Armenian PM Condemns March 1 2008 Deadly Crackdown of Peaceful Protest

On March 1, people took the streets of Yerevan to hold their traditional march to the site of the tragic events of March 2008 when the government opened fire on a peaceful demonstration. People walked with pictures of the victims of that tragedy as well as posters demanding punishment for the former President of Armenia, Robert Kocharyan, who is currently under arrest on charges of overthrowing the constitutional order and violating the constitution involving the Army in a protest crackdown.

Since 2009, every year people in Armenia march to the location of the tragedy and lay flowers in memory of the victims. But where previously this procession was organized by the opposition and is generally ognored by the government, this year the march and commemoration were actually organized by the government itself.

PM Pashinyan, who was one of the key figures of the opposition movement of 2008 and was arrested for this protests and imprisoned, addressed the nation on the day, condemning the deadly crackdown on the peaceful protest. The Head of State also made a special apology in the name of the state for using state institutions in a deadly crackdown on the peaceful demonstration 11 years ago. He also led the march to the location of the tragedy.

The protest movement in 2008 came as a result of unprecedented falsifications of the presidential elections on February 19, 2008. The main opposition candidate, the First President of Armenia Levon Ter-Petrosyan (1991-1998) refused to recognize the election results and the victory of PM Serzh Sargsyan and applied to the constitutional court demanding an annulment of the results of the elections and for there to be new presidential elections. The first president of the state raised a huge public movement in support of his demands and organized a 10-day sit-in and non-stop demonstrations in Freedom Square in Yerevan city center. The demonstrations soon brought results as more and more key officials from the government and parliament started to join the opposition movement and the government was paralyzed. 

On the 10th consecutive day of the non-stop demonstrations, on the eve of the Constitutional court’s discussion of the application of the opposition candidate, police forces attacked the peaceful gathering in Freedom Square in the middle of the night. They arrested most of the members of the opposition movement and put Levon Ter-Petrosyan under house arrest which was an anti-constitutional step. Nikol Pashinyan, who was one of the key figures of Ter-Petrosyan’s team, escaped the morning arrest of opposition leaders and hours later, when people gathered for a new demonstration, Pashinyan appeared in the location and lead the protest demanding to release Ter-Petrosyan and let him join the protest. 

Kocharyan refused to meet the demands of the demonstrators and kept Ter-Petrosyan under house arrest. Hours later late in the evening, Kocharyan, in violation of the law, announced an emergency situation and  the police and army forces attacked the Myasnikyan Square, where the demonstration was being held, and opened deadly fire on the demonstration, killing 10 and resulting in over 250 injured. In the days following the event, Kocharyan's regime arrested most of the opposition leaders of Armenia and silenced the media bringing state censorship as one of the conditions of the situation of the state of emergency. 

Pashinyan became a target for political prosecutions and was forced to spend almost 1.5 years in the “underground.” In 2009, he willingly presented to the judiciary and in 2010 was sentenced to 7 years imprisonment, making him the most famous political prisoner in Armenia. However after 23 months imprisonment, in May 2011, as a result of dialogue between the political opposition movement lead by Ter-Petrosian and the authorities of Armenia, Pashinyan was released.

During the presidency of Serzh Sargsyan, it was believed that the case would never be investigated, all the steps of Sargsyan in this direction were called "fiction" and "imitation" by the opposition parties. On April 22, 2018, Sargsyan, a day before his resignation, threated to "repeat the lessons of the 1st of March" to the opposition leader but faced more resistance from the people who thought this was the red line for the government. 

The 1st of March was one of the tragic days of modern Armenia, which traumatized the people and demoralized the authorities. This is why after the Velvet Revolution the new authorities reopened the investigation and charged the former President of Armenia Rober Kocharyan and the key officials of the army for overthrowing the constitutional order. Kocharyan's arrest brought open critic of the Russian President Putin and Russian Minister of Foreign Affairs Sergey Lavrov, as he is the first president arrested in the post-soviet space, however the new Armenian government is willing to go to the end and fully investigate the tragedy and bringing to responsibility of all the former officials who had relations to this tragedy.

By Karen Tovmasyan