“Now it is not simple human rights violations, but a demonstrative violation of international norms, which is very dangerous. I always said that when talking about Azerbaijan, now I regret that this attitude has been adopted by many of our state bodies and institutions. This is not an effective method for the government to achieve its goals, but it harms the state a lot,” said the first Human Rights Defender of the Republic of Armenia Larisa Alaverdyan in parliament. The chair of the NA Standing Committee on Human Rights Protection and Public Affairs, Taguhi Tovmasyan, invited the current and former human rights defenders of the Republic of Armenia and the former chairs of the committee to discuss priorities within the sphere. The first RA Human Rights Defender Larisa Alaverdyan, former NA deputy and chair of the committee Aram Safaryan and former NA deputy and Bright Armenia party member Ani Samsonyan were also present at the discussion.
According to Larisa Alaverdyan, the commission should deal intensively with the issue of prisoners. She said that prior to being the human rights defender, the non-governmental organization she headed had carried out that work for ten years together with international organizations. “We were even able to return those sentenced to death or to ten years in prison.” She does not consider it necessary for the state to deal with this case. Larisa Alaverdyan also highlighted the existence of a law on missing persons. During her years as a member of parliament, she tried but failed. She also discussed the shameful ill-treatment of the families of soldiers missing in action. Alaverdyan also considered the issue of the status of people from Artsakh who came to Armenia to be important, especially after one of the NGOs recently announced that an appeal should be sent to the US Embassy for Armenia to accept refugees from Afghanistan. “Today we have a problem not only with human rights, but also with the nation and statehood,” said Ms. Alaverdyan.
Nelly Grigoryan
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