Armenian journalist whose rights violated speaks -VIDEO

  12 May 2017    Read: 2622
Armenian journalist whose rights violated speaks -VIDEO
Haykakan Zhamanak newspaper reporter Anna Zakharyan witnessed on her way home how bribes of 20,000 drams ($41) and pre-ticked ballot papers for Sunday’s mayoral elections were being distributed at the campaign headquarters of Yerevan acting mayor and mayor candidate Taron Margaryan on Yerevan’s Kurghinyan Street on the evening of May 11, AzVision.az reports citing the Armenian Media.
According to the journalist she has noticed overcrowdings at Taron Margaryan’s pre-electoral campaign office at Kurighyan Street and supposing that they are giving away bribes, she has gone inside and started to take photos of what was going on.

“People were coming out with a ballot in their hands, the number 3 already selected, with some ballot paper with 1/3 parameters that I didn’t have time to understand what it was and also with money- I’ve seen one holding 20.000 drams. So basically at least that many people have received it. When they figured out that I was an outsider and that I was filming them, they came up to me and some guys took my phone away. They returned it only after a long while with most of the things in my phone deleted. I strongly demanded my phone, but they said they had no idea what I was talking about. But when I was going home hopelessly, they tried to return my phone on my way. It was in napkins so that their fingertips wouldn’t be on it, then they reached my home and when I opened the door, they threw the phone, that was still in napkins, inside my house and went away,”- said Anna Zakharyan.

She added that after a while she went back to the scene, but the picture of Taron Margaryan had already been taken off. Nikol Pashinyan supposes that that piece of paper is the mechanism, that’s required to be put inside the envelopes. He mentioned that they should turn to the Central Election Commission, to declare all those kind of ballots invalid. After Anna Zakharyan’s alarm, Nikol Pashinyan decided to go to the scene, where there were dozens of civilians gathered: “Vardan Vardanyan, a former deputy candidate proposed by Samvel Aleksanyan as a puppet at the 2012 parliamentary elections, also came out of the building. He came out and started to make prevocational announcements, like ‘who are they to come here’ and such nonsense. I was following the events with a quiet smile. And he, I don’t know why didn’t dare attack me; instead, he hurled himself at our proxy Hayk Sargsyan. He kicked his hand with his foot and escaped.”



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