The authorities have to bring the solution of issues from streets to another forum

“Today,
a street turned into a forum for  raising
issues and seeking solutions for issues of  public interest”, said Artak Kirakosyan, Civil
Society Institute Board Chairman at the meeting with joutnnalists on September.

According to him, this situation was
caused by the fact that the government adopts decisions on issues of public
importance without any public discussion or consideration of public opinion.
Then it appears that the only way to change the decisions is to engage into
street protests, as other civilized options do not bring about positive
change. 

“If you try to raise issues by means
of letters or other means, they ignore you. The authorities start to react and
try to engage in a dialogue only when groups go out to streets and raise their
demands, at times in an aggressive manner,” stated A. Kirakosyan.

He referred to the decisions regarding
installation of booths at the Mashtots and increase of the public transport
fare as examples of such practice.

“We may call it freedom of speech,
but freedom of speech assumes that if someone speaks out, then there are some
others to listen to him. Currently your efforts may be successful only if you shout
loudly and are able to collect 100 people and some intelligentsia” says CSI
Board Chairman. 

In his
opinion, it is at least odd, that the government’s reaction to this is ‘how
good it is that the civil society has been formed in Armenia’ instead of trying
to bring the process from streets to normal forum for discussion.

Artak Kirakosyan believes that the
street actions have another dangerous trend, as it appeared in the case of the
Covered Market: “The other party of the conflict thought: ‘why should we not use
the same methods?’ And if it continues this way, the street conflicts of two parties can result in fights.”

CSI Board Chairman does not expect
the street protest to weaken; on the contrary, new people will be joining them
for this or that reason.

He mentioned that “the authorities currently
exercise control over the situation, and have enough influence to force even
Samvel Alexanyan to condemn violence, if needed”. However, he thinks that the risks
are not estimated correctly.

The risk, according to him, is that
the situation sooner or later will result in a brutal intervention of the
police against street protesters.

CSI Board Chairman believes that in
such a situation the responsibility of the authorities is to create mechanisms to
bring the dialogue from streets to civilized platforms of discussion, and seek
solutions of issues there.

“If it is not done, we will end up at
a dangerous situation, as there are provokers on both sides. Whereas most
likely that it is not the provokers but peaceful participants of demonstrations
or those who genuinely struggle for the Covered market who will become victims
and no difference will be made between them,” says Artak Kirakosyan.

A. Kirakosyan believes that the Office
of the Human Rights Defender can play an important role in the process of
building dialogue and seeking solutions to the conflict between the society and
the authorities. However, he mentioned that the Office has turned into “an
ordinary organization on protection of human rights, which raises some issues and
sometimes reaches less effect than other non-governmental organizations”.