Tragedy in Gyumri should prompt Armenia to reconsider its foreign policy - expert
19.01.2015,
17:03
What happened in Gyumri should prompt Armenia to reconsider its foreign policy, Karine Danielyan, head of the Nongovernmental Organization For Sustainable Human Development, said Monday at a news conference.
YEREVAN, January 19. /ARKA/. What happened in Gyumri should prompt Armenia to reconsider its foreign policy, Karine Danielyan, head of the Nongovernmental Organization For Sustainable Human Development, said Monday at a news conference.
She thinks Armenia's foreign policy should be significantly changed, since its image of a weak country has a disastrous effect on it.
Armenia should introduce itself to the world with a greater dignity, and then such incidents will not occur.
In her opinion, the authorities were wrong in thinking that minimum information would give lees grounds for fueling anti-Russian sentiments. They even have not declared mourning days. However, this produced a polar opposite effect and put people in a fume.
«It is wrong to measure the nation's dignity with the number of people living here and its armament, it s dignity should be gauged by considering its contribution to development of civilization,» Danielyan said. «Armenian authorities should learn a lesson from what happened in Gyumri.»
Ethnographer Hranush Kharatyan, on her side, added that yet in one day after the tragedy, when still nothing was known for sure, warnings against sparking anti-Russian sentiments emerged in Armenia's media outlets, but these statements produced an opposite effect.
«These very statements formed certain approaches and Armenian political field proved to be quite provocative – a senseless attempt was made to politicize public protest and reaction to the crime, suppressing this protest by the police,» Kharatyan said adding that the Armenian authorities showed disability to talk to their citizens.
Artist Zaruhi Muradyan thinks that the public protest in Gyumri and Yerevan leveled the situation, since attracted attention to the problem and forced the Russian side react adequately to the happening.
Last Monday Armenian law-enforcement bodies said a Russian soldier, Valery Permyakov from the Russian military base in Gyumri was suspected of killing a couple, their son and daughter-in-law, a 2-year-old granddaughter, and an unmarried daughter. They all were found shot dead in their house on January 12. The couple's six-month-old grandson was hospitalized in a grave condition. Valery Permyakov was detained on January 13, shortly after midnight, while trying to cross the border into Turkey dressed in civilian clothing. He confessed his guilt. ---0----
