Yesterday Amnesty International released its 2011 report.
The 400-page report describes the state of human rights in 157 countries. The report also contains a section on Armenia, which states that as of end of 2010 the events of the tragic events of March 1, 2008 were not justly investigated and adds that irrelevant force was practiced against the protesters of the process. No one was charged because of the 10 victims in the aftermath of the events. The relatives of 9 victims submitted complaints about the inaction of the prosecutor-general’s office but all the instances of courts rejected those. This observation is included in the “impunity” sector of the report. In general the Amnesty International reports contain five sectors – deaths in custody, impunity, freedom of speech, violence against women and girls and prisoners of conscience. These sectors are mostly involved in the 2010 report. In the category of deaths under custody the report reads, “Following its visit to Armenia in September, the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention expressed concern about ill-treatment and beatings of detainees and prisoners. It also expressed concern over detainees being pressured in order to extract confessions.” Amnesty International pointed to the April 2010 death of a man in the central Armenian town of Charentsavan shortly after his arrest on suspicion of theft. Armenian law-enforcement authorities say Vahan Khalafyan committed suicide after being beaten up by local police officers. One of those officers was sentenced to eight years in prison last November. Another Charentsavan policeman got off with a suspended prison sentence. Khalafyan’s family strongly disputes the official version of events, saying that the 24-year-old was beaten to death by his interrogators and that not all of them were prosecuted. The sentenced officer, Ashot Harutiunyan, also insisted during his trial that Khalafyan did not commit suicide. The Amnesty report says that no independent investigation has been conducted yet into the March 2008 use of deadly force against opposition protesters in Yerevan. It notes the fact that nobody has been brought to justice in connection with the deaths of eight protesters and two police personnel in those clashes. In the category of freedom of speech the report reads, “In November, Nikol Pashinyan, an opposition activist and editor-in-chief of Haikakan Zhamanak, was reportedly assaulted by unidentified men while serving a revised prison sentence of three years and 11 months. He was originally sentenced in January to seven years’ imprisonment on charges of organizing mass disorder in 2008. He continued to write articles for his newspaper while in detention. His lawyer reported that Nikol Pashinyan had earlier been threatened with harm unless he stopped exposing in his newspaper allegedly corrupt practices in the penitentiary system. Following the assault, the journalist was moved to another prison.” According to the sector on violence against women and girls in October, 20-year-old Zaruhi Petrosyan, a victim of ongoing domestic violence, died, reportedly after being severely beaten by her husband and mother-in-law. According to her sister, Zaruhi Petrosyan had approached police on two occasions to report the abuse and seek help but they reportedly dismissed her case as “unimportant” and “irrelevant”. Following extensive publicity about the case, the authorities arrested her husband and charged him with “causing willfully heavy damage to health.” According to section on prisoners of conscience Amnesty report notes that at the end of the year, 73 men were serving prison sentences for refusing to do military service on grounds of conscience. “I think that in general Amnesty International remains objective and equitable as it has always been. It has justly reflected all the issues that remain in Armenia and it still continues to do so. It was no surprise for me that this organization worries about the issues that have existed in the country and continue to remain now. The next year report may say that the concrete oligarch has sworn the concrete journalist. Or that some unknown people intruded in the publishing house and hit the employees,” mentioned the president of Asparez club of Gyumri Levon Barseghyan when asked to comment on the Amnesty report. Simultaneously with the Amnesty report the EU also released its report. The EU takes note of recent positive political developments in Armenia. The EU has on a number of occasions raised concerns about freedom of assembly in the country. “We therefore welcome the fact that, for the first time in many years, the political opposition was granted permission to hold a rally in Liberty Square on 28 April. We hope that future requests to hold rallies will be handled in the same way. This rally passed off in an orderly manner due, it seems, to the effective cooperation between law enforcement bodies and opposition groups. With Armenia due to begin a new cycle of elections in 2012, we attach particular importance to the respect for freedom of assembly," reads the statement. The EU welcomes the release of some opposition activists arrested in the aftermath of the March 1, 2008, tragic events and calls on the Armenian authorities to release all the activists that remain in detention. The EU believes that a thorough investigation of the violent events of March 2008 and the release of all those in custody in relation to those events will help Armenia to truly move on." Finally the EU would like to reiterate once again the importance it attaches to intensified relations with Armenia and invites the Armenian government to make full use of the opportunities provided by the Eastern Partnership and the European Neighborhood Policy. RPA deputy-chairman Galust Sahakyan agrees that the reality is not revealed yet but finds it wrong to blame the Armenian government for inaction. Like the Amnesty and EU reports the statements of the US State Department, Human Rights Watch and Freedom House also criticized Armenia several months ago. Quite recently the Human Rights commissioner of the Council of Europe Thomas Hammarberg also gave a pretty rough statement on the mentioned issues. Why has the international community decided to criticize the Armenian government so much? Sahakyan thinks that the international community is bringing up statements, which contradict the interests of Armenia. He is sure that in the whole world, even in Europe there are more problems in terms of democracy than in Armenia and so the criticism of these structures has a subjective approach. And the reason why these structures are so subjective to our country, according to the MP, is that they have a super objective, which is expressed in the international military political situation. Each country is trying to create favorable conditions for itself by using Armenia for its lobbying purposes. “The world politics is built in a way that people guide not only based on democratic values. Often times economic interests are higher than democratic ones,” he says and adds that in police and other structures there are serious reforms. “No matter what the RA government does in international structures to temper these opinions the strict statements will still remain as long as the problems exist in the country. If we are not able to solve the problems connected with media, opposition, political prisoners these reports will be issued for years,” says human rights expert Vardan Harutyunyan. The latter thinks that the last statements of Serzh Sargsyan about rallies, investigation of March 1 events are merely words and that the government has to take the next steps to find concrete facts about the events of March 1, such as releasing the political prisoners, revising over 150 cases. As of the fact that the international organizations release reports one by one, means that they have ultimately understood their role. “They were not strict during the past two years because of the Armenian-Turkish protocols. Most importantly, this means that no matter what the Armenian government has to focus on the events of March 1 events,” adds Harutyunyan. Let us also add that Amnesty International states that in 89 countries of the world the freedom of speech is limited, in 48 countries there are prisoners of conscience, there is violence in jails of 98 countries and in 54 countries unjust court trials took place.