Author: Torgomian Varazdat

TEN YEARS OF THE INTERNATIONAL CRIMINAL COURT: THE SLOW BUT SURE GROWTH OF WORLD LAW

Newropeans Magazine
July 18 2008
France

For nearly a half a century — almost as long as the United Nations
has been in existence — the General Assembly has recognized the need
to establish such a court to prosecute and punish persons responsible
for crimes such as genocide. Many thought that the horrors of the
Second World War — the camps, the cruelty, the exterminations, the
Holocaust — could never happen again. And yet they have. In Cambodia,
in Bosnia and Herzegovina, in Rwanda. Our time — this decade even–
has shown us that man’s capacity for evil knows no limits. Genocide
is now a word of our time too, a heinous reality that calls for a
historic response – Koffi Annan, then UN Secretary-General

July 17 marks the 10th anniversary of the Diplomatic Conference in Rome
that established the International Criminal Court — a major step in
the creation of world law. Citizens of the world have usually made a
distinction between international law as commonly understood and world
law. International law has come to mean laws that regulate relations
between States, with the International Court of Justice — the World
Court in The Hague — as the supreme body of the international law
system. The Internatiional Court of Justice is the successor to the
Permanent Court of International Justice that was established at the
time of the League of Nations following the First World War. When the
United Nations was formed in 1945, the World Court was re-established
as the principal judicial organ of the UN. It is composed of 15 judges
who are elected by the UN General Assembly and the Security Council.

Only States may be parties in cases before the World Court. An
individual cannot bring a case before the Court, nor can a company
although many transnational companies are active at the world
level. International agencies that are part of the UN system may
request advisory opinions from the Court on legal questions arising
from their activities but advisory opinions are advisory rather
than binding.

Citizens of the world have tended to use the term "world law"
in the sense that Wilfred Jenks, for many years the legal spirit
of the International Labour Organization, used the term the common
law of mankind: "By the common law of mankind is meant the law of
an organized world community, contributed on the basis of States but
discharging its community functions increasingly through a complex of
international and regional institutions, guaranteeing rights to, and
placing obligations upon, the individual citizen, and confronted with
a wide range of economic, social and technological problems calling
for uniform regulation on an international basis which represents a
growing proportion of the subject-matter of the law." It is especially
the ‘rights and obligations’ of the individual person which is the
common theme of world citizens.

The growth of world law has been closely related to the development
of humanitarian law and to the violations of humanitarian law. It was
Gustave Moynier, one of the founders of the International Committee
of the Red Cross (ICRC) and a longtime president of the ICRC who
presented in 1872 the first draft convention for the establishment
of an international criminal court to punish violations of the first
Red Cross standards on the humane treatment of the sick and injured in
periods of war, the 1864 Geneva Convention. The Red Cross conventions
are basically self-enforcing. "If you treat my prisoners of war well,
I will treat yours the same way." Governments were not willing to act
on Moynier’s proposition, but Red Cross standards were often written
into national laws.

The Red Cross Geneva conventions deal with the way individuals should
be treated in time of war. They have been expanded to cover civil wars
and prisoners of civil unrest. The second tradition of humanitarian
law arises from the Hague Conventions of 1899 and 1907 and deals
with the weapons of war and the way war is carried on. Most of the
Hague rules, such as the prohibition against bombarding undefended
towns or villages, have fallen by the side, but the Hague spirit of
banning certain weapons continues in the ban on chemical weapons,
land mines and soon, cluster weapons. However, although The Hague
meetings made a codification of war crimes, no monitoring mechanisms
or court for violations was set up.

After the First World War, Great Britain, France and Belgium accused
the Central Powers, in particular Germany and Turkey of war atrocities
such as the deportation of Belgian civilians to Germany for forced
labor, executing civilians, the sinking of the Lusitania and the
killing of Armenians by the Ottoman forces. The Treaty of Versailles,
signed in June 1919 provided in articles 227-229 the legal right
for the Allies to establish an international criminal court. The
jurisdiction of the court would extend from common soldiers to
military and government leaders. Article 227 deals specifically with
Kaiser Wilhelm II, underlining the principle that all individuals
to the highest level can be held accountable for their wartime
actions. However, the USA opposed the creation of an international
criminal court both on the basis of State sovereignty and on the basis
that the German government had changed and that one must look to the
future rather than the past.

