Hrayr Tovmasyan, talking about the Human Rights Watch report published the other day that the Armenian authorities continued to violate human rights during a conversation with Aravot.am today, said that a serious progress had been made in terms of human rights last year.
“Let me begin with the infringement of the right to freedom of assembly, which the organization referred to in its speech. One could have talked about that at the beginning of last year, whereas after the bill passed in April, no rally has been prevented from being conducted or generally refused. We even had an uninformed rally and for the first in our practice the police, according to the new regulations, supported the conduct of the rally and at the same time informed that the rally was uninformed. Therefore, noting regress in this regard is not only surprising, but also unacceptable for me. I am ready to sit with those people and publicly prove that the legislation and practice that exists in our country is much more advanced than we think.”
The minister commented also on the arguments of the report that abuses and violent treatment in the police and army remain a serious problem inArmenia, about which local and international human rights organizations inform.
“The military prosecutor talked about those numbers in detail a few days ago. And we should clearly differentiate from each other whether we can assess talking about those facts more, along with the increase in publicity, as a regress in that field – we must say no. The fact that we have started talking about that more doesn’t mean that the situation there has become worse.”
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In Mr. Tovmasyan’s words, although there have not been made sweeping changes in the police system, but progress is noticeable too, “If a person can get a driving license after one exam, deprived of any corruption risks, then the installed videos will allow to decrease corruption risks also in that field. I don’t see any regress in any field. I must say concerning progress that the process has commenced in many fields and we should understand that one can make positive changes only some time after. I don’t want to say that the report has a hidden agenda, there is no hidden agenda, I just want to see whether the actual reality has changed or not.”
Arpine SIMONYAN
