Talking about “Country Reports on Human Rights Practices for 2012” issued by the US Department of State last week, in which the situation in the field of human rights is presented, political scientist Armen Minasyan said: “Not that it is a far cry from the reality,
but in any case, one should take into account that not only this, but also all the other reports are written by the US government, and naturally they reflect or stress the American interests. One should think of it as normal, but one should also understand whether the problems pointed out in it exist or not.” In response to a question what differences there were in this report compared to that of last year’s – there was no election last year, and this report stated that the most important problems in the field of human rights in Armenia during the year had been related to limitations on the right to change the government – Minasyan stated: “You yourself said that the reports of those two years were incomparable. If we want to compare with this electoral cycle, we should consider the reports on the previous electoral cycles, the report issued in 2009, in particular, which reflected the 2008 presidential election and the 2007 parliamentary election. As for the problems, the problems certainly exist, furthermore, one should compare, point out the issues, regarding which there is progress or regress. For example, it is not right to compare the 2011 report with the 2012 report. In 2012, there were cases of violence against journalists, all of which concerned the May 6 voting, and since there was no vote in 2011, naturally, there could be no violence related to the voting.” In response to an observation that the court system was also mentioned in the report and a question whether examining that part, we could say that it was presented mildly, Armen Minasyan said: “Our society, our experts realize the problems that exist in the court system better than it can be presented in the report of the Department of State. In any case, there are laws and problems with enforcing those laws, one just has to think of the report as a report, realize the problems and move on.”
Eva HAKOBYAN
