Mhers nya asylansökan till migrationsverket

 Följande brev är Mehrs egen nya asylansökan till migrationsverket.New application 2014

On 18 January 2014 I arrived to the Armenian airport with three Swedish escorts who promised to be with me until going out of the airport.  As we were about to go out one guy stopped me and started to speak with me. The escorts saw it but didn’t wait and continued walking out of the airport (maybe to their hotel). 

-Why do you hurry, Mher? -  started that guy,- we can help you to go in our car.

In the beginning of our conversation I thought that he might be my brother’s friend whom I didn’t know before. But when the guy stepped and started to whisper with others from National Security Service (NSS) I understood what was going on. I captured the moment when something concerning  two other guys attracted their(NSS guys) attention and they were distracted for a moment. I hurried and turned left down the hall. I threw myself into a random taxi standing on the street in front of the entrance with other ones. 

-Drive and I will say to where, - I said to the driver.

We went to my friend’s apartment. I lived there without a wish of contact with anyone for some days. Of course, my native and trusted friends heard about me and came to see me as well as my parents and brother. I missed my family in Sweden and was worried for them, and our perspective for the future… I seemed to be living in a nightmare for some weeks. 

I considered two things to be very important in all cases: apply and get my passport  as well as my press card. If I would manage to escape Armenia alive again I would need them for traveling in other countries. After some weeks I dared to go out of my friends apartment and managed to get them, fortunately.

After I got my press card on February 14/15 (2014), I thought that going out seemed to be not dangerous for me. I called my mother and said I wanted to visit my parent’s home. However my mother advised me to be careful.  

I went to my parent’s home at late evening in the dark. I neared the entrance behind the building when some guys attacked me.  They acted so quickly. I could not manage to see what was going on and who it was. I got punches and kicks on my chest and back. I could hear from someone behind me:

-Hit him so that he dies…

And when I fell on the ground one of them angrily expressed kicking my hand:

- Fucking journalist…  

Pains were so hard, and I shouted.  After a beat on my head I collapsed because of faint.

Later my mother told that a dark car was driven at full speed when she cried from the balcony and ran out. 

When I opened my eyes I was lying on the bed at my parent’s home.

A private doctor visited to heal me. I could not go to the hospital since they eventually would find out that I was alive and attack me there.

So hard and strange days…!   

Reality and nightmare were mixed for me especially at nights. My condition was a state of emergency and after a while the doctor considered my being in a room in the hospital as the only one solution for 1 or 2 days at least, unofficially of course. I have my gratefulness to the doctor and staff of the hospital. It was also a risk for them. After that I was moved to another house to hide and recover, since it would be to dangerous to remain in my parents house.  It was there in my new hiding place that the Swedish journalist Johan Persson visited me, who together with his colleuge Martin Schibbye already had been involved in writing, workin and protesting against my deportation.

So I was hiding there waiting for recovery. In the mean time some of my close friends in Armenia helped to collect money for getting me smuggled out of Armenia to Georgia. After some months, when I was healthy enough to move again, we manged to arrange and succeed with this.

So I came through Georgia staying there for rest longer time. I lived in some friends house at the countryside, witch I thought would be the safest place to be, while my friends in Armenia where helping me with setting up a way for me go back to Sweden where my wife and children where still living.  On the 26 of October, 2014 I arrived to Sweden and met my family.

I found out through my parents that since the day I came to the airport in Yerevan and managed to flee from the security guards, that there had been unknown persons who had been circling around their house and closest neighberhood, and also been looking in through their windows when they thought that they where not at home.  Though after the day I was attacked outside their home no one appeared near our building or our apartment for a short while. But later my parents also started to stay at my brother’s apartment for some time because of suspicious cars’ and persons’ appearance again. I pray for them too.

I can attach:

-          The epicrisis written by my doctor (description about my sickness and state concerning to the incident)

-          The articles about me written by my Swedish colleges (journalists): they also include enough information about my case/last incident

-          A paper including some acute facts about impunity in Armenia and Armenian courts’ injustice against ordinary suffered citizens/residents

-          A link informing that MP Levon Sargsyan is going to be advisor of MP spokesman:   http://www.tert.am/am/news/2014/09/10/joxhovurd/

Let’s note that he was the criminal person who made my relative A. Babayan to be  killed (as he had done it to others becoming a real threat for the people) and  I suffered because of this.

Mher Sahakyan