ESSAY: A VETERAN JOURNALIST’S VIEWPOINT ON “CHOICE”

Among many other accusations in his 90-minute speech on October 26, Levon Ter-Petrosyan accused the authorities of: “gathering so-called compromising information and making special dossiers against all active citizens including many now standing on this square”. I wasn’t among those standing in that square, but I understand what he was talking about. I am a man with a “dossier”. Mine, though, is not new. It was created against me during the presidency of Levon Ter-Petrosyan.
In 1997 I tried to open a Non Governmental Organization. I was refused, I learned, because the National Security Service (KGB) had branded me “an undesired person” due to articles I’d written that were in opposition to the Ter-Petrosyan regime.
In those times, working in an oppositional newspaper was dangerous. Colleagues of mine were beaten and newspaper offices were targets for being vandalized by authorities. I lived in a building with a dark entrance and often entered with fear of who might be waiting to attack me there.
A protest wave rose against the falsification of September 22, 1996 presidential election results. Ter-Petrosyan was declared president elect, but the opposition insisted the winner was Vazgen Manukyan and demanded that ballot boxes be opened. The Constitutional Right Union’s “Iravunk” newspaper and ours suspended publication for two weeks, because law-enforcement had closed both newsrooms.
The protest culminated on the 25th. A decision was made to intrude into the National Assembly, where the Central Electoral Commission was located. People started to shake the barred fence in front of the building and finally broke through. I followed them and, while many sought out officials and beat them (including the Speaker of the Assembly), I went straight for the CEC.
All of a sudden shots were fired and people around me thinned out. A policeman by the central entrance asked me who I was. I took out documents to show I was a journalist and was “welcomed” by his truncheon glancing off my head as I managed to slip from his beating.
I reasonably did not spend the night at home; but was foolish enough to go to the center of the city the next day and saw tanks and soldiers surrounding the streets. I saw a friend near the building of the Writers’ Union: “Are you crazy, man? Why have you come?,” he warned. “They are after you, run away!” That friend now lives in Paris and called recently to ask if Levon Ter-Petrosyan’s return is possible.
During those tense days of 1996 I learned that I was wanted by police; that my name was among those on a list at the airport where I would be detained if I tried to leave the country.
I changed two apartments, to have my trace lost. The police had gone to ransack my place; my mother had called the neighbors from the window to come stop the search. The neighbors had fled the home.
They had looked for me even in the house of my ex-wife. Her father had told them the person is divorced, has nothing to do with us. I was offered an escape through Iran and had already given my consent. But then the violence ended after Davit Shakhnazaryan of Armenian All-National Movement stated on TV the hostility should be stopped. I understood everything was over, passions had died away.
I had escaped, but hundreds had been caught. Like me, they also have their memories of the last time Levon Ter-Petrosyan was in charge. Deputy Davit Vardanyan was beaten with his legs and arms tied. Among those doing the beating was Mushegh Saghatelyan, who, Ter-Petrosyan stated in his speech, is persecuted by the authorities. It’s true, Saghatelyan was fired, tried and jailed.
My classmate Hovik had nothing to do with politics; he was a programmer, but he also went through the violence of 1996. Where is he? Levon’s speech reminded me of him; he appeared to be in the US. I found his mail address and wrote him asking about what happened to him in 1996. He replied:
“There were talks all opposition leaders were caught. I used to work in ArmImpexBank next door to the National Self-Determination Union’s office. I thought I could go there for information. Some soldiers stood with Kalashnikov sub-machine guns by the door. They let me in without problem. They would let everybody in, but no one was allowed to leave.
There were about 15 members of the National Self-Determination Union. Deputy Aramazd Zakaryan was saying: ‘You can’t detain me, I am a deputy.’ They began to harshly beat him; they broke his nose with a Kalashnikov. They began to beat all the men with Kalashnikovs. Women were screaming. Then they arrested all the men, took them to a building on Nalbandyan Street (the Sixth Department of the Police [Department for the fight against organized crime]). We were like dangerous criminals, they were beating us. They ordered us to lie down on the dirty floor. I was thinking: ‘I was a free man an hour ago and had done nothing wrong, but now I am in jail, I am treated like an animal and beaten. What for’?”
“They took us to a court house and kept us there for six hours. There were many jailed men there. There was an old man, cruelly beaten. Then the judge read the verdict and we were taken to jail. I spent ten days there. My relatives didn’t know where I was for several days.
“I left for the US several weeks after the events. My heart was broken.”
Many of my friends from those troubled days are gone now. Some went abroad. Some died. Those remaining have seen the current administration repeat the horrors of “independent” Armenia’s first, when about 600 opposition supporters were jailed on false charges in 2004. Some of my friends from that time have left, too.
Elections? Democracy? Change in power? The question was closed in 1995-96.
I had forgotten the past, I was interested in tomorrow. I am a journalist. I wish for a press that is free from control of political forces and where my colleagues and I can earn a proper living. I was thinking of the platforms that would dismantle the regime and set democracy so that every person gets freedom from such things as “dossiers”.
The return of Ter-Petrosyan is seen as offering an alternative.
Serzh or Levon? I have no choice. I think of a different thing now: Spare us from the return of the past.

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