Epress.am News from Armenia
A year has passed since the launch of the two-week round-the-clock protest action in central Yerevan against rising electricity prices, but no police officers have yet been held liable for the brutality against demonstrators on the first night of the protest, Union of Informed Citizens NGO coordinator Daniel Ioannisyan said at a press conference today.
“There should have been 300-400 injured parties in this case: all those who were detained, whose right to freedom of assembly was violated – all of them should have been recognized as victims [of police brutality]. And the police officers who detained these people, who gave out orders or did not intervene when their colleagues were beating people should be held liable [for their actions or lack thereof],” Ioannisyan stated, adding that “it was a crime carried out by a uniformed crime group.”
On June 23, 2015, the speaker said, Armenia’s law enforcement forces detained 237 people on suspicion of hooliganism; however, the country’s Investigative Committee subsequently reported that no evidence of hooliganism on the demonstrators’ part had been discovered; “The police have yet to clarify what had possessed them that day to see nonexistent hooliganism in 237 persons’ actions. They have been pushing the idea that it was a non-premeditated dispersal, that there had been no order from the powers that be to use water cannons on the demonstrators.”
Head of Protection of Rights without Borders NGO Haykuhi Harutyunyan, for her part, noted that the complaints of those who were injured during last year’s events are still in the preliminary investigation stage. “Authorities are intentionally delaying the investigation. The police, for example, say that they cannot locate the officer pictured on one frame or another. Looks like this investigation could last for at least another year,” Harutyunyan said and added that only 13 law enforcement officers have been subjected to disciplinary penalty for the violent protest dispersal on June 23 last year.