The candle lighting rally at Harsnakar Restaurant dedicated to commemoration of doctor Vahe Avetyan’s death has just finished. At first a few hundred citizens were not allowed by the police officers to enter the premises of the restaurant, but the police officers met the demands of the people gathered to light and leave candles in the place where the security officers of the restaurant had beaten Vahe to death.
There was a wedding without songs and dances at the restaurant today. Seeing the wedding guests, the protesters went ballistic and started to shame them, then demanded to stop thewedding and to leave. Deputy Chief of Police Robert Melkonyan and State Protection Service (SPS) regiment commander Valery Osipyan engaged in negotiations demanding of the protesters to keep silent and to leave, but the protesters got more stirred up and started to shout “oligarch’s policeman.”
Two young men came outside to argue with the participants in the candle lighting protest. According to the people gathered, they were wedding guests.
Police officers, after not achieving any results through long negotiations on dispersing the people gathered, de-energized the inner and outer parts of the restaurant and a few dozens of red berets, coming out of the restaurant, started to push the people gathered at the entrance and demanded to leave.
Read also
The energy had not been restored in the premises until the protesters decided to leave and to continue the rally outside the Presidential Palace tomorrow.
Members of the Armenian Revolutionary Federation (ARF) and Levon Zurabyan, the Armenian National Congress (ANC) parliamentary group leader, also participated in the march today. “We should make it clear for the government that besides them, there are also other people who live in this country and this country is theirs too,” Armen Rustamyan, a representative of the ARF Supreme Body in Armenia, said.
Arpine SIMONYAN
