AUTHORITIES PROTECT THEMSELVES

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In absence of Opposition MPs Parliament started discussion of the bill on “Order for Holding Meetings, Rallies and Marches”. An attempt has been made to put the law in force since 2001 but the MPs then failed approval of the law.

As a result of rising rally moods in the republic Authorities again tried and the same bill appeared in the Parliament agenda.

There is a standpoint that quick entering of the bill on the agenda is the Authorities’ response to the held mass rallies.

Independent MP Manuk Gasparyan joins this position. He considers suspicious the fact that the bill hasn’t been discussed in the temporary committees of Parliament in due presence of MPs and that the bill has been entered in the big agenda. It is much more suspicious that the bill appeared in the three-day agenda.

”Government didn’t make an urgent decision. This was a planned step in Government activity program. It was represented and is in circulation for a long time”, Justice Minister David Harutyunyan, representing the bill in Parliament, says.

The bill opponents say that the document considered in Parliament is rather stricter than the one currently in force. In particular, the new bill hampers the mechanism for getting permission to hold a march or a rally.

Besides, David Harutyunyan says, “naturally, norms, which are to meet the constitutional demands are fixed, particularly, organizing such public measures that are channeled to violent failure of the constitutional order, stirring up national, racist, or religious hatred, propagandizing coercion or war is forbidden”.

He also states that the bill makes a provision for a criminal liability for an official who untimely forbids holding of a march or a meeting.