On the 16th of March, information was disseminated about prisoners Arthur Gevorgyan and Armen Yengoyan, that they had announced strike at 14:00 o'clock with no fixed term and that they complain about illegal actions in Artik Penitentiary. Yengoyan even sewed his mouth and eyes as a sign of protest.

We called the chief of the Public Relations Department of the Penitentiary Department of the RA Ministry of Justice Arsen Babayan to verify this information. He informed www.hra.am that there was no strike in Artik at that moment (at 15:40): "There is no strike there at this moment, the information is not true. I just found out that there is no application of strike. There is information that they sewed their mouths and so on, so forth, but there is no such a thing", informed Arsen Babayan.

We also asked for an explanation about announcements of strikes of life sentenced prisoners. Yesterday the mass media spread information that the life prisoners had stopped their strike because the administration of the institution had fulfilled their demands.

"There has been no demand to be fulfilled. That means when there is no demand, there is nothing to fulfill", answered Babayan. He found it difficult to say for sure whether there were strikers among the life sentenced prisoners at that moment or not but he said he would find it out.

We will publish further information as soon as we get more information.

Mary Alexanyan
Source: www.hra.am