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FORUM 18 NEWS SERVICE, Oslo, Norway
http://www.forum18.org/
The right to believe, to worship and witness
The right to change one's belief or religion
The right to join together and express one's belief
===============================================
Thursday 20 January 2011
ARMENIA: "WHY DOES THE GOVERNMENT KEEP PUSHING LAWS THAT GET NEGATIVE
REVIEWS?"
Nora Sarkisyan of Armenia's Justice Ministry has stated that draft
Amendments restricting freedom of religion or belief will be changed to
reflect the recommendations of a Council of Europe / Organisation for
Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) legal review. This found that
the Amendments do not comply with international human rights law. However,
Vardan Astsatryan of the Ethnic Minorities and Religious Affairs Department
claimed "the draft Amendments were in accordance with international human
rights standards". Many human rights defenders and religious communities
are concerned at what Pastor Rene Leonian described as "limitations on
freedom of conscience, freedom of expression of our faith and limitation on
human rights generally". Stepan Danielyan of the Collaboration for
Democracy Centre thinks the Amendments "had the strong backing of Prime
Minister Tigran Sarkisyan". But, "why does the government keep pushing laws
in this area that get negative reviews?" Maria Aghajanyan of the Open
Society Foundations asked. Danielyan and Aghajanyan are organising a civil
society-government round table "to get the government talking - this is a
question of transparency", Aghajanyan told Forum 18.
ARMENIA: "WHY DOES THE GOVERNMENT KEEP PUSHING LAWS THAT GET NEGATIVE
REVIEWS?"
By Felix Corley, Forum 18 News Service , and
John Kinahan, Forum 18 News Service
Nora Sarkisyan, advisor to Armenia's Justice Minister Hrair Tovmasyan, has
pledged that the Ministry will bring the text of proposed Amendments to the
Religion Law, the Criminal Code, the Code of Administrative Offences and
the Charity Law into line with the recommendations of a joint Council of
Europe / Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) legal
review. "We recognise that the review was negative and we are taking into
account its views," Sarkisyan told Forum 18 News Service from the capital
Yerevan on 20 January. "A Justice Ministry working group is now revising
the proposed Amendments to bring them into line with the recommendations."
She said the Justice Ministry aims to present revised texts to the Venice
Commission for discussion at its next plenary meeting on 25 and 26 March.
However, government religious affairs official Vardan Astsatryan of the
Department for Ethnic Minorities and Religious Affairs - who said he was
involved in drafting the 2010 Amendments - disagrees. "The draft Amendments
were in accordance with international human rights standards," he claimed
to Forum 18 from Yerevan the same day. "We didn't have very sharp
differences with the Venice Commission. Only a few points need
reconsideration."
The published review - an Interim Joint Opinion - clearly states that parts
of the latest proposed Amendments do not comply with international law and
so with Armenia's international human rights commitments.
"They said some things in favour and some against"
Religious affairs official Astsatryan reluctantly told Forum 18 that
representatives of the Evangelical Church (one of Armenia's evangelical
Protestant churches) and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints
(commonly known as the Mormons) had separately come to him about the 2010
Amendments. He refused to say if these communities were in favour or
against the proposed Amendments. "They said some things in favour and some
against."
Pastor Rene Leonian, head of the Evangelical Church, which has 45
congregations across Armenia, told Forum 18 in December 2010 that they
feared "the limitations on freedom of conscience, freedom of expression of
our faith and limitation on human rights generally" in the proposed
Amendments. These concerns have been echoed, sometimes in private, by a
wide range of human rights defenders and religious communities (see F18News
8 December 2010 ).
A number of religious communities have also approached the OSCE Office in
Yerevan, as its Human Rights Officer Vladimir Tchountoulov told Forum 18 on
20 January. "We are keeping a close eye on developments - it's part of our
mandate."
Amendments prepared in secret
The current draft Amendments were prepared in secret by the Justice
Ministry and sent for review - in English only - to the Council of Europe's
Venice Commission. They only became known when the Venice Commission
published them on its website on 30 November 2010. The draft Amendments to
the Religion Law are available at
, and those to
the Criminal Code, the Code of Administrative Offences and the Charity Law
are at .
