On August 1, the Armenian National Congress (ANC), along with representatives of a few youth organizations, was holding a protest outside the Presidential Palace demanding to set
free the ANC activists. During the protest, Congress member Vardges Gaspari was calling police officers “shameless, hooligan, brat” and said that they “have feces instead of brain.” Let us mention that police officers didn’t react to the offenses in any way this time.
Besides, the protest was held with slogans and banners reading “Fuck you, dictator,” “Fuck system.” Today www.aravot.am inquired of Lyudmila Sargsyan, an ANC MP, regarding this whether it was possible that the Armenian equivalents of those words would be written during the Congress demonstrations and rallies in the short-run and there would be similar Armenian slogans. Ms. Sargsyan laughed. She assured that she hadn’t paid attention to the banners, “I think that during such protests, one should be much disciplined, organized and comply with the letter of the law. Let us not forget that different kinds of people come there to support and everyone comes with his own banner.” We asked to clarify whether it was possible that those banners might have nothing to do with the Congress, were not prepared by the Congress, Ms. Sargsyan said, “Certainly, a part of the banners are prepared by the Congress youth, there are banners that people bring with them, according to their state of mind and approach. Therefore, I don’t think that it should have been presented in Armenian too.”
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In response to our observation that the Armenian word for fuck would have hardly been written, but whether she was against such banners specifically, Lyudmila Sargsyan said, “I am against, I don’t accept such an approach. You have caught me by surprise with your question, I haven’t looked at the banners, therefore, I haven’t inquired whether it is regulated by the law or not. However, at least I think that the law doesn’t ban a man from expressing his thoughts also in the form of a banner. I am sure that the law doesn’t regulate that issue.”
Hripsime JEBEJYAN
