According to Zhanna Aleksanyan, President of the Human Rights Organization “Journalists for Human Rights,” the HRD candidate of the government, Anahit Manasyan, Deputy Prosecutor General of RA, does not meet the nomination criteria for that official. She is not known to the public; she became known when she was appointed to the position of Deputy Prosecutor General of Armenia and became known for the fact that she did not communicate with journalists and avoided answering questions, which makes her known in an even more negative light.
Zhanna Aleksanyan reminds me that she continued her attitude of “running away in panic” from journalists even after she was nominated for the position of HRD. “I want to tell Anahit Manasyan that the appointment of HRD is not a position for you to come and enjoy it. This is work. I don’t know Anahit Manasyan personally and have no positive or negative attitude. She was a member of the Constitutional Reforms Commission. Before that, she was the Vice-Rector of the Academy of Justice.
In my opinion, the most important thing was to agree to the position of Deputy Prosecutor General when she was a close friend of Prosecutor General Anna Vardapetyan. No one denied that” at the “Media Center,” Zhanna Aleksanyan said during the discussion on the topic “Can a candidate sent by the government to HRD work freely,” noting that in the case of the working style of the current authorities when the relative- in-law and friend ties have the most significant influence, this circumstance cannot but affect the quality of work.
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The human rights defender noticed that HRD is a job of dealing with various problems of different people, which should be able to be done. In this regard, she remembered Larisa Alaverdyan, the first HRD of the RA, who had a pro-government attitude when she was appointed, but in a short period, devoted herself entirely to the issues of human rights protection and spoke against the government. “We have not seen Anahit Manasyan defending anyone’s rights; she should appear herself; if she does not appear, then she has problems,” said the human rights defender.
According to Zhanna Aleksanyan, the three-month vacancies of the HRD position, and the high-handed statements of the government representatives on that occasion, are the direct attitude of the government toward human rights in Armenia. “We see the decline in the protection of human rights in Armenia, and the authorities are not interested in it. On the occasion of the last local government elections, the Prime Minister wrote: “There is a future,” but I say the exact opposite. If you don’t think at all, not your soldiers, we have more than 20 victims. Who should protect? The ombudsman institute did not deal with the problems of servicemen either because the government’s pressures are so great…very superficial…”.
Human rights defenders note that the opinion of society and human rights organizations is also essential in the HRD candidate. The government and the opposition should not declare who should be the HRD. In this context, she referred to Edgar Ghazaryan, the HRD candidate proposed by the opposition. The opinion of the human rights defender about the candidate of the opposition is the same: he is a prominent politician. “The man participated in the rallies during which the suspected Ceausescu and his wife were shot and had nothing to say. He is a prominent political figure, a politician. I want to say that the opposition and the government are worth each other.”
Nelly GRIGORYAN