The Armenian government has refused to make the original Armenian text
public (see F18News 8 December 2010
).
The Venice Commission opinion - produced jointly with the OSCE Advisory
Council on Freedom of Religion or Belief - was approved at the Venice
Commission plenary meeting in Venice on 16 and 17 December 2010. They were
made public on 22 December 2010 on the Venice Commission website
, as well as
on the OSCE Legislation Online website.
Armenian government representatives at the plenary meeting in Venice
insisted to the Venice Commission that Amendments would be made to the
draft and a new text would be presented again. In response, the opinion was
renamed an "interim opinion".
2009 critical review ignored?
The December 2010 Opinion came one and a half years after the similarly
critical Venice Commission / OSCE review of restrictive proposed Amendments
to Armenia's Religion Law and Criminal Code was made public in June 2009.
The 2009 proposed Amendments were fiercely criticised by many human rights
defenders and religious communities in Armenia at the time (see F18News 2
July 2009 ).
The latest Opinion notes that "a good deal of the [2009] specific comment
also remains relevant since the drafters in many instances do not appear to
have taken into account the recommendations in the 2009 Joint Opinion".
Unclear wording affects wide range of human rights
The latest Opinion by international legal experts notes that the latest
Amendments are "often difficult to understand and vague so that the public
will not be in a position to be certain of their rights and obligations".
It calls for the Amendments "to make more precise and clear the scope of
application of the law", and to "clarify which provisions of the Current
and Draft Laws apply to all religious organisations and which apply only to
those which are registered".
The Opinion also notes that the Amendments affect "the linked rights of
freedom of thought, conscience and religion as well as the right to freedom
of expression and opinion and freedom of association and the right to
non-discrimination which are protected in the Armenian Constitution as well
as in the international treaties by which the Republic of Armenia is
bound". These include the European Convention on Human Rights and
Fundamental Freedoms (ECHR) and the International Covenant on Civil and
Political Rights (ICCPR).
Ongoing serious problems
Serious problems are common to both of Armenia's recent sets of proposed
Amendments. As was the case with the previous Amendments, the latest
Opinion bluntly indicates that parts of the latest proposed Amendments do
not comply with international law and so with Armenia's international human
rights commitments. Issues identified by the latest Opinion include:
- that human rights are for everyone, whatever their citizenship. As the
2010 Opinion puts it, the proposals should be amended "so as to guarantee
freedom of conscience, religion or belief to everyone regardless of
citizenship";
- that the Amendments' defining of the scope of freedom of conscience,
religion or belief is much narrower than international law requires of
Armenia. For example the latest Opinion calls among other things for the
Amendments "to recognize the freedom to change religion or belief", as well
as "to expressly guarantee the freedom to manifest religion or belief in
public or private, and to act according to one's religion or belief in
daily life";
- that the right to legal status must not be restricted. The latest Opinion
calls for the Amendments "to clarify that any religious organisation is
entitled to legal personality and has access to it if it wishes to avail of
such status";
- that the Amendments' defining of what a religious organisation is, what
it can do, and how it can be registered is too unclear and restrictive. As
the latest Opinion states, Armenia should:
* "reconsider the definition of 'religious organisation' and ensure its
compliance with international law";
* "specify with greater precision which particular laws should a religious
organization's statute comply with in order to satisfy registration
requirements";
* "ensure that the administrative requirements set by the Law are
appropriate and consistent with international standards";
* and "clarify that the prescribed list of rights of religious
organisations is not an exclusive list whereby any activities not specified
therein are automatically prohibited";
- that registration is not a pre-condition for being able to exercise the
right to freedom of religion or belief. As the Opinion states, "it is not
clear whether individual groups are free to practise their religion without
registration and this should be expressly permitted";
- that the Amendments should narrow the scope for the authorities to stop
the activities of religious organisations. As the Opinion states, there
should be "a range of sanctions of varying severity, with liquidation being
a measure of last resort applicable only in cases of repeated and/or grave
breaches of the law committed by religious community as a whole or by a
substantial number of its adherents";
- that the possibility to share beliefs should not be narrowed in ways that
break international law. The Opinion calls for the Amendments to
"reconsider the blanket prohibition on religious advocacy and preaching in
all 'learning' and 'social institutions' ", as well as "to ensure that the
Law (and the Criminal Code) allow for some forms of proselytism and only
prohibit 'improper' proselytism, in line with international law". The
Opinion notes that "the right to discuss one's belief is protected" by both
the freedom of religion or belief and freedom of expression articles of the
ECHR and ICCPR, and that "the terms defining proselytism are too broad and
vague".
