Such responsible statement was made by Ararat Zurabyan
Yesterday Ararat Zurabyan, the former president of the Pan-Armenian National Movement (PANM) board and now a founding member of the Free Democrats Party, referred on www.aravot.am to the questions asked by ANC coordinator Levon Zurabyan as early as on Wednesday – why is Ararat Zurabyan the only prisoner of conscience released by the mediation of Samvel Nikoyan’s commission, if it is so, why was it kept secret and the ANC members found out about that from WikiLeaks and third, why was Ararat Zurabyan the only prisoner of conscience who did not file a petition in the European Court of Human Rights?
But he also referred to the reasons for the campaign against the people expelled from the Congress and generally from PANM a year and a half ago.
– What do you think why the Congress has started over the second round of critique of mainly you and others who were expelled from PANM?
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– The fact that ANC try to slander, discredit people who have travelled a long path with them is a matter of their conscience. It has always been characteristic of individuals. In this case, my dear friend Vano Siradeghyan said aptly about Levon Zurabyan himself in his book called “Season of Villains” with the following definition “… that Lyovik Zurabyan with infantile, super-partisan enthusiasm appointed Levon Ter-Petrossian’s chief sociologist Nairi Badalyan, a scout and the Armenian Revolutionary Federation (ARF) member with his biography, character, anatomy and essence, in the election year 1996…”. I think one shouldn’t add anything to this. Levon Zurabyan, surrounded by such people, has surrounded Levon Ter-Petrossian with such people these days.
Look who speaks against my friends and me – people who have been stooges of Robert Kocharyan’s regime for many years. Let me make a specific example, Vladimir Karapetyan. What can Vova, a man who was the Ministry of Foreign Affairs press secretary and served Vardan Oskanyan’s and Robert Kocharyan’s foreign policy and their “heroic acts” in this field, say? Or Ter Petrossian’s friend Arakel Semirjyan who posts some curses on his wall on Facebook. But does anybody ask who Arakel Semirjyan is – a man who worked at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs as an agent of the National Security Service (NSS)? A man who is a senior officer at NSS and we are aware that he was fired from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs along with a set of other diplomats, whereas we haven’t read anywhere that he was also fired from NSS.
As for the accusation directed at me – during the same period, if you remember from the same WikiLeaks materials, Davit Shahnazaryan indirectly applied to the establishment to release the other 75 prisoners of conscience. By the time my measure of restraint was changed, a half of the 150 prisoners of conscience had been released for this or that reason, for example at the instructions of the Attorney General and given this fact, to speak of the reasons for release now is just ridiculous. According to the same logic, I can also ask why Levon Zurabyan and a few of his closest friends who work at the central office of ANC today were not summoned for even an interrogation regarding any case, not to mention were not persecuted, their houses were not searched, special squad with automatic weapons did not enter their houses in their kids’ presence or arrested them and they were not kept in the pre-trial prison at NSS. Everything is clear at least for me and therefore I will not share the same path with those people.
But on the other hand, I would like to remind my former colleagues – this issue was raised exactly today for some reason and everybody forgot how happy they were when I was released, and what a long path we have travelled together afterwards. They tried to show that we worked against the Congress or we were released because of that. I would like to remind that there was no Congress on the day my measure of restraint was changed and no issue of working or not working against it could be raised. There was the National Movement at the time, one of active participants of which I was myself.
It would be good, if my colleagues referred to the other revelations of WikiLeaks, in which their today’s leadership is mentioned, with the same enthusiasm and tried to get clarifications on those, because there are many serious data there, which should arouse serious speculations, if we judge from the logic of one or two of those. However, given the human value of fairly judging is secondary for them and achieving goals at all costs is primary, they will not talk about it. None the less, many things will be revealed yet, also the archives of NSS where many things are written on all this, all in good time. It would be good, if my former colleagues supported the Lustration bill of the Heritage Party. Otherwise, serious doubts about them arise. He who is not for lustration and is a member of the Movement… I want to use ellipsis here.
– Why was that lie said, none the less?
– Everything is quite obvious. First of all when someone attacks and blackmails an interlocutor or an opponent, or tries to slander him, he has to think just once whether he can carry that through and whether it will be easy for him. I am inclined to think that the real target of the attacks directed at us is the Free Democrats Party. I will specifically ask at the upcoming party congress to raise hands those who left PANM and you will see what their real number is and perhaps it will be more visible whether only 8 persons left PANM, as ANC state. Besides the people who left PANM, many of our friends and like-minded people with whom we have travelled a common path supported us in the period of building the Free Democrats. They are people who, unfortunately, were once saying that they would be by our side, but they would not enter PANM, they are also young people who have just entered politics and of course individuals who are just free-thinking people and give importance to real democracy. This is the very factor that aroused the concerns of our former colleagues from ANC and they thought they had to do anything, in order that Free Democrats were discredited in the society.
– I.e. ANC perceive you as a competitor?
– Unfortunately, one thing is clear – for a year and a half after my resigning the office of PANM board president, I have made no public statement, I have made no commentary, although there has been much to speak of and if I had a wish to speak or to harm the Congress, you bet there was much to say. I wish the Congress success in its political struggle today too. At the end of the day, those people, politicians who are gathered in the ANC should understand that the opposition and the society in Armenia have a common goal to get rid of the illegal establishment, the rule of bandits as soon as possible. And it is pointless to organize a witch-hunt, putting every effort, not to mention with the content and methods of 1937, with the same methods that were used by the law-enforcement system against us after March 1, pressing groundless charges of the same kind against some people, naming “contacts” of secret services of some countries, not to mention that every member of the Congress knows who have been the real “contacts” since March 24, 2008, and why they are called so. If they try to take this path, I think they will achieve nothing good.
– Do you think that the saboteur-hunt in ANC will continue for long, in particular, also among the members of your newly-established party?
– There is no wish to start a war with ANC or to reveal anything, note facts that are known by everyone, but need to be clearly noted and politically assessed. I don’t see a need for that. ANC is an entity that struggles for establishing a legitimate government in Armenia, but it should also reconcile to the fact that there are other political entities, besides it, that aim at the same thing and political entities that share common goals may not always cooperate, in particular under the circumstances of this cunning libel. As for the others, certainly there can be found things in common to cooperate with them in good time. There is an election in the short-run, every political force, including ANC, the Heritage Party and others, has to do something to guarantee its legitimacy. By the way, the year is ending and I would like to take this opportunity and say Happy New Year and Merry Christmas to all the members of “Aravot’s” staff and its readers, as well as our whole society. I think that we will meet in the upcoming political year and talk not about the controversy between ANC and us, but about our programs and issues that concern the society.
NAIRA MAMIKONYAN
