At the end of the siege of police headquarters in Yerevan, OSCE Representative on Freedom of the Media Dunja Mijatović today sought reassurance from the foreign minister of Armenia that journalists’ rights and safety during times of civil unrest would be protected.

Armenian authorities took all possible measures to avoid human losses, President Sargsyan announced at a meeting with representatives of the society, leadership and clergy.

“Yerevan isn’t Beirut or Aleppo. Let no one attempt to import the solutions of the Cold War era of the previous century to Armenia from the Middle East. Let those who don’t understand this study the history of Lebanon’s civil war or the consequences of the ongoing Syrian civil war and make conclusions”.

“I would like to speak about another issue, which we have spoken about on many occasions. It is about the Karabakh issue and so called “surrender of lands.” My personal statements with regard to our clear-cut position on that are probably numberless. I repeat once again: there will be no unilateral concessions in the resolution of the NK issue. Never. Nagorno Karabakh will never be part of Azerbaijan.”

“Yerevan is neither Beirut nor Aleppo. Let no one aspire to import Near East solutions of the previous century, of the Cold War to Armenia. Let those who don’t comprehend this need to look at the history of Lebanon’s civil war or at the consequences of the civil war going on the moment in Syria and draw conclusions.”

“Use of the term ‘decolonization’ was interesting to me, and unfortunately, use of this term is proper. Not a single post-Soviet country, even countries regarded as Russia’s vassals, appeared in such dependency from Russia. For instance, Belarus and its position in Russia-Ukraine conflict. Armenia’s authorities have totally failed Armenia’s foreign policy, not speaking of the domestic policy, economic policy dragged to a deadlock, that in half an hour Moscow solved the issue of failure of Armenia’s association with the EU. Armenia’s authorities have no other way out, than showing independence, sovereignty from Moscow, for instance, regarding deploying that very peacekeeping mission.”

“On August 1, 2016 the Investigation Department of the National Security Service has submitted a written request to the Armenian Prosecutor General’s Office to transfer the above-mentioned criminal case to another investigation body in accordance with the rules of the investigation set by the Article 190 of the Criminal Procedure Code of Armenia,” the NSS’s statement says.

The Human Rights Defender’s representatives are conducting visits to the Detention centers of the Police to see Varuzhan Avetisyan, Arayik Khandoyan, Artur Soghomonyan, Garnik Hovakimyan and other detainees, to get acquinated with the conditions of their detention, as well as to observe the provision of rights.

“The term ‘terrorist’ hasn’t been used for this period. Yet two days ago those operations weren’t even named terrorist corpus delicti, and it’s so, if the operations are directed against the population, civil persons. However, if NSS uses such a term, they have facts that those operations were directed not only against the authorities, the policemen, but against civil persons as well. Use of these terms shows that they intend to apply Article 217, maybe not towards all the members of the group.”

“People moved forward a bit slowly and we had this settlement, however, this shouldn’t oppress our people. We realize, we’ll continue our struggle. Revolutionaries appear in prisons, then leave due to the victory of their people. It’s also a way of struggle. We love you, Armenian people, dear citizens, nothing can separate us, we don’t want bloodshed. I, Arayik Khandoyan, others, understood we can’t raise a weapon on an Armenian. We see our people’s victory. Let this sacrifice become a nourishing root for the struggle, which will lead to the final result.”