Trend interview with Vahan Martirosyan, head of the Armenian organization 'National Liberation Movement', who asked for political asylum in Azerbaijan.
- On October 7, in Armenia, a tragic incident happened with your mother. Do you think it was a planned act of revenge by the authorities?
- Of course I think so. Any person who is more or less familiar with the situation in Armenia should think so too.
These methods are used by the authorities, the security forces, the National Security Service, to deal with people like me, who are out of control and oppose the regime of Sargsyan.
I see this as a message to me, and a warning. They act like vile jackals with people, it is peculiar. They know that at the press conference held on September 18, and in an interview, I gave about 10 percent of the information that I possess, and touched on the surface of all the issues.
They always acted like this. A 70-year-old woman was hit by a car, and she has a compound fracture, so that I would understand and keep silent, not give and did not spread the information that I possess.
For three or four years I have been engaged in social activities, I was the leader of a movement, and they are well aware of it. I even know who exactly it is – it is the chief of the presidential staff, Vigen Sargsyan, who knows me, several deputies from the Republican Party, with whom I spoke about various issues and processes.
They know very well what information I possess. And this is a message to me. They could not wait. But I paused. For 10 days I did nothing, and I knew that something was going to happen. But I did not expect that they would reach such a degree of meanness.
Prior to that, they fired my mother-in-law from her job under the pretext of retirement. Although 52 years is not considered to be the retirement age, according to the law – it is 63 years for women. Along with this, pressure was also put on members of my movement.
I also recently found out that my mother-in-law warned her husband in Odessa by SMS, so that he would take his son – my wife's brother – because the special services of Armenia were sitting on his "tail" and it is inevitable that something will happen to him. He is 28 years old.
He worked in a church, from which he was also fired. Ultimately, I hope that this is the last incident: my mother was hit by a car in the street, and as the police report, this incident occurred in the early morning at 08:50, at an intersection. At such a time, the probability of my mother being on this street is excluded. And it is 200 meters from our house, on a narrow street, where it is impossible to hit pedestrians. Besides, my mother is a very cautious person. She is 68 years old. She never got into an accident. All of this is a logical continuation of how the Armenian authorities and law enforcement agencies act.
Even at the press conference held in Baku on September 18, I warned about the possibility of such incidents. I warned the International Committee of the Red Cross and the United Nations. It is the cynicism of the authorities, and they do not care that there are international organizations. The most important thing for them is to save their own skins, and they are ready to hit an elderly woman in a cowardly fashion with a car. I still expect anything from them, they are capable of doing anything.
- What is the reason for your action? Why have you decided to flee to Azerbaijan? How do you and your family feel in Azerbaijan? What are your future plans?
- In Azerbaijan, I and members of my family feel fine. Lovely people, a lovely city, a normal attitude towards us, I even made friends here.
Why did I come to Azerbaijan? Because persecution against me started, a criminal case was initiated, and so on. It started right after I had a small conflict with one of the inner circle of Serzh Sargsyan, the MP Mher Sedrakyan. Once I did not reconcile with him, they began to initiate falsified criminal cases against me, in the usual manner, there were attempts to arrest me.
At first I went to Georgia. I knew that with the "baggage" of social and political activities that I have, I'm perfectly able to go to any European country and ask for political asylum there. But I would have regarded it as an escape, because no European country would be interested to present to the world, to the Armenian diaspora, and to Europe, the whole truth about the criminal regime of Sargsyan. There would be one or two articles in some newspaper and that's all.
At the same time, I knew that no one is interested, to such an extent, in presenting the truth about this to the world, as the Azerbaijani media.
The Armenian Diaspora, too, in some way, is disappointed with Sargsyan's regime.
Knowing the truth about the criminal acts, Sargsyan's group can only be called a gang. It is headed by him, his relatives and close people who were and still are in power.
- What, in your opinion, will the political system of Armenia look like after the adoption of the amendments to the Constitution of the country? Are there premises for civil society to finally protest against the corrupt oligarchic-vertical of power of Armenia?
- The amendments to the Constitution of Armenia are aimed at extending the criminal regime of Sargsyan. It is regenerating. Sargsyan cannot be a candidate for a third [presidential] term, so through amendments to the Constitution he is trying to introduce a different system of government in Armenia. He can easily become the parliamentary speaker, and if there is a parliamentary government, de facto, he will remain in power.
