Mock Trial in Yerevan: Hranush Kharatyan vs. Rights of Ethnic Minorities

At 5 pm on Sept. 24, a mock trial, Hranush Kharatyan vs. violation of the rights of ethnic minorities, will take place in Yerevan’s Mkhitar Sebastatsy educational complex with the cooperation of the Caucasus Center for Peace-Making Initiatives NGO and the Mkhitar Sebastatsy school.

Participating in this event will be journalists Irakli Chikhladze, Yulia Adelkhanova, and Nana Plieva, who have been invited from Georgia.

During this particular mock trial, the plaintiff (or claimant) will be ethnographer Hranush Kharatyan and the defendant will be Armenian Revolutionary Federation (Dashnaktsutyun) Youth Branch Director Artak Zargaryan. 

Note that such mock hearings have been held also in Georgia, on the topic of Chechnya’s self-determination vs. Russia’s territorial integrity, as well as on the right of people’s self-determination vs. territorial integrity using Nagorno-Karabakh as an example. 

In the first case, jury members voted in favor of Chechnya’s right to self-determination, while Azerbaijan’s territorial integrity won the second case.

The event is part of a larger project called Mock Court on Human Rights in Armenia as part of a common program of South Caucasus mock trials and civic hearings in cooperation with the Alliance of Women for Civil Society (Azerbaijan) and the Caucasian Center of Civil Hearings (Georgia). The project aims to become one of the links of regional integration and peace-making processes in the South Caucasus by creating a space for open dialogue and holding mock trials and hearings on issues related to democracy and human rights. It aims to assist citizens’ ability to be informed and to initiate civil participation in the area of human rights in Armenia.