Karen Andreasyan, the Human Rights Defender of the Republic of Armenia, responding to the questions of Gagik Minasyan, a Republican Party of Armenia (RPA) MP, that he stubbornly didn’t want to say what he would do with the money he would be provided, said during the discussion on the 2013 budget today that if they had given him time during a four-day session to hear his annual report, they would have known what the Human Rights Defender generally did, how many complaints he listened to, what activities he was engaged in.
Later on, Alexander Arzumanyan, a member of the Free Democrats Party, stated that the secretariat had told him that Karen Andreasyan was “to blame” for the fact that the annual report had not been put forward in the National Assembly, because he was on business trips all the time, he was absent from the republic. Karen Andreasyan denied, “You have been provided with disinformation. It was included in two four-day sessions, I put aside all possible engagements to come and present. Only during the third four-day session, there was a very important business trip, which couldn’t be postponed, because we had international obligations to the inviting party.” Then Deputy Minister of Finance Pavel Safaryan complained that the complaints of the Human Rights Defender expressed today that the financing was little had not been put forward in the Cabinet. This time Karen Andreasyan gave a sharp answer, “The Cabinet treats the Human Rights Defender in the following manner – to have him stand in line in the corridor. Let me say this – the discussion of the Cabinet was not organized properly.”
In response to our question during a conversation with www.aravot.am whether the facts that he hadn’t been received in the Cabinet, the discussion on the annual budget during a four-day session had been put off were hints at indifference toward the institution of the Human Rights Defender, he said, “Please, ask MPs, the Cabinet how they treat the Human Rights Defender. The indifference is toward the very institution of the Human Rights Defender, not toward Karen Andreasyan’s personality, because there may be an appointment in the government, they have me stand in line, make me wait not even in the waiting room, but in the corridor for hours. There may be a situation when the law has already been violated – the annual budget should have been heard before May, it hasn’t been. They haven’t even raised issue at two four-day sessions that it was included, but they didn’t manage. For the third time, it suddenly coincides with my business trip; they put an emphasis on it. As for what different forces, organizations think of that, it is their problem.”
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