YEREVAN, JULY 13, NOYAN TAPAN. The existence of political prisoners has become a tradition for Armenia and in case of the absence of counteraction by society this problem can get bigger and bigger like a snowball. This point of view was expressed during the discussion on the subject "The problem of political prisoners in the Republic of Armenia", which was organized on July 12 by the Civil National Initiative. According to Larisa Alaverdian, the RA defender of human rights, political pursuits have begun neither today and nor under the current regime, but immediately after the Republic of Armenia became independent. The criticism of the authorities and the disagreement with them, according to Larisa Alaverdian, are currently becoming not only criticised phenomena, but are also classed as crimes. This phenomenon resembles the Soviet years, when the political activities of dissidents were given a criminal colouring. Among the current political prisoners Larisa Alaverdian mentioned the name of Jirayr Sefilian, the coordinator of the non-governmental civil initiative "In defence of liberated territories", Vardan Malkhasian, Vahan Aroyan, as well as Aleksandre Arzumanian, the former Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Armenia, who are imprisoned on the charge of the same case filed against Jirayr Sefilian. This fact is considered to be political pursuit and the above-mentioned people are classed as political prisoners by the standards of the "Amnesty International" international lawyers' organization. Vahe Grigorian, the defender of Jirayr Sefilian, mentioned that the uncertainty of the conception "calls" becomes a basis for groundless approaches, that is to say, a selective opinion is considered to be a call. That is why, according to him, the defensive side intends to submit an application to the Constitutional Court concerning the issue of the conformity of this mentioned article with Constitution. Mikayel Danielian, the Chairman of the Helsinki Associasion, declared that at present there are more political prisoners than those four: currently 75 followers of Jehova's Witnesses are under arrest.

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