* The Opinion also states that "the wording 'distortion of religious
convictions' appears to be aimed more at protecting 'the exclusive mission'
of the Armenian Church than at protecting the forum internum and other
rights of those harassed by improper proselytism". As the Opinion notes, "a
general notion of respect for religious feelings is not itself a right
found within the freedom of thought, conscience and religion. On the
contrary, it is inconsistent with the 'pluralism indissociable from a
democratic society' entrenched in Article 9" of the ECHR;
- that discrimination should not be permitted against followers of any
religion or belief. The Opinion calls for the Amendments "to ensure that
the expressly recognized privileged position of the Holy Apostolic Armenian
Church is consistent with the principles regarding equality of treatment
between religions";
- and that Armenia should "consider allowing for charitable financial
support for religious advocacy" The Amendments define "religious advocacy"
as "the dissemination (irrespective of the form - a book, brochure,
electronic carrier, etc.) of certain religious ideas and knowledge
(doctrines) by a follower believing in them".
February round table "to get the government talking"
Civil society activists complain that no official government statement has
yet been made in Armenia, responding to the critical Opinion. The
government has also not announced how it intends to proceed.
The Opinion has been welcomed by civil society activists. "It was a serious
review which will prove very helpful here in Armenia", Stepan Danielyan,
head of the Yerevan-based Collaboration for Democracy Centre, told Forum 18
from Yerevan on 20 January.
Collaboration for Democracy and the Open Society Foundations - Armenia are
planning a joint round table conference on the proposed Amendments in
Yerevan in early February, with participants from the government and civil
society, including religious communities. They hope the Yerevan offices of
the OSCE and Council of Europe will also be involved.
"The whole idea is to get the government talking - this is a question of
transparency," Maria Aghajanyan of the Open Society Foundations told Forum
18 on 20 January. "Why does the government keep pushing laws in this area
that get negative reviews? It happened in 2009 and again in 2010." To help
public discussion, Open Society Foundation has sponsored a translation into
Armenian of the Venice Commission / OSCE Opinion, which has been published
on the Religions in Armenia website at .
The Venice Commission with the OSCE has in recent years published a number
of other critical legal reviews of various proposed Armenian laws
.
What will government do now?
Sarkisyan of the Justice Ministry told Forum 18 that the Ministry will
rework the current Amendments in the light of the Venice Commission / OSCE
recommendations. "They will work from the draft text in hand, but it may
become a new text," she said. Only after the Venice Commission and OSCE
have completed a further review and given its comments will it be presented
to other relevant Armenian government agencies and the government itself
for comment and approval. After that the Amendments will be presented to
Armenia's parliament, the National Assembly, she said.
However, Astsatryan of the Department for Ethnic Minorities and Religious
Affairs denied this. "I believe the Justice Ministry will send the text to
us - and to other parts of the government - before it goes back to the
Venice Commission," he told Forum 18.
Sarkisyan pledged that the text of any new proposed Amendments would be
published in Armenian on the Justice Ministry website "in line with usual
procedures". She said she has been working at the Ministry only for one
month, so could not explain why the 2010 Amendments were not made public in
Armenian.
The 2010 Amendments had been prepared by the then Justice Minister Gevorg
Danielyan and Ministry officials, but Danielyan was sacked in December
2010. So both the Justice Minister Tovmasyan and his advisor Sarkisyan have
been in their jobs for only one month.
Amendments to the 2003 Law on Alternative Service are also with the Justice
Ministry for review. As of 1 December 2010, 73 Jehovah's Witness young men
were prisoners of conscience for refusing to do compulsory military
service, or military-controlled alternative service (see F18News 7 December
2010 ).
