OPPOSITION’S SIT-DOWN STRIKE COMES TO AN END
Noyan Tapan
Ju ly 30, 2008
YEREVAN, JULY 30, NOYAN TAPAN. 130-140 activists spent the night in
Northern Avenue on the 26th day of the 28-day sit-down strike of the
radical opposition. Many people took part with their families in the
action organized without tents, in the open air. The relatives and
supporters of those arrested by the March 1 case were among them.
It should be mentioned that the participants of the sit-down strike
that immediately followed People’s Movement’s July 4 rally make
several demands.
Their main demand, as PM representatives periodically state in Northern
Avenue, is to release those arrested for their political views. The
other demands regard dismissal from job of a number of high-ranking
officials and disclosure of those really responsible for the March 1
tragic events. Unless these demands are fulfilled, according to first
President Levon Ter-Petrosian’s July 4 statement, the opposition is
going to call for President Serzh Sargsyan’s resignation.
It is noteworthy that the sit-down strike mostly proceeds without
serious incidents. However, in the evening of July 29, policemen
on duty in Northern Avenue together with representatives of special
detachments broke the small wooden cage symbolizing a prison cell, in
which the initiative members had placed the photographs of former and
current Presidents Robert Kocharian and Serzh Sargsyan. As initiative
head Grigor Manukian said in his talk with Noyan Tapan correspondent,
the policemen are not able to tolerate even symbolic actions, while,
for instance, in the United States various political forces sometimes
demonstratively burn President George Bush’s dummy, and law enforcers
never hinder it.