The state of democracy in Armenia
With Emil Danielyan

Moderator: Nicole Rosenleaf Ritter
Wednesday, July 7, 2004; 04:00 pm CET

In his recent article “A Dictator in the Making,” noted Armenian analyst
Emil Danielyan writes that repression against the political opposition “is
turning Armenia into a vicious police state where human rights are worth
nothing when they threaten the ruling regime?s grip on power.” Do you agree?
Mr. Danielyan will be on hand in a live discussion on Wednesday, 7 July, at
4:00 p.m. CET to discuss the situation in Armenia and to answer your
questions. Emil Danielyan works for the Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
bureau in Yerevan, where he is a correspondent and editor of the
Armenian-language daily news site He is also
a frequent contributor to TOL and other publications covering the
post-communist region. Join in the discussion on the 7th, or submit a
question in advance below.

The transcript follows.

Editor’s Note: Transitions Online moderators retain editorial control over
Live Internet discussions and choose the most relevant questions for guests
and hosts; guests and hosts can decline to answer questions.

Prague, Czech Republic: Hello and welcome to everyone who is joining us for
the discussion. Emil, thank you for being with us today.

Emil Danielyan: Thank you for this opportunity to communicate with your
readers.

Prague, Czech Republic: So what can be done to change the situation in
Armenia. Opposition did its best and got no result.

Emil Danielyan: It’s a good question which is difficult to answer. First of
all, the overall situation with human and civil rights in Armenia must not
depend on whether or not the Armenian opposition is fighting for regime
change. Those are natural rights that are guaranteed by Armenia’s
constitution and stem from its international obligations. I believe that
Armenian citizens must simply resist their country’s slide into
authoritarianism with various forms of peaceful protest. I, for example,
sympathize a lot with several local NGOs that have recently joined forces to
fight against the blatant human rights abuses. I wish more Armenians had
been involved in such activism. But my greatest disappointment is with the
West which has largely turned a blind eye to these alarming developments. If
the United States and Europe are unwilling to go to great lengths in
advancing Armenia’s democratization (which I believe they can), they must
admit that openly. That would be more honest than what they are doing now.

Minsk, Belarus: What is your opinion about the Dictator of Belarus ? Belarus
parliament adopted new law for KGB yerstoday.. KGB transform to stalin NKVD
of USSR Dr.Valery Hrytsuk v_hrytsuk@canada.com P.S. Armenia is near at
Belarus

Emil Danielyan: Frankly, I have no in-depth knowledge of Belarusian
politics. But I do know that the regime of Aleksandr Lukashenko is arguably
the most undemocratic and authoritarian in Europe (the South Caucasus
included). It is “natural” for such regimes to rely heavily on a
Soviet-style security apparatus. Fortunately, Armenia’s political and media
environment is still more pluralistic than that of Belarus. However, the
overall direction in which my country is moving is certainly the one which
Belarus took when Lukashenko came to power a decade ago.

Yerevan, Armenia: Emil, when riot police attacked opposition supporters
camped out overnight on Baghramian Avenue during the early hours of the
morning, did you see any sign of provocation from the crowd that justified
the use of water cannon, electric batons and stun grenades? As I understand
that you had to literally run for safety during the attack, did you consider
identifying yourself as a journalist so as to avoid being beaten as Hayk
Gevorkyan was and so that you could cover events from the sidelines?

Emil Danielyan: I didn’t see any actions by the crowd that might have
provoked such a brutal reaction from the riot police. The protest was
absolutely peaceful. At that moment it didn’t really matter whether you are
a journalist, a woman or an elderly person. On the contrary, having a camera
was likely to get you in greater trouble. I was simply lucky to escape
unschathed.

Brussels, Belgium: Armenia’s defence minister, Serzh Sarkisian, is often
said to be the second-strongest man in the country. To an outsider, the
notion of an army man being so strong and the prominence of the army in
Armenian life since the Karabakh war seems profoundly disturbing and
ominous. How would you describe the relationship between Kocharian and
Sarkisian? Is Kocharian making any attempt to reduce the army’s influence?
Or is the army a weapon that Kocharian is completely confident about?

Emil Danielyan: The Armenian army as such does not have much influence on
politics and is not a separate institutionalized player as is the case in
countries like Turkey or Algeria. It’s just that Armenia’s defense minister
(a civilian) is the closest and most powerful associated of President
Kocharian. They have always worked in tandem, both in Armenia and Karabakh.
Serzh Sarkisian is indeed the second most powerful man in the country is
Kocharian’s most likely successor. His pervasive influence on economic
affairs is indicative of the serious problems with the rule of law in
Armenia. Lucrative business still requires strong government connections
here.

Taipei, Taiwan: If both Armenia and Azerbaijan are really eager to solve
their problems on Nagorno-Karabagh and Nakhichevan, why don’t move the
people (from NK to Nakhichevan and from Nakhichevan to NK) and then change
their names of both places (Nakhichevan as NK, and NK as Nakhichevan)?

