Based on the announcement of Luis Maria de Puig and the discussion of the resolutions 1609 and 1620 we may assume that Armenia’s delegation to the PACE will not be deprived of the voting right.
Before the PACE session Luis Maria de Puig made the following announcement: “As far as I know during the recent visit of the PACE Monitoring Group co-rapporteurs to Armenia an arrangement was made to form an ad hoc to handle the issue of political prisoners. The mentioned ad hoc will also discuss the possibility of amending the Armenian criminal code in a manner to exclude possibilities of persecuting politicians, and the situation will become acceptable for PACE. I don’t know what the decision of the commission will be and Armenia may be deprived of the voting right till April too. But I think that the ad hoc needs time to work.” The latter says that if the arrangements with the Armenian government are fulfilled, it will not be necessary to deprive Armenia of the voting right. During the session the latter pledged that they hoped Armenia would make some changes till April and the critics of the PACE was not targeted at punishments but efforts to help Armenia. The session took place in close conditions and only the head of the delegation Davit Harutyunyan and deputy head Armen Rustamyan were allowed to participate. After the session Davit Harutyunyan said that a serious discussion was organized on Armenia, the co-rapporteurs developed recommendations, during which they did not discuss issues of imposing punishments on Armenia. “Generally it was an active discussion and both the positive and negative sides of the issue were discussed. They said that the policy of the Armenian parliament adopted recently is very important and appreciated Armenia’s decision to grant amnesty to 20 people. However, they said that it does not and shall not exclude the possibility of applying other mechanisms. The co-rapporteurs presented recommendations. Their recommendations currently don’t include any provision concerning imposing sanctions on Armenia or depriving of the voting right. The Monitoring Commission will continue the work with the processes in Armenia and control at a higher level,” said Davit Harutyunyan, who had visited Strasburg two days before the other members of the Armenian delegation. According to the PACE policies, the new resolution on Armenia was circulated and the PACE delegates had to develop recommendations concerning the mentioned document within one hour. Today another session will be organized to discuss the written recommendations. Deputy head of the Armenian delegation Armen Rustamyan, who joined the discussion a little later (as he had been participating in the session of the PACE commission in charge of the policies), said that according to the PACE policies, if there is an issue of imposing punishments on a country, the PACE commission in charge of policies shall discuss it. “As our report is changing, specifically the provisions on sanctions are changing significantly, the mentioned commission shall discuss it to see whether it is consistent with the charter and policies. The decision of the commission is the following: As the previous formulation of the resolution, which envisaged the issue of depriving of the voting right, was consistent with the charter, after changing it the new version, which does not envisage such provision on depriving of the vote, is consistent with the charter as well.” According to Rustamyan, it is already impossible to make significant changes in the draft resolution, i.e. Armenia will not be deprived of the voting right during this session. “It is almost adopted by the commission and it will be hard to change it. Armenia’s issue will always stay in the agenda and it was decided not to impose sanctions in this phase because there is political will to change the situation,” said Armen Rustamyan. For instance, the provision on imposing sanctions on Armenia was amended due to the fact that there is a commission (which was convened about 4-5 days ago) to work on and amend the articles 300 and 225 of the criminal code. Armen Rustamyan says that the content of the draft resolution is the following: “In consideration of the political will to amend the articles 300 and 225, and the fact that such works will be coordinated by the head of the delegation, it is suggested not to impose sanctions in this phase.” The latter says that during the monitoring commission session it will be recommended to solve the problem of political prisoners as soon as possible. “It is an outstanding issue but it should be decided how to do that. Our suggestion is that in order not to bypass the law and legislation of Armenia we should change the provisions in a manner not to leave a space for misinterpretation. In other words, it is important to clearly separate the political motivation from the legal aspect, and it should be done through amending the law. When it happens it will be in fact weakening of the law, which according to the Constitution can have a reverse power in terms of granting amnesty or changing the situation, thus the prosecutor can revise his decision as well,” said Armen Rustamyan.
Before the monitoring commission session there was a session of the PACE political factions. Member of Liberal-Democratic political faction Avet Adonts informed us that Armenia’s issue was discussed during the mentioned session as well. There were both negative and positive opinions. Adonts assures that positive opinions prevailed. “I informed them about anything connected with the situation. It did not change their minds because definitely they knew it before too. We have not met anyone and worked in advance. I told them about the work that has been done so far to fulfill the requirements of the resolutions 1609 and 1620. The discussion was very active, over 10 members came up with speeches, and almost unilaterally they decided that the document, which contains a provision on depriving Armenia of the voting right, is unacceptable, and they will be against it,” said Avet Adonts. Member of the PACE commission on international affairs, representative of Legal State party and member of the Armenian delegation Artsrouni Aghajanyan says that the discussion of Armenia’s issue in their commission lasted about one hour. He says that only two people have been against, one of which was Azerbaijan’s representative. The other 8 members of the commission had positive opinion concerning Armenia and were against depriving Armenia of the voting right. “The representative of Azerbaijan said that when in their country 3 journalists were arrested they wanted to deprive them of the voting right, but when ten people were killed in Armenia they don’t want to do it. They were saying such things,” said Aghajanyan. The commission of international relations also discussed the issue of independence of media in Armenia. In a word, the Armenian delegation to the PACE has made many efforts to convince the Europeans that the Armenian government is doing everything to fulfill the requirements of the resolutions. By the way, while they were saying that the Monitoring Commission had appreciated the fact that the Armenian authorities had granted amnesty to about 20 people, it turned out that only two people out of the 16 citizens who were granted amnesty were political prisoners. The representatives of the PACE countries were informed about this fact by the delegates of the Armenian national Congress (Levon Zurabyan and Arman Grigoryan). Levon Zurabyan told us that they had met with delegates representing 10-12 countries and gave them documents certifying that the authorities are cheating because most of the released prisoners were not political prisoners. They gave them the list of 58 oppositionists imprisoned due to political reasons. They also submitted letters to EU officials and PACE delegates to inform them about the opinion of the Armenian national Congress concerning the process of fulfillment of the requirements of 1609 and 1620 resolutions. Today they are also meeting with the EU commissioner on human rights Thomas Hammerberg.
Strasburg-Yerevan