SAVE TEGHUT FOREST ACTIVIST ASSAULTED BY PLAINCLOTHES OFFICERS
Tert.am
13:00 ~U 22.01.10
Vardan Hovhannisyan, an activist with the Save Teghut Forest campaign,
was assaulted by a group of police officers on the evening of
January 20.
According to a statement released by the local environmental group,
at around 8 pm on that day, five men in black approached Hovhannisyan
on Nalbandyan Avenue and asked him what he was doing in the park,
to which Hovhannisyan replied that he hadn’t been in the park.
Afterwards, the men pushed and shoved the activist away from the
street and into the park, verbally assaulting him along the way.
Hovhannisyan then made a call to the police, and it was only at that
time that the officers identified themselves, with one of them saying
he was the vice-colonel and flashing his badge. When Hovhannisyan said
that he was going to call his attorney, the officers said "you can
call the president if you want," then immediately said they confused
him with someone else and left.
Minutes later, the police called Hovhannisyan and told him to come to
the station. The activist, however, not trusting the police at this
point, refrained from going and requested, instead, that officers come
to the scene. The next day, on January 21, a local journalist called
the police station to clarify the details of the story; however,
officers said that they hadn’t registered such an incident.
Save Teghut Forest has expressed its criticism for the "recent
wide-spread assaults and persecution" against civilians, demanding
that Armenian authorities take immediate steps to bring to an end
free reign and lack of punishment when it comes to police.
"We ask all activists who are assaulted to immediately call 103
emergency, 104 gas services, or even 101 fire services, instead of
102," reads the Save Teghut Forest statement.