Yesterday one of the 7 commissions, the one in charge of examining the activities of the law-enforcing structures, formed by the opposition to investigate the events of March 1-2, which is headed by the former Minister of Internal Affairs Souren Abrahamyan presented his preliminary report. The most noteworthy moment was the 25-minute video, which clearly showed at what time and where the armed assault of the police started against the people on March 1.
The facts of March 1 and the events followed afterward, which were included in the video, were placed in various websites – A1+ and www.youtube.com. The working group has summed them up and prepared a 25-minute video. The video clearly shows how the policemen on the March 1 morning intrude in to the Liberty Square and attacked the sleeping people. It is also clearly showed how in the evening the policemen armed with machine guns shoot at people and how several guys not in uniforms take the weapons and bullets out from some car. “We are giving a general assessment on the events and don’t delve in private details. But in near future we will also do some professional evaluation. This process is not going to be over by this,” said Abrahamyan. According to the report the government has started the repression against the people since October 23, 2007. It’s when Levon Ter-Petrosyan for the first time announced about his nomination. “During the pre-election, election and post-election periods the whole pressure on the opposition and even the peaceful protesters followed one goal – to reproduce the government. Therefore all the other actions initiated by the government in our opinion fit in the same logic and the scenario planned by the government. This made them even more confident because they had the practice of impunity since the events of 2003 and 2004. Therefore, in order to analyze the events of March 1 we need to divide the process into pre-election, election, post-election and general phases,” said Abrahamyan. According to him the March 1 events didn’t happen spontaneously. According to the examination results of the working group that event is the logic of certain steps developed by the government. According to the report by organizing the events of March 1 the government decided to “go till the end” in order to create necessary conditions for the Constitutional Court to initiate the false verdicts because in the conditions of the active protest of 300-400 thousand protesters the Constitutional Court would hardly decide to make uncertain verdicts even in the face of Gagik Harutyunyan. Moreover, according to Abrahamyan the government organized the events of March 1 in order to make the people oblivious about the falsified elections. “When estimating the activities of the government the most simple and primitive analysis shows that the events of the morning of March 1, the description of which is the beating and slaughter of the peaceful protesters, it becomes clear that the arsenal of the government was not qualitatively changed compared to similar events undertaken in 2003 and 2004. If back then the government would invent cases on the protesters to jail and isolate them by substantiating that hundreds of people belie the police then now they don’t offer any administrative custody. Now they are subject to criminal custody. There is only one qualitative change between the events of March 1 and the ones in 2003 and 2004. This time the police beat and killed the protesters in a direct way,” said Abrahamyan. As a response to the allegations of the government as if the police went to the Liberty Square on the morning of March 1 to only search weapon is absurd and untruthful. According to Abrahamyan another allegation of the government doesn’t resist any criticism as if the police used force because of the resistance on part of the protesters. “These two versions were denied so many times that I don’t even wish to bring up any facts about the untruthfulness of these versions,” said the former minister. According to him on these days several illegal activities were undertaken by the police. The police kidnapped the activists of the opposition; their cars were taken to the police department. They didn’t even let the trucks with woods to approach close to the square to burn on the cold days. “However, there was no resistance against any police officer and none of the protesters had even said any bad words addressed to the police,” he stated. “Even the unarmed eye shows that the morning activities of the police didn’t have any purpose to fix the public order or aimed to search weapon. These were the methods of Kocharyan to “admonish” the opposition through beating them. The government was so confident of its impunity that they didn’t wish to accept the complaint of hundreds of thousand people and admit that the elections were falsified once again. The core of March 1 was the falsified presidential election,” stated Abrahamyan and added that the examination of the activities of the government showed that the events, which took place on March 1 started on the day when Ter-Petrosyan announced that he was going to run the presidential race. “We can declare that the events of March 1 were launched from October 23. It’s when the police dispersed the peaceful rally of Ter-Petrosyan,” said Abrahamyan. According to him it was followed by the repression actions of Ter-Petrosyan’s activists and supporters. Moreover, in his opinion the government wouldn’t give up to any hurdle and they would use all their means. They would use the whole arsenal of police cruelty and the strength of bodyguards of certain oligarchs. “It’s painful to mention that the cruelty on part of criminals to peaceful citizens, journalists and activists would be applied by the permission and knowledge and the high-rank police officers,” reads the report and adds that the police had long ago stopped being a structure, which is supposed to just maintain the public order and find criminals. It abuses its functions and powers. “It has long ago become a political circle in the hands of the NSS. This was because of the weak and incompetent chief of police because there are many professional policemen in the structure. That is the reason why I blame him. He would assign the officers to fulfill all kinds of political and devious tasks. Those would include beating a politician, closing streets, inventing cases and political conversations,” said the former internal Affairs Minister, who is well-aware of the police structure. According to him the events of March 1 wouldn’t be so tragic and wouldn’t have so tremendous consequences if the activities of the government were not followed by evidently illiterate and unprofessional steps. According to the working group even if the police went to the Liberty Square for a search of weapons they would still not convince us why they would beat and disperse the innocent protesters. According to Abrahamyan there is no single case when the police officers would take the injured people to the hospital (this is their duty). This proves that the reason why they intruded the Liberty Square is not the weapon search. According to Abrahamyan they not only helped the wounded ones but also hid them till their wounds would recover. When speaking of the statement of Kocharyan after the events of March 1 when there was no professional statement about these events, Abrahamyan said that Kocharyan claimed that the police had done everything in the framework of legality. “Originally he planned all that. By that statement Kocharyan re-proved that he is the main instigator and the order issuer to start the March 1 slaughter,” stated Abrahamyan. According to the preliminary report in order to maintain power Kocharyan pushed the whole law enforcement structures to the political game. “Today the whole struggle of the joint opposition is against the law enforcement system. Kocharyan is not in power any more but the goal of the opposition is to come to power through legal means. It means that our struggle is with the political power. They made the opposition go through court procedures without any grounds. We don’t have any problems with the city police management because our demands are political. But they made this whole story a fight between the opposition and the police,” said Abrahamyan and emphasized that their main demand is the release of political prisoners. “The events prior to March 1 were included in the scenario of the government. They knew who they were going to beat but after that the processes got out of control. On the second half of the day they were not able to control the situation,” he stated and emphasized that the gathering of the people near the French embassy was mechanical. According to the report first the ones, who got beaten gathered there, where they got abused again. “However, when meeting serious resistance the number of protesters would increase by geometric progression due to the people, who watched how violent the police was to people. The police receded and a bit later there was almost no policemen left at the square. The square was filled with hundreds of thousand protesters.” According to the commission the situation was out of control however due to the opposition leadership the situation was appeased and the opposition would continue its rally. But the steps of the government were illogical at that time.