The Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) has given the
Armenian authorities six more months to end their crackdown on the opposition
and fully restore civil liberties restricted following last February’s disputed
presidential election.

In a resolution adopted late Wednesday, the PACE also backed away from its
earlier intention to explicitly demand the reopening of an independent Armenian
television station that was controversially pulled off the air six years ago.

Armenian pro-government members of the Strasbourg-based assembly hailed the
crucial reprieve given to the administration of President Serzh Sarkisian. But
the only opposition member of the Armenian parliamentary delegation walked out
of the PACE session in protest against of what he saw as a betrayal of Europe’s
“own values, rights and benchmarks.”

The measure came as a follow-up to the PACE’s previous resolution on Armenia
adopted in April. It demanded the urgent release of all opposition members
arrested on “seemingly artificial and politically motivated charges,” the
scrapping of serious restrictions on freedom of assembly and the launch of an
independent inquiry into the deadly post-election clashes between opposition
protesters and security forces. The PACE warned that failure to take these
measures by late June could lead to the suspension of the voting rights of its
four Armenian members.

The assembly’s Monitoring Committee, which drafted the latest resolution, argued
against the imposition of any sanctions on the authorities in Yerevan for the
time being, while saying that they have not done enough to meet the PACE
demands.

“Two months is not enough time to implement all the changes for which we
called,” John Prescott, one of the committee’s two Armenia rapporteurs, said
during the debate broadcast live on the Internet. “We believe that Armenia is
going in the right direction, and changes are being made,” he added.

Prescott said he and the other rapporteur, Georges Colombier, arrived at this
conclusion despite having serious misgivings about the independence of a newly
formed Armenian parliamentary commission tasked with investigating the March 1
violence in Yerevan that left at least ten people dead. He said they are also
concerned about the continuing arrest of dozens of supporters of opposition
leader Levon Ter-Petrosian.

Raffi Hovannisian, another prominent opposition figure, dismissed Prescott’s
arguments. “It is clear – Armenian civil society demands that we address this –
that Armenia has not passed democracy’s test on all counts,” he told more than
two dozen fellow PACE members attending the discussion. “Scores of prisoners of
a political character remain detained and incarcerated, and they must be
released forthwith, not in January.”

“The 1 March government crackdown on peaceful demonstrators and the fatal
opening of fire that killed eight civilians and two policemen have not led to
the opening of individual criminal cases,” said Hovannisian. “To date, there are
no suspects: no-one is alleged to have ordered the firing or to have executed
them. That is a travesty of the judicial process.”

“Finally, the right to assembly, free association and free speech remains at the
discretion of security agencies and, later, a judiciary that is far from
independent,” he added before announcing his boycott of further PACE sessions.
Hovannisian said he will not attend them until “Armenia meets standards – its
own and Europe’s – and Europe rises to the realization of its own values, rights
and benchmarks.”

Six other parliamentarians led by Marietta de Pourbaix-Lundin of Sweden proposed
that the deadline for the Sarkisian administration’s compliance with the April
resolution be extended to next October, rather than January. “Mr. President and
dear colleagues, if you consider nothing else, please consider those political
prisoners who have already been in prison for four months,” she said. “Should
they stay in prison for another six months?”

Both the Monitoring Committee and the full assembly rejected the proposed
amendment to the new resolution, however. Prescott argued that the committee
will ask Thomas Hammarberg, the Council of Europe’s commissioner for human
rights, to pay another fact-finding visit to Yerevan and draw up a special
report on the arrested Armenian oppositionists by next September. “We have
visited two or three times, and it is not easy to get to the truth,” said the
former British deputy prime minister.

By contrast, the PACE accepted virtually all of nearly two dozen amendments
proposed by the pro-government members of the Armenian delegation. Those watered
down some of its key demands addressed to the Armenian government.

In particular, the assembly removed from the original version of the draft
resolution a sentence urging the government to give the right of a consultative
vote to international experts invited to take part in the parliamentary inquiry
into the March 1 unrest. The adopted text also makes clear that the ad hoc
commission formed by the Armenian parliament should look into the “causes,”
rather than the “circumstances,” of the deadly use of force against opposition
protesters.

Another amendment pushed through by the Armenian government effectively rebukes
the Ter-Petrosian-led opposition for not accepting the legality of Sarkisian’s
victory in the February 19 election. “The Assembly regrets that not all
opposition forces have recognized the Constitutional Court’s decision, which
confirmed the results of elections as announced by the Central Electoral
Commission,” it says.

The resolution also mentions a recent ruling by the European Court of Human
Rights that faulted the authorities in Yerevan for consistently refusing to
allow the independent TV station A1+ to resume its broadcasts. The document’s
original version drafted by Prescott’s committee specifically stated that they
should at last “grant a broadcasting license to A1+.”

The Armenian authorities succeeded in having that demand dropped as well. The
final version of the resolution only contains a general call for the fairness
and transparency of broadcasting license biddings administered by a
government-controlled regulatory body.

By Emil Danielyan