Epress.am News from Armenia
The Helsinki Citizens’ Assembly Vanadzor office director, human rights defender Artur Sakunts advised the Minister of Health of Armenia Armen Muradyan to read his organization’s reports before commenting on them. Sakunts spoke to Epress.am about the Minister’s comments regarding the report. The Minister said that if the human rights defenders have information about psychiatric facility patients being subject to violence, forced labor, or other violations, they should approach law enforcement about the issue.
“The objective of monitoring closed institutions is not to reveal incidents, but to assess the situation, in order to find a solution to the issue and not to open a court case. Nevertheless, if there are any applications for cases, we also provide legal support during the trial process,” said Sakunts. He believed, the Minister’s answers were not due to ignorance, but quite possibly were an emotional reaction, because “investigative functions can not be attributed to human rights defenders”.
According to Sakunts, Armenia has signed international agreements which oblige the country to involve independent experts with the objective of observing the assurance of human rights in closed institutions. Armenia has signed an agreement related to ensuring the social integration of those patients receiving treatment and care at psychiatric facilities, basically the de-institutionalization of treatment, while the monitoring has also shown that the facilities only deal with the treatment aspect of their work (not the social integration aspect).
In regards to the Minister's assessment that the human rights defenders' criticism proves to be tendentious, Sakunts noted that is entirely false conclusion.
“If we had a tendentious approach, we would have published the 2009 report. But we have also shown with our 2013 report, that changes have occurred during the years. The improvement of those people’s lives are a top priority for me, and not to find those who are guilty,” said the human rights defender.