But does Prime Minister support restrictions?
Given the apparent difference of opinion within the government, Danielyan
of Collaboration for Democracy remains wary. "I believe the 2010 Amendments
had the strong backing of Prime Minister Tigran Sarkisyan," he told Forum
18 from Yerevan on 20 February. "A year ago he spoke in public that the
idea that the Church and the State should be separate is an outdated
concept. He has special contacts with the Armenian Apostolic Church, and
there'll be lobbying from him and the Church to make the Amendments
harsher."
Prime Minister Sarkisyan is the current head of the board of the Armenian
Apostolic Church's Ararat Diocese, which includes the capital Yerevan, the
Chancellery of the Armenian Apostolic Church's headquarters in Echmiadzin
told Forum 18 on 20 January.
Astsatryan of the Ethnic Minorities and Religious Affairs Department told
Forum 18 on 20 January that Prime Minister Sarkisyan has made no comment on
the proposed Amendments, and plays no role. An aide to the Prime Minister
told Forum 18 the same day that the government has "one position", not
several, and that this issue is being handled by the Justice Ministry.
2009 proposed Amendments not dead?
Aghajanyan of the Open Society Foundations points out that the 2009
proposed Amendments restricting freedom of religion or belief remain on the
National Assembly agenda (see F18News 24 March 2009
). They were approved
by the National Assembly before being criticised by the Venice Commission
and OSCE (see F18News 2 July 2009
). "Since these
Amendments are also on the agenda, they will have to be discussed," she
told Forum 18. (END)
More coverage of freedom of thought, conscience and belief in Armenia and
the unrecognised entity of Nagorno-Karabakh is at
A compilation of Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe
(OSCE) freedom of religion or belief commitments can be found at
.
A printer-friendly map of Armenia is available at
.
(END)
© Forum 18 News Service. All rights reserved. ISSN 1504-2855
You may reproduce or quote this article provided that credit is given to
F18News http://www.forum18.org/
Past and current Forum 18 information can be found at
http://www.forum18.org/
From: A. Papazian
http://www.forum18.org/
The right to believe, to worship and witness
The right to change one's belief or religion
The right to join together and express one's belief
===============================================
Thursday 20 January 2011
ARMENIA: "WHY DOES THE GOVERNMENT KEEP PUSHING LAWS THAT GET NEGATIVE
REVIEWS?"
Nora Sarkisyan of Armenia's Justice Ministry has stated that draft
Amendments restricting freedom of religion or belief will be changed to
reflect the recommendations of a Council of Europe / Organisation for
Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) legal review. This found that
the Amendments do not comply with international human rights law. However,
Vardan Astsatryan of the Ethnic Minorities and Religious Affairs Department
claimed "the draft Amendments were in accordance with international human
rights standards". Many human rights defenders and religious communities
are concerned at what Pastor Rene Leonian described as "limitations on
freedom of conscience, freedom of expression of our faith and limitation on
human rights generally". Stepan Danielyan of the Collaboration for
Democracy Centre thinks the Amendments "had the strong backing of Prime
Minister Tigran Sarkisyan". But, "why does the government keep pushing laws
in this area that get negative reviews?" Maria Aghajanyan of the Open
Society Foundations asked. Danielyan and Aghajanyan are organising a civil
society-government round table "to get the government talking - this is a
question of transparency", Aghajanyan told Forum 18.
ARMENIA: "WHY DOES THE GOVERNMENT KEEP PUSHING LAWS THAT GET NEGATIVE
REVIEWS?"
By Felix Corley, Forum 18 News Service , and
John Kinahan, Forum 18 News Service
Nora Sarkisyan, advisor to Armenia's Justice Minister Hrair Tovmasyan, has
pledged that the Ministry will bring the text of proposed Amendments to the
Religion Law, the Criminal Code, the Code of Administrative Offences and
the Charity Law into line with the recommendations of a joint Council of
Europe / Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) legal
review. "We recognise that the review was negative and we are taking into
account its views," Sarkisyan told Forum 18 News Service from the capital
Yerevan on 20 January. "A Justice Ministry working group is now revising
the proposed Amendments to bring them into line with the recommendations."
