www.ombuds.am

[Thai-Samurai]

Rights and Wrongs: Ombudsperson fights to assert her power in wrangle with authorities

By Vahan Ishkhanyan
ArmeniaNow Reporter

The launch of the Armenian Ombudsperson’s official website (www.ombuds.am) this week coincided with a period of bitter standoff between the human rights defender and the authorities.


Activity of ombudswoman made authorities unhappy

When Larisa Alaverdyan was appointed Armenia’s Ombudsperson in January 2004, few expected that within a year her activities would anger the authorities so much that periodical campaigns would be launched against her.

Prior to her appointment, Alaverdyan headed the “Against the Violation of Law” NGO. Her activities were mainly aimed at solving the problems of Armenian prisoners of war in Azerbaijan. The activist was known to hold a moderate stance on the protection of human rights in Armenia, was neutral towards the authorities and backed President Robert Kocharyan.

But since her appointment, she has come to be viewed as an enemy of those in the judicial system, the Prosecutor’s Office, the Ministry of Justice and the President’s office.

The first public clash occurred in the winter, when Alaverdyan walked out of a government meeting chaired by the President. She accused the President of denying her legal right to speak and suggesting that she only ask questions. The Government sitting discussed the adoption of a draft law restricting the powers of the Ombudsperson.

The Government submitted the draft law to the National Assembly, proposing to deprive the Ombudsperson of the right to obtain information about cases under investigation and to submit proposals to the court. The Minister of Justice defended the bill by saying that the role of the Ombudsperson undermined the independence of the courts.

Alaverdyan argues that the court’s main objective is not independence, but the administration of justice. The purpose of the Ombudsperson’s interventions is to protect the right of people to a fair trial. Besides, she says, courts in Armenia are not independent of the executive authorities.

The National Assembly quashed the bill after which Kocharyan appealed to the Constitutional Court. The court granted the suit and stripped the Ombudsperson of these powers.

The Government also applied to the National Assembly to ensure that the Republican Civil Service Council appoints the staff of the Ombudsperson, not the office-holder.

“They ‘defend’ the non-existent independence of the court,” says the Ombudsperson’s legal advisor Zhora Khachatryan, who is responsible for registering violations of human rights by law-enforcement bodies and courts.

“They are very angry that we presented critical reports about the activities of a number of judges.”

However, the authorities did not content themselves only with restricting the powers of the Ombudsperson by law.

On May 26, the National Security Service (NSS) arrested Serob Antinyan, a member of the Ombudsperson’s staff, claiming he had taken a $300 bribe while investigating a complaint. The complaint came from a citizen unhappy at noise levels from a restaurant-bar in the basement of his building.

Antinyan is alleged to have taken money from the restaurateur not to start legal procedures against him. The Prosecutor’s Office instituted criminal proceedings and the same evening the Public Television of Armenia broadcast the moment of bribe taking and the arrest videoed by the NSS.

On the night of the arrest NSS employees, without notifying the Ombudsperson, broke into her office and confiscated an office computer with confidential information on complaints by citizens.

It was later returned. But the law on the Ombudsperson was broken, as it states that the Ombudsman’s office, property and correspondence are inviolable.

There were suspicions that Antinyan was provoked into fraud in order to discredit the Ombudsperson, a view shared by Alaverdyan. Antinyan was given a job with mediation of a former advisor to the Justice Minister.

“The Ombudsperson’s office has no powers to release any businessman from responsibility,” says Armenia Helsinki Committee Chairman Avetik Ishkhanyan. “So why should the restaurant owner have given money to an office worker? The purpose of this story is to compromise the Ombudsperson.”

If the intention was to discredit the Ombudsperson, it failed. The press portrayed Alaverdyan as an independent and conscientious champion of human rights, whom the authorities wanted to silence. Opposition parties rallied to her protection at a meeting.

Vazgen Manukyan, chairman of the National Democratic Union (NDU) declared: “Knowing Robert Kocharyan well I can say that he does not tolerate the disobedience of subordinates. In reality, the authorities committed infringements against the institution of the Ombudsperson and everybody.”

