If the Crowd Penetrated into the Police HQ, Chaos would have been Recorded in Yerevan, it would Be Extremely Dangerous: Aghasi Yenokyan

“Activities by the Police were unlawful,” Aghasi Yenokyan, director of the Armenian Center for Political and International Studies, told 168.am, touching upon the occurrences in Sari Tagh, during which a few dozens of citizens suffered injuries and have been detained.

According to him, if the issue of the Police was dispersing the meeting, it should have simply applied special means of dispersing the unauthorized rally, and not organize beatings, send secret agents there, who penetrated into public in civilian clothes and firstly attempted to provoke people, and then applied functions of the Police,

“I don’t observe any lawful activity here, these actions by the Police are strictly condemned, basically, they have changed their target. The issue was freeing the Police patrol regiment, meanwhile they were fighting with the participants of the meeting.”

As for the reason of the activity of the policemen, A.Yenokyan said, “The reason was that the crowd attempted to penetrate into the Police HQ, this was the main reason, which was unacceptable and also reprehensible, as we know what scheme would be brought into operation, however, the policemen could have done this with more lawful means. And I can’t say who urged and provoked people to go there.”

To the observation that those on the platform said they didn’t have the purpose to penetrate into the Police HQ, and attempted to explain to the policemen that they don’t have such a purpose, A.Yenokyan said that in any case people’s activities were directed to that, “Otherwise what was the reason? Maybe the platform didn’t control the situation at that moment.”

Regarding the implications if the crowd penetrated into the territory of the Police HQ, A.Yenokyan replied a rather fearsome situation would be established, “Based on some information, large volumes of armaments are found inside, that would be disseminated to the uncontrollable crowd, and simply chaos would be established in Yerevan. That would be very dangerous, extremely dangerous, not speaking of how would they penetrate and how many casualties would have been recorded?”

Regarding the point if the purpose of the Police was to prevent the crowd from penetrating into the territory of Police HQ, why violence was used against representatives of media outlets, he said, “On the one hand, one may consider, that they attempted to show more toughness, which resulted in it. On the other hand, probably it was a command to exert pressure by ignorance of any law, any mechanism to protect the reporters, and show brute force. They think they’ll threaten and deafen people after that.”

By Ani Keshishyan