She said the Justice Ministry aims to present revised texts to the Venice
Commission for discussion at its next plenary meeting on 25 and 26 March.
However, government religious affairs official Vardan Astsatryan of the
Department for Ethnic Minorities and Religious Affairs - who said he was
involved in drafting the 2010 Amendments - disagrees. "The draft Amendments
were in accordance with international human rights standards," he claimed
to Forum 18 from Yerevan the same day. "We didn't have very sharp
differences with the Venice Commission. Only a few points need
reconsideration."
The published review - an Interim Joint Opinion - clearly states that parts
of the latest proposed Amendments do not comply with international law and
so with Armenia's international human rights commitments.
"They said some things in favour and some against"
Religious affairs official Astsatryan reluctantly told Forum 18 that
representatives of the Evangelical Church (one of Armenia's evangelical
Protestant churches) and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints
(commonly known as the Mormons) had separately come to him about the 2010
Amendments. He refused to say if these communities were in favour or
against the proposed Amendments. "They said some things in favour and some
against."
Pastor Rene Leonian, head of the Evangelical Church, which has 45
congregations across Armenia, told Forum 18 in December 2010 that they
feared "the limitations on freedom of conscience, freedom of expression of
our faith and limitation on human rights generally" in the proposed
Amendments. These concerns have been echoed, sometimes in private, by a
wide range of human rights defenders and religious communities (see F18News
8 December 2010 ).
A number of religious communities have also approached the OSCE Office in
Yerevan, as its Human Rights Officer Vladimir Tchountoulov told Forum 18 on
20 January. "We are keeping a close eye on developments - it's part of our
mandate."
Amendments prepared in secret
The current draft Amendments were prepared in secret by the Justice
Ministry and sent for review - in English only - to the Council of Europe's
Venice Commission. They only became known when the Venice Commission
published them on its website on 30 November 2010. The draft Amendments to
the Religion Law are available at
, and those to
the Criminal Code, the Code of Administrative Offences and the Charity Law
are at .
The Armenian government has refused to make the original Armenian text
public (see F18News 8 December 2010
).
The Venice Commission opinion - produced jointly with the OSCE Advisory
Council on Freedom of Religion or Belief - was approved at the Venice
Commission plenary meeting in Venice on 16 and 17 December 2010. They were
made public on 22 December 2010 on the Venice Commission website
, as well as
on the OSCE Legislation Online website.
Armenian government representatives at the plenary meeting in Venice
insisted to the Venice Commission that Amendments would be made to the
draft and a new text would be presented again. In response, the opinion was
renamed an "interim opinion".
2009 critical review ignored?
The December 2010 Opinion came one and a half years after the similarly
critical Venice Commission / OSCE review of restrictive proposed Amendments
to Armenia's Religion Law and Criminal Code was made public in June 2009.
The 2009 proposed Amendments were fiercely criticised by many human rights
defenders and religious communities in Armenia at the time (see F18News 2
July 2009 ).
The latest Opinion notes that "a good deal of the [2009] specific comment
also remains relevant since the drafters in many instances do not appear to
have taken into account the recommendations in the 2009 Joint Opinion".
Unclear wording affects wide range of human rights
The latest Opinion by international legal experts notes that the latest
Amendments are "often difficult to understand and vague so that the public
will not be in a position to be certain of their rights and obligations".
It calls for the Amendments "to make more precise and clear the scope of
application of the law", and to "clarify which provisions of the Current
and Draft Laws apply to all religious organisations and which apply only to
those which are registered".
The Opinion also notes that the Amendments affect "the linked rights of
freedom of thought, conscience and religion as well as the right to freedom
of expression and opinion and freedom of association and the right to
non-discrimination which are protected in the Armenian Constitution as well
as in the international treaties by which the Republic of Armenia is
bound". These include the European Convention on Human Rights and
Fundamental Freedoms (ECHR) and the International Covenant on Civil and
Political Rights (ICCPR).