On June 16, John Evans, the United States Ambassador to Armenia, visited the Ombudsperson’s Office and presented it with a computer, saying that he would support her activities. Ambassadors of European countries met Alaverdyan at the French Embassy on June 24 and expressed their solidarity with her.

A day after the computer was confiscated, Alaverdyan issued a statement saying: “I have not yet been given any documents that provide for such action in law. There are no written assurances that the confidential information in the computer will not be spread and will not be used against individuals filing complaints and officials who are addressees of the Ombudsperson’s correspondence.”

Her concerns were justified. On June 5, Alaverdyan announced at a press conference that on May 31, two NSS workers had entered the RIGHT Legal Group advisory organization posing as members of her staff. They had demanded information about individuals filing complaints.

She expressed concern that the NSS was seeking information regarding cases of two citizens who had also applied to her for help. Alaverdyan stated: “The most important guarantee of the protection of human rights was directly violated with the grossest, illegal, anti-lawful actions.

“It is an unprecedented case that has no equal in international practice when the National Security Service puts the state’s security in danger.”

She tried to contact the President and Prime Minster Andranik Margaryan by phone, but neither would speak to her. In a letter to the Ombudsperson, the NSS denied posing as members of her staff and said that a criminal case had been opened against the RIGHT Legal Group’s president Vahe Grigoryan on charges of power abuse and forgery of legal documents.

The RIGHT Legal Group accuses the NSS of persecuting its staff since the organization helped several citizens send applications for hearings to the European Court of Human Rights.

What could the Ombudsperson have done to anger the authorities so much? The answer may be found in her annual report published three months ago (www.ombuds.am).

Among numerous human rights violations presented in the report, two stand out. First, the violations of the law in Spring 2004 during the opposition protest rallies calling for Kocharyan’s resignation, and the torture of participants at police stations.

The report stated that people’s right to free movement and to demonstrate were violated, as was their right to a fair trial. The ransacking by police of the opposition Ardarutyun party’s office on the night of April 12 was seen as a violation of the right to form unions. A large section in the report also dealt with the story of Grisha Virabyan, who lost a testicle as a result of police brutality (see Fighting Back.

The second matter dealt with violations of people’s property rights in the construction of North and Main Avenues (see Death and Destruction and “Need” or Greed?.

This project is being carried out under the personal supervision of President Kocharyan, yet the Ombudsperson has consistently sought to protect the rights of residents in the territories set aside for development.

The Prosecutor General, the Minister of Justice and the Chairman of the Court of Review wrote the Ombudsperson very critical letters about her report, describing it as “groundless.”

During the website presentation Alaverdyan said that she included in it the Report: “We again present the Report. Do not let it seem strange. Many times it was evaluated painfully, many times not adequately, but it shows that the Report found its addressees who understood that they hadn’t protected the law. And a nasty anti-blow was delivered.”

She had an expressly joyful look. “I am happy today,” she said, as the creation of the website, according to her, will give a possibility to people from small towns to apply to her and will make the Ombudsperson’s Office available to more people.

“To be honest, it was unexpected for me that Alaverdyan would become a real champion of human rights,” says Ishkhanyan, the chairman of the Armenia Helsinki Committee. “I had thought that her report would be similar to the formal reports of commissions attached to the President.

“But it pleasantly surprised me. Not only did it objectively present the situation on freedoms in 2004, but also presented both legislative shortcomings and violations in the application of laws. The authorities grew angry because it is one thing for public organizations to criticize and quite another for an official appointed by the President to do it.”

How will the conflict end? Alaverdyan has no intention of resigning her position and she considered the campaigns against her to be a good reason to work harder.

“All this gives a clear conviction that one has to work more systematically with these bodies and a special effort is needed for the executive bodies to get a clearer idea of human rights,” she says.

[Thai-Samurai]

{I found this about the dude losing his balls}

Armenia: A Dictator in the Making

by Emil Danielyan, TOL, 24 June 2004


A police state is being rebuilt in Armenia, and the West´s silence is worse than deafening. Read the transcript of an online discussion with Emil Danielyan on 7 July.

