PRESS RELEASE
The Heritage Party
Yerevan 0033, Armenia
Tel.: (+374 – 10) 58.08.77, 52.22.38
Fax: (+374 – 10) 54.38.97
Email: [email protected]; [email protected]
Website:
July 21, 2006
Heritage Headquarters Under Lock Again
Yerevan — The Service for Mandatory Execution of Judicial Acts (SMEJA)
of the Ministry of Justice, which recently became the visible servant
of the business and political interests of the ruling clan in Armenia,
this time even surpassed itself.
Today, on July 21, approximately thirty marshals from SMEJA, led
by Major Vahram Yenokian, head of SMEJA’s Central and Nork-Marash
Division, again surrounded the Heritage Party’s main office which,
based on the Court’s ruling that went into effect on July 12, had
been reopened yesterday, on July 20. Initially, the SMEJA officials
prohibited the staff from entering their office and subsequently locked
and resealed the office doors. When Heritage Chairman Raffi Hovannisian
demanded that he show a Court order or other legal warrant to that
effect, Yenokian shamelessly responded that they were carrying this
out in line with Hovannisian’s own formal request for execution of
the Court’s June 26 verdict. This demonstrated that the high-ranking
SMEJA officer interpreted that ruling in a way that was convenient for
him and those he serves. Yenokian was under strict telephonic orders
and thus was simply uncompromising. He did not even reply to Zaruhi
Postanjian, Hovannisian’s attorney, who demanded that they wait until
Judge Edward Avetisian formally elucidated his verdict pursuant to
a request for clarification officially submitted to him today.
With respect to the unlawful actions–which obviously were "directives
from above"–of the state-owned Paronian theater’s management against
the party’s main office, Judge Avetisian of the Court of First Instance
of Yerevan’s Central and Nork-Marash communities had issued on April
14 an injunction prohibiting the defendant theater from taking any
restrictive action against the office in question and the usage of
the property located in it and forwarded its ruling to SMEJA. Then,
on June 26, the same Court ruled that the forcible closure of the
Heritage office was illegal, and thus the SMEJA seals placed on the
doors of the office had effectively expired. While the Court instructed
the plaintiff to pay certain installments on the contract, it held the
defendant and its negligent conduct to be solely responsible for this
situation, thus constructively validating the five-year real-estate
lease that had been signed between Hovannisian and the government’s
agent in September 2002.
In Yenokian’s words, they were sealing the doors today since they
would soon be removing the party’s belongings from the office and
taking them to SMEJA.
The lawless lackeys wearing official uniforms for the ruling clique
should come to understand that they will be held accountable for
their flagrantly illegal acts, the sole objective of which is to
obstruct and disrupt the normal, lawful activities of any and all
political opposition.
Founded in 2002, Heritage has regional divisions throughout the
land. Its central headquarters are located at 7 Vazgen Sargsian Street,
Yerevan 0010, Armenia, with telephone contact at (374-10) 580.877,
fax at (374-10) 543.897, email at [email protected], and website at