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New Reports Suggest Teaching Rules of Law to Armenian Police

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  • New Reports Suggest Teaching Rules of Law to Armenian Police

    Tert, Armenia
    Nov 13 2009

    Witnessed First-Hand: New Reports Suggest Teaching Rules of Law to
    Armenian Police
    15:23 ¢ 13.11.09


    Today, the report Monitoring of Freedom of Peaceful Assembly in
    Armenia, carried out by the Armenian Helsinki Committee, was presented
    at the Yerevan Congress hotel. Ambassador of OSCE Yerevan Office
    Sergey Kapinos, Special Representative of CoE in Armenia Sylvia Zehen,
    Deputy Head of OSCE Human Rights Department Assia Ivantcheva, as well
    as experts from the Council of Europe and Armenia participated in the
    report's discussion.

    The experts, touching upon the necessity of peaceful assemblies, spoke
    very mildly on the violence during those demonstrations and the
    attempts at hindering them. They spoke more about the necessity to
    improve and develop the corresponding laws on assemblies.

    OSCE/ODIHR (Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights)
    expert Nil Jarmann stated that much work has been done ever since 2004
    in order to improve the law on freedom of peaceful assembly and in
    order to adjust them according to international criteria, but,
    according to Jarmann, the law is only good on paper if it is
    implemented well. After the speeches, Armenian Helsinki Committee
    President Avetik Ishkhanyan presented the report.

    Ishkhanyan said that the work presented in the report was carried out
    from September 26, 2008, to June 30, 2009. It is stated in the report
    that political rallies prevailed in the overall rallies, during which
    unjustified actions by police officers, skirmishes, apprehension, use
    of force, and so forth, were bserved. They also observed that police
    officers were quite well armed in the case of 46 rallies. The report
    also states that in case of any opposition rally, artificial
    impediments were created for the organizers of the rallies. The report
    also referred to the well-known `case of seven,' political prisoner
    Tigran Arakelyan's arrest, and so on.

    Referring to police officers' behaviour during the rallies, Ishkhanyan
    stated that they are often unaware of the laws, therefore they suggest
    that police officers receive special training on the rules of the law.
    He also said they included in the report what they witnessed
    first-hand.
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