Unfortunately, I do not see any prerequisites for civil society to finally protest against the corrupt oligarchic-Armenian authorities, because for 25 years we changed three regimes - Petrosyan's regime, Kacharyan's regime and Sargsyan's regime. They honed the skill of "pocket" opposition to such a level that even if people want changes, pseudo-leaders immediately appear, who are leaders only de jure, and de facto they are fed by Sargsyan's regime. We call it the Vatican foundation. For example, the son-in-law of Sargsyan, Mikael Minasyan [ambassador to the Vatican], supervises both the press and the opposition in Armenia.
- How, in your opinion, should the Karabakh issue be resolved, so that ultimately, people living on these lands benefit from it? Can Armenia provide them with a decent life, given the weak economic situation of its own?
- The conflict should be resolved only by peaceful means, international organizations should act honestly, according to a completely different scheme, the OSCE and the Minsk Group, for example. Both the ex-president, Robert Kocharyan, and the current one, Serzh Sargsyan, over these years, honed their skill to "splurge" these organizations. In simple terms, for 27 years these lands have not prospered, they have been abandoned.
The people there are hungry, and this is despite the fact that dozens, hundreds, if not billions of dollars have been directed to the development of Nagorno-Karabakh by the diaspora and European countries over the years.
There should have been a small Monte Carlo there now, if at least 70 percent of the money had reached its goal. However, the money went into the pockets of Kocharyan, and now to Sargsyan's entourage.
In 27 years there should have been at least some progress, but there is regression. This is a vast land, but only 40-45 thousand of the population remains there, and 90 percent of them are elderly, because the young people left a long time ago, some to Russia, some to Yerevan, to earn at least some money.
There are no jobs, nothing is built, and what was built in the early years of the Kocharyan government – the center of Stepanakert (Khankendi) – is simply to show tourists and inspectors, overseers of various funds, that something is being done. The "development" is in quotation marks and in front of everyone. Shusha is a dead city, there is no population. Everything there is just like in Tarkovsky's films, where there is a dead city where something like an epidemic happened.
- Does Armenia need the war for Karabakh? Are the Armenian people ready for a war for someone else's land?
- The people of Armenia are not only not ready for a war, no one wants one. The army of the country is shambolic. The enormous corruption, that reigned and still reigns in the Ministry of Defense, has led to the fact that the army, the armed forces and the Ministry of Defense are in such a decline, that now it is a huge corruption pyramid, where the Minister of Defense Seyran Ohanyan decides nothing. It's like profiles on the social network Facebook. Sometimes it is a real profile, and sometimes it is a fake. So he [Ohanyan] is a fake Minister of Defense, and the real face is the Chief of General Staff Yuri Khachaturov. He is doing everything to destroy the Ministry of Defense and just launder the money from each contract.
If a referendum in Armenia were held today and if people were not afraid to tell the truth, then 90 percent of Armenians, especially in Yerevan, think like that for a long time and will vote for – I do not want to say this word – getting rid of Karabakh.
[Earlier, V. Martirosyan stated that if a similar referendum would be held in Karabakh itself, and voters would not be put under pressure, they would gladly stay as a part of Azerbaijan]. Because their children have been dying there for several years. A lot of non-military casualties occurred, there are unauthorized relations, there are many cases of suicides among soldiers, shooting at officers or each other.
- With what, in your opinion, is the ever more deteriorating economic situation in Armenia connected?
- The decline in the economy is connected with the fact that the entourage of Sargsyan has the psychology of a small-time swindler. They drag and sell everything. It reached the point where they sold the Foreign Ministry building in the center of Yerevan, Armenia's most famous sports and concert complex, which belonged to the Ministry of Defense. This is the psychology of a small-time swindler. Enormous embezzlement occurs, the treasury is empty, especially after the adventure when one billion dollars was spent on events dedicated to the centennial of the 'genocide'. That is, de facto, to carry out these events, they carried out a new 'genocide'. They say that bribes were even given to the Vatican. The nonsense is in the fact that we do not even have professionals in any field, people create the appearance of work, creating fiction.
If there were at least one thinking man working on the organization of these events, then they would not have brought the porn star Kim Kardashian, and would not make her the face of the 'genocide', the face of this date. It was a shame and disgrace. When she was brought, met at the state level, met by the Prime Minister of the country, there was such excitement on the streets that I thought Russian President Vladimir Putin arrived.
Hundreds of millions have been taken from the treasury and spent on artists, on some concerts and bribes. I know that one famous Moscow actor said that he will wear the symbol of the 'genocide', a forget-me-not, on his jacket until the end of 2015 because the Armenians gave him so much money, he does not recieve so much even for three or four movies. And this is a mid-level actor. There were Montserrat Caballe, Kim Kardashian, System of a Down. The insanity reached the point that when I went to a supermarket, I saw socks with the symbol of the 'genocide'.