The same issues arose after the Second World War with the creation of
two military courts — the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg
and the International Military Tribunal for the Far East. Some have
said that these tribunals were imposing ‘victors’ justice on their
defeated enemies, Germany and Japan. There was no international
trial for Italians as Italy had changed sides at an opportune time,
and there were no prosecutions of Allied soldiers or commanders.

In the first years of the United Nations, there was a discussion of
the creation of an international court. A Special Committee was set
up to look into the issue. The Special Committee mad a report in 1950
just as the Korean War had broken out, marking a Cold War that would
continue until 1990, basically preventing any modifications in the
structure of the UN.

Thus, during the Cold War, while there were any number of candidates
for a war crime tribunal, none was created. For the most part national
courts rarely acted even after changes in government. From Stalin
to Uganda’s Idi Amin to Cambodia’s Pol Pot, war criminals have lived
out their lives in relative calm.

It was only at the end of the Cold War that advances were made. Ad
hoc international criminal courts have been set up to try war crimes
from former Yugoslavia, Rwanda, and Sierra Leone. Just as the Cold
War was coming to an end, certain countries became concerned with
international drug trafficking. Thus in 1989, Trinidad and Tobago
proposed the establishment of an international court to deal with the
drug trade. The proposal was passed on by the UN General Assembly to
the International Law Commission, the UN’s expert body on international
law. By 1993, the International Law Commission made a comprehensive
report calling for a court able to deal with a wider range of issues
than just drugs — basically what was called the three ‘core crimes’
of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes.

By the mid-1990s, a good number of governments started to worry about
world trends and the breakdown of the international legal order. The
break up of the federations of the USSR and Yugoslavia, the genocide
in Rwanda, the breakdown of all government functions in Somalia,
the continuing north-south civil war in Sudan — all pointed to the
need for legal restraints on individuals. This was particularly true
with the rise of non-State insurgencies. International law as law
for relations among States was no longer adequate to deal with the
large number on non-State actors.

By the mid-1990s, the door was open to the new concept of world law
dealing with individuals, and the drafting of the statues of the
International Criminal Court went quickly. There is still much to be
done to develop the intellectual basis of world law and to create the
institutions to structure it, but the International Criminal Court
is an important milestone.

ABOUR’S FAVOURITE DOCTOR PRESCRIBES STRONG MEDICINE, BUT PATIENTS AND HIS COLLEAGUES MAY NOT SWALLOW IT

AZG Armenian Daily
17/07/2008

Social

The surgeon Ara Darzi likes to listen to Pink Floyd while he wields
his scalpel. After a year-long operation, the music stops tomorrow
when he publishes a review of the NHS that aims to revive the ailing
patient on its 60th anniversary.

One of Gordon Brown’s first acts as prime minister was to call on
Darzi to undertake the task. He was duly ennobled as Lord Darzi
of Denham and made a health minister. Brown’s request "gobsmacked"
the 48-year-old clinician, but stranger things had happened to Darzi.

Born in Iraq to Armenian parents and raised in the Russian Orthodox
faith, he went to a Jewish school before studying medicine in Ireland
and becoming an internationally renowned pioneer of keyhole surgery
in London. His robot-assisted techniques have earned him the nickname
"Robo Doc".

His years in Dublin have left him with an Irish lilt that marks his
affable manner. Courteous, brainy and driven, Darzi has done nothing
to embarrass his patron, unlike Brown’s other coopted "outsiders"
such as Alan West, the security minister, Mark Malloch Brown, the
foreign minister, and Digby Jones, the trade minister.

He achieved heroic status last November by helping to save the life of
Lord Brennan, a Labour peer, who had a heart seizure after attacking
the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill in the Lords.

"I could see from the corner of my eye Lord Brennan was not very well,"
Darzi recalled on Desert Island Discs last week. "He collapsed. You
just forget where you are. So I started jumping on top of benches
and ended up doing a mouth-to-mouth and heart massage to see if I
couldn’t get him back." After several minutes of futile attempts,
Darzi called for an electric defibrillator ("I used the F-word")
and revived Brennan. "As I was shocking him I saw the Archbishop of
York doing his prayers."

Darzi continues to perform operations on Fridays and Saturday mornings
in London: he is honorary consultant surgeon at St Mary’s hospital,
professor of surgery at Imperial College and chair of surgery at
the Royal Marsden. The rest of the weekend is set aside for his wife
Wendy and children Freddie and Nina.

Having left political meetings abruptly when summoned for emergency
operations, he is clear where his priorities lie. He does a humorous
impression of aghast expressions in Downing Street when he raced off
to treat a colleague. "From day one I told them: if one of my patients
[needs attention], that comes first."

Darzi seemed in need of pastoral intercession himself last October
when the interim report of his NHS review proposed 150 polyclinics
or "super-surgeries", open all hours and partly run by private
enterprise, which would bring together family doctors and specialist
consultants. Amid talk of a mass walkout from the health service and
calls for Darzi’s resignation, fears were raised that the innovation
could spell the end of small practices run by family doctors, replacing
them with a wasteful, bureaucratic system.

The clamour has increased in recent weeks, with the British
Medical Association’s "save our surgeries" campaign raising 1.2m
signatures. Scaremongering, protested Darzi, who accused doctors of
"breaking their professional vows" by urging patients to oppose the
plan. In last week’s Sunday Times he singled out some doctors as
"laggards", so intent on protecting their "professional boundaries"
that they obstructed new treatments.

Since Darzi mooted the idea of polyclinics, all 31 London health
trusts have submitted plans for the super-surgeries.

Tomorrow’s review is expected to guarantee minimum standards of care,
setting out the rights and responsibilities of patients – although
plans to force people to lose weight or give up smoking in exchange
for healthcare have been rejected. Darzi also proposes to give a
bigger role to nurses.

Under his slogan "localise where possible, centralise where necessary",
Darzi believes doctors and nurses must treat patients as customers,
inviting them to grade the quality of their care so others can shop
around: "When you go to a restaurant you look at a website and find
out exactly what people said about that restaurant."

He visualises the NHS structured like a pyramid with, at the bottom,
patients receiving more care in the home – and being allowed to die
there, if they wish – while the top tier would consist of centres of
excellence along the lines of the Royal Marsden. Complex surgery and
critical care for serious illnesses would be provided by big hospitals
serving a million or more people.

Critics say aspects of the plan smack of John Major’s "patient’s
charter", introduced to little effect in 1991. They also cast doubt
on Darzi’s avowed reluctance to take on a political role ("I had
sleepless nights thinking about this"), claiming he was used as a pawn
by the government in the 2004 Hartlepool by-election to reinforce its
reassurances that the town’s University hospital would not be closed.

His detractors point to a telling remark by Alan Johnson, the
health secretary, on Brown’s appointment of nonpoliticians to his
"government of all the talents", known by the acronym "goats". Johnson
told The Guardian in January: "We don’t have a goat problem in this
department. Our goat is tethered."

Darzi was born on May 7, 1960, into a family that had fled to Iraq
from the genocide of Armenians by Ottoman Turks in 1915. His father’s
work as an engineer, developing power stations, often took the family
abroad, but Baghdad was then a stable cosmopolitan city in which
Saddam Hussein had yet to appear.

Darzi’s Jewish school was highly disciplined: "Very academic, not
even a playground. There was no such thing as sport, really." At
home he studied Armenian and served as an altar boy in church. He
was expected to emulate his father’s career, but while in hospital
with a life-threatening case of meningitis, his doctor planted the
idea of medicine.

His parents had friends in Ireland, which they considered safe for
his studies, so at 17 he was packed off to Dublin: "Rain, cold,
miserable." Soon he began to fall in love with the place, visiting
little towns in a sailing boat and frequenting Durty Nelly’s bar in
Limerick, which he had been told had the most beautiful girls. Friends
called him "Dara Darcy, the dark Paddy".

To his mind there was a curious parallel between the conflicts in
Ireland and Iraq: "Most of the troubles back in Iraq were between the
factions of the Shi’ites and the Sunnis. In Ireland, is was between
two factions of Christians. That had no logic to me. I found that
quite challenging."

As a student at the Royal College of Surgeons, Darzi took to hanging
around hospitals to see if he could make himself useful and experience
the reality of being a doctor. After conducting his first appendix
operation, a year before qualifying, he said: "It was the most exciting
day of my life."

He met Wendy, the Protestant daughter of a dentist, at a college
function. Their subsequent marriage in 1991 posed interdenominational
problems: "We had to find a church in Ireland to get married, and
also to have an Armenian patriarch to come and give us a blessing."

Darzi first encountered keyhole surgery in Dublin. "Surgery in those
days was a big cut – the bigger the cut, the more macho the surgeon
was." Enthused by accounts of less invasive techniques, he did his
first keyhole operation and was struck by the patient’s quick recovery
time. "The same day we had done an open operation on the patient next
door. It was like chalk and cheese."

