Since the Karabakh movement, when rallies became a serious political factor, the number of people attending rallies became a good PR and campaign tool.
For the Western societies, where even small demonstrations with one thousand people are accepted as a large event, the events in Yerevan were more than impressive. These events were also impressive to those members of our society, who are not politically active and are nonpartisan. Such people usually ultimately are deciding to follow the majority. It is natural that all active political powers have this tool of influence to use when they need. The debates concerning the real numbers of people attending rallies started in 1988. In the beginning the communistic administration was blaming the Karabakh committee in exaggerating the number of participants of rallies by proving that more than 50 thousand people cannot stand in the territory near the Opera House. The opposition of that time, the ANM movement, did not agree with those allegations (the ANM assured that this number was between 100 thousand and a half million people). However, in several years, the ANM, which had taken the power already, used the same substantiation and methods to allege that the number of protestors representing their opposition was fewer than reported by them.
This problem has not changed since that time. The proof is the recent presidential elections and the manipulation of numbers of the rallies with thousands of citizens. Thus, the opposition alleges that the number of participants is more than one hundred thousand, and the government alleges that this number is smaller by four times. There were such differences of numbers after the rally of June 20 as well. First, different representatives of the opposition announced different numbers concerning the participants of the rally near the Matenadaran. In the beginning Aram Z. Sargsyan said that there were fifty thousand people there, and later Levon Ter-Petrosyan said that this number was one hundred thousand, and some time later he said there were about two hundred thousand people there. According to police chief Afyan’s opinion, this number is about 8-10 thousand. Yerevan police deputy chief N. Nazaryan thinks that about ten thousand people attended the rally. According to the information of the national security services, in the beginning there were twelve thousand participants, but later this number reached fifteen thousand. If we can understand that the opposition is exaggerating this number for the purpose of helping the pressure on the part of the European instructions before the PACE session, it is not quite understandable why the law-enforcement bodies publish different information without substantiation. The territory near the Matenadaran, starting from the scene till the Koryun and Mashtots streets (where the cookie and candy shops are), makes about 5000 c.m. The number of people standing on each cm is 4-5. On the day of the rally the territory near the Matenadara was really full of people and there were people in other surrounding places as well. In consideration of this fact, we may assume that the number of the participants is about 25-27 thousand.