14 Days on Hunger Strike: Shant Harutyunyan and His Friends Have Acquired Health Problems

Political activist Shant Harutyunyan, arrested on Nov. 5, has been on a hunger strike for 14 days. He is exhausted, moves with difficulty (but unaided), and his blood pressure has dropped, Artur Sakunts, head of Helsinki Citizens' Assembly's Vanadzor office, who met with Harutyunyan on Monday, informed Epress.am. The detainee, who has been held the past month in a psychiatric clinic, was complaining of unfair treatment, asking that the ban on family visits be removed.

According to Sakunts, Harutyunyan is worried that the results of his court-ordered medical examination have not yet been published, though they should have been ready by Dec. 27, 2013. According to the human rights activist, two of Harutyunyan's friends who were also arrested, Liparit Petrosyan and Vahe Mkrtchyan, both of whom joined Harutyunyan in his hunger strike, also have health problems. A hunger strike is particularly dangerous for Petrosyan, who is diabetic.  

Sakunts once again remarked that all the actions against Harutyunyan and his friends, including opting for pre-trial detention, and the ban on family visits and on making phone calls, have no legal basis and prove that the persecution against the detainees is political. 

"The ban on family visits is aimed at isolating Shant Harutyunyan, to deprive him of information, which is serious pressure for a politician. In what way can visits interfere with the preliminary investigation? They can't. Shant's meeting with his relatives cannot affect the so-called victims in the case, the police officers, because they are still police employees," said Sakunts. 

Epress.am also spoke with Harutyunyan's wife, Ruzanna Badalyan, about her husband's health. "It's been I don't know how many days now that we've been calling the Human Rights Defender, and there's no one returning our calls. In recent days, we have had no news; only yesterday we were informed of his condition, when Artur Sakunts went to visit him," she said. 

Badalyan was surprised that there was a ban not only on visits, but also on transferring items. "Yesterday, I tried to pass two bottles of mineral water to Shant through Sakunts, but they didn't allow that either, citing that it was a non-working day. They even forbid transferring a sealed bottle of mineral water to a man who has spent 13 days on hunger strike — see what sort of cruel treatment they exhibit toward [Shant] and us," she said. 

Speaking to Epress.am, Harutyunyan's attorney Inessa Petrosyan said in the last few days she was denied access to her client: "To my question why observer organization representatives were allowed to meet with detainees, head of the solitary unit Zakaryan said they are accredited by the organization and can visit at any time, while lawyers can visit only on work days."