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Six Reporters Assaulted During Yerevan Municipal Elections
Six cases of physical violence against reporters were registered in the May 31 Yerevan municipal elections, as well as incidents designed to prevent them from carrying out their professional duties.
At 10:45 am, physical violence was employed against “Chorrord Ishksanutyun” newspaper reporter Gohar Veziryan, “Hayk” reporter Tatev Mesrobyan and “Zhamanak Yerevan” reporter Marineh Kharatyan. The incidents took place at the 9/1 polling station.
Parliamentary Deputy Levon Sargsyan was at the 9/1 polling station located in the M. Nalbandyan School in the “Medaks” neighborhood.
“We went to the 9/1 polling station at around 10:45 am and saw that Lyova Sargsyan had already voted. There were some 15 people milling about. I asked him if he had voted here and he responded that he had 25 houses and that he could vote wherever he pleased. I replied that I hoped he didn’t cast a vote in all 25,” states Marineh Kharatyan. Then, Gohar Veziryan came and invited the deputy outside. “Who are you to speak to me like that and call me outside,” the deputy said and proceeded to call Gohar Veziryan a “fool” and “lazy-bones”. Gohar responded by calling the deputy a “fool”, to which the deputy replied with a list of expletives like, “your mother…”
Gohar Veziryan ten answered back with her another choice expression.
Marineh Kharatyan claims that the deputy started the cursing and that everything is clearly audible on the tape recording of the incident.
Levon Sargsyan then ordered his bodyguards to clear the polling station of all reporters. With that, one of the bodyguards slapped Gohar Veziryan. According to Marineh Kharatyan the slap can be heard on the tape. Three bodyguards then assault Gohar, twisting her arms and hitting her. “One was holding my arms and another slapped me twice in the face. One struck my head and the metal hair pin and in shattered in my head. Another bodyguard kicked me in the stomach and I got short of breath and went dizzy,” Gohar Veziryan said.
“I didn’t have a chance to see a doctor yesterday, but my abdomen hurts. Maybe an organ or muscle was damaged. I’ll definitely get a check-up tomorrow for some piece of mind,” Gohar Veziryan said.
Marineh Kharatyan wasn’t physically assaulted but the curses rained down on her as well. “During that period Lyova Sargsyan was mouthing some pretty nasty stuff at me and no one intervened; not members of the district electoral commission nor the police. Misha Samvelyan, president of the district commission, was probably encouraged by the presence of Sargsyan and acted in a foul manner. When Sargsyan was cursing at me, Samvelyan snatched my tape recorder. I’m emotionally stressed out. It was horrible. If I dared to respond to the verbal assault against me possibly another murder would have taken place,” says Marineh Kharatyan.
“They twisted my arm and punched me in the shoulder. They took my phone,” says Tatev Mesrobyan, adding that, “then one of the guys keeping an eye on the street returned it to me. Perhaps they checked it for photos and then decided to give it back.”
Deputy Sargsyan and his entourage of bodyguards then left the polling station. The local electoral commission president responded to all questions by saying that such an incident never took place. “We can do nothing. You must go to the Erebuni police station,” was the answer of the police present at the scene.
Tatev continues, “The other members of the electoral commission joined in with the cursing. We still hadn’r registered but it clearly wasn’t in their best interests that we hang around.”
The reporters left the site after the incident but Tatev remained at the polling station. After 5:00 pm she witnessed a series of violations and ballot box stuffing. She also saw a group of about thirty young men vote several times.
At around 5:00 pm at the Malatya 8/05 polling station physical force was employed against Armineh Avetisyan, a reporter for “168 Zham”, and Lilit Tadevosyan, a reporter for the “Tert.am” website wasn’t allowed to carry out her professional duties.
Lilit wasn’t physically abused but she was not allowed to approach the ballot box. Lilit saw that they were stuffing the ballot box and she tried to intervene. “They jostled and pushed me and didn’t let me get close to the box.”
