More than a dozen opposition parties have strongly condemned last week’s arrests
of several supporters of former President Levon Ter-Petrosian and demanded that
the Armenian authorities drop “baseless” criminal accusations leveled against
them.

The five opposition activists, among them two newspaper editors, were formally
charged on Tuesday with assaulting police officers who tried to stop their
October 23 march in Yerevan. The demonstration, sanctioned by municipal
authorities, was aimed at informing city residents about Ter-Petrosian’s
upcoming rally in the capital. It followed the Ter-Petrosian camp’s complaints
that none of Armenia’s major television stations agreed to broadcast paid
advertisements of the event.

The police claim that the several dozen marchers interfered with traffic and
disrupted public order by littering the streets with leaflets and disturbing
residents. But organizers deny this, saying that they simply exercised their
constitutionally guaranteed rights.

In a joint statement issued late Thursday, 11 opposition parties, most of them
allied to Ter-Petrosian, also rejected the official version of events. “We
declare that police actions against participants of the peaceful and legal march
are illegal and blatantly violate human rights and civil liberties,” they said.

The statement demanded that the authorities end the “baseless criminal
prosecution” and “hold accountable” the deputy chief of the Yerevan police who
ordered a special police unit to use force against the demonstrators.

The police actions were also separately condemned by two other major opposition
parties that have had an uneasy relationship with Ter-Petrosian and are unlikely
to support him in the upcoming presidential election. One of them, the National
Democratic Union (AZhM), said Armenia has had a poor human rights record and
lacked rule of law “since 1988,” implying that Ter-Petrosian is also to blame
for the existing situation.

While deploring the “illegal and unjustified use of force,” the National Unity
Party of Artashes Geghamian, blamed on Friday the rising political tensions on
both the authorities and “some opposition parties and their leaders.”

By Emil Danielyan