PRESS RELEASE
The Heritage Party
31 Moscovian Street
Yerevan, Armenia
Tel.: (+374 – 10) 53.69.13
Fax: (+374 – 10) 53.26.97
Email: info@heritage.am; office@heritage.am
Website:

17 March 2008

Heritage Party Declaration on Armenia’s Past, Present, and Future

Now more than ever, as the schism between the Armenian people and its
government continues to expand, the Heritage Party calls for a
national rehabilitation process. Such a process, if it is to be
meaningful and permanent, must proceed not in spite but in full and
brave recognition of the events that have unfurled in our Republic
over the past few months.

February 19, election day, was the evident disregard of the national
will, but we must bear in mind that the campaigns that preceded it and
the human rights violations that followed it are part and parcel of
that disregard. The campaigns were inherently unequal in terms of
media access and fairness of coverage, the misuse of administrative
levers, and the endemic application of the means of state for partisan
advantage. At times votes were purchased, at others they were forced.

The elections, therefore, were prejudiced before they were held. But
even on election day, substantial and systemic violations were
recorded across the Republic, with grave implications for the
qualitative integrity of the electoral process and the quantitative
reflection of its true results. This does not happen under democratic
governments.

Nor do democratic governments use force to suppress their own
citizens. In Armenia’s case, hundreds of thousands of Armenians
gathered in Liberty Square peacefully to protest the conduct and
official count of the vote. That the number of protesters grew and
doubtless triggered an unpredictable concern among the authorities was
no validation for suppressing them. And yet on March 1, the incumbent
president of Armenia declared an effectively unlawful state of
emergency. This meant, in breach of every national and international
norm of civil and political liberty and of common democratic ethics,
that there would be no free speech and assembly, no free media, and no
political pamphlets that the government did not approve.

Against this background, sadly so reminiscent of the Soviet era,
international broadcasters, when beginning to report on Armenia, would
be interrupted by darkness or by advertisements. Websites were blocked
and radio stations kicked off the air, all in an effort to keep the
Armenian people ignorant of the actions of their own government and
the world beyond.

And now to the actions. On the morning of March 1, and deep into the
night of the same day, the authorities began a systematic crackdown
upon their fellow citizens, unleashing professional provocateurs to
stir up the crowds and giving themselves and others an excuse for
violence. Freedom was squelched, seven civilians and a police officer
were killed, hundreds were injured, and all were deprived of their
fundamental human rights. But for the forcible dispersal of Liberty
Square in the early morning, the tragedy of that night would not have
befallen the nation.

Deprived of their voice, the protesters began to lose their leaders.
On a daily basis, security personnel including masked men wearing
various uniforms took away or arrested opposition figures and
rank-and-file participants and proceeded to indict them on various
creative charges up to organizing a coup d’etat. Four members of
Parliament who had dared to endorse the opposition candidate were
stripped of their immunity and also charged. The intent of the special
operation and ensuing state of emergency was simple: to attempt to
drive the Armenian people into fear and to warn the Constitutional
Court against any fantasies of reaching an independent verdict. The
brute tactics worked and the authorities, once again, upheld in court
the elections they wanted on February 19.

Today emergency rule continues in force, citizens remain in jail often
with restricted access to attorneys, and the media–the role of which
it is to serve as an informed and informing watchdog against
government conduct and corruption–have been pushed into oblivion or
complicity. The political arrests and detentions show no sign of
abating, and the measures of the Prosecutor General’s Office have now
extended to interrogating Heritage’s members of Parliament, immorally
attacking their integrity, and announcing the deprivation, however
illegal, of their right to visit citizens at their place of
incarceration.

The unconscionability displayed on February 19 and the brutality used
to protect it on March 1 remain unresolved issues. No state of
emergency, accompanied as it is by an aggressive, one-sided "public
information" vertical which deepens the public divide rather than
healing it, will succeed in securing the collective amnesia of state
and society. It must be lifted forthwith.

What the country needs–what the people require and their government
can no longer postpone–is a brave, new national discourse. In that
discourse the Heritage Party will continue to serve in any capacity
which Armenia’s citizenry demands, and it will use its every resource
to achieve the reconciliation of the body politic with its government,
and the government with its past. To that end, Heritage calls for
national solidarity, a multi-partisan public project for a dignified
dialogue, the release of obviously political detainees, and an
immediate plenipotentiary inquiry into the tragedy of March 1–its
causes and consequences both–whose just and comprehensive findings
might help the recovery of democracy in Armenia.

Only in this way will we, at this most critical hour in modern
Armenian history, be able to realize the national transformation that
is long overdue but now imperative for the sake of Hayastan and her
people’s future.

The Heritage Party
17 March 2008
Yerevan