Moving to England to gain experience, he encountered resistance
to keyhole surgery from his superior, who pronounced the procedure
dangerous, until Darzi won him round by conducting an operation with
him. "Very quickly we realised this was the tip of the iceberg." The
medical director of St Mary’s hospital was so thrilled by the publicity
that he offered Darzi a consultancy at the youthful age of 31. The
student decided to wait until he had qualified a year later.

Showered with awards, in 2002 he was knighted for services to medicine
and surgery; in 2003 he became a British citizen.

Darzi says his review of England’s healthcare is like no other,
incorporating the views of 2,000 medical experts. His watchwords are
courage, innovation and best practice. "I am a great believer in
bottom-up. When I want to change something in a ward environment,
I go and talk to the student nurses on the ward, because they know
exactly what is happening on the ward."

YEREVAN ARARAT TO RECEIVE SWISS BELINZONA ON JULY 17 IN ABOVIAN

NOYAN TAPAN

JU LY 16

Yerevan Ararat will receive Swiss Belinzona in the first game of
UEFA Cup Tournament first qualification round on July 17 in Abovian
sports ground. French judges group headed by Philippe Kalt will serve
the match.

ARMENIA AND U.S. TO JOINTLY COMBAT NUCLEAR SMUGGLING

PanARMENIAN.Net
15.07.2008 14:26 GMT+04:00

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Armenian Foreign Minister
Edward Nalbandian signed on July 14, 2008, the "Joint Action Plan
between the Government of the United States of America and the
Government of the Republic of Armenia on Combating Smuggling of
Nuclear and Radioactive Materials."

This political agreement expresses the intention of the two governments
to cooperate to increase the capabilities of the Republic of Armenia
to prevent, detect, and respond effectively to attempts to smuggle
nuclear or radioactive materials. With this agreement, the U.S. and
Armenian governments are significantly enhancing their collaborative
efforts to combat the threat that nuclear or highly radioactive
materials could be acquired by terrorists.

This is the fifth agreement of this nature that has been concluded by
the U.S. government’s Nuclear Smuggling Outreach Initiative. Previous
agreements were completed with Ukraine, Kazakhstan, Georgia, and the
Kyrgyz Republic. To date, eight countries and three international
organizations have partnered with the U.S. government to provide
assistance to support implementation of these agreements, reported
the press office of the U.S. Embassy in Yerevan

CABINET PORTFOLIOS FROM POLITICAL FACTIONS’ PERSPECTIVE

Naharnet
July 11 2008
Lebanon

The 30-member government of national unity and the first under
President Michel Suleiman brought in new ministers and a change of
portfolios for some old ones.

Suleiman nominated State minister Yusuf Taqla (Greek Catholic, new),
Defence Minister: Elias Murr (Greek Orthodox, unchanged) and Interior
Minister: Ziad Baroud (Maronite, new).

The new cabinet saw the representation of MP Michel Aoun’s FPM for
the first time through Social Affairs Minister Mario Aoun (Maronite,
new), Deputy Prime Minister: Issam Abu Jamra (Greek Orthodox, new),
Telecommunications Minister: Gibran Bassil (Maronite, new).

Al-Mustaqbal Parliamentary Block was represented through Premier
Fouad Saniora, the first woman to hold the education ministry and
sister of assassinated Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, MP Bahia Hariri
(Sunni, new), Finance Minister: Mohammed Shatah (Sunni, new) who
was Saniora’s advisor, and State Minister: Khaled Qabbani (Sunni)
who held education ministry.

MP Walid Jumblat’s Progressive Socialist Party is represented by
State Minister Wael Bou Faour (Druze, new), Public Works and Transport
Minister: Ghazi Aridi who held the information post.

Lebanese Forces was represented by Justice Minister: Ibrahim Najjar
(Greek Orthodox, new), and Environment Minister: Antoine Karam
(Maronite, new).

Phalange Party was represented by Tourism Minister: Elie Marouni
(Maronite, new), whose brother Nasri Marouni was shot dead in Zahle
months ago during a Phalange party event.

Qornet Shehwan Gathering was represented by ex-MP, presidential
candidate State Minister Nassib Lahoud (Maronite, new). He replaced
social affairs minister MP Nayla Muawad.

Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri’s Amal movement was represented by
Industry Minister: Ghazi Zaayter (Shiite, new), Foreign Minister:
Fawzi Salukh (Shiite) who returned to the post he resigned in 2006, and
Health Minister: Mohammad Khalifeh (Shiite) who also retains his post.

Hizbullah was represented by Labor Minister: Mohammed Fneish (Shiite)
who held the energy portfolio in Saniora’s resignated government.

Tripoli Gathering was represented by its leader Mohammed al-Safadi
who holds now Economy and Trade Minister: Mohammed Safadi (Sunni)
instead of Public Works and Transport portfolio.

Armenian Tashnaq party was represented by Energy and Water Minister:
Alan Taburian (new).

Armenian Hanshaq party was represented by State Minister: Jean
Ogassapian who held the Administrative Development portfolio.

Democratic Party was represented by its leader Sports and Youth
Minister: Talal Erslan (Druze, new).

Populer Block was represented by its leader Agriculture Minister:
Elie Skaff (Greek Catholic, new).

The Syrian Social National Party was represented through its former
leader State Minister Ali Qanso (Shiite, new).

Independents are: Information Minister: Tareq Mitri (Greek Orthodox)
who was education minister in the resignated government, Culture
Minister: Tammam Slam (Sunni, new), Displaced Persons Minister: Raymond
Audi (Greek Orthodox, new) who was nominated by March 14 forces.

Administrative Development Minister: Ibrahim Shamseddin (Shiite, new)
is also an independent minister nominated by March 14 Forces and who
Speaker Berri, reportedly, fiercely opposed his nomination.

Three Armenian historical monastery complexes included in list of
UNESCO World Heritage

2008-07-10 10:29:00

ArmInfo. The 32nd meeting of UNESCO World Heritage Committee in Quebec
(Canada) included three Armenian monastery complexes of St. Stepan
(Stepanos), St. Faddey (Tadevos) and chapel Dzor-Dzor in the World
Heritage List. The Islamic Republic of Iran submitted the complexes for
the list, which is a bright evidence of cooperation in the sphere of
culture, the Armenian Foreign Ministry Department for Information and
Press told ArmInfo.

Under the UNESCO World Heritage Convention to Protect world cultural
heritage, 851 objects of common importance have been included in the
above list.

"ARMAVIA"S PRETENTIOUS PROGRAMS
Naira Khachatryan

Hayots Ashkhar Daily
Published on July 08, 2008
Armenia

Negotiations with "Bowing" and "AIRBUS"

In the near future "Armavia" air-company is planning to open
Yerevan-Los-Angeles flight without landing. The air-company is holding
negotiations with "Bowing" to purchase planes for this purpose.

Yesterday owner of "Armavia" Michael Baghdasarov met with the
Commercial Regional Director of "Bowing" Sergey Leshchinsky. Before
the negotiations Michael Baghdasarov informed the journalists that
recently he has hold similar negotiations with "AIRBUS".

"The final meeting will be in London on July 14. I think they will
show us the planes there. As you know the flight is inter-continental,
it will be difficult for transatlantic and our company to open this
flight. That is why the choice of the plane is very difficult for us."

According to Baghdasarov the company is starting a dynamic development
– high-quality flights. Though it is not very easy due to the increase
of fuel prices. "At the moment many air-companies simply went bankrupt,
but "Armavia" is trying to overcome all the difficulties."

The company has closed all the non-beneficial flights.

"As you know recently the number of our flights has 5 times increased,
but at the moment we have to close two of them. One of them is
Yerevan-Minsk, later we will announce about the second one. It will
be the third flight to Dubai. Other cuttings are also possible."

But together with the before mentioned obligatory steps the director
of the company is doing his best to provide a wide variety of flights
for his clients. Yerevan- Marcel -Yerevan flight testifies to this. It
is a very good opportunity for the Armenian community living in the
South of France to have direct contact with their motherland and a
result of the right business activity for "Armavia".

Thus the company will continue to extend its activity and the owner of
"Armavia" insured that he is not going to sell the company.

"Those rumors are baseless. As for the rumors about cement factory,
they are grounded. The latter will be sold and the money will serve
for the development of "Armavia", to make it powerful."

Touching upon the purchase of the new airport M. Baghdasarov
underscored that the conversation is about buying and not renting,
because "AIRBUS" and "Bowing" usually sell their airplanes. "So we
are going to buy two CRJ planes from London and in general from now
on we are going to buy the planes."

