March 1, another upheaval
Statement of the "Army in Reality" civil initiative:
"Four years ago this day, the civil upheaval against the falsification of the presidential elections was pressured through force, bloodshed, the violation of all constitutional norms and the application of the Armed Forces.
Four years later, the consequences of that bloody clash still appear.
Not four years later or never will it be possible to bring the ten youth who were killed in central Yerevan back to life.
The "Army in Reality" initiative records:
1. The ten murders committed during the events of March 1 haven't been revealed and the persons responsible for those murders haven't been brought to justice. The high-ranking officials that gave the commands to shoot at the demonstrators haven't been revealed and haven't been called to interrogations. The government has not only violated citizens' right to life, but also hasn't taken any steps to give an adequate response to the victims' families and the society about what happened and change the impunity of the police and the armed forces.
2. To this day, there has not been any legal evaluation of the 2008 March 1 decree that Robert Kocharyan issued on declaring a 20-day state of emergency in Yerevan, which was accepted due to the lack of a law on state of emergencies. The facts of violations of citizens rights during the state of emergency haven't been investigated and there has not been any legal evaluation of the restrictions on those rights.
3. There has not been any investigation into the legitimacy of decree N 0038 issued by the RA Minister of Defense on 23 February 2008 and there has not been any legal evaluation of the application of the Armed Forces against the peaceful demonstrators.
To this day, the society still hasn't received the answers to the above mentioned questions, and that is why there is still an atmosphere of impunity. The lack of legal evaluations can't be replaced by the authorities' numerous assurances of political will since the atmosphere of impunity may place the society at risk. The National Assembly today is voting for the RA law "On the Legal Regime of the State of Emergency" by which the NA is trying to legitimize the uncontrolled use of the Armed Forces during a state of emergency without any legal evaluations of the events of March 1, 2008.
