“According to the Human Rights Defender Act, I am a mechanism of preventing violence and abuses, i.e. I am ex officio supposed to prevent all that in our country. Meanwhile I can state that I am guilty that there are abuses, violence, inhuman attitude in penitentiaries, police stations, military stations and elsewhere. I think I am guilty insofar as according to the law, I should have prevented all that, but I haven’t managed. It is interesting whether our Chief of Police, Minister of Justice, Head of the Department of Penitentiaries, Minister of Defense will be able to say like I did that they are to blame for the violence in those bodies,” Karen Andreasyan, the Human Rights Defender, said during an event called The World Without Violence – 2012 organized by Against Legal Arbitrariness NGO, talking about the role of the Human Rights Defender in the national mechanism of abuse prevention.
As for what prevention mechanism means, Andreasyan explained that they had made a big step forward, they had involved NGOs in their work, which systematically visited closed institutions – penitentiaries, military stations, police stations – on a voluntary basis, moreover, rapidly responded to the hotline calls. The Human Rights Defender said that along with doing all this, they didn’t manage to reduce the amount of violence and the reason was the following, “The state hasn’t established a real budget in order that we may do that work. And in order to rapidly respond, we have to systematically visit closed institutions, in order that one slap on the face doesn’t turn into a death and then we nationally mourn. However, we cannot go on foot to do all that. We need money at least for gas, in order that people can move,” Andreasyan said, complaining that, for example, last October he had persistently tried to get 5 million AMD in the National Assembly to that end.
“Who are to blame that there are abuses, violence today, I would say all people who didn’t raise the issue in the National Assembly, did not say ‘give 5 million AMD to the Human Rights Defender.’ I didn’t get that money either from the majority of the National Assembly MPs or NGOs. Eventually, as a result of internal negotiations, the Cabinet gave those 5 million AMD as a goodwill gesture. However, it is a symbolic sum, I cannot prevent the whole violence and all abuses in the country with that money.”
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Andreasyan stressed that there is no work without resources and therefore, “I will submit our budget to the Cabinet in August. Budget is not for taking money from the society, which has economic problems already, the budget is for the primitive expenditures that people, when they go to distant military stations, penitentiaries, even if they are volunteers, can eat at least one sandwich or bread and cheese – we have to ensure at least that, do we not? And those visits, which are made once in three months, should be every week, in order that trust is established and the prisoner is able to tell about his problems, realities of semi-underworld, semi-tough guy relations.”
Eva HAKOBYAN
