The material is documentated and written by Andreea Tanase.
Armenian opposition still lives March 1 2008 events
March 1st, Yerevan, Armenia, the Opera Square. Levon Ter-Petrosian, the first president of Armenia and the counter-candidate of the actual president during the February 2008 elections, was smoking, muffled in a blanket, on a bench outside the Opera House. The police and the special troops were all over the place. It was a dark day for Armenia. The government decided to end the 10-day protests that followed the presidential elections. By force. In a few hours' time, the centre of Yerevan became a battlefield. Army, police, special troops, shields, torched cars, bats, sticks, wounded people, tear gas, shootings, despair, screaming, dead people. These events that shook Armenia were vague related by the international press, they faded in the shadow of Province of Kosovo's declaration of independence.
The events on March 1st 2008 left a big gap on the Armenian political scene, 10 dead people, about 200 wounded people, controversies, political leaders sent to prison, 59 political prisoners, an accusing opposition, a daily protest on the North Boulevard, that was held weekly one in front of the General Prosecution Office, marches, a segregated society and lots of question marks. Some people, more or less involved in politics, but nonetheless affected by the March 1st events, sharpened the tip of an arrow pointed against the present government. Below, they tell their stories by themselves, arranged like pieces of a puzzle in the frame of the fight for the right to democracy, for a free society, for the freedom of speech.
The Dead Man's Family and the Commission Chief
It was already 8 o'clock when I called him on his mobile phone, but he didn't answer. My husband got worried and went out to look for him. I phoned all our acquaintances and friends to ask them if they knew something about Gor, but nobody had seen him, says to his mother.
Gor Caloyan died on the morning of March 2nd, at 4 am, wounded by a tear gas shell that had pierced into his leg. He was shot on the streets of Yerevan. He was 28 years old and he had a wife and two children – Liova, 8 months old, and Sarkys, aged 3. He wasn't a member of any political party and he was led to the center of the city by pure curiosity, on March 1st. He left behind a grieveing family, two children and no spark of hope for them.
I entered Gor's house after many days of assiduous pursuit and insistences. None of the March 1st victims’ relatives wanted to talk about what they had been through. I was kindly welcomed but with skepticism and asked who I was working for and why I was interested in listening to their story. All those who had anything to do with the authorities during the events or afterwards were afraid to speak, especially to the press.
Azatuhi Manukyan is Gor's mother and she is 50 years old. She started talking with a strangled voice about how her life changed starting from March 1st:
When he heard about what was happening in the Opera Square on the morning of March 1st, Gor got curious. It was Saturday, our rest-day. Gor enjoyed sleeping late, but he woke up early that morning, he drank his coffee and left the house. I asked him not to go too far from the house. He came back, already knowing what was happening outside the French Embassy. He stayed at home for a while, drank another cup of coffee and told me about what he had dreamt the night before. In his dream, all of his teeth had fallen off and he couldn't put them back. I asked him not to leave the house, because that was a bad sign, and I told him that something bad was going to happen.
I told the policemen that they could've aimed at the feet of the protesters and, that way, they wouldn't have died, Samuel Nikoyan, chief of the commission who investigated the March 1st events, tells me, during an interview. But the situation is different in hand-to-hand combat situations. For instance, one protester threw a grenade in the middle of the police forces, killing one of them and wounding others. Then, another protester came towards the policemen and wanted to throw something too. If they had let him to, that 'something' could've been another grenade. But after they fired, the policemen saw that the man wanted to throw a rock at them. It was dark and they couldn't see very well. They didn't take the risk. It's complicated to state an accusation.
My son wasn't involved in any political event. He took part in the voting process as a proxy for Serj Sarkisian, on the behalf of the Bargavadj Hayastani Party (The Prosperous Armenia). I was worried about him and I told him not to get involved in politics and in the elections. But he participated out of curiosity. After the elections he behaved normally, leading his usual life. He worked as a driver for a factory. He left in the morning, at 7 am, and came back in the evening, after 8 pm.
Somebody told my husband he had seen a man in hospital that resembled Gor. I wasn't told that and so I stayed home waiting, crying and worrying, knowing that something had happened to him. Then, some neighbours who didn't know I hadn't heard from Gor came and told me he was in hospital, with a wounded leg, that he had suffered surgical intervention, trying to calm me down. I asked them to take me to the hospital in their car, but the roads were closed, so I couldn't get too far. When I managed to get there, all our relatives were at the hospital and everybody knew what had happened. Gor was in the operating room and the doctor said the operation was working out fine and that he would be all right. During this time, the wounded were being brought in large numbers. There were so many of them, that I feared that they couldn't offer medical assistence to all of them.
