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Armenia’s opposition has again signaled its readiness to defy the ban on its planned rally and press ahead with the protest action slated for August 1.

Arman Musinyan, the spokesman for opposition leader Levon Ter-Petrosyan, on Monday described the decision of the city authorities as groundless and “beyond any logic”.

Last week Yerevan’s municipality again cited security reasons to make a decision not to allow the opposition led by first president Ter-Petrosyan to stage a rally and a subsequent march either in downtown Liberty Square or near Matenadaran, a nearby ancient manuscripts museum. Instead, it advised the opposition to gather near either the city’s largest Hrazdan football arena or the second largest stadium, Dynamo. The opposition deems both locations situated just off the city center unsuitable for its rallies.

“The government continues to discredit the municipality and police, forcing them to make unlawful decisions,” Musiyan asserted. “All our rallies were held without any incident and there are no grounds for rejecting our applications. The municipality has to think about its prestige.”

If held, the rally on August 1 will become the opposition’s third major gathering in the capital this summer and overall since the deadly breakup of its post-election protests on March 1-2. The two previous rallies, on June 20 and July 4, had not been authorized by the city authorities either and in both cases the opposition had to negotiate the place and terms of holding with police on the spot and settle for the Matenadaran location, while Liberty Square, the scene of late-February protests, remained under heavy police security.

In imposing the bans the municipality had invoked information from the National Security Service (NSS) that large gatherings in downtown Yerevan posed security risks for immediate participants and other members of the public. However, both opposition rallies went on peacefully, with no incident reported.

Musinyan would not elaborate on the opposition’s further steps to try to repeal the municipality’s decision legally. He only emphasized that the opposition would not abandon its plans for staging the rally.

“In all cases, in any weather conditions, the August 1 rally will take place,” he underlined.

At the same time, Musinyan called the municipality’s proposal to hold rallies in other venues “unacceptable”.

“They might as well have proposed the 17th kilometer of the Yerevan-Talin highway. If we consider that in the new political history of Armenia the opposition has had two major squares [for protests], where else can we hold our rallies? This, in fact, shows their [authorities’] horror. If they didn’t have fear, they would have authorized the rally,” the opposition representative concluded.

Meanwhile, Head of the Organization and Inspection Division at the Yerevan Municipality Gagik Baghdasaryan confirmed to ArmeniaNow that the decision not to authorize the opposition rally in Liberty Square and near Matenadaran was based on the data provided by the NSS and police.

“Under law, notifications about planned rallies, including opposition rallies, are sent to police and the NSS. And since I had received a reply that during the planned rally and a subsequent march there would be participants who, according to operative data, would attempt to instigate clashes with police workers by means of unlawful provocative actions, I made a decision to ban the event,” Baghdasaryan explained.

“The fact that there were no incidents during two rallies does not give me reasons to disregard the NSS and police information,” he added.

By Sara Khojoyan
ArmeniaNow reporter
Source: http://www.armenianow.com

Permanent link:  http://www.armpress.com/armenianow/2008/07/21/1193/

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