Epress.am News from Armenia
Council of Europe Commissioner for Human Rights, Nils Muiznieks, in his summary report following his visit to Armenia in October, 2014, has objectively and accurately analyzed the situation in Armenia, stated Human Rights Defender Arman Danielyan and lawyers Yervand Varosyan and Lusine Sahakyan during a press conference today, March 16th.
According to Sahakyan, the issues found in the report are so deep-rooted and widespread, that the Commissioner was able to see them during the few days of his short visit.
At the same time, the lawyers agreed that the report would have no practical impact because such reports are frequently written and the issues raised, however, there is no political will in Armenia to solve those issues.
“I’m confident that nothing will change in practice. Even if the executive legally has no influence over appointing judges, there is no inner freedom. There are multiple tools for influencing the judges,” said Lusine Sahakyan.
Yervand Varosyan noted that, nevertheless, as a lawyer, he is happy that such a report exists; “We raise these issues everyday, but we are told that we are being subjective speaking from a lawyer's perspective. Well, the Commissioner is not a lawyer. He’s turned the main attention toward the judicial system. That is very important. We will have no results until we have an independent judicial system, regardless of the amount of reforms there may be.”
Varosyan also underlined that in his recommendations the Commissioner stressed the necessity of changes in both legislation and practice.
“They have understood that Armenia is ready to change laws for 200 years. Our authorities are prepared to continuously change laws and create separate subdivisions. They said 'you don’t have a separate investigative body', so they created the Investigative Committee. If need be, they will create 100 separate investigative services, but not fight against torture,” said the lawyer.
He explained as to why criminal cases on charges of torture are almost never initiated in Armenia. According to Varosyan, cases of torture fall under the “abuse of official position.”
“When European experts, human rights defenders ask about how many criminal cases on charges of ill-treatment have been investigated and sent to court in Armenia, our officials mix everything up. They say that they have initiated and sent to court over a 100 cases on abuse of official position, but when asked about how many of those cases were based on ill-treatment, they say that they don’t have such statistics. They’re scared of being asked about how many cases they have initiated on charges of torture and why they are not taken to court.”
The lawyers noted that Muiznieks’ report is also important for the European Court of Human Rights, because such observations are taken into consideration while issuing verdicts. On another hand, in Armenia they often ingenuinely initiate criminal case, in order to show the European Court that a proper investigation has taken place.
According to Arman Danielyan, 143 cases based on complaints of torture have been initiated last year, but 141 were closed; “It’s obvious, they open the cases to immediately close them.”