Confidence crisis in Armenia: Artur Sakunts
19:28, July 27, 2016 | News, Other news
National Security Service announces that the growing dangerous criminal behavior by the members of the armed group goes beyond all boundaries where it is possible to demonstrate reasonable restraint … As estimated by human rights activist Artur Sakunts, the characteristics divulged by NSS should have sufficient grounds and facts should be presented based on which they think that the behavior of the militants is growingly becoming dangerous, “The NSS was demonstrating a completely different approach in its previous statements, although it had the text of ultimatum but was moderate with its approach, substantiations of not exposing to criminal liability.”
Referring to the official news that the militants opened fire, Mr. Sakunts said that only NSS has announced this information by presenting only its hypotheses, “The absence of complete information would be possible to eliminate if there were interpretations by the militants about the same situation and occurrence, as long as it is not available, I think that such a statement and estimation obviously has only one intention – to justify its own actions, for which they will always find substantiations… and the government on behalf of the police and National Security Service is in the possession of all resources to improve and deteriorate this situation for holding negotiations in this situation. I think that the government should not cause any escalation and lead to further tension. The actions that are carried out until now are aimed at growing the tension.”
We also asked Artur Sakunts whether he does not consider the actions committed by the armed group a crime in legal sense, “I definitely do not welcome the use of an armed method but I believe that the investigation should detect the circumstances of the death of the police officer who died as a result of the burst of machine-gun fire during the use of an armed method with the police forces, and who has said that the colonel had died exactly as it is described. An investigation should be conducted for the death of the colonel, and the portion of the guilt of specific people should be determined. But you must remember that in the presence of low confidence towards the justice in Armenia, the confidence in carrying out such an investigation is already questionable, who are the judges, if justice was administered, there would be no manifestation of raising such extreme problems.
People have not declared themselves a bandit group who have occupied the building for money, property or to intimidate the public but they have declared clear political matters from their perspective. Giving only artificial legal assessment to the actions of the group by forgetting the political objectives will be incomplete.” He also noted that up to now, there is no accusation filed against any police officer of allowing illegality, humiliating the dignity of the citizens and torturing, “There is no single example during these ten days. In other words, we are dealing with a situation when the operators of legal mechanisms continue implementing unpunished anti-legal actions.” The created situation as described by the human right activist is a political crisis, a “Confidence Crisis”.