“I was at the 8/06 polling station at the same location. I heard voices and went to the 8/5 station to take some pictures. One of the people yelling threatened me by saying, ‘I’ll break your head and the camera if you take any photos’,” says Lilit Tadevosyan. She confirms that they twisted the arms of Armineh Avetyan and Sona Ayvazyan, an observer with Transparency International, and forced them against the wall so that they couldn’t approach.
About twenty thick-necked guys encircled us and took us aside. They hit us with their hands. My pen stuck into my hand and I started to bleed,” added Armineh Avetyan. Local electoral commission members and its president, Petros Avetisyan, failed to register either the ballot stuffing or the assault on the reporters.
Nelli Grigoryan, a reporter for the daily “Aravot” was physically abused at around 5:30 pm at the Malatya 7/25 polling precinct. The reporter and HAK (Armenian National Congress) representatives witnessed a well-built man shove a HAK woman proxy against the wall and try and forcibly remove her from the precinct.
“When I saw what was happening I immediately got my camera ready and started shooting. The members of the local commission were present as well as the proxies, but no one intervened. When I started to take pictures, an unidentified young man who later turned out to be Bokon from Noragyugh, turned around and started to shove me, screaming ‘who let you take photos’. For a moment there I was confused but later gathered my wits about me and told him that he was preventing me from carrying out my professional work as a reporter,” recounts Nelli Grigoryan.
A few minutes later Bokon snatched the reporter’s camera and went outside. They returned it five minutes later but the memory card had been removed.
“A white-haired woman commission member started telling me to behave and asked who I was and why I was yelling. I told her who I was and what my function as a reporter was. At the time, the abuse was choking me. Some seedy looking guys the proceeded to assault two women, to settle a score of some kind. The respectable looking individuals on the commission didn’t lift a finger in the defense of the two women. They just sat by, seemingly uninterested,” the reporter says.
There were no police at the polling precinct. The incident was reported on the spot but the commission president refused to enter it into the official log.
“He said he didn’t see anything. In fact, he didn’t see it because he was outside at the time. But the proxies and monitors saw it. He saw that the proxies were HAK monitors and didn’t register the incident in the log. We wrote up another report and sent it to the district electoral committee.”
Reporters and cameramen from Radio Liberty and “A1+” were prevented from carrying out their work at the 13/9 polling precinct located in Erebuni P.S. 120. Jirayr Ayvazyan, president of the district commission forbade any pictures of the election ballot to be taken and told the cameramen to leave the premises. “They didn’t allow us to take photos but there was no physical abuse,” said Radio Liberty reporter Tigran Avetisyan.
The RoA Police website reports that, “The Erebuni Police Sation called Gegham Nazaryan, the editor of “Hayk” to say that bodyguards belonging to Deputy Levon Sargsyan beat one of its reporters at the 9/1 polling precinct located in Nalbandyan School.”
Gohar Veziryan hasn’t reported the incident to the police. However, H, Galoyan, the personal bodyguard of Natinal Assembly Deputy Levon Sargsyan stated to the Erebuni police that, “At around 10:30 am, at the 9/1 polling precinct, “Chorrord Ishkhanutyun” reporter Gohar Veziryan attacked them when L. Sargsyan was casting his vote and that she proceeded to verbally abuse them, disrupting the public order in the process.”
Gohar wrote the police saying, “exercising her constitutional right, she refuses to make any comments” since her lawyer, Hovik Arsenyan, wasn’t with her at the time. However, the reporter states that the information circulated by the police is an absolute lie. “Let them start a criminal case against me. Let’s all testify in open court about what really happened. Gohar Veziryan is not about to step back and she has no problem with lodging a complaint,” the reporter said.
Yesterday, “168 Zham” reporter Armineh Avetyan made a statement. Today, the Special Investigative Agency sent him a notice but the reporter never went down to the office due to lack of time.
The police have yet to comment on other similar incidents.
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