FAMILY PROTESTS MEMBER’S KILLING WITH SELF-IMMOLATION
By Karine Kalantarian
Radio Liberty, Czech Rep
Dec 7 2006
An elderly woman and her three grandsons were reportedly in a serious
condition on Thursday after setting themselves on fire in protest
against what they see as a government cover-up of the recent killing
of a family member.
Eyewitnesses said Gyulizar Avdalian, 68, and the three teenage boys
tried to burn themselves during a demonstration outside President
Robert Kocharian’s official residence that was staged by over three
dozen residents of their village of Zovuni in northeastern Armenia.
The protesters, most of them Yezidi Kurds, demanded a fresh criminal
investigation into the violent death of Avdalian’s son Kyaram.
The 42-year-old farmer was beaten to death on November 6 in still
uncertain circumstances. His relatives say he was attacked by several
men led by the ethnic Armenian mayor of the neighboring village of
Lchashen, who is said to have been locked in a bitter land dispute
with the Avdalian family.
However, law-enforcement authorities arrested and prosecuted another
man who the angry protesters say had nothing to do with the crime.
Two members of the extended Avdalian family were received by
Prosecutor-General Aghvan Hovsepian following the attempted
self-immolation. A spokeswoman for Hovsepian said he promised to
order prosecutors in Yerevan to take over the inquiry.
Still, the Office of the Prosecutor-General stood by the official
theory of the crime in a statement released later in the day. It said
the dispute broke out after Kyaram Avdalian grazed cattle on a land
belonging to a Lchashen family.
The dead man’s mother and children were hospitalized immediately
after the desperate action. "I’ve just visited them. Their condition
is critical," the leader of Armenia’s Yezidi community, Aziz Tamoyan,
told RFE/RL.
Tamoyan, who had earlier appealed to Kocharian and Hovsepian in
connection with the case, backed the family’s demands and warned that
failure to punish the "real perpetrators" of the crime would further
escalate the situation in Zovuni. He also said that the alleged
cover-up the result of government corruption and ethnic discrimination.
The Yezidis are Armenia’s largest ethnic minority, numbering between
30,000 and 50,000, most of them rural residents. There have been Yezidi
protests in Yerevan in the past against alleged land grabs carried
out by local government officials and wealthy farmers connected with
the latter.
"In general our relations with the Armenian people have always been
good," said Tamoyan. "We consider Armenia to be our homeland. But
there have always been some cases [of discrimination.]"
"People just don’t want to keep quiet anymore," he added. "That is
why four of them burned themselves."
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress
