YEREVAN CONTINUES POST-ELECTION WITCH-HUNT
By Ashot Azatian
Eurasia Daily Monitor
March 18 2008
DC
Armenia’s embattled leadership has unleashed an unprecedented crackdown
on the opposition following the bloody suppression of street protests
against the official results of last month’s disputed presidential
election. More than a hundred supporters of the main opposition
presidential candidate, former president Levon Ter-Petrosian,
have been arrested and are facing lengthy prison sentences for
their involvement in what the ruling regime calls an attempted coup
d’etat. The crackdown, aggravated by a virtual ban on independent news
reporting, intensified last week despite the West’s calls for dialogue
between the Armenian government and the Ter-Petrosian-led opposition.
The mass arrests, increasingly resembling a witch-hunt, stem from the
March 1 clashes in Yerevan between security forces and opposition
supporters that left at least eight people dead. Thousands of
protesters barricaded themselves outside the Yerevan mayor’s office
just hours after riot police forcibly ended Ter-Petrosian’s 11-day
non-stop demonstration in the city’s Liberty Square. The clashes,
triggered by police attempts to disperse the crowd, ended only
after outgoing President Robert Kocharian declared a 20-day state
of emergency and ordered troops into the Armenian capital. Kocharian
and other Armenian officials claim that the violence was instigated
by Ter-Petrosian as part of his broader plot to use the February 19
presidential election to overthrow the government.
Relevant coup charges have already been leveled against the vast
majority of the detainees. Among them are three parliament deputies,
Ter-Petrosian’s election campaign manager, and several dozen senior
members of opposition parties aligned with the former president.
Dozens of other prominent oppositionists have gone into hiding. Both
Kocharian and his controversially elected successor, Serge Sarkisian,
have said that Ter-Petrosian may end up behind bars, too. According
to Justice Minister Gevorg Danielian, law-enforcement authorities
already have "sufficient evidence" to prosecute him (AFP, March 10).
Armenia’s Prosecutor-General Aghvan Hovsepian indicated on March
7 that the coup case may be complemented by an Orwellian charge of
"psychological sabotage" against the country’s population (RFE/RL
Armenia Report, March 7). He said Ter-Petrosian resorted to mass
hypnosis and other "psychological tricks" to attract a large following
after his dramatic political comeback in September 2007.
The authorities continue to justify the use of lethal force against
the protesters, stressing the fact that one security officer was
killed and dozens wounded on March 1. But they have yet to clearly
explain the circumstances of the deaths of at least seven protesters.
The official line is that security forces fired gunshots only into the
air. However, amateur video clips of the deadly violence posted on
the Internet last week suggest the opposite. One clip shows several
heavily armed men in special police uniforms firing what appear to
be live rounds in the direction of the demonstrators. In another,
more harrowing, footage, pieces of a human brain and skull can be
seen strewn in a pool of blood.
The ruling regime has clearly been emboldened by Western observers’
largely positive preliminary assessment of its handling of a ballot
seen as fraudulent by many Armenians and by the failure of Western
powers to condemn the use of force against Ter-Petrosian supporters.
U.S. and European envoys who rushed to Yerevan in the first week of
March blamed both the government and the opposition for the unrest
and contented themselves with making vague calls for "dialogue"
between the two sides.
The West began pressuring the Sarkisian-Kocharian duo in earnest
only after it became evident that those calls fell on deaf ears. In
a March 10 interview with the Associated Press, Matt Bryza, a U.S.
deputy assistant secretary of state who was in Yerevan on March 6-7,
described as "harsh and brutal" the Armenian government’s response
to the March 1 protests and the ensuing mass arrests of opposition
supporters. Another senior U.S. diplomat wrote to Kocharian the
next day, warning that Washington could "suspend or terminate" its
multimillion-dollar economic assistance to Armenia. "The government of
Armenia needs to uphold the rule of law, lift the state of emergency,
and restore press freedoms," a White House spokesman said on March 13,
according to Western news agencies.
For its part, the European Union expressed serious concern on March 12
about the continuing crackdown on the Armenian opposition. A statement
by its Slovenian presidency also reiterated the EU’s earlier calls
for Yerevan to end the state of emergency, release all political
prisoners, and agree to an "independent investigation" into the deadly
post-election unrest.
The Armenian authorities have so far responded to the pressure with
largely symbolic gestures. On March 13, Kocharian signed a decree
allowing media outlets not controlled by his administration to
resume their work, so long as they do not provide "obviously false
and situation-destabilizing information" (Statement by the Armenian
president’s press service, March 13). However, the decree proved to be
little more than a gimmick. The National Security Service, the Armenian
successor to the Soviet KGB, continues to prevent the country’s
leading independent and pro-opposition newspapers from publishing
and to block Internet users’ access to local online publications.
Western pressure may still not be strong enough, but it should make
it harder for the regime to arrest Ter-Petrosian and/or extend
the state of emergency for another 20 days in order to forestall
opposition demonstrations before Sarkisian’s inauguration, which
is scheduled for April 9. Ter-Petrosian made it clear at a March 11
news conference that he will continue to challenge the official vote
results and stage more street protests. It is not clear, however,
whether he will do that with virtually all of his close associates in
jail or on the run or will wait for the dust to settle. In any case,
Ter-Petrosian can count on the unwavering backing of tens of thousands
of angry Armenians who rallied in Yerevan to back his demands for a
re-run of the presidential election.
Many of them are young people who have previously shown little
interest in politics and barely knew their revered leader just a few
months ago. They are the ones who set up barricades and took on riot
police on March 1. The government repression may have quelled their
spontaneous rebellion, but it did nothing to address the underlying
causes of anger that drove them to the streets in the first place.