YEREVAN, Armenia—Handcuffed and defenseless, Grisha Virabian endured hours of merciless blows to his crotch and sides. Only after a night of agonizing pain was he reluctantly allowed to undergo surgery. As a result of his torture, one of his testicles had to be removed. But the person who may find himself in jail is Virabian, not one of his sadistic interrogators. The charge: that he put up resistance.

Virabian´s cardinal sin, though, was to lead a group of a hundred people from Artashat, a town 30 kilometers south of Yerevan, on a march to the Armenian capital on 9 April. There, they joined up with the country´s main opposition groups, which had begun a campaign of street protests aimed at toppling President Robert Kocharian, a man controversially reelected last year. Police officers visited his home on an almost daily basis until he stopped hiding and showed up for interrogation on 23 April. Virabian, 44, says he was first assaulted by Hovannes Movsisian, head of the criminal investigations division at the Artashat police, and hit the latter in the face in self-defense with a mobile phone recharging device lying on a table. This is what apparently made the officers go berserk.

Yet if one is to believe the Armenian authorities, Virabian himself is the culprit because he attacked a “state official performing his duties.’ Criminal charges, carrying up to three years´ imprisonment, have already been brought by prosecutors in Yerevan. Virabian has been cross-examined face to face with a dozen Artashat police officers, all of them testifying that he went on a rampage at their headquarters. “They avoided looking me in the eyes,’ says this soft-spoken father of two.

ON THE PATH TO DICTATORSHIP

The case against Virabian has become a potent symbol of unprecedented repression unleashed by Kocharian in response to the opposition drive for regime change, repression that is turning Armenia into a vicious police state where human rights are worth nothing when they threaten the ruling regime´s grip on power. Hundreds of people around the country have been rounded up, detained, mistreated, and imprisoned over the past three months in blatant violation of the law. About two dozen opposition activists have faced prosecution on trumped-up criminal charges.

The crackdown demonstrates that an independent judiciary is as nonexistent in contemporary Armenia as it was in the Soviet era. It also shows that Armenia´s corrupt law enforcement bodies are growing even more brutal in their treatment of ordinary citizens. In an ominous sign for the country´s democratic future, they have been given a new KGB-style function of keeping track of and suppressing opposition activity. This is especially true of the areas outside Yerevan, where just about everyone challenging the regime is on the police watch list.

“Armenia has taken a big step backward in the past three months in terms of human rights protection,’ says Vartan Harutiunian, a prominent human rights campaigner who himself spent eight years in Soviet labor camps as a political prisoner. “We are now firmly on a path leading to dictatorship.’

The most common (and benign) form of political persecution has been “administrative’ imprisonments for up to 15 days for participants in opposition demonstrations. Hundreds are believed to have faced such punishment under the Soviet-era Code of Administrative Offenses for allegedly “disrupting order’ or defying police. In reality, they were simply randomly detained by plainclothes police officers after virtually every opposition rally this spring and were promptly sentenced in closed overnight trials without being granted access to lawyers. Judges hearing such cases usually act like notaries, rubber-stamping police fabrications. The purpose of the administrative arrests seems obvious: to discourage as many Armenians from attending anti-Kocharian protests as possible.

The practice, equally widespread during last year´s disputed presidential election, has been strongly and repeatedly condemned by domestic and international human rights groups. The Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) again called for its immediate end in a resolution on the political crisis in Armenia adopted on 28 April.

The arrests pale in comparison with other human rights abuses. As the campaign for Kocharian´s ouster gained momentum in late March scores of opposition activists in various parts of the country were rounded up for what the police described as “prophylactic conversations.’ The oppositionists said they were bullied and warned against participating in the upcoming rallies in Yerevan.

The first major show of government force came at an opposition rally in Armenia´s second-largest city of Gyumri on 28 March. Authorities there refused to sanction the protest, saying that they could not guarantee its security because the local police were too busy solving a serious crime. The rally went ahead but was nearly disrupted by several men who threw eggs at organizers. They, as it turned out, were police officers. Some opposition activists hardly knew this when they clashed with the men and were arrested on the spot by dozens of other plainclothes police. Four of the activists were eventually sentenced to between nine and 15 months in prison for “hooliganism.’

