Of 131 parliamentarians and 5 parties, only those from Heritage were on the scene and in the middle – between police and protestors – in the heated air of March 1 near the French Embassy to Armenia and Alexander Myasnikyan statue.

MP Anahit Bakhshyan remembers how at 7:30 AM on March 1, 2008, she was called and told that people were being beaten at the Opera House.

“I did not manage to contact the other members of our party, and I did not know who was where at that moment. I left the house at 10:30 AM to go to the party’s office, but when I reached the French Embassy, I saw people gathered there. I got out of the car. People approached me and told that they came to ask for political asylum from the embassy,” Bakhshyan recalls.

During those hours it was only Bakhshyan -- a former teacher and widow of Yuri Bakshyan one of the October 27 1999 parliament slaying victims -- from the opposition factually present there, and she was invited to participate in negotiations. Representatives of the Police told Bakhshyan to tell people to move towards the ‘Dinamo’ stadium.

“I said immediately, “Are we taking people there to bludgeon them?” The boy standing next to me cried that we could not beat people, and he was immediately beaten. And then he was taken to somewhere. Little by little our deputies, the Ombudsman, people from the Congress arrived. It was a terrible situation,” says Bakhshyan.

According to her, it was possible to evade bloodshed that day, if the police, in the name of the authorities, managed to pacify the public carefully and impassively instead of infuriating the crowd.

When in the evening people were having a peaceful meeting, the police, the MP says, should have simply stood there and controlled the situation rather than inciting it.

Bakhshyan maintains that police provoked the outbreak of violence.

“What was that sniper doing there? Why did those soldiers appear there? How did they manage to take a group of protestors with them and organize a local clash there?” Bakhshyan asks, referring to the original flare-up that led mass violence.

Heritage deputy Vardan Khachatryan, who witnessed how people died there, says, “I said yet during the special session (of the National Assembly) called that day that, unfortunately, our life was divided into two parts by the March 1 events – before March 1 and after it. The impressions about the State, the Homeland, and other things changed that day. We do not have an alternative except for reaching justice.”

Khachatryan was at the scene until another deputy from their Party – Armen Martirosyan was knifed (while trying to protect a policeman). And then Khachatryan returned at about 6 p.m. He is sure that there were some instigators “imported” into the crowd.

“They were the same people among the public who, at the beginning were using bad language about the police officers. It was a specific group, very well seen. Later they climbed the unfinished building near the French Embassy, and they started throwing stones at both the policemen and people. Even Armen’s knifing was planned,” Khachatryan claims.

Bakhshyan is convinced the authorities’ actions were premeditated.

“Even if the public were dispersed after 8 p.m., it does not matter. These disorders were planned, so that they could have video material to show the world and say, ‘Look what our opposition is doing’,” says Bakhshyan. “They must have an argument for declaring an emergency, and they declared an emergency much later than they started those disgraces.”

Khachatryan says that it was necessary to leave people alone that day, and hence, it would be possible to evade bloodshed. According to him, there was no need for police to surround the people and for military forces to be sent. Nor, he claims, were weapons necessary.

“What do they mean saying that they shot into the air, leaving alone that people died in the streets? Who gave the order to shoot by military weapons even into the air? It was as dangerous as to shoot directly at people. It means that if a bullet should rise up to 500-600 meters and then fall somewhere, it is the same to shoot at people directly, which, in fact, happened,” he says.

Deputies share the concerns of the ten victims’ relatives, saying that currently justice is not implemented.

“They (the relatives) did not have a reason to believe. The authorities are hiding and concealing everything; it is evident. Last week the fifth anniversary of Gurgen Margaryan’s death was commemorated. (The officer murdered in Hungary by an Azeri officer while attending English courses in the frames of NATO program.) They were blaming the Azeri murderer. And I want to ask, “Who killed my husband in the tribune of the National Assembly, who beheaded the State, who shot at people on March 1, who gave the order? It is the same ‘handwriting,’” says Bakhshyan.

Khachatryan believes that maybe it would be possible to ‘say good bye’ to March 1, if there were normal treatment.

“They could have announced a mourning day, they could have held a just investigation, they could have held a high level preliminary examination under exclusively transparent conditions, so that the public could get satisfaction for their own demands and for the striving for justice,” he says.