ARMENIAN OPPOSITION SAYS AMENDMENTS TO LEGALIZE USE OF ARMS AGAINST CIVILIANS

Aravot
March 19 2009
Armenia

The Heritage parliamentary opposition faction in Armenia is planning
to vote against amendments to three laws related to the police, which,
the faction leader believes, would legalize the use of arms against
civilians, Aravot daily has reported. The faction leader added that the
amendments will legalize skinheads, too, the paper said. The following
is the text of Margarit Yesayan’s report headlined "Skinheads are being
moved from ‘de facto’ to ‘de jure’", published by the pro-opposition
Aravot daily on 19 March 2009; subheadings inserted editorially:

Yesterday [18 March] parliament discussed a portfolio of draft laws
on making changes and amendments to the laws on "On police troops",
"On the police" and "On police service". According to the government’s
decision, these changes are pressing.

Draft law bans police intervention against "peaceful, unarmed" rallies

When presenting the draft law, a deputy chief of Armenia’s Police,
Hovhannes Hunanyan, took questions from MPs. [Independent MP] Viktor
Dallakyan asked whether police troops could use physical force and
violence against peaceful protesters. The deputy chief of the Police
replied: "Point 3 in Article 14 of this law envisages that intervention
by police is prohibited for the purpose of stopping peaceful, unarmed
meetings, rallies, marches and demonstrations that are held with a
violation of legal order." "Why did they [police] intervene on 1 March
[during post-election disturbances in 2008]?" one of the journalists
asked, but his question remained unanswered.

Dallakyan said that the proposed changes forbid use of firearms in
"the event of a considerable gathering of people": "For one person
a considerable gathering can be 100,000 people, for another – 10
people. My approach is the following: we need to remove the word
‘considerable’, and because more than one person is already a
‘gathering’ and one cannot open fire in their presence."

The chairman of the temporary [parliamentary] commission to look into
the 1 March events, Samvel Nikoyan, said that the draft laws discussed
were directly connected with the 1 March events. He repeated the
statement by the deputy chief of the Police that the dismissal of
a few top police officials was connected with the 1 March events:
"Police actions were often an attempt to react to developments in
some way rather than precise actions aimed at predicting the events
and resisting them." Mr Nikoyan requested that the draft law clearly
prohibit use of expired weapons – implying the story of Cheremukha-7
gas grenades [which, according to official reports, killed three
out of the 10 victims in the 1-2 March 2008 clashes between security
forces and protesters]. He also suggested defining clearly in what
kind of a case a special weapon can be used and in what kind it cannot.

Opposition faction says draft law to legalize use of arms against
civilians

The [opposition] Heritage faction announced that it would vote
against the portfolio. The leader of the faction, Armen Martirosyan,
who described the draft law as important, said that after having
familiarized himself with it, he came to the conclusion that general
elections should be held in our country periodically and they should
be rigged periodically, afterwards, the people will periodically
voice their discontent, then mass disturbances should take place,
and internal troops should immediately intervene. Martirosyan said:
"According to the logic of this law, internal troops have been
replenished by youth of conscript age, and from now on they will be
replaced with contract servicemen. That is, skinheads, who defended
the authorities on funding from oligarchic structures, will become
legal now, will receive salary from the state and will protect the
authorities from mass disturbances within this framework." The MP
believes that this is the whole logic of the draft laws. The MP made
this statement because the draft law envisages that service in police
troops will be carried out exclusively on contract basis starting from
2012. Martirosyan also said that the draft law tries to legalize the
use of arms and military equipment against civilian population. He
said: "This should happen exclusively under conditions of martial
law, and even then [only] in the battlefield. And if there is such a
wave of popular disturbances, then there is demand for it, and this
requires a political solution but not use of military equipment."