SAVE THE THREE PRESIDENTS
Naira Hayrumyan
Story from Lragir.am News:
Published: 13:46:34 – 14/06/2011
Regnum news agency, citing Times.am, posted a YouTube link directing
to a recording of telephone talks of the opposition leaders on
March 1, 2008. Judging by the records, the opposition at least knew
about the massacres in Yerevan. Emotionally, it even looks like the
opposition, in particular, the head of election headquarters of Levon
Ter-Petrosyan, the ex-foreign minister Alexander Arzumanyan (he is
mentioned more frequently than others) approved the crackdown and
tried to keep people in the square by force, although they knew about
the impending military action aimed to disperse the peaceful rally.
Interestingly, this information appeared immediately after the
visit of the Deputy Assistant Secretary of State in the Bureau of
Democracy, Human Rights and Labor Thomas Melia to Armenia who met
with Prosecutor General, the Head of the Special Investigative Service
and the Investigative Group on March 1.
Thomas Melia was assured that the investigation proceeds properly,
and already almost the complete picture of the events is in place.
Certainly, it is not clear why the investigation is not sending the
case to court if the picture is complete.
The March 1 case is a bugbear for the government. The tactics used
so far is apparently not working anymore. They cannot or do not want
to bring charges against any of the three presidents or their close
persons because otherwise they will have to reveal everyone’s sins.
Therefore it is better to save all the three presidents and pretend
as if nothing had been planned but at some point there was chaos
which involved neither the government, nor the opposition, and people
were just victims of the chaos. Yes, here the opposition is to blame
because it provoked people and the government is to blame because it
never fully controlled the situation but the leaders are not directly
responsible.
Robert Kocharyan’s interview is evidence to the decision that this
story will be sent to court. “I can definitely say that no one gave
any order to shoot at people with military weapons. It is obvious
that all the killed people, excluding the Captain of Internal Forces,
were shot dead at a spot far from the place of the rally, where cars
were burnt and shops broken into. There, no one could really control
the situation, neither the police, nor the leaders of the opposition,”
said Robert Kocharyan.
Will the three presidents be satisfied with this story? It is most
likely they will. In case Levon Ter-Petrosyan disagrees with this,
the telephone talks in which he will “approve” the fact of death of
people will appear in YouTube. Serzh Sargsyan and Robert Kocharyan
will be more than satisfied.
As to the society, it has lost faith in the investigation and courts.
The society has already identified the share of guilt of everyone. We
only need to wait for the visit of the next U.S. lower-ranking
government official to Armenia.