{"id":279651,"date":"2017-03-20T11:56:06","date_gmt":"2017-03-20T07:56:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/epress.am\/?p=279651"},"modified":"2017-03-20T15:01:48","modified_gmt":"2017-03-20T11:01:48","slug":"lawyer-suffers-from-police-action-amid-protests-in-yerevan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/2017\/03\/20\/lawyer-suffers-from-police-action-amid-protests-in-yerevan.html","title":{"rendered":"Lawyer Suffers From Police Action Amid Protests in Yerevan"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Armenian police used excessive force against demonstrators on Sunday during a march through the center of Yerevan in honor of <strong><span style=\"color: #003366;\"><a style=\"color: #003366;\" href=\"http:\/\/epress.am\/en\/2017\/03\/18\/a-boycott-is-the-way-to-go-death-of-food-bringer-and-armenian-election-races.html\">Artur Sargsyan<\/a><\/span><\/strong>, a supporter of the Sasna Tsrer (Daredevils of Sasun) opposition armed group who died in hospital on Thursday, ten days after his release from prison following a nearly month-long hunger strike.<\/p>\n<p>In July 2016, Sargsyan, who came to be known as the \u201cFood Bringer,\u201d drove through a police cordon around a Yerevan police station occupied by Sasna Tsrer to deliver food to the gunmen. He was subsequently arrested and accused of aiding the armed group.<\/p>\n<p>According to a video released on Monday by the Armenian Helsinki Association for Human Rights, HAHR lawyer Arayik Papikyan has also suffered from police actions.<\/p>\n<p>\u201c[Police officers] grossly violated my right to free movement; during the scuffle, they blocked the way I could have used to leave the area. I asked them multiple times to get out of my way, but they never did, and I suffered physical pain in the scuffle as a result,\u201d Papikyan said in the video.<\/p>\n<p>The lawyer added that law enforcement authorities should consider the video message a crime report, and demanded that two police officers in particular, junior sergeant Khachatryan and corporal Martirosyan, be subjected to criminal responsibility.<\/p>\n<p>Details in the video:<\/p>\n<p><em><iframe width=\"425\" height=\"344\" src=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/Qvq145tOsPk?wmode=transparent\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen> <\/iframe><\/em><\/p>\n<p>After Artur <strong><span style=\"color: #003366;\"><a style=\"color: #003366;\" href=\"http:\/\/epress.am\/en\/2017\/03\/16\/supporter-of-yerevan-gunmen-dies-in-hospital.html\">Sargsyan\u2019s death<\/a><\/span><\/strong>, thousands of demonstrators have been holding daily marches in different parts of downtown Yerevan. On Sunday, the marchers walked from the Mashtots Ave. to the city&#8217;s central Republic Square where they attempted to stage a sit-in protest. The protesters, however, were soon dispersed by police, after which they relocated to the Freedom Square and began an around-the-clock sit-in there.<\/p>\n<!-- AddThis Advanced Settings generic via filter on the_content --><!-- AddThis Share Buttons generic via filter on the_content -->","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Armenian police used excessive force against demonstrators on Sunday during a march through the center of Yerevan in honor of Artur Sargsyan, a supporter of the Sasna Tsrer&#8230;<!-- AddThis Advanced Settings generic via filter on get_the_excerpt --><!-- AddThis Share Buttons generic via filter on get_the_excerpt --><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":279646,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tstyn_error":""},"categories":[66030],"tags":[56729,66009,65790],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/279651"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=279651"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/279651\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/279646"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=279651"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=279651"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=279651"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}