Epress.am News from Armenia
If there had been more time, other questions could've followed Heritage Party MP Zaruhi Postanjyan's question to the Armenian president at the autumn session of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE), Postanjyan said at a press conference in Yerevan today, responding to a Epress.am correspondent's question on what other questions would she have asked if she had more than the allotted 30 seconds.
"Of course I would have asked [him] why members of a foreign country's armed forces — in this case, members of the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) — can place a checkpoint not at Armenia's border but 30 km away, inside the country, and carry out actions restricting a person's fundamental rights, not presenting legal grounds for this, speaking with our citizens in a foreign language, and so on. Is this not perhaps one of the cases of losing our sovereignty in a casino? Or perhaps, are the Armenia-Turkey Protocols a transaction like losing in a casino?" she asked.
Postanjyan said she was surprised at talk that she disgraced Serzh Sargsyan with her question.
"What, I had to disgrace Sargsyan with my question? Disgrace is that 35% of the Republic of Armenia s poor and hungry — vivid evidence of this is what happened in the churchyard in Abovyan. The whole world saw that shameful footage. If we're talking about disgrace, then we have to consider the number of people who have emigrated from Armenia and are in Strasbourg and how these people arrive there and request asylum. These are the disgraceful facts, as well as a number of [other] facts that surround us, and we know that Serzh Sargsyan is the source of our disgrace," she said.
She said that even threatening letters and statements made on social media don't intimidate her. Law enforcement bodies are obliged to see to it that no one has the right to assault her, she added.