As political parties prepare for the parliamentary elections in spring 2017, the Heritage Party — which has represented Armenia's opposition for two terms in the National Assembly — finds itself under specific attack by the authorities. Our VP Armen Martirosyan, Press Secretary David Sanasaryan, and Civil Society Liaison Hovsep Khurshudyan remain in jail and await trial, where they will face 4-10 years in prison on account of trumped-up and unsupportable charges of inciting riots.

The public at large knows, and media accounts confirm, the opposite: these men were on the front-lines, enforcing the peace between increasingly aggressive police and protesters. Their ongoing detainment of these three fundamental figures of our party aim to paralyze our activities and make our participating in the upcoming elections pointless, and renders the elections themselves fundamentally flawed from now.

We call on the release of these three members of the Heritage Party, as we do for the release of all political prisoners in the republic. Without this move, and other drastic measures in the coming months which will change political culture in this country, the opposition in Armenia is further forced out of the electoral process and toward less predictable forms of struggle.

10 August 2016
Yerevan