HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH DEMANDS PROBE INTO ARMENIAN CRACKDOWN

Radio Liberty
March 3 2008
Czech Republic

A leading international human rights organization has demanded that the
Armenian government launch a "prompt and independent" investigation"
into the bloody confrontation between security forces and opposition
demonstrators in Yerevan that left at least eight people dead.

The New York-based Human Rights Watch (HRW) said it is also "deeply
concerned" by reports from journalists and local observers that many
other protesters have gone missing.

"The Armenian government should swiftly investigate whether the police
and army used lethal force against protesters in accordance with
international standards," Holly Cartner, HRW’s Europe and Central
Asia director said in a Sunday statement. "While the government has
a duty to maintain civic order, lethal force may only be used when
strictly necessary to protect life."

Under a United Nations convention, lethal force may only be
used against violent protesters only when less extreme means are
insufficient to protect the life of law-enforcement officers and
other citizens.

Citing witness accounts, HRW suggested that riot police may themselves
have provoked violence by firing trace bullets in the direction
of thousands of people who barricaded themselves on a major street
intersection outside the Yerevan mayor’s office. "Violent clashes broke
out, according to eyewitnesses, when a tracer bullet apparently struck
and killed a demonstrator," it said. "Angry demonstrators cried for
revenge and attacked the security forces."

"A local observer who watched a video recording of the events told
Human Rights Watch that the video showed how demonstrators, demanding
revenge, placed the dead body of a man, apparently in his 50s, on
top of a car," added the HRW statement.

The Armenian authorities insist that it is the demonstrators who
opened fire first before attacking security forces, burning down police
vehicles and looting nearby shops. The Office of the Prosecutor-General
said on Monday that a police officer was among at least eight people
killed in the unprecedented violence. The law-enforcement agency
identified all of them in a statement posted on its website.

"Human Rights Watch is deeply concerned by reports from journalists
and local observers that many demonstrators have gone missing,"
the New York-based group said. "In the current state of emergency,
with an effective media blackout, relatives have little access to
information about their missing family members."