Over 1 month passed since the Commissioner for Human Rights Thomas Hammarberg and President of the PACE Luis Maria de Puig visited Armenia and only two weeks is left before the next PACE session on September 11. During their meeting with the government representatives of Armenia the officials of the PACE adverted to the PACE resolutions 1609 and 1620, the process of fulfillment of the requirements, issues connected with the arrested citizens after the events of March 1 and the rally ban on part of the government. After the visit of the Europeans only the verdicts of arrested oppositionists Arshak Banuchyan and Ararat Zurabyan were changed. Several cases were sent to the court and the government keeps banning the opposition rallies. There are no more changes. Reminder: Puig had said that if Armenia doesn’t abide with the two PACE requirements a “scandalous situation” will be created and that the fall session of the PACE may be “disastrous for Armenia” and quick sanctions will be applied. We tried to check how the political powers of Armenia assess the current situation and whether the government had taken necessary steps to deserve a positive report by the PACE on September 11. Head of the Bureau of the Heritage Party Anahit Bakhshyan told us that she is sure that the next PACE report is going to be stricter than the previous one. On the opposite RPA deputy-chairman Galust Sahakyan is sure that due to geopolitical issues there won’t be subjective attitude and that the PACE will show a positive report. ARF member Artyusha Simonyan and Prosperous Armenia member Aram Safaryan were hesitant whether the report will be positive or negative. Especially during this month the health state of the NA arrested MPs Sasoun Mikaelyan, Miasnik Malkhasyan, Souren Sirunyan and others is getting worse. They always complain that the health aid they are receiving in prison is not enough. On the other hand during the recent days the police has attacked the peaceful protesters of the Northern Avenue several times. Several dozen policemen and people wearing plain clothes, showed up in Northern Avenue, shouted abuse at the sit-down strikers, tore posters and left taking along their posters. However the police didn’t try to substantiate its actions. As a response to the question of the citizens and the opposition MPs as what the ground of tearing posters is the policemen said that there was no prior decision made. The ground for such actions is the complaints of the storeowners of the Northern Avenue. About a dozen policemen were quick to again move into the street later in the morning after a young man defied them by posting an opposition banner on the wall. They removed it after a brief altercation with the protesters. One of the officers said that they are acting on complaints lodged by the owners of expensive buildings lining the street. The police arrested three young men. It is hard to figure out what kind of logic the government is guided by when they attack the protesters on the eve of September 5 rally and the session of the PACE on September 11 when they are going to discuss the issue of Armenia. “I don’t have any information on that. Or why do you think that any process taking place in the world should reflect on us? The opposition camp is applying extreme steps right now. The whole world is busy with other things but the opposition in Armenia is still trying to bring up fake democracy,” said Galust Sahakyan and added, “in the event of any alert call the jailed citizens were taken care of. Moreover, because of that their verdicts were changed. I think that the courts will go through the cases of all imprisoned and will draw their own conclusions.” It turned out that Mr. Shahbazyan and A. Simonyan were not as informed about the events of Northern Avenue as Sahakyan as they refused to express concrete opinions. “We collide with a phenomenon when there are people, who own stores. But meanwhile there are people, who wish to express their complaints,” said Shahbazyan. “During the last two sessions of the committee we have thoroughly discussed the issues concerned with the health state of the imprisoned ones. We have documents with us but we are not specialists to say that the verdicts should be changed due to the medical documents at hand. That is the reason why we decided to apply to certain institutions to give us medical conclusion,” said the ARF MP. “I am a member of the committee on March 1 and at our last session we had discussed several appeals, which we received from the families and relates of the imprisoned ones. We are going to send these appeals to relevant bodies and hope to receive response on those,” said Safaryan. “The conditions there are so bad that the health state cannot ever be good. There are 6-7 people in one cell. They all smoke. They are people with various problems. How can someone hope that their health state is going to be good? Nothing is taken into account. And the society doesn’t even know what they are charged for. The court trials proceed in an illiterate way. This is our reality. The government announces that they are all our brothers and sisters but nothing is taken into account,” says Bakhshyan. Reminder: at the end of June the PACE gave time to our government till January 2009 session to meet the requirements of the PACE resolutions 1609 and 1620. And at present only 4 months are left before the January session of the PACE. Judging from the behavior of our government it is not excluded that the situation will be the same in January 2009. What expectations do our MPs have? “In any case everything is going to be fine and life is not going to stop regardless of their opinion. I think the PACE will make new recommendations. But I don’t think we should work for them. We should work or our people. I think there will be partiality there too. The reality is that the RA still has a lot to overcome. It means that the program that we are offering to our people will meet most of the requirements of the PACE because it implies most of the PACE demands,” said Sahakyan. “I am having a hard time answering how the report is going to be. When the final conclusion was left till January we knew that some time was needed to resolve these issues. These relate to the democratization process of the country. I can say that certain steps are taken in this direction in the committee and on state level. Perhaps certain progress will be made in this regard. The committee directly moved its activities forward. We may have an interim report in mid-September. These things must be defined and I think there wont be any harsh remarks. It is not right to evaluate the process of democratization half way through. They must wait until the whole process is completed. First we must see certain results in order to evaluate,” says Shahbazyan. “And it may happen during the fall session in the result of the intensive work of the law enforcers and the intensive work of the judicial bodies. Armenia is able to resolve these issues by the end of the year. The political life was slightly passive because of the summer. It was expected that this life may become active. I have always said that the government of Armenia must show sufficient political will to complete the whole process of the March 1 tragic events and reveal the culprits and punish them. I am sure of that,” said Safaryan. “Instead of showing that they are trying to relive this tension the government continues the same line, same court trial, same attitude to the political prisoners. Honestly saying I am having a hard time understanding the government. I don’t understand what they are trying to do with their steps. But if we follow the same steps Armenia will appear in a quite dangerous state,” said Bakhshyan. Reminder: On July 24 Luis Maria Puig stated that “Armenia cannot wait till January. By January the decision may already be ready. Armenia had a lot of time for changes and the fact that the time was prolonged till January is only an exception.”
