July 2014: police officers block activists from "Stand up, Armenia!" from moving towards Yerevan's Freedom Square. (c) Asatur Esayants / VisualRIAN. All rights reserved.Several days ago, Armenia’s Compulsory Enforcement Service banged on my door. They stated I had several administrative fines outstanding — fines stemming from my participation in protests and civil actions.
The court ordered that I pay 53,000 dram (roughly 100 euros — a little less than half of my monthy salary) for each instance. Around 500 people were detained and arrested in those protests. And over 200 were, like me, subject to political repressions and administrative fines for daring to be active in our country’s civic life. The number of political prisoners in Armenia is also growing.
I often came home from the Electric Yerevan protests covered in bruises, soaked from the water cannon — but my situation is not unique. This is how the Armenian government pressures and punishes those of us who want to change the country for the better. Like many of my comrades, I’ve participated in many protests that we perceived to be strictly “social” in nature. But if the problems we were trying to solve were strictly “social” or “economic”, I don’t think the government would have persecuted us nearly as much.
