Human Rights Watch WORLD REPORT 2015. Armenia
10:22, February 4, 2015 | News, Own news
Armenia’s human rights record remained uneven in 2014. Authorities continued to interfere with peaceful protests. Torture and ill-treatment in custody remained a problem, and investigations are ineffective, even when opened. Journalists continued to face pressure and violence. Although changes to alternative service to compulsory military service garnered praise, serious abuses in the army persist. Local groups documented forced psychiatric hospitalization.
Violence and discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity are serious problems. The government has yet to lift unnecessary restrictions on access to pain medications for people with terminal illnesses.
A Helsinki Citizen’s Assembly-Vanadzor office study of five state-run psychiatric hospitals based on over 300 interviews with medical staff and patients found that some people with actual or perceived psychosocial disabilities are confined in institutions without their informed consent. Under the civil code, a court can declare an individual as “mentally incompetent” without the person in question appearing. No independent mechanism exists to ensure that persons with psychosocial disabilities are not arbitrarily detained in psychiatric institutions.
The Helsinki Citizens’ Assembly-Vanadzor received 42 complaints following the 2013 winter and 2014 summer call-ups about inadequate medical examinations and medical care for new conscripts, resulting in some conscripts with serious health problems being drafted. In some cases, conscripts with health problems were not referred to additional testing, or additional tests were only undertaken as a formality. Activists remain concerned about the thoroughness, transparency, and impartiality of investigations into non-combat deaths that are officially ruled accidents or suicides but where there may be evidence of violence.