“I think that the fact of beating journalist Suzy Gevorgyan will definitely find a place in the international reports, especially since this is the second case against her. The first one was last year,” said the Chairman of the Armenia Helsinki Committee, Avetik Ishkhanyan, during the expertize roundtable organized by the Armenian Institute for International and Security Affairs. To the question of Aravot.am of whether this incident will affect the rating of Armenia, Mr. Ishkhanyan replied, “I am not so much interested in the rating. I am more interested in the fact that associated with it, the society should stand up which it did not do. In fact, the problem is with us.”
We wondered about the reason of why the society’s vigilance against such problems has become dull, Avetik Ishkhanyan replied, “Not the authorities are strong but the society is weak. In other words, their strength is in the weakness of the society.” To our observation that given the violence against the observers and proxies on the day of the referendum on December 6, whether we can say that we have a setback and these acts of violence were unprecedented, Mr. Ishkhanyan replied, “These very methods were used in the 90s. In the 2000s, they became more civilized: electoral bribe, use of administrative resources. This time, we had a return to the 90s. From this perspective, it was unprecedented but it was not unprecedented in the common history of the Republic of Armenia.”
To the question that given these facts whether a setback is registered in the sphere of human rights protection, Avetik Ishkhanyan, replied, “The situation is the human rights in Armenia is a systemic problem as we do not have an independent judiciary and a separation of the government. But since Armenian does not have a dictatorship resource: oil and gas, however, certain human rights are operating in Armenia.” Mr. Ishkhanyan noted that the situation in the human rights of Armenia is deteriorating during the elections and post-election period. Regarding the trends, Mr. Ishkhanyan noted the following: “Since 2013 up to now, we have a setback in the sphere of human rights protection, in 2011-2013, the situation has improved.”
To our observation that perhaps the reason is that the Western institutions driven by Armenia’s accession to the EaEU have begun operating less active in our country, Mr. Ishkhanyan did not rule out this fact and said, “It is not associated only with it. In any case, Armenia seeks funds from the West and in this regard, it has commitments.” The human rights defender expresses doubt in this context saying that when there was an international observation in Armenian related to the situation of the human rights, when Armenia was going towards the Association Agreement, so whether the elections in this period were held normal, no, was the mindset of the authorities changed or they were just pretending in front of the international community. He noted, “The problem is that the authorities are reluctant to change the mindset. On the other hand, whether other forces influencing the public have this mindset, these are rhetorical questions.”
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Tatev HARUTYUNYAN
