HAK Activist Described How One of their Own Humiliated Political Prisoners

Armenian National Congress (HAK) member, activist Vardges Gaspari published a note on his Facebook page regarding his behavior at the HAK rally yesterday.

As previously reported, Gaspari was demanding that recently released from prison HAK loyalist Ara Hovhannisyan step down from the podium at the HAK rally at Liberty Square. Gaspari shouted “Criminal!” when Hovhannisyan appeared on the stage, after which Nikol Pashinyan approached Gaspari and spoke with him privately. Later, when asked why he was calling Hovhannisyan a criminal, Gaspari said, “Ask Nikol Pashinyan, he knows.”

“When in the move to shout ‘Hovhannisyan criminal’ I approached the center of the square, several close friends attempted to stop me (naturally, those not close to me wouldn’t have even dared to do that). They wanted everything to go well: even afterwards, when they found out from me who ‘political prisoner’ [quotation marks in original] Ara Hovhannisyan is; nevertheless, they were saying, ok, but this isn’t the place for that.

“By the way, since 2008, when I described in detail to those responsible at HAK (at the time, the Pan-Armenian National Movement) that Ara Hovhannisyan, being a local representative of the criminal fortress, what a villainous role he has in the act of humiliating and destroying others, including political prisoners, HAK officials said now is not the time to settle this issue,” writes Gaspari.

“And I come to one conclusion, that we want everything to be flawless; the Movement, HAK to be pure, flawless, but we don’t become this way by pretending to be pure and flawless. I often remember that it is said how ‘none of the political prisoners broke’: it’s a lie, about ten of those granted pardon were perhaps visible, but small losses… they’re not spoken about, those in the prisons who were subject to brutal violence by criminal gangs, even losing their identity, about those who became partly insane,” he continued.

In a later post, Gaspari recalled the days he himself spent in prison. “The person watching the cell at the time was Arayik Hovhannisyan, drug addict, thief; literally, a palace being — by the way, included in the list of political prisoners —, who was a more dirty and inhuman creature than other cell supervisors that I saw. He didn’t recognize a limit to humiliating prisoners… In such a situation, his biggest problem was me, which is why our colliding had become more frequent.”