Today the Civil Society Institute NGO published the 2011 annual report of the Observatory for the Protection of Human Rights Defenders. Considering there was no mention of the “heroic acts” of Suren Khachatryan, the governor of Syunik, in this report, Aravot.am inquired from head of the NGO Arman Danielyan whether there was hope that at least in the upcoming reports there would be a mention also of his incidents, to which he responded, “This report was about the human rights advocates and Liska’s case was about human rights of a businesswoman. It is interesting that when Hrant Khachatryan did the same thing to Hayk Babukhanyan, he was fined a few thousand AMD, if I am not mistaken and when the governor of Syunik has done that they perceive it as a paternal slap.”
Artak Kirakosyan, the president of the NGO council, thinks that there is mainly a problem of inequality in enforcing punishment in Armenia and Georgia, “Recently there was the same scenario in a case we were interested in, when a priest and a Jehovah’s Witness argued and the Witness was condemned to 6-month imprisonment, when he didn’t even beat. The mistake is in the sentence and attitude of the court. The problem is that Reverent Yesayi may think that Jehovah’s Witnesses are the evil of our country and they should be expelled not only from the churchyard, but also from the country, but at the same time there are basically two kinds of violations that perhaps the court treats him more harshly, because he is a Jehovah’s Witness and the second violation is that the punishment is not equal when one compares it with other cases. In one case they try, in the other they don’t even launch a case when it should have been quite the opposite, a harsher punishment should have been imposed on an official.”
Arman Danielyan informed that the article employed against the Jehovah’s Witness had been absolutely “absurd” and shouldn’t have been employed at all, therefore they were going to prepare material for the court in that regard.
Hripsime JEBEJYAN
