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On April 1, 2015, Helsinki Citizens’ Assembly Vanadzor started implementation of Support for Developing Anti-Discrimination Culture in RA Police System Project, with the financial support of the Open Society Foundations-Armenia. The Project aimed to promote development of anti-discrimination culture in the RA Police system. In particular, the Organization intended to develop modules for training of RA Police Educational Complex students and re-training of RA Police officers and trainers on general prohibition of discrimination, legal guarantees against discrimination in the RA and their proper application

Before initiating the Project, in January 2015, HCA Vanadzor submitted a letter to the RA Police inviting it to discuss the opportunities to implement jointly the Support for Developing Anti-Discrimination Culture in RA Police System Project developed by the Organization. In response to the letter, the RA Police gave its approval of the proposal for joint implementation of the Project above.

On March 9, 2015, a working meeting was held. It was attended by A. Zakaryan, Head of RA Police Headquarters; M. Hakobyan, Head of Legal Department; A. Ghazaryan, Deputy Head of Police Headquarters; and A. Sakunts, Chairman of the Organization, and A. Chilingaryan, Project Coordinator. Following the arrangements made at the meeting, in its letter of March 12, 2015, the RA Police provided the data of the RA Police officers to be involved in the Project as experts.

While it was decided to start the Project from April 2015, according to the verbal agreement of March 27, and Project activities were not commenced “due to numerous national public events scheduled for April and official requirements of the Police.” According to the arrangements, the Project activities were to be discussed after the April events, in late April and early in May.

However, in late April and in May, the Organization could not contact the persons within the RA Police system responsible for implementation of the Project, which made it impossible to start the Project activities. This situation was also brought about by the personnel changes in the RA Police; hence, RA Police contact person M. Hakobyan, Head of Legal Department, was transferred to another position, and the Organization could not contact him. And discussion of the issue with the new officer who replaced him showed that he was not assigned the obligations of the contact person under the Project.

To reveal the position of the RA Police on implementation of the Project, on June 18, 2015, HCA Vanadzor sent a letter to the RA Police Headquarters to find out who was responsible or contact person on behalf of the RA Police. About a month later, in its response of July 16, the RA Police stated that “due to objective circumstances, the RA Police increased the number of police officers involved in the protection of the public order, which resulted in their excessive service workload. Also, it is vacation period now, and therefore, it is reasonable to delay the joint implementation of the Support for Developing Anti-Discrimination Culture in RA Police System Project till more favorable times.”

The period above also marked a number of public events of social and political significance. Among others, HCA Vanadzor also expressed its heavy criticism about the illegal and violent actions taken by the Police against the participants of such events: criminal prosecution and violence against the Founding Parliament members in March, violence against mothers of the servicemen deceased in the armed forces in peacetime in May, and violence against the participants of electricity hike protests in June and July.

However, after reply of the RA Police dated July 16, 2015, the Organization decided to resume the Project activities given the significance of the Project objectives; as a result, a training module was developed with the assistance of the Project Team and experts representing the NGO.

On December 30, 2015, the initial draft of the training module with a letter attached was submitted to the RA Police to invite it to submit its comments, amendments and suggestions, if any, and to discuss the opportunity to test the pilot Project by involving the RA Police officers and/or students of the Police Academy (as trainers and trainees).

In its response to the letter above, on January 18, 2016, the RA Police stated that “the Police officers attend regular trainings at Training and Qualification Faculty of the RA Police Educational Complex facilitated by highly qualified lecturers on the topics below: ‘Issues on Restriction of Human Rights and Freedoms in RA’, ‘Issues on Respect for Constitutional Human Rights during Operational-Investigative Activities’, ‘Human Rights and Police’, ‘Issues within Theory of Human Rights’. Therefore, given the trainings on the issues above, we currently find it unreasonable for police officers to attend similar supplementary trainings.”

It follows from the above, that about 11 months later the RA Police found such training unreasonable, despite the fact that it used to consider it reasonable before.

The RA Police service activities undergo continuous reforms, inter alia, aimed at building public trust in the Police. The RA Police Reform Program for 2015-2017 also has a direction to carry out reforms for greater transparency of police activities, envisaging increased scope of cooperation between the Police agencies and specialized civil society organizations.

Nevertheless, it is obvious that the RA Police shows inconsistent and non-transparent behavior in its cooperation with HCA Vanadzor and implementation of the Project in question. This comes to show the huge difference between the official statements of the RA Police and its real actions.

HCA Vanadzor will never cease either to voice its concerns and criticism over human rights issues and particularly the illegal police actions, or to take relevant actions. The Organization carried on its consistent activities with a priority of human rights protection in 2015 by spotting and voicing numerous flagrant human rights violations by the police and assisting the victims of such violations, as necessary.

HCA Vanadzor hereby:

– traces the inconsistent and unscrupulous behavior of the RA Police, as well as its intolerant attitude to criticism and lack of willingness to take real reforms in human rights protection and cooperate with the civil society;

– states that it does not give up its policy on working with the RA state agencies; along with taking measures to spot and criticize the violations of human rights by state agencies and officials and restore such violated rights, the Organization will carry on introducing recommendations for necessary changes;

– states that it will also carry on assisting the state agencies, including the RA Police, in taking measures to create an atmosphere of real respect for human rights in RA and finds that the RA Police should radically change its attitudes and show a behavior contributing to a constructive atmosphere of trust.