On January 12, hours after shooting of the Avetisyan’s family in Gyumri, it was already noticed that the case of felony is intended to be handed over into the hands of Russian law enforcement. “The Russian government bodies provide every kind of necessary support to Armenian government authorities to track down the culprits and bring them to justice,” says the Russian Foreign Ministry press release a few hours after the crime. On the same day, Deputy Foreign Minister Shavarsh Kocharyan received the Russian Ambassador to Armenia Ivan Volynkin who mentioned that the Russian side is interested in sooner disclosure of the crime details and punishment of the culprits and bring the culprit to justice, and stressed, “The management of the Russian military base deployed in Gyumri is fully cooperating with the Armenian law-enforcers and supports the investigation.” While under the Agreement on deployment of the Russian military base signed between Armenia and the Russian Federation, Article 4, the crimes committed by persons involved in the Russian military base in the territory of Armenia are subject to investigation by competent authorities of Armenia in a manner prescribed by the legislation, and Armenian competent bodies can also be used with regard to such persons. Though the investigation of felony in Gyumri by RA law enforcers is still no guarantee that the true causes of the crime, the organizers, if any, will be identified, nevertheless, many believes that the RA authorities will simply demonstrate principality in terms of protecting the interests of the citizens of Armenia, at least from the standpoint of propaganda reasons. On January 14, after the meeting at the President’s residency followed by the multi-crowd protest in Yerevan and Gyumri, the Prosecutor General Gevorg Kostanyan said, “I assure you that the criminal will be held criminally liable in the territory of the Republic of Armenia, and we will all see and have the chance to follow the entire procedure and see how he is brought to justice. The Republic of Armenia does not yield anything to anybody.” At the meeting with the First Deputy Defense Minister David Tonoyan, Russian First Deputy Defense Minister Arkady Bakhin said that the Russian Defense Ministry Commission has completed its internal service investigation conducted at the Russian No 102 military base, and all the culprits are revealed. Bakhin also said that according to the Criminal Code of the Republic of Armenia, Valery Permyakov, a soldier of the Russian No 102 military base involved as a culprit by the filed criminal case, is in the territory of the Republic of Armenia, and under the criminal case, further works will be carried out by the relevant law enforcement agencies of Armenia and the Russian Federation.
Bloody pages in the history of the Russian military base in Gyumri
The January 12 murders refreshed the tragic events of the Russian military base in Gyumri happened in the past few years. On April 7, 2013, an incident happened in Vahramaberd community, Shirak Marz. Two children of village Vahramaberd, Mushegh Gevorgyan and Arthur Mkrtchyan, were killed by the landmine explosion in the territory of Russian troops’ tank shooting. It turned out that the landmine explosive in the site of the shooting took the lives of two village residents of Vahramaberd Village, A. Mkrtchyan, born in 2001, and M. Gevorgyan, born in 1997. Arthur Mkrtchyan’s father had gone to the field to shepherd the sheep and the children had joined him. At the time of the incidents, the father had gone to fetch water, the children had seen the wheels and had gone close to play with them, when hitting, the mines exploded. Both families were large and live in extreme living conditions, the men of the families are shepherds. The Mkrtchyans’ family has 8 children, and the Gevorgyans’ family – 6 children. The mentioned area was given to the Russian Federation Armed Forces by interstate leasing agreement for 45 years. However, so far there are no punished, brought to liability, even in the event when the incident was an accident. So far, it is not clear why the territory was not cleared from the armor, or why the access there for unauthorized persons was not properly blocked. In April 19, 2013, GALA had informed the families of the two killed teenagers are unhappy. “As they said, the Russians had convinced, even frightened that “if they keep doing it,” the case will be turned on them, and they managed to make the 10-year-old Arthur Mkrtchyan’s and 15-year-old Mushegh Gevorgyan’s families to sign a document that allegedly they have no complaint and dissatisfaction. Thus, the job is completed, and the village continues to live as usual, taking the cattle to graze in the same territories where it is dangerous, and where the two juveniles were killed. God forbid, in the event of recurrence, they will declare, “The ones killed are to be blamed.” In the interview with GALA, Vahramaberd Village Mayor Aghvan Martirosyan referred to the question that the families had signed underneath a paper that they do not complain. “If they have made such statements that they were made to sign that nothing of the kind has happened. They have said that they have written that they have no complaints. What remains to close the case is up to the Russian investigative bodies. We are not the ones to decide whether to close the case or not. No one from the Armenian side was involved in the investigation group, simply to be able to understand the language, there was one representative, who was for the translation work.” The incident happened in April 1999 was more horrible by its cruelty, when two drunken Russian soldiers from the military base had come out to the town with rifles and had opened irregular fire right and left on people and the houses. In the result of these irregular firing, more than a dozen people were seriously injured and two were killed. The drunken soldiers were found guilty in the incident happened in 1999, but were extradited to Russia, now, we do not anything about their fates.