Emil Danielyan: I don’t think the Armenians (especially those living in
Karabakh) and Azerbaijanis will ever agree to such an unusual solution. At
issue is Karabakh, not Azerbaijan’s Nakhichevan exclave. And as far as this
discussion is concerned, I must stress that the Karabakh issue is only
indirectly connected with domestic Armenian politics.

Vienna, Austria: In the West, we often hear about Armenia as relates to the
diaspora. What remains of the influence of the diaspora on the country these
days? Are they a help or a hindrance in moving Armenia forward?

Emil Danielyan: The Diaspora influence on Armenia’s political, economic and
social life has been marginal. They have rightly poured millions of dollars
worth of assistance into this country since independence, but have done
little to promote Armenia’s democratization and make its post-Soviet rulers
respect human and civil rights. For example, the only Diaspora reaction to
the dramatic events in Yerevan was a toothless statement by an
Armenian-American lobbying group calling for “dialogue” between the two
rival camps. Many Diaspora Armenians fail to understand that their
historical homeland can not become prosperous without having free elections,
freedom of speech, an independent judiciary and things like that. They often
dismiss international criticisms of the Armenian authorities’ human rights
record as being part of a U.S. ploy to make us stop campaigning for
international recognition of the 1915 genocide of Armenians in the Ottoman
Empire and become dependent on modern-day Turkey. For them, the recipe for
development is nationalism, not liberal democracy. The Diaspora
organizations in the US and Europe must stop ignoring this country’s
fundamental flaws.

London, Britain: In the article that you wrote for TOL, you wrote about the
police being given “a new KGB-style function of keeping track of and
suppressing opposition”. How secret is this new role? How widely is this
known in Armenia, and do you get a sense of growing fear in the country?

Emil Danielyan: The revival of KGB-style policing is particularly visible in
small towns outside Yerevan where everyone knows each other, there is no
civil society and independent newspapers, and the authorities find it much
easier to persecute oppositionists. The recent draconian imprisonments of
several such activists are a vivid example of that. The entire
law-enforcement apparatus was given functions of secret police ahead of the
opposition campaign. That kind of policing has eased since the end of the
opposition rallies in Yerevan last month, but I have no doubts that it will
intensify again in the event of another anti-Kocharian campaign. As for a
sense of fear, I must admit that for the first time in my life felt kind of
scared while doing my job last April. If journalists experience fear during
their work then there is really something wrong with their country.

Armenia, Yerevan: Emil, you are considered one of the best and most
professional journalists in Armenia today and the authorities can’t be happy
with the coverage that RFE/RL gave to last year’s elections and the
opposition protests that occured in April and May. Do you ever feel under
pressure not to write some of the articles and analysis that you do? Has any
direct pressure been asserted on either yourself or RFE/RL? In general, are
journalists protected and able to work freely in Armenia?

Emil Danielyan: To my knowledge, there have been no instances of
intimidation or direct pressure on any of the RFE/RL reporters in Armenia in
recent years. Maybe the fact that we work for a US-funded broadcaster gives
us additional protection, I don’t know. But as I write in my article, the
April events saw the worst-ever violence against Armenian journalists. That
can not fail to make us feel more jittery, and I guess we now think more
about the consequences of our critical reporting than we did before this
crisis. But so far I have faced no government reprisals for freely
expressing myself.

Leipzig, Germany: Armenia’s history in the 1990s was turbulent and bloody,
with tanks on the streets and the 1999 massacre in parliament. What would
you say are the chief differences between then and now? Is the repression
and violence being perpetrated by Kocharian now really something new?

Emil Danielyan: The scale and the nature of the repressions is definitely
something new. After all, we didn’t have rank-and-file opposition activists
sentenced to 18 months in prison in the past. And it’s not an exaggeration
to say that Armenia has obvious political prisoners for the first time in a
decade. Fundamentally, Armenia’s current political system is no different
from what we had in the mid- and late 1990s. It’s just that there is now
more government recourse to brute force despite the fact that we a member of
the Council of Europe and should have been more democratic.

Yerevan, Armenia: Emil don’t you think that Armenia needs another 10 to 15
years of development to overcome all the hardships of transition period –
enough time for Komsomol activists to leave the sceen to new generation of
Armenian politisions.

Emil Danielyan: Well, there were plenty of Komsomol guys in East Germany,
Poland or Hungary in 1989, but that didn’t prevent those countries from
developing into established democracies. The problem is that Armenia’s
oligarchic system is becoming more and more entrenched and it could be more
difficult to change it in the future. Prospects for democratization should
improve if there is real economic development that would strengthen civil
society and make citizens less dependent on their government. But that
primarily depends on the overall situation in the South Caucasus, notably
the resolution of the Karabakh conflict.

Prague, Czech Republic: Emil, thank you very much for your thorough and
thoughtful answers, and thanks to all the people who sent in questions.
Please join us again for the next TOL discussion.

Emil Danielyan: Thank you too.