Tension rose further when the opposition, buoyed by the success of the November “rose revolution’ in neighboring Georgia, took its campaign to Yerevan. The authorities effectively disrupted transport between the capital and the rest of the country in a bid to reduce attendance at the opposition rallies.

The confrontation culminated in a march on 12 April by thousands of opposition supporters in the direction of Kocharian´s official residence in the city center. Baton-wielding riot police stopped the crowd from approaching the presidential palace and brutally dispersed it in the early hours of 13 April, using water cannons, stun grenades, and, according to some eyewitness accounts, electric-shock equipment. The security forces left no escape routes for the fleeing protesters, relentlessly beating and arresting scores of them.

This was immediately followed by the police ransacking and the closure of the offices of the three largest opposition parties. Among those arrested were more than a dozen women working for the most radical opposition party, Hanrapetutiun (Republic). Some of them later gave harrowing accounts of mistreatment and humiliation at the hands of the police chief in Yerevan´s Erebuni district, Nver Hovannisian. One young woman told a Human Rights Watch researcher, “He came in and said, ‘Ah, it was you who was at the protest.´ I said ‘No, it wasn´t me.´ He began to beat me with his fists and knees to my stomach. I fell and he kicked me on my back. He said, ‘Now all our men will come in and rape you.´ ’

The crackdown also saw the worst-ever violence against Armenian journalists. Four were severely beaten by the police while covering how police broke up the 12-13 April demonstration. According to Hayk Gevorgian of the Haykakan Zhamanak daily, the deputy chief of the national police service, General Hovannes Varian, personally confiscated his camera and then ordered subordinates to attack him. Gevorgian had already lost a camera a week before that when he and other photographers and cameramen pictured a group of burly men attempting to disrupt another opposition rally in Yerevan. Almost all of them had their cameras smashed by the thugs, who reportedly work as “bodyguards’ for some government-connected tycoons. Police officers led by Varian stood by and watched, refusing to intervene.

The authorities made an awkward attempt to dispel the widespread belief that they orchestrated the ugly scene by having a Yerevan court fine two of the thugs $180 each on 10 June. It was a travesty of justice, with about 30 well-built men packing the courtroom and refusing to let anyone in. They gave in only after a plea (not an order) from the court chairman. “We were twice humiliated, first in the street and then in the court,’ said Anna Israelian, a veteran correspondent for the Aravot daily who was attacked by the one of the defendants.

THE COUNCIL OF THE BLIND

Strangely enough, international reaction to the events in Armenia has been rather muted. Only Human Rights Watch has made an explicit condemnation of the “cycle of repression’ in a detailed report on 4 May. The PACE resolution also criticized the crackdown, threatening Yerevan with political sanctions. However, the Strasbourg-based assembly´s official in charge of assessing Armenia´s compliance with the resolution, Jerzy Jaskiernia, is notorious for his leniency toward Kocharian´s regime. The Polish parliamentarian´s fact-finding trip to Yerevan on 11-14 June was marred by a scandal over the recent publication of the Armenian version of his book about the PACE, which was sponsored by the Kocharian-controlled parliament. Opposition leaders have accused Jaskiernia of taking a “bribe.’

Seeking to placate the Council of Europe, the authorities have already released all prominent members of the opposition arrested in April. But they are showing no clemency for the jailed rank-and-file oppositionists. It remains to be seen whether the PACE will care about the likes of Edgar Arakelian, a 24-year-old man jailed who got an 18-month jail term for hurling a plastic bottle at a police officer on 13 April, or Lavrenti Kirakosian who, on 22 June, was sent to prison for 18 months for allegedly keeping 59 grams of marijuana at home.

For Grisha Virabian, meanwhile, Europe is the only place where he can bring his tormentors to justice. His government has refused to prosecute them, and he plans to file a lawsuit with the European Court of Human Rights. “The Armenian government won´t punish any of those individuals,’ he says, “because the whole system created by them would crumble as a result.’