come out of this trial as well, but I don’t want this phenomenon to become common, where you have to write a note about your friend’s freedom because the state decided to apply the will of the government rather than the spirit of the law to him.

Dear Armen, I know that this too will pass, and those who today are sure that the state machine will remain in their hands forever, sooner or later will have to answer not only to history, but also to their own conscience, even though they don’t have it.”

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