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“The impetus of reforms has faded away and has returned to its origin.The reforms began years ago, when Davit Harutyunyan was the Minister of Justice, but regressedafterwards.In the situation of centralized authority, reforms cannot happen as the head of a PI does not report to the Minister of Justice.
Heads of PIs are appointed by the Presidentand they report to the President,” said Artur Sakunts, President of the Group of Public Observers Conducting Monitoring of Penitentiary Institutions and Agencies of the RA Ministry of Justice.

Valuing the role of monitoring mechanisms in the sphere of human rights, the representatives of non-governmental and international organizations and observer groups of closed institutions discussed the problems and perspectives of monitoring initiatives on November 18th.

Suren Iskandaryan, Chairman of the Public Monitoring Group at the Detention Facilities of the Police Department, considers their activities to be particularly effective this year: “This year we have submitted 60 urgent reports and had great results; dismissal of the chief of police (in MasisTown), severe reprimand to some chiefs of police. When we present a proven fact, and evidence, the appropriate agencies conduct an internal investigation and we get results.”

The President of PI Observer Group states that the most urgent issue is the dominance of informal rules over legal norms. It takes some efforts for the group to obtain evidence.

“The internal system of appeals is strongly ineffective at PIs: the unwritten rules prevailover the written rules. No steps are taken here for the legal norms to have more power and effectiveness than the unwritten laws.This is a huge obstacle to protecting human rights and other issues at PIs. For instance, an imprisoned individual has a complaint but has to receive permission to submit his complaint and does not know how the complaint will be processed by the regime. The establishments of a “zone watcher” and a “cell watcher”are still active and dominate legal norms,” says Sakunts.

The second important issue, according to Sakunts, is the release of prisoners before the due date, which is possible in cases of early conditional release or in cases of an illness preventing from service: “There is no mechanism, it is impossible. When a person gets into a PI, there are no appeal mechanisms to protect individual rights: from one side there are the informal rules and from the other side there is the impossible formal mechanism preventing individuals from appealing.”

The observer group of the police is pursuing the urgent solution of two legal reform questions.

“Based on the international criteria, the investigator has the right to limit the number of phone calls and visits of an arrested individual or a detainee.  We are among the small number of countries which have this restriction. Our lawyer is currently working in this direction,” says Suren Iskandaryan.

As a second important legal issue, Iskandaryan mentions the closed-door decision of applying detention as a measure of restraint: “We want to make these trials open so even the advocate is engaged. It will be more correct, if the trial is open.

The leaders of the observer groups at police and penitentiary institutions gave negative assessments to the activity of the Office of the Human Rights Defender, in terms of being a mechanism of the prevention of torture. They believe that thereare notany points for cooperation and the mechanism is simply not working.

“I insist that as a national mechanism of the prevention of torture, the Office of the Ombudsman is inactive. Political factors have more impact on the institute of the Ombudsman than the protection of human rights. Which is inappropriate for the structure as well as illogical,” states Sakunts.

Karen Andreasyan, Human Rights Defender was not present at the discussion because of a business trip to Syunik Region. Karen Andreasyan did not respond to the call of the organizer to ensure the participation of an appropriate staff member from the office of the HRD.

The discussion on “The Role of Monitoring Mechanisms in the Protection of Human Rights in Armenia: the problems and perspectives of monitoring initiatives” was organized by Prison Reforms International (PRI) Organization, OSCE Yerevan, Counterpart International Armenia, Open Society Foundations-Armenia, and Partnership for OpenSociety Initiative.

Aghavni Yeghiazaryan
Source: www.hra.am