Ani Gevorgian
As I wrote in my previous post, three journalists were arrested on May 31 during the chaos surrounding the crackdown on a peaceful protest that was being staged in Liberty Square.
The police claim that Ani Gevorgian, a 22-year-old journalist for the pro-opposition “Haykakan Zhamanak” newspaper, assaulted an officer and was dragged away, judging from the video that can be watched here, by what seemed to be undercover cops, again smoking slim cigarettes (it always kills me to see these supposedly macho guys smoking cigarettes marketed towards women, another Armenian societal paradox). The state prosecutors will decide what to do with her today, since she hasn’t been formally charged. Hopefully, they will do the right thing and release her from custody.
It’s hard to believe that she did in fact “assault” a police officer. Perhaps the guy dragging her off, who was in plain clothes and didn’t look much older than her, said something she didn’t like–we can just imagine what words could have been exchanged during that scuffle–and maybe she slapped him. He could have been anyone, assuming he had no identification to prove who he was, which most likely was the case.
However, there is no way of really knowing what transpired in the moment she was apprehended because it wasn’t captured on video. Regardless, she was certainly targeted because she was recognized as a reporter for the paper edited by Nikol Pashinian, who is serving jail time for speaking his own mind during past protests. Obviously, no one in the authorities is crazy about “Haykakan Zhamanak” for the anti-governmental information that it prints.
The strange thing is, despite that Europe and the US keep voicing stern warnings to Armenia to clean up its act when it comes to human rights violations, they continue unabated. The struggles are videotaped, the brutality of the police in full view and broadcast on the Internet for the world to see. And the authorities don’t care.
As the Armenians always say about situations where people are acting out of sorts in public and causing a scene, “It’s shameful.” The troubling thing is, the police don’t comprehend this, and they keep making the same mistakes over and over again. Their actions do not uphold the freedoms a diplomatic society enjoys, they in fact ridicule those freedoms.
So let the protesters sit on the asphalt on Liberty Square and hold their signs, who cares? Who are they disturbing? And why lock up a young journalist for doing her job–reporting about what Yerevan citizens are doing peacefully to voice their concerns, their essential right to do? I haven’t read any interviews with bystanders complaining about the protests going on there, it’s only the authorities who seem to have a problem with it. Don’t they have anything better to do?
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