After March 21, when the state of emergency was raised, different organizations applied to the city administration office to get permission for organizing rallies and demonstrations. The city administration office has rejected all those applications.
Later, on April 19 the municipality of Yerevan allowed the Women for Peace NGO to organize a rally in the children’s park (Komaygi). Thus, this was the first rally after the bloody events of March 1. Opposition representatives and leaders who are not in jails attended this rally as well.
As the organizers of that event were mainly women, and most of the opposition leaders were in jail, the main speakers were women. The park square is much smaller than the Liberty square. The demonstrators said to each other that the government had given that small square for their rally in order not to let too many people gather there and show that their number is not so big. Besides that, the stage was low and the square was not so good, accordingly people could not see the speakers. The moderator of the rally was deputy chairman of New Times party Hrachya Sargsyan. Wives of political detainees came up with speeches, as well as women who were beaten on March 1 night had an opportunity to speak (Grizelda Ghazaryan, the wife of academician Rafayel Ghazaryan, Lyudmila Sargsyan, etc.). The chairmen of Republic and PPA parties Aram Sargsyan and Stepan Demirchyan were there as well; however they did not make speeches. War participant Arshavir Bozinyan, who has gone on hunger strike, attended the rally too. The demonstrators were waiting for the first president Levon Ter-Petrosyan participate in the rally and were calling his name. However, he did not come. Instead of him his wife Lyudmila Ter-Petrosyan attended the rally. Suren Surenyants, who had been set free from the cells just the previous day, had a speech too. He announced in the name of all their arrested friends that their struggle is spontaneous and their victory inevitable. According to him, the biggest achievement of the people’s movement has been forming a civic society. “Everyone should understand that the civic society is unconquerable. No official can violently go against the society. Now the opposition is very decisive. The Nubarashen, Vardashen and Yerevan Kentron community cells have become those schools, were real politicians are taught. I want all of us demand freedom for our friends,” Surenyants said. The speeches sometimes were interrupted by slogans such as “freedom”, “free, independent Armenia”, “Levon president”, “Serzhik go away”, etc. The wife of Levon Ter-Petrosyan’s campaign manager and former foreign affairs minister Alexander Arzumanyan, Melissa Brown told about how the days of the wives of political detainees start and finish. “It is hard to say who a political detainee’s wife, mother, daughter and sister are. That woman is waking up every morning, making food, writing a letter, then waking the children up, feeding them and taking them to school. Then she goes to work, where she organizes a small rally, running away from work and going to participate in demonstrations, and after the demonstration she is going to work again. On the visit day she is going to the prison, waiting for 7 hours in order to talk to her husband for one hour. After that she is again running to participate in demonstrations. This is our life. Yes, and in evenings she is going to the North Avenue. Our husbands are not with us, but the police is very careful,” Mrs. Brown said. “The authorities should understand that on March 1 they did not frighten people, but ultimately taken that fright out of them,” said AT newspaper chief editor Nicol Pashinyan’s wife, Anna Hakobyan. G.Ghazaryan told about how 4-5 policemen beat her and her daughter up on the March 1 night. “I got 8 stitches on my head. The pain in my head has gone away, my girl’s pain has gone away too, but the pain of my soul is still with me. A group of friends came to this country, the country divided between them, and now they don’t need our type of people, we are useless.” Concerning the new government G. Ghazaryan says that even if people are changed with places, the real picture cannot change. Concerning the prime minister’s announcement that the minister should study all the time she said, “Lenin said that too, he said study, study and again study. They must bring well-educated people and appoint them in those positions, but not to appoint and later instruct them to study. Our country is in such a situation that we don’t have time to open school classes in the government and parliament.” Even though the rally proceeded without any scuffle and arrests, everything was not so smooth. The electricity of the park was cut down for about 30 minutes and the organizers had to switch on their own electricity generators. The demonstration lasted more than it had to because they were given two hours for that purpose. At 5 p.m. the police chief of Kentron community Taron Baghdasaryan and the chief of Shengavit police Levon Yazichyan came and said that their time had finished and demanded to stop the rally. The organizers explained that due to electricity problems they had stopped their demonstration for about a half hour but the policemen did not agree and told them to leave. The demonstrators got angry and decided to use their lost time in the North Avenue. Several thousand demonstrators walked to the North Avenue, where they were met by numerous policemen. The Liberty square was blocked as well. Deputy chief of the police Sashik Afyan, deputy chief or Arabkir community Valeri Osipyan were there as well. In about 30 minutes T. Baghdasaryan approached the head of the Women for Peace NGO Gayane Martirosyan and said that they had been given only two hours for their rally in the territory of the children’s park. He also said that if people did not leave that place, they would be forced out. The organizers asked the citizens to leave in order to escape from new clashes.