Brought message from Syunik province
When a state official publicly hits a woman regardless of her social status and remains unpunished, that is embarrassing for the country.
This is how President of the Helsinki Committee of Armenia Avetik Ishkhanyan assesses the decision of the Special Investigative Service on quashing the case in relation to the incident with the governor of Syunik province.
"The quashing of the case shows that medieval feudalism is under the highest patronage in Armenia and that there is no respect for people's dignity at all," the lawyer told "A1+".
He says this was also a slap to businessmen, telling them that "their properties can be taken away and slapped again".
The lawyer says he would like to know how Governor Surik Khachatryan's partisans view the fact of a woman getting slapped.
"Do they laugh their hearts out?" Avetik Ishkhanyan says, adding: "The government is laughing wholeheartedly at the citizens."
The lawyer, who has just returned from Syunik province, has brought a "message" for the authorities.
The residents of Syunik province, who had hoped that Governor Surik Khachatryan wouldn't get away with at least this act, have asked Ishkhanyan to let the government know that it won't be receiving their votes in the upcoming parliamentary elections, if the governor wasn't impeached.
"The people are simple-minded," the lawyer says, recalling that Surik Khachatryan has gotten away with many things over the past years, even when "he impeached the legitimate mayor of Goris with an armed detachment and sat in the big chair with support from Vazgen Sargsyan in 1992."
