Yesterday the NA Standing Committee on Legal Affairs in its closed session gave a positive opinion about President Serzh Sargsyan’s proposal to grant amnesty. After the session certain details were publicized, which shows that the main reason of this amnesty is to blow some air in the eyes of the PACE. The thing is that not all opposition members and supporters imprisoned following last year’s Armenian presidential election will likely walk free as a result of a general amnesty. As of yesterday it was clear that amnesty will not be granted to at least 15 political prisoners, including NA MP Sasoun Michaelyan because the proposal selectively and without any grounds included or didn’t include certain articles from the RA Criminal Code. Moreover, in this project the discussion of the presence or absence of any article is nonsense. The reason is that it is totally unclear why some political prisoner sentenced based on the same article is released and other is not. So it turns out that the part of the people, who commit the same actions are released and another part is not. And this is done when the government all the time claims that the amnesty is granted for the sake of social demand. Yesterdays’ proposal discussed at the NA proposes only partial social demand and solidarity.