The concrete conditions of the purchase of planes from "AIRBUS" and
"Bowing" are at clarification stage. "We don’t have final agreement
neither with "AIRBUS" nor with "Bowing". I hope those companies will
propose favorable conditions. Anyway we will choose the best option."

It was evident from M. Baghdasarov’s speech that "Armavia" has got a
pretentious development program. "In future we will have more planes,
, because Armenia is becoming a transiting country. The latter can
connect North with South and West with East."

The representative of "Bowing" who arrived in Armenia by "Armavia"’s
plane was impressed by the high level of the company. S Leshchinsky
said: "We are pleasantly surprised not only at the technical comfort
but also the service that meets the demands of the international
standards."

As regards the mutual cooperation and negotiations, he says the company
is able to open an inter-continental flight without landing. "The
only thing that we must do is to chose the right equipments. In my
view it is too early to speak about the choice of the plane’s type
and cooperation. But the first meeting showed that actually it is
possible."

MEDVEDEV SUPPORTS DIRECT ARMENIAN-AZERBAIJANI NEGOTIATIONS

Interfax News Agency
July 3 2008
Russia

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev welcomed progress in the Karabakh
settlement process and promised support to the participants in the
direct negotiations.

"Certain progress has been made," Medvedev said after talks with
Azeri President Ilham Aliyev in Baku on Thursday.

"Moscow supports the resumption of direct negotiations between the
Azeri and Armenian presidents, which took place in St. Petersburg on
June 6," he said.

"Russia will continue to assist the search for a mutually acceptable
compromise" in the Karabakh settlement process, Medvedev said.

ARMENIA INVITES TURKISH PRESIDENT IN FOOTBALL DIPLOMACY

Agence France Presse — English
July 5, 2008 Saturday 10:32 AM GMT

Armenian President Serzh Sarkisian has invited Turkish President
Abdullah Gul to watch a football match in Yerevan, a spokesman said
Saturday, despite a diplomatic freeze between the two countries.

"The president has invited Turkish President Abdullah Gul Enhanced
Coverage LinkingAbdullah Gul -Search using: Biographies Plus News
News, Most Recent 60 Days to visit Armenia on September 6 to watch the
World Cup qualifying match between Armenia and Turkey," Sarkisian’s
spokesman, Samvel Farmanyan, told AFP.

There are currently no diplomatic ties between Turkey and Armenia
because of disputes over the massacre of Armenians by Ottoman Turks
in the early 20th century and over Turkey’s support for Azerbaijan,
Armenia’s arch-foe.

Backed by Armenia, ethnic-Armenian forces took control of the
Azerbaijani province of Nagorny Karabakh during a war in the early
1990s that killed thousands and forced nearly a million people on
both sides to flee their homes.

There have been recent calls to reopen the border between ex-Soviet
Armenia and Turkey to help growing trade ties between the two, which
are currently conducted through third countries such as Georgia.

MEMBER OF SASUN MIKAYELIAN’S SUPPORT GROUP BROUGHT TO POLICE FROM NORTHERN
AVENUE

NOYAN TAPAN

Ju ly 7

At about 15:00, July 7, a brawl started between two girls who appeared
in Northern Avenue and the participants of the action of protest,
radical opposition supporters, who are on sit-down strike for the third
day in Northern Avenue. As a result, policemen in civil clothes brought
to the police station an oppositionist, a resident of the village
of Vanatur, who had come to Northern Avenue as a member of arrested
Sasun Mikayelian’s support group. As Noyan Tapan correspondent was
informed by the members of the Special Regiment youth organization,
the girls very obviously instigators.

It should be mentioned that nearly sixty people, the majority of
which were women, spent the July 7 night in Northern Avenue. In the
previous nights their number reached 90. They organized the action
without tents, in the open air and spend the nights near the walls
of Avenue’s elite buildings, on mattresses spread on the ground.

It should be mentioned that the demands of the sit-down strike
announced until August 1 are to release those arrested on the March
1 case, to stop prosecutions and pressures to opposition supporters,
to quickly call for liability those really guilty of the March 1
events, in the person of former President Robert Kocharian. Besides,
the opposition demands dismissing until August 1 Deputy Prime Minister
Armen Gevorgian, Head of President’s Administration Hovik Abrahamian,
Prosecutor General Aghvan Hovsepian, Head of the National Security
Service Gorik Hakobian, and Chairman of Council of the Public TV and
Radio Company Alexan Haroutiunian.