Human right activist Artur Sakunts believes that violence in Armenia has become the only way of expressing the attitude against the problems and solving them. “The acts of violence as a form of attitude have become commonplace and are regularly repeated. The political affiliation, occupation, sex and social status do not matter anymore. The acts of violence are constantly repeated because the characteristic feature of the system is the impunity; violence are either not revealed and are concealed or the persons using violence remain unpunished.
The series of acts of violence against the Pre-parliament members began since last year, now, it continues against the protesters of the law on turnover tax. I do not even want to go further to know who could do it, but interestingly, HRD representatives commenced their searching operations by the traces of Artak Khachatryan’s violence through questioning the law enforces, who were the number one possible suspect structures. Of course, they informed that they are unaware and have not detained, but the law enforcement actions are not only limited to detainment. They may not detain, but take to another place, commit an act of violence, leave helpless and go away like they did with Artak,” said Arthur Sakunts.
According to him, a person who plans to commit such an act in the daytime, in a mask and on a car without a license plate, cannot commit such an act, unless he is sure that he will remain unpunished. “And only the person sponsored by the government authorities may have the chance of impunity. I doubt that those responsible for the incident in Berdzor will be punished and those beating the activists will be identified. The series of violence, in my opinion, is a terrorism against the public. The atmosphere of fear is the approach through which they want to make the situation manageable, because they are unable to find solutions and give answers to the questions raised through civil disobedience, and the only way is the violence.”
Mr. Sakunts said that the human rights defenders are going to raise the recent acts of violence both inside the country and at the international instances, with whom Armenia shares the membership. “The concern is not only stating these acts of violence, but the ability to respond afterwards, both inside the country and beyond. We have a non-responsible, inadequate and incompetent government, which will not be able to answer these questions.”
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Arpine SIMONYAN
