khosq.com

A senior U.S. official in charge of promoting democracy around the
world ended on Wednesday a two-day visit to Armenia during which he
pressed its government to restore civil liberties and “promptly”
release opposition members arrested following last February’s disputed
presidential election.

“We hope Armenia gets back on a democratic path and stays on that
path,” David Kramer, the U.S. assistant secretary of state for
democracy, human rights and labor, said after talks with Prime Minister
Tigran Sarkisian and other senior Armenian officials.

“We recognize that there will be ups and downs in the future as
well,” Kramer told a news conference. “What we hope to see is that
those ups significantly outweigh any future downs.”

The Armenian government has been under pressure from the United
States and other Western powers to end its post-election crackdown on
the opposition that involved mass arrests and the use of lethal force
against opposition demonstrators demanding a re-run of the February 19
vote. U.S. officials have repeatedly urged the government to release
all political prisoners, abolish severe restrictions on freedom of
assembly and engage in dialogue with the opposition led by former
President Levon Ter-Petrosian.

They have said such steps are essential for the release of $236
million in additional economic assistance to Armenia promised by
Washington. The five-year aid program was effectively frozen after the
deadly suppression on March 1 of Ter-Petrosian’s street protests
against official vote results which the opposition considers
fraudulent.

According to Kramer, the authorities in Yerevan have still not
fully addressed the U.S. concerns even if they refrained from using
force against thousands of Ter-Petrosian supporters who rallied in the
Armenian capital last Friday. “There is a lot that remains to be done,”
he said. “I think that’s to be expected of a government that is still
rather new.”

The U.S. official, who also met Ter-Petrosian, singled out the
continuing imprisonment of dozens of opposition leaders and activists,
saying that he had “extensive discussions” on the issue with Prime
Minister Sarkisian as well as Justice Minister Gevorg Danielian and
Prosecutor-General Aghvan Hovsepian.

“We did express concerns that the vast majority of people detained
in connection with the March 1-2 events were from the opposition,”
Kramer said. “And so we reiterated our hope that people detained for
expressing their political views would in fact be released promptly.”

Sarkisian insisted at the meeting with Kramer that none of the
oppositionists arrested in the crackdown is facing a prison sentence
for their political views or activities. According to the government’s
press service, he also said that Armenian courts are independent and
objective enough to judge whether the charges brought by prosecutors
are substantiated. Most of them stem from the March 1 unrest which left
at least ten people dead.

The local courts have sided with prosecutors in virtually all of
the relevant cases adjudicated by them so far. In the latest example of
that, Armenia’s Court of Appeals on Wednesday upheld a lower court’s
decision to sentence an opposition supporter to three and a half years
in prison for his involvement in the “mass disturbances.” The court
also threw out an appeal lodged by another oppositionist jailed for
four years on the same charge.

Prosecutor-General Hovsepian briefed Kramer on Tuesday on the
course of the ongoing criminal investigation into what the Armenian
authorities call an opposition attempt to stage a coup d’etat. A
statement by the Office of the Prosecutor-General quoted Hovsepian as
saying that Armenian law-enforcement authorities are having “certain
difficulties” ascertaining the precise circumstances in which eight
civilians and two riot troops were killed in the worst street violence
in the country’s history.

None of the arrested oppositionists was charged in connection with
those deaths. Nor have investigators prosecuted any of the police
officers involved in the March 1 clashes.

“There were ten people killed on March 1-2,” Kramer told
journalists. “We would like to see those responsible for those deaths
brought to justice.”

Kramer said the authorities should also enable the independent TV
station A1+, which was controversially forced off the air in 2002, to
resume broadcasts and authorize Ter-Petrosian’s next rally scheduled
for July 4. He commended them for not breaking up last Friday’s rally
that was not sanctioned by the Yerevan municipality.

During his meetings with Armenian officials and the ensuing news
conferences Kramer also condemned Armenian state television for making
anti-Semitic comments in its continuing verbal attacks on
Ter-Petrosian. Citing the Jewish origin of Ter-Petrosian’s Russian-born
wife Lyudmila, the state-controlled Public Television as well as some
pro-government newspapers have alleged in recent weeks that the
opposition leader’s bid to return to power was part of a
“Judaic-Masonic” conspiracy against Armenia.

“For a country with a proud history of relations with the Jewish
community and with the state of Israel, we made clear that
anti-Semitism has no place in Armenia,” said Kramer. “And based on the
reaction that we heard from people in the government, it is my hope
that there will be an immediate end to such rhetoric.”

The Armenian premier, according to his office, described that
rhetoric as “extremely condemnable and inadmissible.” Justice Minister
Danielian told the visiting U.S. official, however, that Public
Television’s controversial reports “can not be unequivocally deemed
anti-Semitic.”