Ongoing serious problems
Serious problems are common to both of Armenia's recent sets of proposed
Amendments. As was the case with the previous Amendments, the latest
Opinion bluntly indicates that parts of the latest proposed Amendments do
not comply with international law and so with Armenia's international human
rights commitments. Issues identified by the latest Opinion include:
- that human rights are for everyone, whatever their citizenship. As the
2010 Opinion puts it, the proposals should be amended "so as to guarantee
freedom of conscience, religion or belief to everyone regardless of
citizenship";
- that the Amendments' defining of the scope of freedom of conscience,
religion or belief is much narrower than international law requires of
Armenia. For example the latest Opinion calls among other things for the
Amendments "to recognize the freedom to change religion or belief", as well
as "to expressly guarantee the freedom to manifest religion or belief in
public or private, and to act according to one's religion or belief in
daily life";
- that the right to legal status must not be restricted. The latest Opinion
calls for the Amendments "to clarify that any religious organisation is
entitled to legal personality and has access to it if it wishes to avail of
such status";
- that the Amendments' defining of what a religious organisation is, what
it can do, and how it can be registered is too unclear and restrictive. As
the latest Opinion states, Armenia should:
* "reconsider the definition of 'religious organisation' and ensure its
compliance with international law";
* "specify with greater precision which particular laws should a religious
organization's statute comply with in order to satisfy registration
requirements";
* "ensure that the administrative requirements set by the Law are
appropriate and consistent with international standards";
* and "clarify that the prescribed list of rights of religious
organisations is not an exclusive list whereby any activities not specified
therein are automatically prohibited";
- that registration is not a pre-condition for being able to exercise the
right to freedom of religion or belief. As the Opinion states, "it is not
clear whether individual groups are free to practise their religion without
registration and this should be expressly permitted";
- that the Amendments should narrow the scope for the authorities to stop
the activities of religious organisations. As the Opinion states, there
should be "a range of sanctions of varying severity, with liquidation being
a measure of last resort applicable only in cases of repeated and/or grave
breaches of the law committed by religious community as a whole or by a
substantial number of its adherents";
- that the possibility to share beliefs should not be narrowed in ways that
break international law. The Opinion calls for the Amendments to
"reconsider the blanket prohibition on religious advocacy and preaching in
all 'learning' and 'social institutions' ", as well as "to ensure that the
Law (and the Criminal Code) allow for some forms of proselytism and only
prohibit 'improper' proselytism, in line with international law". The
Opinion notes that "the right to discuss one's belief is protected" by both
the freedom of religion or belief and freedom of expression articles of the
ECHR and ICCPR, and that "the terms defining proselytism are too broad and
vague".
* The Opinion also states that "the wording 'distortion of religious
convictions' appears to be aimed more at protecting 'the exclusive mission'
of the Armenian Church than at protecting the forum internum and other
rights of those harassed by improper proselytism". As the Opinion notes, "a
general notion of respect for religious feelings is not itself a right
found within the freedom of thought, conscience and religion. On the
contrary, it is inconsistent with the 'pluralism indissociable from a
democratic society' entrenched in Article 9" of the ECHR;
- that discrimination should not be permitted against followers of any
religion or belief. The Opinion calls for the Amendments "to ensure that
the expressly recognized privileged position of the Holy Apostolic Armenian
Church is consistent with the principles regarding equality of treatment
between religions";
- and that Armenia should "consider allowing for charitable financial
support for religious advocacy" The Amendments define "religious advocacy"
as "the dissemination (irrespective of the form - a book, brochure,
electronic carrier, etc.) of certain religious ideas and knowledge
(doctrines) by a follower believing in them".
February round table "to get the government talking"
Civil society activists complain that no official government statement has
yet been made in Armenia, responding to the critical Opinion. The
government has also not announced how it intends to proceed.
The Opinion has been welcomed by civil society activists. "It was a serious
review which will prove very helpful here in Armenia", Stepan Danielyan,
head of the Yerevan-based Collaboration for Democracy Centre, told Forum 18
from Yerevan on 20 January.
