Levon Ter Petrosian Rally, Liberty Square, Yerevan, Republic of Armenia © Onnik Krikorian / Oneworld Multimedia 2007

Last week I received an email from Aramazd Ghalamkaryan, a frequent commenter on this blog and also seemingly one of the main people behind the publicity for former president Levon Ter Petrosian’s unofficial campaign ahead of February’s presidential election. Basically, they wanted to purchase the high resolution version of a photograph I took of Levon Ter Petrosian at his first public rally for use in their materials. In a normal country such a request would be easy to grant, but this is Armenia. This is not a normal country.

My main concern was that by effectively selling an image to Levon Ter Petrosian’s team it might create a conflict of interests in my work covering later rallies and so I consulted various photographers I know outside of Armenia for their opinion. In all cases — New York Times photographer Justyna Mielnikiewicz, World Press Photo Award winner Edmond Terakopian, and EurasiaNet photo editor Dean Cox — the answer was no, it does not represent a conflict of interests given that I was not commissioned to take the photo and the fact that I cover every other campaign rally as well.

[…]

Now, fast forward to yesterday. According to RFE/RL, and since confirmed by a quick SMS to Aramazd Ghalamkaryan, leaflets printed to publicize Saturday’s rally by Levon Ter Petrosian have been confiscated by the authorities. True enough, while walking through Komitas earlier this evening I wondered why there were no flyers for the event in sight anywhere. For the previous two meetings they were everywhere.

Today, just two days before a rally that I can suppose would have attracted more people than normal because it was a Saturday, there was nothing. And now I know why.

Tax inspectors have confiscated thousands of newly printed leaflets announcing former President Levon Ter-Petrosian’s upcoming rally in Yerevan, it emerged on Thursday.

According to Aleksandr Arzumanian, a close Ter-Petrosian associate, an activist of the opposition Aylentrank movement was detained by officials from the State Tax Service (STS) while receiving 4,000 leaflets from a printing house in the capital on Wednesday. He said the activist, Artak Arakelian, was taken into custody on the grounds that he had no documents certifying the origin of the fliers.

“After keeping him in custody for six hours they fined him 15,000 drams ($50),” Arzumanian told RFE/RL. The STS officials also inspected the Van Arian printing company’s books and briefly detained one of its employees, he said.

A spokeswoman for the STS, Alina Khudoyan, essentially confirmed the information, saying that the leaflets were “temporarily” confiscated because Van Arian did not input the Aylentrank order into its accounts in order to evade taxes. Khudoyan said the tax collection agency fined the company, rather that Arakelian. Speaking to RFE/RL, she could not say when the leaflets will be returned to Aylentrank.

Arzumanian dismissed the official explanation and described the STS actions as the latest example of government harassment of Ter-Petrosian supporters in advance of next February’s presidential elections. “They are doing everything to prevent us from informing the public that we will hold a rally in Liberty Square on Saturday,” he said.

[…]

“We are not doing anything illegal,” said Arzumanian. “We will try to find other printing houses,” he added. “But as you know, everyone is scared now.”

[…]

Meanwhile, the photo Aramazd Ghalamkaryan says was used for the leaflet is posted above, and just to remind, all photos taken during this pre-election period are available on my Flickr site and may be freely used for non-commercial purposes as long as credit is given. In fact, I actually urge webmasters to use these images if they are not modified in any way if only to show to the government that under no circumstances will their attempts at censorship and intimidation be allowed to succeed.

And as I have to wonder if at some point pressure will be applied on journalists and photographers covering Ter Petrosian’s rallies, I will now be writing an email expressing my concern to the British Embassy. I am also going to express my concern and outrage to high-level acquaintances I have at the U.S. Embassy in Yerevan. This move towards an environment of fear and oppression in Armenia must not be allowed to continue. In fact, it must stop now.

The full post is available on the Armenia Election Monitor 2008.