Armenia to release political prisoners

Thursday, May 26, 2011

VERCİHAN ZİFLİOĞLU

ISTANBUL – Hürriyet Daily News

Armenia’s parliament approved an amnesty Thursday to free hundreds of inmates, including 15 political activists jailed for their involvement in post-election violence in 2008, fulfilling a key opposition demand.

Lawmakers in parliament voted in favor of the plan to release nearly 400 inmates in an amnesty marking 20 years since Armenia gained independence in the breakup of the Soviet Union.

“Freedom is a human being’s greatest merit. They managed to imprison my body for three years but not my thoughts and feelings. Those who imprison innocent people are in no position to pardon us. Rather, they are the ones who need our pardoning. As a human being, I feel proud of my moral stance,” Sarkis Hazspanyan, one of the prisoners who may be released, told the Hürriyet Daily News & Economic Review via email.

Hazspanyan, a French citizen, was arrested after he claimed certain people might be plotting against the current Armenian President Serge Sarkisyan to assassinate him, during an interview he had given to Nikol Pashinyan, the editor-in-chief of Armenian Times, or Haygagan Jamanag, in November 2008. The political views expressed in Haygagan Jamanag are known to be more closely aligned with those of the country’s first president Levon Ter-Petrosyan.

Pashinyan is also among the 15 prisoners who will be released as a result of the proposed amnesty. Pashinyan has fiercely criticized Sarkisian as well as former President Robert Kocharyan in his newspaper articles in the past and had a leading role in protest marches.

Sarkisian and the parliament were forced to discuss the amnesty because of the political and economic pressure applied on them by the United States and the European Union, although recent uprisings in the Middle East also added a factor of intimidation for Sarkisyan’s government, Hazspanyan said.

“Sarkisian is not freeing the prisoners by his own personal will. The struggle of Armenia’s people has finally born fruit. The people who have been striving for this decision must be congratulated,” Nikol Pashinyan’s wife, Anna Hagopyan-Pashinyan, told the Daily News by email. Pashinyan is currently serving his jail sentence in Artig Prison, although his case has already been brought before the European Court of Human Rights.

One deputy from Sarkisian’s ‘Hanrabedagan Gusagzsutyun’ (Republican Party), Sasun Mikayelyan, is also among the prisoners awaiting amnesty. The prisoners are expected to be released by the end of May, if parliament approves.

“I bear the weight on my shoulders of being considered as the ‘other’ in my own home by my own people,” said Hazspanyan. To continue living in Armenia would require Hazspanyan to engage in an uphill battle because his passport had been seized and his residency rights were formally revoked, he said, adding that the directives issued by Armenia’s second president, Koçaryan, on March 10, 2008, were also still valid.

“I will kneel and remember the 10 youngsters who lost their lives in Freedom Square on March 1 the first day I am free,” said Hazspanyan whose release the government of France had also tried to secure from Armenia, without success.

It was impossible to imagine the difficulties their family went through, according to Hagopyan-Pashinyan. Her children know their father was a political prisoner, but the whole family had to put up with all the hardship together, she said, adding that she had to face enormous challenges for three years not just as a woman or a wife but also as a mother.

Despite his criticism of Sarkisian’s government, Hagopyan-Pashinyan also expressed hope for Armenia’s future and added that her people no longer bow down before illegitimately constituted governments. The people of Armenia were becoming increasingly more vocal in asserting their rights, said Hagopyan-Pashinyan.