Artur Sakunts: “The authorities seem to have become a victim of their own method”
18:32, July 21, 2016 | News, Other news
While presenting his view on the situation in Khorenatsi Street and Sari Tagh district this night in his interview to Aravot.am, human rights activist Artur Sakunts said that the authorities, represented by the police and law enforcement agencies, obviously provoked to the extent possible the spontaneous protest of the citizens to incite them to incidents and clashes with police officers. “According to the information received from the participants of the spontaneous protest, those plain-clothes police officers or agents, who were the first to throw stones and show an example of using violence against the police officers in uniform, brought about similar actions on the part of the other protesters.”
The human rights activist mentioned that a similar conduct by plain-clothes police officers could be observed during various events and recalled the day when water cannons had been used during the protest by ‘Electric Yerevan’ movement when plain-clothes police officers from the ranges of the protesters were the first to apprehend the protesters.
According to the human rights activist, the fact that the persons standing under the trees were apprehended suffering aggression, violence and swear words, means that this was merely a pretext and the real purpose was to revenge on citizens protesting there, which, according to the human rights activist, is beyond any norms regulating the actions of the police. According to him, the real aim of the protest was also to prevent any use of violent force.
“By their actions, the police and the law enforcement agencies come to show that the political leadership knows no other language and no other methods than those of force and violence and has no wish to apply any other methods when dealing with its citizens”, the human rights activist said adding that the authorities are responsible for the current general situation in Armenia. “They preferred their force methods to use them as a main tool against the issues raised by citizens and as long as these practices remain unchanged, those actions will not cease. The authorities seem to have become a victim of their own method and have lost their creativity; the very primitive, crude and wild thinking and dead-end positions will continuously raise complaints and such crises will continue to persist no matter whether on the part of “Sasna Tsrer” or any other group.”