Today former prisoner of conscience Suren Sirunyan made new revelations about ANC “rules” during a conversation with Aravot.am. According to him, “If you are in it, you have no right to get out,” besides the law, another rule is in effect, “They beat up those who don’t agree with them in ANC.” He assured that he would make his revelations only after the presidential election, “Do you know what happened – when this movement was started by Levon Ter-Petrossian in 2007, when he stated that he would participate in the election, nobody could imagine that there would be such people next to those people that serving this establishment for 10 years, participating in different kinds of injustices, would come and stand by Levon Ter-Petrossian then. If one had decided to actually stand by him, he should have been in the Freedom Square not on February 21 or 22, but before that, he should have participated in the election and the campaign. There were just many people who saw the ship sinking and decided to jump ship.” We tried to clarify whether there was jealousy among various members of ANC, “Certainly, there is no jealousy, I can be jealous of a woman, not of Jhangiryan.” Suren Sirunyan doesn’t want himself to be called a prisoner of conscience, because it is a stigma. According to him, when someone from the Prosperous Armenia Party (PAP) is arrested on drug charges, the press writes that there is no such thing, those arrests are just ordered by some person or force, “Let us say then that those are prisoners of conscience too, because those people were arrested, due to being members of PAP or perhaps only arrested members of ANC are prisoners of conscience. Prisoner of conscience has been devalued.” In response to our question whether Gagik Jhangiryan separated those who had been prisoners of conscience from those who had not been such, whether there was such a distinction or a definition for prisoner of conscience for him, Mr. Sirunyan said, “Ashot Navasardyan is a prisoner of conscience for me and assessments made by Gagik Jhangiryan have nothing to do with me, I don’t care for them, because people assessed Gagik Jhangiryan long ago and I am not to say anything now. Gagik Jhangiryan is very far from the conception of prisoner of conscience to be able to explain who is a prisoner of conscience is and who is not.”
Let us remind that ANC coordinator Levon Zurabyan also said, “I am absolutely against all attempts to determine who can be perceived a prisoner of conscience and who cannot be perceived a prisoner of conscience, given his attitude. We must understand one thing that regardless of what attitude the prisoner of conscience showed afterwards, whether he cut a deal with the establishment, only the fact that he was unfairly persecuted and put in jail for his political views is sufficient to perceive that man a prisoner of conscience.”
Hripsime JEBEJYAN
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