{"id":277526,"date":"2017-01-18T16:40:18","date_gmt":"2017-01-18T12:40:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/epress.am\/?p=277526"},"modified":"2017-01-19T00:45:23","modified_gmt":"2017-01-18T20:45:23","slug":"human-rights-advocates-declare-armenian-opposition-activist-prisoner-of-conscience","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/2017\/01\/18\/human-rights-advocates-declare-armenian-opposition-activist-prisoner-of-conscience.html","title":{"rendered":"Human Rights Advocates Declare Armenian Opposition Activist Prisoner of Conscience"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Gevorg Safaryan, a member New Armenia and Founding Parliament anti-government movements, is a victim of discrimination, a prisoner of conscience, and a political prisoner who is being subjected to vendetta by Armenia\u2019s authorities, a group of human rights advocates announced in a news conference today.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s pointless to challenge yesterday\u2019s verdict<\/a><\/span><\/strong> at Armenia\u2019s Court of Appeal; we should go straight to the European Court of Human Rights,\u201d Artak Zeynalyan, the chairman of the Rule of Law human rights non-profit, said, adding that Safaryan is a discrimination victim and is being persecuted for his political beliefs, while Armenia currently lacks the means for his legal protection.<\/p>\n

According to Zeynalyan, the ECtHR complaint should specifically mention that in Armenia, there is no protection against discrimination and no right to freedom of expression; it should further stress, he added, that Safaryan\u2019s right to fair trial has been violated, and it\u2019s impossible to achieve justice through domestic remedies.<\/p>\n

Arthur Sakunts, the head of the Helsinki Citizens\u2019 Assembly Vanadzor office, for his part, stated that Armenia\u2019s all political forces should be strongly condemned for failing to announce where they stand on Safaryan\u2019s issue.<\/p>\n

Speaking about how politicized the judicial system in Armenia is, Helsinki Committee head Avetik Ishkhanyan, in turn, noted; \u201cThis is yet another proof that the judicial-legal agencies \u2013 the Investigative Service, the Police, the Court \u2013 are only formally separated from each other.\u201d<\/p>\n

Gevorg Safaryan was yesterday convicted by a Yerevan district court of violence against a representative of authorities and sentenced to 2 years of imprisonment. He was arrested on January 1, 2016, and subsequently charged with assaulting police officer Gegham Khachatryan, after several dozen members of Founding Parliament and New Armenia opposition movements scuffled with police as they tried to celebrate the New Year on Yerevan\u2019s Freedom Square.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Gevorg Safaryan, a member New Armenia and Founding Parliament anti-government movements, is a victim of discrimination, a prisoner of conscience, and a political…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":277474,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tstyn_error":""},"categories":[66033],"tags":[52201,14362],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/277526"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=277526"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/277526\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/277474"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=277526"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=277526"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=277526"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}