“The Armenian National Congress (ANC) worked by ‘the more prisoners of conscience, the better’ principle at the time, but time proved some prisoners of conscience were not that prisoners of conscience, at least the recent developments have proved that. Was it a wrong strategy for ANC to declare anyone a prisoner of conscience?” a journalist of Chorrord Ishkhanutyun newspaper asked ANC coordinator Levon Zurabyan during a press conference today. At first the ANC coordinator did not agree with some observations in the question, “First of all, the ANC has never adopted the ‘the more prisoners of conscience, the better’ principle. On the contrary, we have done everything to make the prisoners of conscience less. Second, I am absolutely against all attempts to determine who can be perceived as a prisoner of conscience and who cannot, given his attitude. We should understand one thing; regardless of what attitude the prisoner of conscience showed afterwards, he cut a deal with the authorities, only the fact that he was unfairly persecuted and imprisoned for his political views is enough to perceive that man a prisoner of conscience.” Thus, all those people who have been imprisoned for their political views, activity, political actions are prisoners of conscience for Zurabyan. “Many of those people, not standing hardships, have applied to Serzh Sargsyan for pardon”, said he, advising “not to go into it,” because he thought classifications were inappropriate, but those people didn’t stop being prisoners of conscience, in Zurabyan’s opinion. “I, for one, think that they are victims. It means that he was not only illegally tried, but also humiliated, put under different kind of pressure, therefore, they wrote petitions. And if such people try to make statements against their fellow-fighters today, I don’t want to blame those people. I think the establishment is immoral – they not only illegally persecuted those people, now they try to destroy them morally. This process is a disgrace”, said Zurabyan.
In response to the clarifying question of Aravot.am whether Suren Sirunyan was also among his mentioned “victims”, Zohrabyan said, “Suren Sirunyan, as far as I know, has not filed a petition.”
Nelly GRIGORYAN
