1 March 2016
HE Federica Mogherini
High Representative of the European Union
for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy
Brussels and Yerevan
Dear Ms. Mogherini:
We welcome you to Armenia, one of the cradles of European civilization and values. In their defense we have over the centuries suffered and surmounted occupation and partition, genocide and national dispossession. And so our ancient nation turned new republic has, in the modern period, fully earned the right to a political and public life pursuant to those very values.
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Most unfortunately, and ever so ironically, the man with whom you meet today—and the regime he embodies—do not legitimately represent the Armenian people, their rights and interests, or the benchmarks that we share. We trust that you possess persuasive evidence in this connection.
There is no need, therefore, to detail the long-standing reality that your interlocutor and his administration constitute a neo-Bolshevik criminal compact which makes rhetorical reference to but in truth mocks European standards; which continues to usurp the citizenry’s constitutional power by means of political and economic commingled monopolies, widespread violations of human rights and the systemic falsification of elections and referenda; and the means and ends of whose governance are endemic corruption and conflict of interest itself.
Perhaps the most tragic of such episodes took place eight years ago today, when after fraudulent presidential elections the ruling regime, with Mr. Sargsyan then as prime minister, ordered and carried out the killings of at least ten citizens, the wounding of another 50, and the incarceration of hundreds. To this day neither the masterminds nor the executors have been brought to account, and from these sources of blood has evolved a state policy to cover up this crime and to reinforce the autocratic single-party rule of yesteryear—all under a guileful veneer of seemingly democratic trappings that serve only to remove Armenia from its very own European domain.
It is sad, but a fact nonetheless, that Europe was so taken in by Sargsyan’s pledges for European association that it became complicit in turning a blind eye to his 2011 dissolution of the March 1 fact-finding group with the aim of obstructing justice, and has continued in the same vein to respond to false post-election promises by countenancing—and even validating—the Sargsyan-orchestrated fraudulence of process and result during both the presidential elections of 2013 and the constitutional referendum of 2015.
A criminal and corrupt regime will never confess or punish itself of its own volition; from it there can be no such legitimate expectation. Hence, as the mission of the European community of values is the establishment of democracy and the protection of civil and human rights, we petition and insist, through you, that the European family of nations correct its own track record of accommodation:
1) by revealing, on a re-examination of the evidentiary bases uncovered by the March 1 fact-finding group and under the supervision of international specialists, the identities of all those who organized, carried out, and/or covered up the crime of March 1 and by accordingly imposing international sanctions upon each and all of them;
2) by ensuring that the relevant de facto authorities implement forthwith a) the demand of Human Rights Watch to release political prisoner Gevorg Safaryan and b) the demand of several other human rights defenders and associations to review the cases of, and then to release, all other citizens currently in prison for pursuit and publication of their political views; and
3) by working, together with the law-abiding citizens of the Republic of Armenia, to bring to justice, including via international sanctions, all those responsible for masterminding and realizing the crimes of systemic vote theft and falsification of the past presidential elections and, most recently, the constitutional referendum of 6 December 2015.
It is at the intersection of these challenges—and their resolution—that the fate and future of EU-Armenia relations will be truly tested and, most hopefully, their potential finally unleashed.
Sincerely yours,
For the New Armenia Front
Raffi K. Hovannisian
First Minister of Foreign Affairs
Chairman, Heritage Party
Republic of Armenia