On September 21, 2022, in the Yereblur Pantheon, the police used disproportionate force against the parents of the dead soldiers. No police officer has been called to account for that violence. The RA Investigative Committee still complains with its published clarification that “the pre-investigative body is presented with groundless demands to make specific decisions in the proceedings.”
And during the last 24-hour demonstration of protest in front of the RA Investigative Committee, no one considered it necessary to talk to the relatives of the dead servicemen because, according to the clarification in the report of the Penitentiary, “During the last meetings, some of the attendees allowed themselves to make emotional statements, insulting expressions addressed to RA Penitentiary representatives, actually disrupted the normal course of the meeting, due to which it did not serve its purpose.”
During Aravot’s “Areresum” (“Confrontation”) program, Ara Gharagyozyan, a lawyer of the “Helsinki Association” human rights organization, assessed the statement of the RA Investigative Committee as “belonging to the genre of absurdity.”
“There have been acts of violence against mothers, which were recorded by the media. The faces of the police officers are visible. And for eight months, they constantly gave reasons that they could not identify the identity of the police officers. In general, there is no problem with identification. The lawyer assessed what happened as torture and inhumane treatment and claimed that within two weeks or a month, the persons should have been charged and the case sent to the court, but they see that they simply don’t want to do it. Regarding the reasoning of “they allowed themselves to make emotional statements,” Ara Gharagyozyan said: “And why should the victims not react emotionally when they were subjected to violence in such a way and the investigative body has not charged anyone for more than eight months?”
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By the way, Anahit Manasyan, who is still a candidate for Human Rights Defender, was asked by journalists about violence against mothers in Yerablur, but she did not give a specific assessment, arguing that she does not know the actual circumstances of the case. Zaruhi Hovhannisyan, Head of the Group of Public Monitors Implementing Supervision over the Criminal-Executive Institutions and Bodies of the Ministry of Justice of the Republic of Armenia and Public Relations Officer of the “Women’s Support Center” said in this regard: “Here, there is no problem of mastering the factual circumstances at all. There is a position question here: are you a lawyer or not? As a defender of women’s rights, I was the first to state the inadmissibility and assessed the incident as torture and atrocity. And I completely sympathize with those parents, who lost their children to the State, and now they want a fair trial, and they still don’t get it. It is simply an unacceptable approach to such people. And already here, the attitude of HRD towards human rights protection can be measured.”
Reference was made to that Narine Asatryan, who threw the umbrella at the Prime Minister during his visit to the Malishka settlement, was charged with “interfering with the legal service or political activities of an official.” “I am against any violence; any violence is reprehensible,” said Ara Gharagyozyan and added. “I think that the selection of a restraining order against her by her lawyer will be contested.”
The lawyer also called to pay attention to the purpose of the action of the woman displaced from Berdzor, which was not violence, but making the voice of protest heard. Agreeing with that observation, Zaruhi Hovhannisyan recalled the cases when state officials used violence and remained unpunished.
“How many beatings, slaps, and violence cases were in the National Assembly? Are people unequal in this country? Any action was taken against the state official that did not physically harm him, and nothing happened. And the performer is emotional, having lost her homeland, having finally lost the meaning of life; we work with these people every day, and we know their mental and emotional situation.”
The entire conversation is in the video
Anna ISRAYELYAN
