ARMENIA AMENDS LAW ON RALLIES TO PREVENT REPLAY OF MARCH UNREST
Interfax News Agency
March 19 2008
Russia
Armenian President Robert Kocharian signed into law amendments
to the law regulating the organization of rallies, processions,
and demonstrations on last Tuesday, the presidential press service
told Interfax.
The amendments came into effect immediately.
The parliament had passed the bill at an extraordinary session early
on Tuesday.
The amendments stipulate that public events can be banned if there is
reliable information that they may be aimed at forcibly overthrowing
the government, fuelling ethnic, racial, or religious enmity, or
propagating violence or war, or if such events could harm state
security, public order, morality, or public health or can violate
people’s constitutional rights and freedoms.
The law says that such information can be considered reliable if
the National Security Service presents an official conclusion on
this account.
The law also stipulates that, if a public event has turned into
mass unrest involving the loss of life, an authorized body can
temporarily ban any mass public events to prevent new crimes until the
circumstances of this crime and its perpetrators have been established.