ARMENIAN OPPOSITION RALLIES; PACE SAYS REFORMS "INADEQUATE"
Marianna Grigoryan

EurasiaNet
June 20 2008
NY

With cries of "Fight, fight till the end!" supporters of ex-President
Levon Ter-Petrosian on June 20 held their first large-scale public
demonstration in Yerevan since the violence of March 1 that left ten
people dead.

Opposition protestors made plain that they saw the rally as a critical
test for the government – both at home and abroad. Next week, the
Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe will discuss Armenia’s
progress in meeting the terms of a recent resolution calling for the
government to undertake various confidence-building measures in the
wake of the March 1 crackdown on opposition demonstrators. Failure
to honor the resolution could result in the loss of Armenia’s PACE
voting rights.

On June 20, the body announced that Armenia’s progress in meeting
its demands had been "insufficient."

With those demands in mind, some rally participants carried posters
with the photographs of arrested opposition members. "Prescott and
Colombier, don’t protect the assassins of March 1," read one poster, in
reference to John Prescott and Georges Colombier, two PACE rapporteurs
sent to evaluate Armenia’s progress in meeting Resolution 1609 before
the body starts its summer session on June 23.

As if a reminder for the international community, rally speakers
re-emphasized their chief complaints against the government of
President Serzh Sarkisian.

"This rally proves that the people do not accept the results of the
[February 19 presidential] elections and [Armenian President] Serzh
Sarkisian’s legitimacy," Ter-Petrosian, who officially finished a
distant second in the presidential race, told cheering onlookers.

The ex-president went on to assert that such rallies should
not be linked with the events of March 1. "Dozens of rallies and
demonstrations have taken place before, but no disorder ever happened,"
he proclaimed. "The bandit group, the Tatar-Mongol gang, fired at
the people. Sooner or later, they will pay for this," he charged
in reference to Sarkisian and former President Robert Kocharian,
who was in office at the time of the March 1 events.

In an apparent flashback to his own presidency, Ter-Petrosian also
promised the crowd that those who died during the violence would be
named official national heroes.

As usual, opposition and police showed little convergence in
their estimates of the number of participants on hand to hear that
message. Police monitoring the crowd estimated 10,000; at the start of
the rally, senior opposition Republican Party member Suren Sureniants
put the number at "around 50,000." By the end, Ter-Petrosian himself
asserted that 200,000 protestors had turned out to express their
disapproval of the government.

Opposition supporters claimed that public transportation cuts were
used to block a greater turnout.

Less debate surrounds the demonstration’s timing – the event took
place just three days before the start of the PACE session. The two
PACE rapporteurs were in the country from June 16-17, while the
Ter-Petrosian movement’s fight to secure a downtown location for
their rally was still going strong.

Contrary to the two men’s findings, President Sarkisian’s government
has maintained that progress has indeed been made in releasing some
prisoners, setting up a structured dialogue with some opposition
groups, and launching an investigation into March 1. [For details,
see the Eurasia Insight archive].

The opposition, however, says that it sees no sign of change. "There
is only one issue for me at this moment – the issue of liberating
the political prisoners," declared Ter-Petrosian. Only once such
prisoners have been released from jail, he added, could talks with
the government begin.

In the days running up to the rally, however, the opposition had
been careful to keep the focus on their fight with the Yerevan city
government over the demonstration venue.

The Yerevan city government had earlier denied the group permission
to convene at Liberty Square, the most popular site for opposition
rallies. The request was rejected on the grounds that an event
for children had been scheduled for June 20 at the square for the
same time.

But on Friday, Liberty Square bore no sign of such an event.

Instead, rows of police with shields tightly ringed the square, minutes
away from the offices of the president and prime minister. Several
police vehicles stood parked in the square’s center.

Opposition leaders, charging that the city was playing politics,
had vowed to gather at the site, nonetheless. Their announcements
sparked a warning from First Deputy Police Chief Major General Armen
Yeritsian on June 19 that "our position will be very harsh" if "mass
disorder and crimes … take place." sparked a warning from that
"We will not allow mass disorder and crimes to take place."

In response, the opposition tuned its sights on the area in front
of the Institute of Ancient Manuscripts, also known as Matenadaran,
the standard fallback site for opposition rallies. The city had
earlier also rejected an opposition request for this site, and made
a counter-offer of a soccer stadium, which was rejected out of hand.

But, after negotiations between protestors and police, the rally at
Matenadaran was allowed to proceed. Police armed with electric shock
devices and shields had taken up position at the site in the afternoon,
a few hours before the original 6pm start time.

Neighborhood onlookers watched the rally with interest, but without
necessarily joining in. While a flag-waving Ter-Petrosian supporter
asserted that "[w]e will win" eventually, one taxi driver took a more
distant approach. As the opposition and government do battle, he said,
"[n]o one is thinking about the simple people."