Epress.am News from Armenia
German Ambassador to Armenia Hans-Jochen Schmidt on Monday met with Armenian National Congress (HAK) leader Levon Ter-Petrossian while both were visiting Liberty Square in Yerevan. Recall, today is Day 4 of the nonstop rallies (set to last a week) declared by opposition supporters on Friday.
Speaking to the Epress.am correspondent on the scene, Ambassador Schmidt said why he was visiting the square and what he spoke about with the opposition leader.
“I just returned from Germany, and I wanted to see what’s going on here [in Liberty Square]. I received some SMS [messages], some emails, [so] I wanted to see what is going on. And suddenly, I met Mr. Petrossian. He criticized me for having taken the floor recently at a meeting with Civilitas [Foundation], that I referred, for example, to the events in 1996, concerning what is it, falsification of elections, when certain people were thrown into prison, and I, as [I said at the] Civilitas [public forum], one has to at least acknowledge what happened at that time. For me [it’s] a kind of critical ethics [that is, ethics of criticism]. If you criticize somebody [that person]… at least has to acknowledge” that something was not right at the time, from the point of view of either democratization or something else, he said.
Continuing, the ambassador said he would be concerned if “somebody of the leadership” said one was “totally wrongly informed” that nothing happened the way you described it — “for example, the falsification of elections, that, as far as I know, 230 Dashnaks were thrown into prison, [and] television stations were closed”:
“If somebody said, that doesn’t correspond to reality, as a foreigner, I’m certainly going to be concerned. If he criticized me,… that I interfere in internal affairs, I think on the one side, we are supposed to be critical observers and therefore, I allow myself sometimes to refer to certain events as having occurred in the former times.”