It was 2 am when they announced that a man of 31 yearsold had died. His friend who was nearby even received his death certificate. It happened in the same place where Gor was and that deepened my despair. I cried for that boy and I was worried, but I wasn't thinking that it would also happen to me. It was around 4 am when my son in law received a paper that asked us to donate blood for Gor. I went into the operating room, because I have the same blood type as Gor. The doctors told me I wasn't allowed in there and that I had to go to the blood transfusion’s center. I realized there was no one left in the operating room and that everybody was avoiding me. I went in, but Gor wasn't there anymore. He had been transferred to intensive care. I went there, but I wasn't allowed to get in. Then I heard my husband screaming. His body was lying on the operating table. My husband was crying and screaming, holding his head in one hand. Half of his body was still warm, the other half, cold.
The problem is that those capsules didn't explode at the moment they were unleashed, but they entered the people's bodies and exploded in there, Samuel Nikoyan tells me. They should've exploded after they were released and spread tear gas through the air. But the capsules entered the bodies.
How did the 10 people die? Who where they?
Samuel Nikoyan: All of them were men. Two soldiers, one shot, the other one dead from the wounds caused by a grenade explosion. There were 35 people wounded by shrapnel. Among the dead there were also five recruits, three from the gas capsules, two from the grenade explosion, another one shot and one from a hit in the head. Other cases couldn't be investigated, because the shells remained in the bodies and we couldn't bring in a verdict, not being able to identify the guns they where shot from.
Did Gor die from his leg wounds?
I was told he died from a haemorrhage, that one of his main arteries had been sectioned and caused his death, remembered Azatuhi. During the surgery, my brother was shown a piece of plastic extracted from his body, a remnant from a tear gas capsule. This was the problem that aggravated the operation. During the operation, the capsule exploded and the gas spread through the room, stopping the doctors’ activity. I think this was another obstacle in their saving my son. We wanted to take the clothes Gor had been wearing, in order to keep them, but they wouldn't give them to us. Although they knew very well how he had been wounded. The authorities speak of 10 dead, but I saw three dead people in that hospital with my own eyes and the wounded were being brought around-the-clock. They called me down many times to the Prosecution Office to testify as a witness, Sarkis Caloyan, Gor's father, intervenes.
Were there any witnesses that saw how Gor got wounded?
Sarkis Caloyan: No, but there is one who knows when he left home and where he went.
What was the official statement regarding the cause of his death?
Sarkis Caloyan: The Prosecution Office released a statement based on the testimonies of four of the policemen who shot tear gas at the crowd, but they made four victims, thus the policeman responsible for Gor's death cannot be identified because of the similarities of the weapons. Cheyromuchas is a gun that uses one gas capsule and they showed me how big it was. Inside the capsule there were 3 or 4 bullets, of which only three exploded and spread the gas, while the fourth one, unexploded, entered together with the capsule inside Gor's body and exploded during the operation.
Mister Nikoyan, the final report has a deadline. Will you keep to it?
Samuel Nikoyan: We haven't finished the investigations yet and we haven't finished the examination of all the evidence yet. We won't manage to finish by January 2009. We still have to examine one of the bodies. For this, we need the government’s support. The investigation of the cases regarding the deaths is not finished yet. There is another body that needs forensic examination, in order to find out the cause of death. Hence, the deadline of the report will be extended until all the evidence are examined. Three of the deaths were caused by tear gas capsules. The difficulty of the case resides in establishing the type of the firing weapon. If it was a normal weapon, it's hard to establish its origin and type and a final conclusion cannot be reached. Who is to blame: the policeman who fired the shot and didn't know that the weapon wouldn't function normally because it was old? The one who purchased the weapons? Or maybe the factory that manufactured those weapons? (The type of weapon has Russian origins, 23 mm model Cheryomukha-7M Bird cherryand Cheryomukha 7).
Is Gor's case closed or is it still under investigation?
Sarkis Caloyan: It hasn't got to court yet and it won't until the person who issued the order to open fire is established. The commission won't give out any result, Azatuhi intervened. Eight months have passed since my son, aged 28, left us. And nobody cares about that. I have no hope left that the case will be solved and I don't know what to expect any longer.
What would you like to happen? What are your expectancies?
I just wish the guilty one to be punished. As you see, he left two children behind. How will they live? Nobody cared. Their mother can't work, because she would have to leave them alone. Each of them receives a 20-dollar monthly allowance. Since Gor Died, our relatives who live abroad have been helping us. Nobody in the government cares about our lives. They didn't even say they were sorry. It's as if Gor wasn't a citizen of Armenia and nobody cares about him. We don't know what to do next. We are living a life without hope, Azatuhi says.
Who do you think is responsable for Gor's death?
Azatuhi Manukian: Gor would give a better answer to this question. He didn't have anything to gain from the elections. They couldn't have had any effect, either positive or negative, on our family. We are normal citizens and we would've lived the same, normal life after the events. But they changed our family's destiny forever. I don't know why I lost my son, nobody can answer this question for me.
If good or bad things happen in every country, the government should take responsibility, and Gor's case will be solved only if the government is changed, Sarkis Caloyan adds.
Gor's wife, Rozan Unanyan, aged 25, was sitting on an armchair, trying to calm down her youngest child's cry. She answered my questions with a sadly without further hopes for the future, that she finds it impossible to imagine.
