Varuzhan Avetisyan, member of an armed group “Sasna Tsrer”, in interview with 1in.am said: “Regime pursued policy of disabling our fighters separately. Our people become significantly fewer and yesterday they tried to attack, they destroyed the walls with armed vehicles, but then for some reasons they stopped the attack. We tried to negotiate with them. Today there was intense shooting, stun grenades exploded and armored vehicles broke into the territory.
We had two options. First: we fight against the police and other officers shedding blood of the people who have nothing to do with the decisions made by the regime. And the next option is to refrain from the bloodshed and continue our fight and to remain in a status of prisoner of war, as in this situation we can’t speak about the status of political prisoners. It was a hard decision. We have decided not to spill blood and we have chosen the status of prisoner of war.
We consider our mission has been accomplished: popular movement started. We found it unnecessary to cause the death of dozens and to put thousands of our citizens in a hard situation. We consider our life nothing, but there are standing people who are on their duties though they don’t realize that they are carrying wrong commands. We decided that they we don’t want to spill the blood of these people. The standoff is over and we have changed the methods of our struggle, but we will continue to struggle. And we call on our people not to doubt our common victory. Popular movement should continue, do not immigrate, stay and struggle against this anti-Armenian regime.
Our nation should be liberated: this is a national liberation struggle. We don’t have right to leave our ancient motherland to turn into a Russian state or to be in a poor condition. We feel that the victory is close and we are calling on the people to take this decision as a positive step and continue the struggle following our calls from the prison. We wanted to spark we did it and are satisfied with it. It would be better and quicker if the process of people’s mobilization would be faster and we could get united and reach our victory.
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Unfortunately this did not happen. But this step should not discourage the people: we will continue our struggle wherever we are. This is also a method of struggle: revolutionaries are often jailed, but then they leave the jail as winners thanks to the people. We repeat again and again we love you all dear Armenian nation, dear citizens of Republic of Armenia. We are united, no one can separate us.
We are going to lay down our weapons at 8 pm. We are going to leave this territory as we don’t want bloodshed to happen. There are heroes, I’m not talking about myself, Arayik Khandoyan, Mkhitar Avetisyan. We understood that we cannot target Armenian young men who are carrying a command, but wrong command. We are calling on our people to continue the struggle and have a victory. Only god can defeat disobedient, rebellious people. We see the victory of our people and we are sure that we will meet soon. Let this struggle, our sacrifice turn into the nutrient root which will lead to final result”.
Lusine BUDAGHYAN
