ARMENIAN OPPOSITION ENCOURAGED BY SUPPORT FROM WEST IN ORGANIZING MARCH EVENTS

ARKA
Jan 19, 2009

YEREVAN, January 19. /ARKA/. The support from the West encouraged
Armenian opposition to organize the March events, Shushan Khatlamajan,
political analyst and coordinator at the Institute for Civil Society
and Regional Development, said Monday answering ARKA News Agency’s
question at a press conference in Novosti Press Center.

Armenian opposition headed by former president Levon Ter-Petrosyan, who
lost the election, staged protests saying the election was fraudulent
and the results were rigged. The rallies ended in clashes between
protesters and law enforcements.

As a result, ten were killed and 200 injured. Many were arrested.

"The bias western institutions and organizations display while
commenting on elections in the three South-Caucasian republics leads
to some deformation in public perception and particular political
processes", Khatlamajan said.

She said it is difficult to assume what would happen in Azerbaijan
and Georgia, if these countries’ opposition received such a support.

"For example, not only administrative, but also budget means were
used in Georgian parliamentary and presidential elections for backing
Saakashvili’s team. And if the same happened with Armenia, we would
be eaten alive", she said.

The political analyst said that, as a rule, European emissaries and
representatives of European organizations=2 0coming to Azerbaijan and
Georgia do little more than meet once or twice with the opposition
and promise to take due steps. And that’s all.

"In Armenia everything goes otherwise, and this can be understood in
two ways", Khatlamajan said.

Commenting on the reports of international organizations Freedom House
and Human Rights Watch, she expressed discontent at some aspects. She
said the organizations put special emphases on certain problems and
play down the progress reached by Armenia.

"If the reports were unbiased, balance of how much the society is
concerned about the levels of civil and political rights in the
country would be described differently", she said.

Freedom House, a U.S.-based international non-governmental
organization, in the findings from the latest edition of "Freedom in
the World – 2009", the annual survey of global political rights and
civil liberties, said that democracy level in Armenia has lowered,
just as in many former soviet republics.

Armenia is listed among partly free countries, as a year earlier.

Armenia, along with Azerbaijan, Georgia, Kyrgyzstan and Moldova,
lowered its 2008 political rights rank from 4 to 6 on a seven-point
scale because of post-election violence that took lives of ten people.

Human Rights Watch Organization says in its World Report-2009 that
"Armenia experienced one of its most serious civil and political rights
crises since independence when security forces used excessive force
on March 1 against opposition demonstrators protesting the results
of the February 2008 presidential election".