Demo Outside Parliament: Young Man Pretends to be a Journalist, Street Traders Continue Protest

“And tomorrow we’re going to demonstrate outside city hall, and we’re going to fight till the end. They can’t silence us; we have to live somehow or not; that is how we make our living.” Gathered outside the parliament building yesterday were Yerevan street traders, to whom Heritage Party MP Zaruhi Postanjyan had told at the previous demonstration (held outside Yerevan City Hall) that she would raise their issue in the National Assembly on Feb. 9, adding they could hold a demonstration outside parliament.

Recall, the last demonstration was accompanied by skirmishes between police and protestors. Members of Parliament Zaruhi Postanjyan and Vardan Khachatryan had arrived on scene and tried to defuse the situation.

Yesterday, protestors stood outside parliament for a few hours, waiting for a response. The placards they held had such inscriptions as “Shame on the government,” “Shame on the mayor,” “Don’t deprive us of work,” and “Don’t deprive us of our daily bread.”

Some of the women participating in the demonstration told Epress.am that, in their opinion, they were being followed by certain youth.

“There are spies walking among us and they think we don’t know, why do they come. After each demonstration, we notice young boys behind us, that day they had brought a girl with them, they come, they stand by our house. They come to the demonstrations too, so we don’t think that they’re following us, but we’re not naive,” said one of the women.

At that moment, another woman pointed at a young man in the crowd and yelling, asked, “Who are you? You always come, you don’t speak, nothing — who are you?” but the man didn’t respond.

Epress.am tried to find out from the young man why the woman suspect him of being a spy. The young man, who went by the name Artur, first asked his photos to be deleted from the camera then said, “For me, it’s three seconds. I call; they call to have you removed.” Artur then said that he’s a journalist and works at local Armenian paper Haykakan Jamanak (“Armenian Times”).

Epress.am called Haykakan Jamanak to find out whether they had sent a journalist to the demonstration, but the editors said no journalist by that name works for them.

The demonstration continued, and later, MP Zaruhi Postanjyan, speaking to Epress.am, said, in parliament she raised the question of the ban on street trading, but the respondent, RA Minister of Finance Vache Gabrielyan, according to Postanjyan, “had given dispersive responses.”

“Mrs. Postanjyan told us that we will meet and decide our further course of struggle,” said one protestor.