I just read a report on RFE/RL that twelve protesters and three journalists were arrested in Liberty Square, which is where the Opera House is situated. The square only reopened a week ago after the area was dug up to build a parking garage, the construction of which took nearly two years.
Activists started protesting there last Friday, peaceful as always, by sitting on the asphalt and holding placards with messages about protecting human rights and reopening the pro-opposition A1 Plus TV station, which was closed by the government in April 2002. A video also posted by RFE/RL showed these people being forcefully removed, although they weren’t creating any sort of mass disturbance with broadcasted anti-governmental messages. They were just sitting.
Seems that the police were harassing ordinary pedestrians that they believed to be protesters as well. That was also the case on Monday.
Things became more hectic yesterday when the crowds clashed with the police. I didn’t read anything about police offers being injured in the struggles.
According to one woman who was interviewed in the video that supplemented the article, she was walking home with her son on the sidewalk nearby the Opera (on which particular street wasn’t made clear) when they were essentially attacked by the police and roughed up. They never entered or were about to enter Liberty Square. Her son was taken away in a police vehicle, with his dress shirt ripped off him.
Of the dozens of police offers shown in the video, there were many others who seemed to have been undercover cops, one of whom had a slim cigarette hanging out of his mouth as he pulled some young guy towards a police van and pushed him inside.
If the opposition wants to get anywhere and continue attracting Armenian citizens to its cause, these types of protests have to continue on a daily basis. As more people get detained, the more likely momentum will pick up in favor of the opposition. If the majority of people are indeed opposed to the authorities as many people who I have spoken to claim, this is the way to activate people to get off their rear ends and enact change–whatever that means for them. People should have taken to the streets on March 2, 2008 in defiance to the state of emergency and infamous brutal crackdown of the day before, but people stayed home afraid, with the opposition’s leader Levon Ter-Petrossian suddenly quiet.
I think what needs to happen is for the Armenian National Congress–which hasn’t demonstrated its courage lately–to elect a new leader that would replace Ter-Petrossian, preferably someone who previously held office in government, like Former Foreign Minister Alexander Arzoumanyan. The movement needs fresh faces to the fore and new calls for action if it wants to rally the masses like it did before. I really believe that people have become complacent lately because they are bored with the aloof former president and his apparent erratic leadership.
If the opposition is indeed serious and is determined to struggle for the protection of human rights, justice to prevail and so forth, the peaceful protests that have restarted need to repeat, and the Congress needs to pick a new leader. This will in turn reactivate the other opposition forces like the Heritage party, which has also been relatively dormant.
People moving about in Liberty Square, whether they are pedestrians or peaceful protesters, cannot be permitted to be brutalized by the police. Citizens of Yerevan must pressure the authorities to make this unwarranted harassment stop.
Photo credit: RFE/RL
[...] some people have been detained regardless? According to an account told by a woman that was cited in a previous post, the answer is no. That is, unless the police knew who her son was and was believed to have had [...]