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Political prisoner Volodya Avetisyan, with the help of his wife, submitted to the Yerevan Office of Helsinki Citizens’ Assembly-Vanadzor an open letter on his own behalf and on that of other detainees addressed to the competent public authorities, a group of deputies and Artur Sakunts, Chairman of HCA Vanadzor.

The letter reads as follows.

Open Letter

To: Mr. Kostanyan, RA Prosecutor General,

Ms. A. Hovhannisyan, Minister of Justice,

Mr. Tatoyan, Human Rights Defender,

Deputies: Elinar Vardanyan, Zaruhi Postanjyan and Nikol Pashinyan

Mr. Sakunts

Dear gentlemen, if asked whether the rule of law is in place in the RA, you will answer: of course, it is.

And if we disagree with you, what would you answer? You will say, “If there is a case when you applied and the rule of law was not in place, prove it, and we will enforce the law.”

Here’s what happened….

We hereby refer specifically to ‘Vardashen’ penitentiary facilities; in particular, in October 2015, a group of detainees went on an indefinite hunger strike since the early release, open regime and a variety of other clauses were not in place.

A group of officials and deputies arrived at the penitentiary facilities, with representatives of the Prosecutor General’s Office and the Ministry of Justice, some deputies, the Human Rights Defender, Deputy Chief of the Penitentiary Department among them, in short a serious delegation. They promised that they would soon demonstrate to us the fact of an enforced law. 10 months have passed since their visit; the National Assembly held numerous sessions; however, there has been no response as to the promised enforcement of the law.

We, a group of convicts at ‘Vardashen’ Penitentiary, do know that the court deprived us of the right to free movement, rather than the right to think, avail ourselves of the law, sleep, take treatment, be granted visits, the right to early release and open regime. We hereby request you in this open letter to draw your attention, so that the law is enforced in compliance with the law since our rights are infringed.

Our next step will be hunger strike, which is not desirable for us either. We know that the lives of detainees have no value for you, but we have to take this extreme step to focus your attention on our problems. Please, respond to our letter.

Sincerely and hopefully looking forward to your intervention in enforcing the effective law. And we also require that the “Independent committee” is dissolved.

On behalf of a group of convicts:

Convict: V. Avetisyan

For the letter see here