The famous international organizations (even those which have lost their credit along the time) deem it necessary to publish their opinion about the human rights situation every year. The US State Department’s report on March 11 on the Human Rights situation in 2009 was the latest report in the international community. It covered the human rights situation in Armenia, and this part of the report contains a lot of information and references to Armenia. It is not clear what the audience of such report is and what the goals are. If they think that this information is for the citizens of Armenia, they perfectly know what the human rights situation is in Armenia and which rights are violated or abused. However, it is another issue if such reports are for the governments of other countries to make them think twice before cutting a deal with us. The reality is that the fact of abusing and violating people’s right in Armenia is as uninteresting for the ones who are abusing and violating the rights as for the ones who wrote this report (in this case the Department of State). The report writes the following: “The political crisis resulted from the violations of the presidential elections and clashes resulting in the death of ten people still continues.”
The processes show that such things usually don’t affect the relations between the authorities of the country and government of the US. The report of the Department of State shows that they have worked well. They know about the ad hoc looking into the events of March 1 and may even recognize the chairman if they see his picture. In fact things have not changed and the ad hoc has done what it had to do, i.e. it has failed the investigation and has put the blame of the death of the ten people on the opposition, which is easy to understand without this report too. The report writes the following about the events following March 1: “The authorities have used force against the participants of the demonstrations (…) The police have beaten up arrested people, the cases of violating and abusing people’s rights on part of the police and national security services have remained without punishment.” The authors of the report have a precise opinion about the city council elections in Yerevan: “The authorities limited the right of citizens to be free to change their government during the city council elections in Yerevan.”
Many people from Armenia have had the opportunity to express their opinions about such reports and generally the international community. We can just simply remember the ignorance to the international community demonstrated by the LS faction head’s sister Margush Bisharyan during the city council elections of Yerevan. She was even ready to show her breasts to people for the purpose of making the British Ambassador go out of the precinct. Nothing has changed so far; it seems the Ambassador is not shocked anymore and Margush Bisharyan enjoys her life.
Corruption is still a serious problem in Armenia and the government is not making efforts to fight the corruption. This is a reality, which they can use in the upcoming reports as well because it will be still a pending problem in the future too. Nothing can even change Clinton’s conclusion of the report: “Currently the number of governments putting new and destructive limitations on the organizations carrying out the mission of human rights protection is growing.” There is a crisis of credibility in the world. Does the US government have facts of human rights violations in Armenia? No one says they don’t, but it does not have a credibility resource anymore. Even Galust Sahakyan does not respect the report of the Department of State. In Armenia people are also waiting for the reports of other organizations too, specifically we are waiting for the report of the Human Rigths Watch and Amnesty International. The salary of the chairperson of the Human Rights Watch is 350.000 Euro (according to their official information).
International protection of human rights is in fact an unsuccessful activity. The goal of this new tool of civilization, i.e. the goal of monitoring is to keep the hands on the pulse of human rights violations in different countries. However the monitoring is not carried out for the purpose of preventing human rights violations. This document is like Bender’s briefcase: the bigger it is, the higher price will be paid by the government doing the violations. The bigger the violations are, the higher price is demanded by the West, and usually the price that is paid against such packages is certain services and favors. At least bartering can be a good option.
