“Unfortunately, our society treats human rights quite cynically these days. People think that the important thing is to have bread without human rights,” Karen Andreasyan, the Human Rights Defender, stated today while signing a memorandum with the USAID. According to the memorandum, the USAID will give technical support to the Human Rights Defender’s Office, in order that the Human Rights Defender may respond more officially to citizens’ complaints on the “hotline.” In response to a question whether the embassy would take any measures in regard to election fraud during the upcoming election, American Ambassador John Heffern said, “The important thing is that the efforts to hold a free election are put from now on, one shouldn’t wait for the election day. We try to find partners in the government, try to do what we can for them, in order that they put efforts to conduct a free and fair election.”
In response to a question of www.aravot.am whether he believed the serious promises that had been made by our establishment to hold a freer, more transparent and fairer election, than last year, the ambassador said, “We welcome those assurances, when those assurances are given at the highest level, we suppose they will be realized. The Prime Minister reasserted those assurances during a forum on Friday. He and the president of the country have taken on a task to enforce the new Electoral Code and to free elections. It is not only his task to fulfill. The opposition, journalists and civil society have to take part in that, in order that the government can fulfill its promise.”
We also asked the American Ambassador how he would assess the activities of our Human Rights Defender’s Office and whether the Cabinet members in other countries also overreacted to the defender’s critique. He basically didn’t answer, “We choose partners and work with such partners, whom we trust. If we had thought the Human Rights Defender’s Office worked not well, this institution wouldn’t have become our partner. By this memorandum, we assert that we will work on developing capabilities.”
In Karen Andreasyan’s words, “The United States don’t have a Human Rights Defender. In other countries, every statement of the Human Rights Defender doesn’t have the force of law, but the society makes it have the force of law. When a Human Rights Defender says that there is corruption in some field, you have to make a state body correct the mistake, fix it. This is the only way to fulfill the recommendations of the Human Rights Defender. The society has to support the problems we raise.”
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