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The Armenian police exercised tolerance throughout the rallies staged on Bagramyan Avenue in downtown Yerevan against the power tariff hike, but there is a limit to tolerance, Hovhannes Sahakyan, Chairman of the Armenian parliament’s standing committee on state and legal affairs, told Panorama.am.

He said he today followed via the internet the Armenian police actions aimed at unblocking Bagramyan Avenue and he considers law enforcers’ actions lawful.

“If any provision of the law is violated, it should be restored through the police intervention. I consider such actions proportionate. If there were any steps which I probably overlooked, there is a procedure: one can apply to court where inadequate actions of a policeman will be examined. If his actions ruled as disproportionate, he may be held criminally liable,” H. Sahakyan said.

He expressed hope that the atmosphere reported in the first days of rallies on Bagramyan Avenue will become a culture. “Tolerance was displayed, there was an understanding that youths gathered to raise a problem. The problem has been solved now. It is inappropriate to try then to use the avenue for various political orientations as in that case the rally took a little different nature. So I believe that some intervention was necessary. We need to understand from the very beginning that we must not break the law so as to prevent police intervention,” he noted.

Referring to the law on freedom of assembly, the MP said that the law has the definition of spontaneous assemblies and the clear-cut rules on holding an assembly with no more than 100 participants.

“We all must observe those norms - the security, in the first place the security of participants themselves, depends on that,” H. Sahakyan said adding that ‘Security can be ensured only based on mutual respect”.