The Armenian police stepped up on Wednesday daily detentions of opposition
supporters who have been gathering and strolling on a street in downtown Yerevan
since the lifting of the state of emergency last Friday.

The police have been at pains to prevent more opposition rallies by circling the
city’s Liberty Square and dispersing groups of opposition supporters gathering
outside it. Hundreds of them staged daily silent walks along the newly built
Northern Avenue leading to the square despite random detentions carried out by
law-enforcement officers on the sport. The detainees are normally set free and
fined after spending several hours in police custody.

The number of detentions rose drastically on Friday, with dozens of people, many
of them women, bundled into police vehicles and driven away from the pedestrian
avenue. “Where are you taking me?” yelled one elderly woman with a walking cane
as she was led away by several policemen.

“Get in the car, we’ll go to the station and have a talk,” said one of them. “I
can’t come with you, I need to take drugs,” insisted the woman. “I can come over
to the police station tomorrow.”

Another, younger, woman screamed and burst into tears as she saw her husband
seized by other policemen. “Where are you taking my husband,” she cried. “Don’t
I have the right to walk with my husband? Please respond.”

“Madam, it was a mistake,” a plainclothes officers told her moments later. “Your
husband will be let go now. Let us take you to him.” She refused.

Artyom Babayan, head of the criminal investigations unit at the Yerevan police,
watched and defended the arrests. “Attempts to clear up things have such
effects, whereas in a police station you can ask people questions, look at their
identification documents and clarify whether they broke law,” he said.

Babayan claimed that the police detain supporters of opposition leader Levon
Ter-Petrosian also because there could be “wanted criminals” among them. “We
have information that such persons may commit crimes here,” he told RFE/RL. “Who
says they may not? Can you guarantee that?”

“With such steps the authorities further escalate the situation,” countered
Larisa Alaverdian, a parliament deputy from the opposition Zharangutyun
(Heritage) party who was also at the scene.

As was the case in the previous days, the detainees were taken to the police
headquarters of Yerevan’s central Kentron district. Among them was Lyumdila
Sargsian, the leader of the Social Democrat Hnchakian Party, one of two dozen
opposition groups aligned to Ter-Petrosian. Speaking to RFE/RL by phone, she
said there are about 50 opposition supporters inside the building. The police
station’s door was locked and officers there could not be immediately reached
for comment.

In the meantime, several dozen people, most of them friends and relatives of the
detainees, gathered outside the building. They were joined by Alaverdian and
other Zharangutyun parliamentarians who tried unsuccessfully to get in. “The
police actions are absolutely illegal,” one of them, Zaruhi Postanjian, said.

Despite the end of emergency rule, rallies and other street protests in Yerevan
remain effectively banned, with the authorities citing the need to prevent a
repeat of the March 1 violent clashes in the capital. The police say any
gathering of ten or more people amounts to a rally and can therefore be broken
up.

The de facto ban was facilitated by amendments to Armenia’s law on public
gatherings that was passed by the Armenian parliament last week. Ter-Petrosian
and other opposition leaders say the amendments are unconstitutional.

The situation also remained tense on Wednesday in the Vanatur suburb of Hrazdan,
a town about 50 kilometers north of Yerevan. Dozens of local residents gathered
there for the third consecutive day to demand the release of Sasun Mikaelian,
the local parliamentarian jailed and prosecuted on coup charges along with more
than 100 other Ter-Petrosian loyalists.

The protest continued despite similar random detentions of their participants.
The protesters, many of them schoolchildren, chanted “Sasun!” and “Freedom!” and
law-enforcement officers led by the chief of the Hrazdan police, Avetik
Abrahamian, urged them to disperse, saying that the rally is illegal. One of the
protesters, Arshaluys Bozinian, claimed to have been on hunger strike since
Monday.

Police officers also visited the Vanatur school and interrogated students in the
principal’s office in an apparent effort to discourage them from attending the
daily rallies with their parents. An RFE/RL correspondent was allowed to enter
the room after one such interrogation conducted by Armen Markosian, head of the
juvenile crime unit at the Hrazdan police. A 16-year-old boy questioned by
Markosian was writing an explanation at that point.

“We are interviewing the children to find out why they skipped classes,”
Markosian told RFE/RL. “We are obliged to warn the children not to be absent
from the school.”

“The juvenile delinquency unit of the police is supposed to carry out such
actions,” he said.

Angry parents who waited for their children in the school lobby disagreed. One
of them, Samvel Ohanian, was furious with the police for questioning his
10-year-old son in his absence. “They did not inform me,” he said. “If the boy
gets scared, who will answer for that? I declare that starting from tomorrow I
won’t let any of my two children go to the school.”

“When our kids see a policeman, they get scared,” said Lusine Hayrapetian,
another Vanatur resident. “This has never happened before.”

By Hovannes Shoghikian, Ruben Meloyan and Ruzanna
Stepanian