Helplessness of the political field
The mysterious silence that our society has witnessed in these days after the brutal murder of January 12 is just incredible. Even in responding to the crime, it turned out that our political parties and party leaders consider the “circumstances” of what nationality has the suspect in the crime. Even when expressing condolence to the relatives of the Avetisyan’s family, it turns out that the political parties of Armenia, with some exceptions, are thinking about not offending the Kremlin. Social networks compared it to the incident happened in Podolsk in July 13 when the driver of the truck, RA citizen Hrachya Harutyunyan, was brought to the court dressed in a woman’s gown, and until now, it is not possible to solve the issue of his transportation to Armenia. Or, they recalled Gurgen Margaryan’s murder in 2004, when the murderer Ramil Safarov has been sentenced to life imprisonment for taking the axe and bludgeoning the Armenian army officer Gurgen Margaryan to death in 2007 during the NATO training course, later in August 31, 2012, Hungary extradited him to Azerbaijan, after which the Armenian government authorities froze their diplomatic relations with Hungary. Patriotic manifestations by Armenia’s political parties, the occasion for organizing torchlight processions, are always the same. We, the Armenians, are united when remembering the genocide issue. For instance, Armen Rustamyan, commenting on the tragic murders in Gyumri, mentioned in this context that he is happy that “the anti-Russian manifestations are prevented.” But on the other hand, what to expect for a political arena, where the majority considers justified and legitimate, or turns a blind eye on the selling of several billion dollars of weapon to Azerbaijan by the “strategic partner”, but at the same time, “arguments” that “the Russians protect us from Turks” and ensures the security of Armenia and Karabakh. A protest action took place on January 14 in Gyumri; the public was frustrated. The Gyumri people were demanding to handover the Russian military soldier to the justice of the Armenian side in order to bring the responsible entities of the Russian side to a meeting, the protestors had dropped the Russian flags onto the ground and had thrown eggs at the building of the Russian Consulate. The protesters had reached the Russian No 102 military base, where a fight had occurred between protesters and the police. While the “force” of the Armenian law enforcement falls on the Armenian citizens. Evidently, the Armenia-Russia relations are affected by the brutal murders of January 12, which is a negative fact. The murder of the Gyumri peaceful family members created tension between the Gyumri military base and the Gyumri residents, as well as caused uncertainty in the Armenian-Russian relationships. Yes, the Gyumri murders should not be politicized, but we can tell this when there are persuasive evidences that its being organized in the specific crime is excluded, or there are substantiations that the crime has not been committed on the background of national hatred. But, in many cases, our society is not interested in such minor things, and people have more convincing hypothesis. The profound explanation that the Turks are involved in the Gyumri murder, or the one from the West, seems that the Armenian and Russian law enforcement agencies have already presented facts on this, and what is left for us now is to believe them or not. The citizens, who had come out to protest in Yerevan and Gyumri on January 14, stood for the right of the RA citizen to live and our independent state. Unlike government and non-government, as said in a popular language, they kept the worth of our country.
Emma GABRIELYAN
