“If a person is really guilty, we ourselves are for punishing that man. It is not important whether the person is from the government or the opposition. If he has committed a crime, he must be punished. But it is not clear for us to what extent Tigran and the other guys were guilty, to what extent their actions were illegal. It becomes clear for me from this punishment that they are not guilty at all,” Lyudmila Sargsyan, an ANC MP, said during a conversation with www.aravot.am at the protest organized by the Congress members in support of the ANC activists today.
In his words, “If a fair decision had been made and the court had convicted to one year in prison or some suspended term, I would have believed that they had committed some crime, for which they had been convicted to that short term. However, when a man is convicted to 6 years in prison, it is obvious that it is political persecution, that decision has political overtones and in reality, those people are not guilty at all. Particularly given the fact that they convicted 3 guys who had just been present there to 2-3 years – only the Turk can do such a thing, only the Turk can punish the Armenian like that. Can one ruin the life of 20-22-year-old youths like that, what kind of a treatment is that, what kind of a country is this, where a young man can be convicted to such a long term for ostensibly hitting a policeman or necessary defense? It would be naïve to expect humanism, humanity, justice from this government. The events in Syria also testify to that. It is not because of humaneness that they take some steps now. Those are forced steps, which were compelled by the Armenian community.”
In response to our question what goals they could achieve by such protests, Ms. Sargsyan said, “In any case, we don’t have any other way of struggle, we have to make the society understand at any cost that today these boys are in such situation, tomorrow their boys may be in the same situation, one should unite and struggle for everyone. If we can do that, we will mature as a state, if no, we will be just a people that lives in a certain territory without rights, without consciousness, without statehood.”
Lyudmila Sargsyan stated that they might bring the issue to the National Assembly, “We are still discussing what steps we should take, but I don’t rule out that this issue will enter the National Assembly. We should continue the struggle for every young man, every Armenian.”
