Karen Hekimyan, the head of the Citizen Rights Protector NGO, applied to Karen Andreasyan, the Human Rights Defender, on May 23, asking him to register that his rights had been violated and to take action in order to hold the violators accountable. He specifically raised the issue that 15 days after the parliamentary election that had taken place on May 6, 2012, he noticed that the stamp with inscription CEC (Central Election Commission) put on his passport by the election commission of no. 12/13 polling station inYerevan had not disappeared. Therefore, K. Hekimyan wrote in the application to the Human Rights Defender, “According to Article 66, Section 5 of the Republic of Armenia Election Code, ‘The polling station election commission is provided with such an ink to stamp a person’s identity document, which is preserved for at least 12 hours after using and then disappears.’ Around 20 days have passed since theRepublic ofArmenia National Assembly election that took place on May 6, but the stamp put on my passport has not disappeared so far. I think that Article 4 of the Constitution (the article is about ballot secrecy – edit.), as well as Article 66, Section 5 of the Republic of Armenia Election Code, has been violated by that.”
During a conversation with www.aravot.am, K. Hekimyan put forward new details of the case. Firstly he reminded, “Before the parliamentary election, a few parties – the Armenian National Congress (ANC), the Armenian Revolutionary Federation (ARF) and others – filed a petition in theConstitutional Court and demanded that it enforce Article 4 of the Constitution, which was about ballot secrecy. By the way, they demanded to make public the lists of persons who had participated in the election. However, theConstitutional Court rejected it, explaining that those were secret data. However, this is the very thing that violates the respective provision of the Constitution. In one case, the Constitutional Court rules that those are secret data and doesn’t make public the lists of persons that have participated in the election, in the other case, the same CEC doesn’t say anything about the preservation of stamps. So there are basically two different approaches to the same matter.” K. Hekimyan is annoyed, since the stamp has not disappeared from his passport and he, as well as tens of thousands of other people who have found themselves in the same position, cannot do anything. And that violated Article 4 of the Constitution.
Talking about the activities of the Human Rights Defender, K. Hekimyan stated, “In my opinion, the Human Rights Defender performs the functions of mailman. People apply to him, referring to certain articles, which have been violated and the Human Rights Defender applies to some other bodies instead of thoroughly dealing with that issue. Thus, I think that we don’t need such an institution of Human Rights Defender, since it doesn’t differ from Haypost in any way. It is just that Haypost sends a letter for 100 AMD and the Human Rights Defender does it for free.”
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K. Hekimyan is going to file a petition in theConstitutional Court, in order that it revises the constitutionality of the Human Rights Defender’s activities. Our interlocutor added, “A few years ago, I tried to dispute the inactiveness of the former Human Rights Defender on the same factual grounds. However, the Human Rights Defender, as opposed to the tax office or other administrative bodies, can be inactive and one cannot dispute its inactivity. One applies to the court and they say that he is not an administrative body.”
We applied to Karen Andreasyan, the Human Rights Defender, for comments. However, he said, “I don’t comment on assessments made by individuals. Every individual has the right to express his opinion, even if it doesn’t coincide with mine.”
Tatev HARUTYUNYAN
