Memorial for a Lost Son

In a corner of Alla Hovannisian's living room in Yerevan is a small memorial to her son, with religious icons, flowers, and an old school photograph. 23-year-old Tigran died during civil unrest in the Armenian capital on March 1 last year, in violence which shocked and divided this small country.

His mother says that when she first heard that he had been killed, she refused to believe it. "I said it must be a mistake, it must be someone else's body in the morgue, and my husband went a second time to check," she recalls.

Pitched battles raged into the early hours of the morning after riot police moved in to end more than a week of round-the-clock demonstrations against the results of presidential elections which the opposition claimed were falsified.

The night sky was lit up with tracer bullet fire and flames rose from burning cars as police fired tear gas and fought with protesters who had set up barricades and armed themselves with petrol bombs and metal staves. Alla's son was one of several people who were shot during the clashes which left eight civilians and two policemen dead, causing the Armenian authorities to impose a state of emergency and send the army onto the streets.

"Tigran was killed with a special weapon, a tear gas gun which only the police have," claims his mother. "I blame the people who killed him, but most of all I blame the ones who gave the orders to shoot."

As she spoke, her husband sat nearby, quietly crying.

This is an excerpt from a piece I wrote for the Al Jazeera website about the anniversary of the deadly clashes in Yerevan last year and this week's Human Rights Watch report, which claims that the Armenian authorities used excessive force to crush the protests, and are now conducting politically motivated prosecutions of opposition activists. Unfortunately, the TV version of the piece is not online.