Interview
with Artak Kirakosyan, General Secretary of International Federation of Human
Rights (FIDH), Chairman of the Board of Civil Society Institute NGO

In general,
on the international day of human rights people talk about issues. What kind of
global issues do you see in this field?

There is a tendency toward worsening of situation in the region,
particularly in respect of security of human rights defenders. In Russia a
series of sad- in terms of human rights- laws was adopted, including the law on
“foreign agents” and the law on state secret. In Kazakhstan, human rights
defenders are under continuous threat of arrest or trials. The situation
drastically deteriorates in Azerbaijan. In countries of the Central Asia the
situation has been bad for many years, and now the antidemocratic circle
narrows and gets closer to Armenia. In this regard, the threat is felt and
there are reasons for concern. 

What are the grounds of the situation's decline?

The most fundamental reason lay in the fact that after the Soviet
Union collapse the main issue on the agenda was to obtain freedom in various
areas- political, economic, freedom of speech etc., and the West continues
supporting this struggle for freedom.

Definitely, it is not possible to do without freedom, but the emphasis
should not be placed only there. Freedom without social justice brings to the
situation that one group of people becomes more free, unrestricted, to oppress
the others, and leads to formation of oligarchic systems. So, in these
circumstances, a public demand for changes addressing social justice, arises.

Nevertheless, unfortunately, agendas of political parties do not
include issues of social justice. Then the public demand for social justice
becomes complemented with sponsorship. Such as “Aliyev has lots of money but he
also thinks of us”, “Nazarbayev is rich, but a piece falls also to our lot”,
“Ivanishvili is very rich, he will share a part of his wealth with people”,
“Putin does social welfare programs”, and in Armenia it is Gagik Tsarukyan's
phenomena “I am reach, but I will also help you”.

This situation is really very dangerous, because it evokes not from
the political-ideological struggle or movement but from the concept of seeking
sponsorship in the form of ”who will take care of us?” option.

What are the most acute problems in the field of human rights in
Armenia?

The general ones are social -economic problems. If we do not pay
attention to these problems, then we will have a situation that we have now:
wide circles of the public will prefer to have less freedom but to solve at
least some social issues.

The last elections prove what I am saying here. People voted not for a
political force but for the sponsor: “he is our Taron's (Markaryan- the mayor
of Yerevan) brother in-law, we will vote for him because of Taron, because he
does or will do some things for us”.

This is a very dangerous trend, it is calling to our political parties
to change their agendas. Otherwise, the people will prefer minimal social
security to good ideas or freedoms, realization of which is still linked to
money.

Thus, the main ideology demanded by public, which will be followed by the
public, is social justice. There is a global issue of capitalism, and in our
region it is realized in specific forms. Nevertheless, politicians blame the
public instead of trying to address this social demand.

Then does it
mean that elections will not change anything in the life of people?

Ideally, elections have to change the situation. But, as I said, the
political agendas are rejected by the public, so they go and vote for
“sponsors”, and it results in the situation in which the right to vote, in reality,
does not serve its purpose.  And it
breaks the national solidarity and belief that after elections everything will
change.

I think that this is not a crisis in the sphere of human rights, as
the same issues were present also before, but there is a serious political
crisis. Political parties should change their agendas, and it is important that
the civil society stipulates formation of a new political agenda but without
involving much into political struggle, without becoming “political”, not as it
was recently declared:”there are no worthy political parties, let's create
one”.

The agenda for human rights becomes more complicated and I think that
a thorough work is required, and it is being implemented by civil society
groups, ranging from environmental small problems to defending concrete
individuals' rights. This agenda implies a long-term, difficult struggle, in
which the civil society has serious things to do.

What the
non-governmental organizations have to do to change the political agenda?

Think tank organizations should be created and they should aim at
durable tasks, and together with mass media, they should dictate agenda to
political parties.

Political parties, authorities always and around the world have the
same issues – they think from elections to elections and in the end their aim
is to win elections and keep the power or reach the power. So they act in
response to reality and aim at short-term interests.

The vision for our future is vague, and there is a danger that one day
the situation of “seeking sponsors” will result in aliyev's or nazarbayev's
type of authoritarian system such as “our king takes care of us”.

What about
recent reforms in the justice system: did they change anything or it was just a
program that the government implemented for the sake of doing it?

There isan important
element, about which I am even afraid to talk as we lack it tremendously: it is
the issue of morality. The judge should be moral. As long as our agenda lacks
morality and common sense, nothing will change regardless whatever reforms they
implement.

We, in reality, do not have any public response to the activity of
judges. The judges look like sitting in underground making their
decisions.  There should be public
control, because the judges play with people's fates and we should demonstrate
that a concrete judge made such and such decision, which made people unhappy.

I observed some court trials and had an impression that morality was
not considered by judges at all. They are led by other standards, such as
“being within or outside the law”, but this is a closed system and the
independence of judiciary is not going to save the situation.

What
solutions do you propose?

First of all, the light should be shed upon the judges that their
activities appear in front of our sight and are clearly seen.

I would propose that instead of legal and judicial reforms they
broadcast on television a trial on an ordinary criminal case, from the
beginning to the end, that everybody see how the judge deals with people, how the
prosecutors behave in the court, that people see with whom they have to deal
and wake up, get sober. Because the judicial system is very closed, they have
their own norms, it can be said that they act like a mafia, they coordinate
their decisions with their bosses, and there are other issues, about which
lawyers speak out. But all this stays invisible for the public.

There should be a public pressure. In the Mashtots square the
president made a call out of the frame of his authorities: “it is not nice”,
which has to become an idiom. It is not nice, that A1+ does not have a regular
air, it is not nice that Tigran Arakelyan is convicted for 6 years, and there
are many other ugly things like the behavior of judges, prosecutors and other.

We all should get together and organize a public pressure to awake the
feeling of shame. For the judicial system I see this as the most real thing.
Otherwise nothing will change, whether we implement reforms or not: in the best
mode it will become a closed system where judges defend each other, or serve
one another out, and in the worst mode, it will also become corrupt, and they
will start to serve the authorities because we live in a society where
everybody needs “sponsorship”, including the judges.

In line with the all the problems you mentioned are there any positive
changes in the field of the human rights?

All these problems have also a positive side. Elections now are more
transparent than in 1990-s, the pressure, physical violation almost
disappeared. Before people participated in elections, but instead of real
elections they were fed with something totally different. Now the election
results do not cause much hesitance and I hope that this tendency will
continue.

Another positive change is that we have the concept of human rights
developed so far that it is not perceived any longer a monopoly of “NGOs eating
grants” but as a societal issue, demand. Five years ago, when I was saying that
my occupation is defending human rights, people would look at me curiously as they
would not understand what it is at all. But now we have citizens, activists,
who fight for human rights in different areas and this is accepted, welcomed by
the public.

Our society is very critical, which is very positive thing. We have a
big mass of people who are inclined to go through changed. Now it is the time
that we formulate a right agenda for the changes. It is already clear that
political party agendas do not satisfy us, then we ourselves, as civil society,
activists, intellectuals have to form the agenda. Otherwise, we will have a
state of sponsors with all its negative forms and will bring the sponsorship
from the shadow into the legal realm, which happened in Georgia, when
Ivanishvili was elected. 

Interview by Mary Alexanyan