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Artur Sakunts, the chairperson of Helsinki Citizens’ Assembly Vanadzor Office, is answering the questions of MediaLab.

– Mr. Sakunts, after the meeting with the leadership of the National Assembly the day before yesterday the students fighting for the right to draft deferment stopped the hunger strike and the boycott of classes. How do you assess that step of theirs? Isn’t this yet another defeat in terms of civil movements?

– I don’t think so. Quite the opposite – I would like to note that yet once again the government is not taking into consideration the public opinion and has regressed from democratic standards. That’s because what was adopted in the second reading, unequivocally contradicts the principles of a lawful and democratic state. It contradicts the principles of participatory democracy and directly leads to militarization. At the same time, it does not solve any problems in terms of human rights defense in the armed forces. Secondly, the civil youth movement demonstrated its potential as well as the fact that it has things to do and, despite the unlawful methods used by the government, it entirely remains in the civilized domain. Now the further course presupposes actions of a completely different nature. What I mean is that although the law has been adopted without taking into consideration the public opinion, the law is not a dogmatic norm and, therefore, efforts should be pursued to change that law. It goes to show that the core aim of the movement should be achieving changes in the law, which presupposes a more persistent and smarter long-term work, and I believe that the youth has the inherent potential and capability to implement it. The problem in this case was not just related to the draft determent but also to the social injustice that is stipulated by law. I mean the stratification when organizing combat duty, the social stratification based on the division between ordinary soldiers and officers and so forth. So the youth should continue fighting and we, as institutions of civil society, are ready to invest our capacity and ability in that struggle.

– That bill has been adopted fully in the second reading. On one hand, the authorities are stating that they are ready for a round table dialogue. On the other hand, they are mentioning that they are not going to make amendments and there can only be discussions around the subsections of the law. Do you think these round table discussions can produce results? Haven’t the protesters just met with the Prime Minister and the Ministers of Defense and Education and not made concessions?

– The fact that they met with the Prime Minister, the Minister of Defense as well as the Minister of Education and Science already speaks of the potential of the youth movement. This means that the youths have so much potential that the authorities cannot disregard them. I should simply remind you of the curious fact that when the Polish Solidarity movement started, a round table was set up with the then authority led by communist Jaruzelski. It was a format of discussing and solving problems. In fact, now the entire focus should be on preparing for the work of the round table and clarifying the agenda, and, of course, protests can also be held from time to time. This means that we should consider it as a fact that the government is going for a round table as it should have done before. What I mean is that the round tables and the discussions that the Minister of Defense and the social institutions involved by him were conducting, showed that they were not genuine at all as they were only of a formal nature and only had the aim of imitating real discussions, while the latter are just starting. Although many argue that the law has already been adopted, and the discussions are pointless, in my opinion, they are not and they can bring about changes. The fact is that through that round table the government has admitted the fact that there were no real discussions before and that the real ones are just starting. Now the question is connected to the preparation of the round table participants, their competence, integrity, consistency and persistence. We are ready to invest our expertise in support of the students who are round table participants.

– Overall, were there no tactical mistakes in the students’ actions, given the fact that one of the reasons for the defeat of the past civil movements was making compromises with the authorities?

– The cause of failure was not the compromise but the fact that the agenda was not maintained; they got tired of the agenda and were not consistent and put up with the de facto situation. In this case, as far as I understand, the students did not put up with it as they wouldn’t have agreed with the idea of the round table had they put up with the situation. This is a new quality and level of a civil movement and it opens up new opportunities. How the students can make use of it depends on the competence of the initiators and the further organization of the work.

– So do you consider halting the boycott of classes and the hunger strike and making concessions to be right?

– Both the boycott of classes and the hunger strike were the right steps. These were the steps that could be taken and I don’t consider their agreeing with the idea of a round table to be a defeat.

– So why didn’t it turn into a common struggle for students? Why didn’t other higher education institutions join in?

– Some students did join in, for instance, the students of the Conservatory. The protesting students were in fact not from just one higher education institution. We haven’t been to all the higher education institutions to see how many students were present at the classes. On the other hand, the boycott of classes does not presuppose everyone’s participation in the protests. The number of the participants in the boycott of classes could be higher than the number of those protesting. Moreover, 120 young researchers and lecturers supported the students.

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