Mystery behind Harsnaqar plot: cry of the soul or fake alarm?

In case the Defense Ministry serviceman, who wanted to blow up the Harsnaqar restaurant, turns out to have been driven by genuine emotions, his move will be considered a protest against the reality, according Harnush Hakobyan, an ethnographer.

“I mean the reality in which any one of us can be beaten to death in case of doing something – walking down the stairs with the left instead of the right foot, for instance – not pleasing [the owner of Harsnaqar] Ruben Hayrapetyan,” she told Tert.am.

Security guards at the Harsnaqar restaurant severely beat three military doctors on their premises on June 17. One of them, Major Vahe Avetyan, who was the most seriously affected, died in hospital on Friday, after remaining unconscious for about a fortnight. The beatings had caused serious damages to his brains, creating conditions incompatible with life.

Avetyan’s death sparked strong protests in the society, particularly in the social networking site Facebook, where users actively condemned the incident, demanding the strictest punishment for the perpetrators.

A 39-year old lieutenant-colonel of the Armenian Army, Vardan Samvelyan, entered Harsnaqar at about 2:15 am on Sunday, threatening to blow up the complex. Only after three-hour talks with a police special task force, was he rendered harmless and taken to the police department of Yerevan’s Nork-Marash district.

Commenting on the servicemen’s attempted bomb attack, Kharatyan said she doesn’t think it to be a Lynch trial. She is more inclined to consider the incident a cry of the soul, aimed to call the public attention to the violent act.

The founder of Sardarapat initiative, Zhirayr Sefilyan, says it is hard to say at the moment what pushed the high-ranking servicemen to the act.

“Both motives are possible. [He] might have done that in the heat of passion; but that might have as well been an artificial act,” he said.

Speaking to Tert.am, an activist of Sardarapat, film director Tigran Khzmalyan said the servicemen’s motives are not the first thing to be addressed.

“It would be very wrong for us, as a society, to restrict the entire problem to Harsnaqar. It would mean we fail to find the true problem and focus only on fake targets,” he noted.

The activist proposed instead turning Harsnaqar into a youth palace.

“It is necessary likewise to return the brothels and saunas to the society – the youth, the children and the elderly,” he said.

Heritage party member Stepan Safaryan has shared his thoughts on Facebook.

“[Is this] real revenge? A chance to strengthen the security guarantees of Harsnaqar, its owner, especially after the recent days’ public rage and demonstration against the slaughterhouse; a kind of the public revolt or a way of imparting a sense of comfort or …? The story looks strange to me …” said the former parliament member in his public profile.

Levon Barseghyan, the founder of the Gyumri-based journalists’ club Asparez, considers the attempted explosion an emotion-driven step.

“An officer of that rank would have blown up the [the complex] if he had wanted to, and no one would have known anything,” he said, characterizing the action as that of a man who was in a state of affection at the time of taking the step.