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Yerevan Protests Resume Despite Government Crackdown

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  • Yerevan Protests Resume Despite Government Crackdown

    Yerevan Protests Resume Despite Government Crackdown
    By Emil Danielyan, Ruzanna Khachatrian and Ruzanna Stepanian

    Radio Free Europe, Czech Republic
    March 1 2008

    The post-election unrest in Armenia deepened on Saturday evening as
    thousands of people rallied and barricaded themselves on a major
    street intersection in central Yerevan in anticipation of another
    government attempt to forcibly end the ongoing opposition protests.
    President Robert Kocharian, meanwhile, threatened to call a state of
    emergency in the country.

    The crowd, furious with the brutal break-up earlier in the day of
    an overnight protest by fellow supporters of former President Levon
    Ter-Petrosian, blocked all streets leading to the area with buses and
    other vehicles seized from riot police that tried unsuccessfully to
    disperse them several hours earlier. Ter-Petrosian associates urged
    the protesters not go home until the authorities end the opposition
    leader's de facto house arrest.

    "Levon Ter-Petrosian told us to stay here and wait for him," one of
    them, Aram Sarkisian, said.

    Ter-Petrosian's election campaign headquarters said in a separate
    statement that only the ex-president's presence "could calm tempers"
    and prevent a further escalation of the situation. It warned that
    the Armenian authorities will be responsible for that escalation if
    they refuse to let Ter-Petrosian leave his house where he claims to
    have been forcibly taken from Liberty Square.

    However, Foreign Minister Vartan Oskanian denied that Ter-Petrosian
    was placed under house arrest, saying that officers of the State
    Protection Service (SPS) were deployed outside his house only to ensure
    his personal security. Oskanian said they will be removed from there
    if Ter-Petrosian renounces the services of his bodyguards employed
    by the SPS.

    Speaking at a joint news conference with a deputy chief of the Armenian
    police, Oskanian also warned that Kocharian will declare a state of
    emergency if the demonstrations continue. He echoed in that regard
    police claims that the more than one thousand opposition supporters
    camped in Liberty Square themselves attacked security forces before
    being dispersed by the latter.

    Meanwhile, another opposition leader, Nikol Pashinian, urged the
    protesters massing in the vast area outside the Yerevan municipality
    and the French Embassy in Armenia to boost their "self-defense" and
    brace themselves for a possible police attack. He also told them to
    reinforce the barricades set up there following the police attempt
    to disperse several hundred opposition supporters who gathered there
    by noon.

    "The authorities made a big mistake this morning," said Pashinian.

    "Believe me, we will make the most of that mistake."

    Many protesters were already armed with metal and wooden sticks
    and sounded bullish about taking on security forces. Some held
    truncheons and shields seized from riot police. Angry protesters also
    set ablaze a police jeep which eyewitnesses said raced through the
    street intersection and ran over two women. They said a policeman
    that drove it escaped the scene unharmed.

    In another incident, Armen Martirosian, a parliamdent deputy from
    the opposition Zharangutyun (Heritage) party, was stabbed in the
    same area by one of several men who he said were trying to beat up
    a police officer. He was immediately hospitalized.

    "As they hit the police officer, I lay on him to protect his head
    and back," Martirosian told RFE/RL from his hospital bed. "At that
    point I felt pain in my leg."

    Martirosian said he believes the attackers were "agents
    provocateurs." "I think the attackers were not opposition demonstrators
    because we say something demonstrators usually listen to us."
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