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Persecution of nonapostolic religious organisations in Armenia. Part 3
The following is a statement by Marina Kutzian. She is a senior lecturer at the
Sociological Department of the Yerevan University.The statement was made 1/MAY/95.
In my last e-mail I tried to describe the condition of the people who were
imprisoned in connection with the Dashnak Party. Until now, any contact
with them is prohibited for people outside from the prison. Nobody is
allowed to get information about what is going on there. According to
informal information, they were beaten so cruelly that they were in the
hospital inside the prison.
It would be really significant if we would receive some help to break this
informational blockade. I told you how lawyers at the prison were attacked
in their office. Two days ago, one of them, the most active one, was
beaten by a group of people who drove up to him in the street. I saw his
blue, swollen face, his eyes were invisible after that. It became a
regularly thing in Armenia to destroy undesirable people in that way. It
seems that in the list of undesirable people are kind of people who allow
themselves to think and behave differently.
During the last ten days, some religious groups, especially one of them,
called the Hare Krishna, were attacked, too. I want to underline that in
all these cases one finds the same handwriting. One or two cars with
people in military uniform, at least some of them in that kind of
clothing, drive up to a place and attack people. No reaction of the
police.
In case of Hare Krishna, victims had bloody wounds, the temple was
destroyed, all property was stolen. According to my impression and
informal information which I was able to collect, a land-keeping military
group did this action. This group was organized in Armenia before our
national Army was established.
But after that, this group were not disorganized or included in the
regular Army. So, on the one hand, it is not official, but on the other
had it is well known that they are supervised by officials, especially by
minister of defense. I have very strong impression that his group are now
used by officials against their ideological opponents. I wouldn't be
surprised to see them very active during the election and during the
pre-election campaign, which will start from May to 5 July, the date of
parliamentary election in Armenia.