Collaboration for Democracy and the Open Society Foundations - Armenia are
planning a joint round table conference on the proposed Amendments in
Yerevan in early February, with participants from the government and civil
society, including religious communities. They hope the Yerevan offices of
the OSCE and Council of Europe will also be involved.
"The whole idea is to get the government talking - this is a question of
transparency," Maria Aghajanyan of the Open Society Foundations told Forum
18 on 20 January. "Why does the government keep pushing laws in this area
that get negative reviews? It happened in 2009 and again in 2010." To help
public discussion, Open Society Foundation has sponsored a translation into
Armenian of the Venice Commission / OSCE Opinion, which has been published
on the Religions in Armenia website at .
The Venice Commission with the OSCE has in recent years published a number
of other critical legal reviews of various proposed Armenian laws
.
What will government do now?
Sarkisyan of the Justice Ministry told Forum 18 that the Ministry will
rework the current Amendments in the light of the Venice Commission / OSCE
recommendations. "They will work from the draft text in hand, but it may
become a new text," she said. Only after the Venice Commission and OSCE
have completed a further review and given its comments will it be presented
to other relevant Armenian government agencies and the government itself
for comment and approval. After that the Amendments will be presented to
Armenia's parliament, the National Assembly, she said.
However, Astsatryan of the Department for Ethnic Minorities and Religious
Affairs denied this. "I believe the Justice Ministry will send the text to
us - and to other parts of the government - before it goes back to the
Venice Commission," he told Forum 18.
Sarkisyan pledged that the text of any new proposed Amendments would be
published in Armenian on the Justice Ministry website "in line with usual
procedures". She said she has been working at the Ministry only for one
month, so could not explain why the 2010 Amendments were not made public in
Armenian.
The 2010 Amendments had been prepared by the then Justice Minister Gevorg
Danielyan and Ministry officials, but Danielyan was sacked in December
2010. So both the Justice Minister Tovmasyan and his advisor Sarkisyan have
been in their jobs for only one month.
Amendments to the 2003 Law on Alternative Service are also with the Justice
Ministry for review. As of 1 December 2010, 73 Jehovah's Witness young men
were prisoners of conscience for refusing to do compulsory military
service, or military-controlled alternative service (see F18News 7 December
2010 ).
But does Prime Minister support restrictions?
Given the apparent difference of opinion within the government, Danielyan
of Collaboration for Democracy remains wary. "I believe the 2010 Amendments
had the strong backing of Prime Minister Tigran Sarkisyan," he told Forum
18 from Yerevan on 20 February. "A year ago he spoke in public that the
idea that the Church and the State should be separate is an outdated
concept. He has special contacts with the Armenian Apostolic Church, and
there'll be lobbying from him and the Church to make the Amendments
harsher."
Prime Minister Sarkisyan is the current head of the board of the Armenian
Apostolic Church's Ararat Diocese, which includes the capital Yerevan, the
Chancellery of the Armenian Apostolic Church's headquarters in Echmiadzin
told Forum 18 on 20 January.
Astsatryan of the Ethnic Minorities and Religious Affairs Department told
Forum 18 on 20 January that Prime Minister Sarkisyan has made no comment on
the proposed Amendments, and plays no role. An aide to the Prime Minister
told Forum 18 the same day that the government has "one position", not
several, and that this issue is being handled by the Justice Ministry.
2009 proposed Amendments not dead?
Aghajanyan of the Open Society Foundations points out that the 2009
proposed Amendments restricting freedom of religion or belief remain on the
National Assembly agenda (see F18News 24 March 2009
). They were approved
by the National Assembly before being criticised by the Venice Commission
and OSCE (see F18News 2 July 2009
). "Since these
Amendments are also on the agenda, they will have to be discussed," she
told Forum 18. (END)
More coverage of freedom of thought, conscience and belief in Armenia and
the unrecognised entity of Nagorno-Karabakh is at
A compilation of Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe
(OSCE) freedom of religion or belief commitments can be found at
.
A printer-friendly map of Armenia is available at
.
(END)
© Forum 18 News Service. All rights reserved. ISSN 1504-2855
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From: A. Papazian