The journalists reporting the demonstration going on for five days after the July 17 armed attack on the police station in the Yerevan district of Erebuni have been attacked. Police officers hindered the journalists\u2019 professional activities, hit and beat them, seized their video camera\u2019s memory card, and threatened them.<\/p>\n
On July 18, a police officer in the midst of detaining demonstrators hit Azatutyun (RFE\/RL\u2019s Armenian service) journalist Artak Hambardzumyan.<\/p>\n
On July 21, a group of civilians attacked iravaban.net journalist Gevorg Tosunyan, who was covering the demonstration, and took his video camera\u2019s memory card. In the journalist\u2019s opinion, the people who attacked him were plainclothes police officers.<\/p>\n
\nArtak Hambardzumyan
\nAzatutyun (RFE\/RL\u2019s Armenian service)<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\u201cOn the afternoon of July 18, police officers on Movses Khorenatsi St. detained citizens, a few of whom were sitting under the trees of the neighboring park and a few, on the grass. The police officers came, immediately took everyone \u2014without any justification or mentioning a reason. They were simply putting them in [police] vehicles and taking them.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen the next round of detaining ended, we journalists approached the police officer directing the actions there to ask why those people were detained.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe police officer who gave the order to detain the citizens was located behind the wall of police officers. And the officers who formed the wall weren\u2019t allowing us to approach their leader, and we were trying, in any case, without passing them, to ask our questions. And the leader was responding from the back.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen I once again asked the officer in charge why they\u2019re detaining people, does he have justification, one of the police officers in front (he\u2019s seen in the video, the officer wearing glasses) grabbed my microphone and said something, I no longer remember what. I tried to free the microphone, to pull it back. At that moment he punched me in my stomach.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen the officer in charge, who wasn\u2019t there at the moment of the blow, came back, I said your subordinate did this; he said he didn\u2019t, though he wasn\u2019t there [to witness the incident]. The officer who hit me continued to serve in the following days in the same place.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat is, the publication [i.e. the video] meant nothing to the police, though it was obvious there was the fact of hitting there. The officer struck a journalist and holding my microphone was obstructing a journalist\u2019s work, which is prohibited by law.<\/p>\n
\u201cAfter publishing the video of the incident, one of the police officials called me and said, you know, they lost a commander, they\u2019re tense, upset. It wasn\u2019t an official response; they\u2019d called and were simply trying to convince in a \u2018friendly\u2019 way. They were trying to explain that the situation can be understood. But of course, I consider such explanations unfounded.\u201d<\/p>\n
\nGevorg Tosunyan
\niravaban.net<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\u201cThe night of July 20\u201321, at around 3\u20133:30 am, I was covering the action at Movses Khorenatsi St. During that time, several young people came running toward us from Tigran Mets Avenue and said that the situation on Tigran Mets Ave. was tense.<\/p>\n
\u201cI went to cover it, and I noticed that under the bridge on Tigran Mets Ave. police forces were standing in a row, and about 20\u201330 meters away from them were 6\u20137 activists whom I had seen during the action at Khorenatsi. In front of them in greater number were people in civilian clothes, who were throwing bottles at the activists.<\/p>\n
\u201dI filmed that process, I also filmed those people in civilian clothes. Since I didn\u2019t understand very well what was happening, I approached those people in civilian clothing. They were unfamiliar to me. One of them called me and said, \u2018Come, come. It\u2019s safe here.\u2019<\/p>\n
\u201cI joined their ranks, and they began to tell me, \u2018Don\u2019t film, don\u2019t film.\u2019 I saw they were aggressive, I turned off my camera and wanted to leave. But a few of them approached me and said, \u2018Delete it, give us your chip [memory card].\u2019 They surrounded me, 6\u20137 people, demanding I give them my chip. I initially refused, but they threw me to the ground. I said, \u2018Ok, I\u2019ll give you the chip,\u2019 and I felt a few people start to hit me in the back.<\/p>\n
\u201cThese people weren\u2019t satisfied with my giving them the chip. I said I\u2019ll give them the chip, but they had thrown me on the ground and continued to hit me. I was in shock because it seemed to me that they wanted to harm me: their goal wasn\u2019t just to get the chip; it was to hinder my work.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen they threw me to the ground, the camera fell. When I got up, I saw that the camera was in one of their hands. I said to return it. They said, \u2018Give us the chip or we\u2019ll hit you again.\u2019 Under threat, I gave them the chip and left. When I was leaving, some of them were pursuing me, saying, \u2018Is there maybe something else? Are you filming? Look now, don\u2019t come to any more demonstrations, otherwise we\u2019ll hit you again.\u2019<\/p>\n
\u201cI believe those people were plainclothes officers. I\u2019d never seen them before at demonstrations. They were quite aggressive and they were throwing bottles at demonstrators, on those participants whom I had seen previously. They didn\u2019t want their faces to be seen, they were aggressively demanding not to film and were threatening me to no longer go to demonstrations. All this is grounds for me to believe that they were police officers.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m now going for a medical examination. A little while ago, I reported the crime to the Erebuni police division and talked about the violence used against me and the obstruction of journalism activities.\u201d <\/p>\n