On February 12 of this year, the day of a mayoral election in the town of Hrazdan, the civic group “We Will Not be Silenced” circulated a statement and video clip.

Hetq published the statement entitled “Assault on a Reporter” and published a link to the video clip with the rejoinder that it contained foul language.

The group’s statement read that, “According to eye-witnesses, 5,000 AMD bribes were being handed out all day long from one of the offices of the Hrazdan real estate.   Noticing a reporter, those handing out the bribes assaulted him. A flag bearing the logo of the ruling Republican Party was affixed to the office.”

Hetq requested that the police present the subsequent developments of the case.

Accordingly, on February 28 the Kotayk Regional Investigative Unit received material from the Hrazdan police that, “On February 12, Aghavnadzor village resident Ashot Danielyan and his friends Ashot Harutyunyan and Ishkhan Muradyan were eating a meal at around 5pm at Muradyan’s rented apt #4 in building 68 in the Hrazdan neighborhood of Microshrjan, when they noticed that someone was videotaping them. Danielyan came out to the balcony in an attempt to see who it was. The person did not identify himself and this irritated Danielyan who started to launch a 3-4 minute barrage of sexually related expletives at the person; rudely disturbing the peace and clearly showing disrespectful behaviour towards the public.”

The video tape clearly shows that others were also cursing in addition to Danielyan who was throwing things at the cameraman. These individuals were also disturbing the public peace in a rude manner.

But the investigator paid no attention to all this and came to the conclusion that Danielyan only started his tirade of curses after the person with the camera failed to identify himself. Moreover, not only was this manifestation of “hooliganism” overlooked but that the incident should have been regarded as a blatant attempt to restrict the professional duties of a reporter. Naturally, this would have been the case had it been ascertained that the cameraman was a reporter. This didn’t happen.

A criminal case of hooliganism was launched and later on Ashot Danielyan was so charged. He signed a no-flight affidavit and was not arrested before the trial got underway.

Afterwards, the police requested that eye-witnesses to the incident report what they saw that day. Even Hetq received a questionnaire from the police to verify the author of the article and the video tape. The investigator in charge personally came to the Hetq office to pick up the form.

Hetq editors told the investigator that it was the “We Will Not be Silenced” civic group that circulated the article and the video. The investigator confessed that they had been unable to locate any members of the group during the prior months.

Hetq Deputy Editor Liana Sayadyan gave the investigator the email address and showed him the group’s Facebook page, along with a Medimax agency interview with group member Ashot Poghosyan. Mediamax   also ran a photo of Poghosyan with the interview.

Sayadyan told the investigator that she thought the police could find Ashot Poghosyan armed with all the information she had just provided.

Later, Hetq sent an email to the group and they in turn replied that they had indeed uploaded the video off of You Tube. In other words, “We Will Not be Silenced” uploaded someone else’s video and then downloaded it on You Tube, but this time on their page.

The group did write a rejoinder at the bottom of the page stating that “the copyright doesn’t belong to “We Will Not be Silenced”. It was downloaded from    youtube.com/hrazdanelections.”

(Hetq cannot verify if this notation appeared on the video clip of February 12, when the group circulated it to the press.)

While there is no further information on the page entitled “Elections”, it shouldn’t be difficult for police experts to uncover who the page belongs to.

The Kotayk regional deputy prosecutor instructed that the case be dropped due to the lack of any identifiable individuals.

So it turns out that hooliganism isn’t a crime and that, in any case, the cameraman must be found before it can be considered as such.

One can only hope that law enforcement will perform their specific duties the next time the Ashot Danielyans of this world perform similar acts.