EYEWITNESSES TELL OF VIOLENCE, SHOOTINGS
Institute for War and Peace Reporting
March 3 2008
UK
Amidst a virtual media blackout, witnesses tell their own stories of
street fighting in Yerevan.
Armenia is under a virtual news blackout because of the state
of emergency imposed in Yerevan on March 1, which placed tight
restrictions on local media.
As people struggle to form a clear picture of the violence that has
shaken the Armenian capital, rumours are circulating rapidly.
Amid the rumour and half-truths, several direct witnesses have given
accounts of what they saw to IWPR.
Yerevan residents have resorted to telephoning one another or coming
out onto the streets to swap information. Taxi drivers, in particular,
have become a good source of "alternative news".
Internet providers have all but shut down access to two independent
sources of information – the websites of Radio Liberty and A1+
television.
Much of the video footage shot during the protests was confiscated
by police, but some is being released on the internet, as Armenians
exchange information on sites such as Youtube and Facebook.
Rumours that the number of dead was not eight – as officials say –
but 40 or even 100 have fuelled anger among opposition supporters
already infuriated by official television reports that placed all
the blame on the protestors.
Eyewitnesses who observed clashes at various points in the day on
March have told IWPR of running battles and police violence.
When the trouble began early on March 1, as the opposition’s tent
city on Freedom Square was broken up and protestors were rounded up.,
one young woman named Suzie managed to capture on film footage in
which ten policemen attacked and kicked a man.
Later in the day, another clash took place close to the French embassy
and the office of Yerevan’s mayor. A foreigner living in Yerevan, who
asked not to be named, told IWPR he observed the ensuing confrontation,
and alleged that men armed with rifles deliberately fired on civilians.
"I was on a balcony overlooking the epicentre of the battle last
night. I was within 10 metres of the entire fight," he said.
"There were special-forces snipers with black ski-masks mixed in with
the young, scared policemen, who were not masked. While the police
shot tracers into the air, these riflemen directly aimed at and shot
protesters. I saw two men fall on the ground below me, one with a
massive haemorrhage to his head. He was unconscious and carried off
by other protesters."
At the start of the police action against the crowd assembled near the
embassy building, he said, "I saw a police captain and his lieutenants
drinking in celebration as they sent the first attack of terrified,
ill-trained riot police to the front."
As the police moved in, they set fire to a barricade that protesters
had erected near the embassy. "Protesters lobbed fire back onto
the streets and counter-charged. The police then panicked, and some
were wounded in the melee, mostly from their own [colleagues] also
trying to get away from the fight. I saw several police limp back,
but none were bloody," said the eyewitness, adding, "This is when I
saw masked soldiers take aim and fire directly at the protesters."
The eyewitness said the demonstrators had only makeshift weapons –
rocks and metal bars. "A few had Molotov cocktails, but most simply
took tear gas canisters and whatever police used to send fire into
the protesters [and threw them] back," he said.
In the second police charge, he said, the police brought in
water-cannon trucks, but used them "ineptly", running out of water
before they reached the protesters.
The security forces then retreated again. "This is when the protesters
began to give chase, chasing riot police and the water-cannon trucks
all the way to Proshian and the Hrazdan gorge," said the eyewitness.
He gave his own account of the looting incidents that followed,
which have been widely reported in the media. He said protestors
seemed to target only the security forces and those businesses whose
owners were seen as close to the current government.
"Some elements broke into supermarkets owned by oligarchs and
deputies of parliament who are widely seen to be among the most
corrupt officials in the country," he said. "This is the remarkable
thing that occurred – they targeted only two oligarch supermarkets,
one candy store, one high-scale shoe shop and a few windows. That’s
it. They did not touch a single other shop on the street."
The same applied to vehicles, he continued, claiming, "The only cars
torched were military or police vehicles. Fighting went back and
forth in front of me and there were five cars unfortunately parked
on the street by people living in the building, but there was not a
scratch on them."