POLITICAL PRISONERS’ DAY OBSERVED ON OCTOBER 30
Noyan Tapan
Oct 29, 2009
YEREVAN, OCTOBER 29, NOYAN TAPAN. Political Prisoners’ day was first
observed in 1974 in Soviet labor camps, honoring those who had been
unjustly imprisoned and remembering those who had lost their lives
to political repression.
On the occasion of this day, a number of human rights and
non-governmental organizations of Armenia issued a joint statement
which reads:
"It is deplorable that today, thirty years later in independent
Armenia, there are seventeen political prisoners, and there has been
no justice for the victims of March 1, 2008.
In the course of the fraudulent presidential election of February 2008
and the government’s March 1 crackdown on peaceful protesters, ten
people were killed, hundreds of opposition supporters were arrested,
and many more were forced into hiding.
The election and its aftermath represented an attack on democracy;
what followed was the ruin of the judicial system. Rather than trying
to discover what really happened on March 1, and why so many people
lost their lives, the government launched a program of smear campaigns
and show trials. The sordid partial amnesty, in which many of the
political prisoners were released, was no substitute for justice.
Worse, it left seventeen men in prison. All of these men have been
convicted unjustly, many solely on the basis of police testimony. Yet
they face sentences of up to nine years in prison.
Regional developments and geopolitical concerns seem to have
overshadowed the fact that so many political prisoners remain, but
we must not allow them to be forgotten. Every day these men spend in
jail brings with it additional risks to their health and additional
hardship for their families.
On the occasion of October 30, Political Prisoners’ Day, we join
the families of the seventeen political prisoners in calling for the
immediate release of their husbands and fathers, sons and brothers. We
join the families of the victims of March 1 in calling for justice
for their loved ones so tragically lost. We demand an end to political
repression in Armenia".
The statement was signed by Armenian Helsinki Association; Helsinki
Assembly, Vanadzor; Socioscope Democracy Today; Armenian Helsinki
Assembly, Yerevan; Jurists against Torture; Public Information and
Need of Knowledge (PINK); Journalist Club, Gyumri region and some
other organizations.