ACCORDING TO LARISA ALAVERDIAN, POLITICAL PURSUITS HAVE
BEGUN SINCE REPUBLIC OF ARMENIA BECAME INDEPENDENT
13-07-2007 18:29:00 | Armenia | Social
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.