Friday, March 13, 2009

Hitting below the belt, literally

Gagik Shamshyan, photojournalist for Aravot and Chorrord Ishkhanutyun, was admitted to the hospital after being beaten by security personnel at Yerevan State Linguistic University. After a protest action today, he and other reporters had gone to get the viewpoint of the university administration. Their entrance to the building was blocked by security personnel, who soon became very aggressive. Shamshyan was kicked and beaten, and in the radio story (see below) Shamshyan describes how he fell to the floor, and security kept kicking him and swearing at him, and how he kicked back to protect himself. He was kicked in the groin, and later noticed he had bleeding. He was taken to the hospital, and as per the a1plus article, he has been diagnosed with a fracture of the urethra.
The Ombudsman has already made a comment about the situation, calling for consequences; A1plus is reporting that someone named Mirijanyan has been detained.
We'll see whether he's prosecuted or not, whether there are any consequences.

Armenialiberty Radio, 15:00 report: story starts at 5:15 minutes, you can hear Shamshyan being beaten starting at 6:38 minutes

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

does violence never end in my Hayastan? if these ppl want to get violent on someone, plz by all means invite all my enemies to hayastan under auspices of "inviting them to visit Hayastan" then BEAT THEM TO A BLOODY PULP LEAVING THEM LAYING IN THEIR OWN POOL of BLOOD. instead of beating innocent ppl in Armenia, lets beat some evils of the world who have sought out to destroy the kind and warm hearted

Anonymous said...

It's not so slear what actually happenned.
Here's the video, which shows that
Gagik provoked the incident himself, besides he was quite active and healthy after the incident.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TOK_UAI49gA



Ashot

tzitzernak2 said...

Thanks for the videolink, Ashot. I'm not sure it wasn't mutual provocation, and regardless, the response of the security guard was far from professional.
The RFE/RL articles in both Armenian and English on that topic show a picture of him with blood in the nether region. I also don't recognize the radio clip section I referred to in that video - I wonder if there is a section missing. And I think I remember the radio bit saying he went to some offices, then felt unwell, then went to the hospital where they found his urethra had been damaged.