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“An awful resolution,” “a dirty deal,” “Europe defamed democracy,” “Council of Europe buried Armenia’s future.” These were some of the expressions that several human rights defenders of Armenia characterized PACE latest resolution 1643 related to Armenia.

A resolution, with which the naive Europeans have made the third attempt to regulate the situation created in the consequence of the post election events in our country.

Right defender, coordinator of HCA Vanadzor Artur Sakunts is disappointed at the work of PACE and he characterizes it as “retreat from values. Moreover, it was an incompetent retreat and the document with which an effort is as if to give one more chance to RA authorities to change the situation, is fully devoid of actual grounds, and the formulations are taken from nowhere.”

Mr. Sakunts expressed concern that “none of the assembly participants could think of speaking about why no one has been accused of the murder of 10 people on March 1-2, and why even there has not been any suspects so far… No one thought of the circumstance that if in Armenia every third person is sure these 10 people were killed due the actions taken by police, how their assignees can be involved in “the case of seven” as an injured party.” It was too strange for me that Thomas Hammerberg said that he would express his opinion on whether or not there was a political or criminal persecution only after the trial of the case of seven. And why no opinion is expressed about the other trials held before?

It is still unclear for Mr. Sakunts what the Assembly considers “progress” when before in the latest speech of the Monitoring Committee it was said that Armenia might be deprived of its vote, and when nothing has changed in our country. “We have only to assume that Colombier and Prescott were made confused on purpose as during the past one year in Armenia a miracle could make PACE to start such a deal obviously being unfaithful to its conscience and principles”-said the right defender. According to him, the announcement of the Russian Delegation in PACE that they will vote against the decision to deprive Armenia of its right to vote had a great impact on PACE decision. “After that announcement Armenia was fixed as a Russian region, and the issue of human rights protection in Armenia is observed in the CoE as not an issue of the Armenian authorities, but an issue of the country that is under the Russian despotism. I observe the retreat of PACE from its principles in the context of the latest gas battle between Russia and Europe”-said A. Sakunts. He also added that the next reason for such a decision was a political one: “The CoE, being a group of different countries, made a political decision again proceeding from its interests, meaning Russian-Georgian problems, oil factor and the Karabakh issue. Europe understood that by cooperating with the Armenian authorities or putting pressure on them would not be able to establish democracy and make them have reforms. Unfortunately, the CoE became a structure that makes decisions about Armenia by looking at Russia. Therefore, we have to ask Putin to allow us to have democracy in our country. Or we have to go and separately work with the MPs of thw CoE member states. So we face a very serious problem – to restore Armenia’s sovereignty.”

And we asked whether or not during the additional two months that PACE had given to our country would be possible to have a miracle. Sakunts was pessimistic: “As long as there is Serzh Sargsyan, Aghvan Hovsepyan, Tigran Sargsyan and Hovik Abrahamyan in Armenia, the situation will never change as these people are not able and do not wish to change anything. A fresh proof of it is: the ink on the PACE decision had hardly dried, when here without the accused Smbat Ayvazyan a decision was made to continue his detention. So the only miracle that can save is the change of authorities, moreover urgent change of authorities”-the human rights defender is sure.

Source: http://www.zhamanak.com/