I Thought He Would Consider the Facts: Yenokyan's Wife on the Prime Minister's Decision

Lifetime convict Mher Yenokyan's wife, Zarouhi Mejlumyan, wrote on her Facebook page:

“Announcement on the use of illegal means against the realization of rights. I was naively convinced that in New Armenia, narrow group interests, illegality, retroactive legislative methods, blunt pressures, and signatures to bury a person in prison could not influence the decision of a revolutionary Prime Minister.

I thought he would look at the facts, see that Mher, despite 23 hellish years in prison, has recorded a breakthrough development in his biography—higher education in law, forming a family, work, the publication of six books, legislative proposals, public activism, and so on.

In other words, what should have actually been subject to review in the case of pardoning, according to the law on pardons. But now I note that the decision of the Prime Minister not to grant Mher freedom was influenced by:

1. A second trial run from a single center on Facebook, with its stupid fake judges, prosecutors, and investigators.
2. The wild assaults of the yellow press.
3. An indecisive, colorless, easily governable, unsatisfied mob.
4. Surrounding state bodies with Levon-Robert-Sargis cadres in New Armenia.
5. The campaign conducted by those serving narrow anti-revolutionary interests.
6. And finally, most importantly, the high social status of the recognized victim's family, signatures from doctors, and the danger of revealing the true nature of this criminal case with Mher's release.

Our total violation of rights began when the question being discussed behind closed doors in the pardon commission (by the way, only in Mher's case) was unlawfully made accessible to the family not part of that process. And the public saw the pressure, those who exerted it, the extent of the pressure, and the methods of pressure. This is the defeat of an individual who demands freedom, justice, and love.

But in any developed society, the driving force is precisely that individual, and that is why legal states do everything possible to have such individuals. In our de facto illegal state, the realization of rights is conditioned by the slogan of those with connections and those without.

In fact, again, those with high connections are everything; they will bring any number of signatures against the realization of human rights, just as they did 23 years ago with the demand for the highest punishment, and they will not allow the realization of rights. Meanwhile, the rights of the convict have zero value. Finally, in New Armenia, will the web of the connected and the abandoned be dismantled, or will we remain tangled in the complications of an illegal state?

My entire journey has been and continues to be a struggle for the establishment of a legal state where the deciders are state bodies based on the rule of law and the supremacy of rights, and not some written or unwritten provisions based on the degree of influence of any side or social standing.

The state cannot be an instrument of blind vengeance for the connected victims and a tool of impunity for the connected defendants. Uniform application of the law in New Armenia must have no alternative, while selective humanitarianism and selective justice must be repudiated. Thank you to all the aware, loving individuals who did not throw stones at us but supported us with kind words and actions during this difficult time. Thank you to the real media and also to public officials.

P.S. Rights are not given by anyone; rights have always been won at any time. We will win our rights. We will meet on the day of Mher’s exoneration verdict.”